Social Media Breakfast Ottawa 6

Kung Hei Fat Choy! Today is the beginning of the Chinese New Year! The traditional belief is that an individual’s personality and temperament is reflected by the animal representing his/her birth year along with its associated elements. So, by the Chinese Zodiac – it’s the Year of the Earth Ox! Traits of those born under the sign of the Ox (e.g. American President Obama) include patience and hard work – qualities we’ll all need in a year of difficult global economic conditions.

Patience and hard work have also been what we needed while programming for this new year of Ottawa Social Media Breakfasts. We’ve had some fits and starts with concerns due to a season of cold weather and transit strike related woes. But, we’re back and happy to announce our next Breakfast event! Here are the details:

What:  Social Media Breakfast Ottawa 6

When:  Friday, February 20th, 2009 – 7:30 AM to 9:00 AM

Where:  Gowlings, 160 Elgin Street, 26th Floor, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

How:  Purchase your ticket at http://smbottawa6.eventbrite.com

And who is our February Breakfast guest speaker? It’s Stuart MacDonald, CEO and Founder of Tripharbour. Tripharbour is an online cruise vacation e-commerce and community site. It operates at tripharbour.ca for we Canucks and at tripharbor.com for our American neighbors. A self-described e-business and marketing geek, Stuart will talk about launching Tripharbour in a Social Web world. Of course, he’ll bring along his knowledge and experiences having founded Expedia.ca in Canada, acted as the Chief Marketing Officer of Expedia.com and is one of the originators of mesh, Canada’s leading web conference.

We work with a sponsor like Gowlings to cover food and location costs.  And we’ve relied on the goodwill of out-of-town visitors like Bryan Person of Liveworld and Jen Evans of Sequentia Environics to piggy back Breakfasts while they are visiting our city.  By doing this, we’ve been able to keep our Social Media Breakfasts at no cost since last summer. However, there are more expenses involved in continuing to bring in an out-of-town speaker and we need to charge a small admission fee to make sure we can sustain the Breakfast series.  That said, if you are a student, or simply can’t afford the $10, let us know and we’ll make arrangements.  The last thing we want is for people to be left out of the conversation for monetary reasons.

We hope to see you in a few weeks!