Ben Boudreau at Fred Salon Cafe & Gallery (2606 Agricola Street)

Who better than to start off this year’s new series than my friend Ben Boudreau. He’s the community manager at Yelp!, hilarious blogger at No Ordinary Rollercoaster, and all around smart guy (just ask the internet). You may even have spotted him in Bell FibreOP ads lately (check out #benspotting on Twitter). We hung out at Fred Salon Cafe & Gallery recently where, admittedly, neither one of us had coffee. The food and atmosphere were fantastic though. Not to mention the company. Here’s our Q&A to prove it. (P.S. If you know someone you’d like us to profile check out details about our Coffee Q&A series.)

Kimberly: Since this is a coffee Q&A, I have to start by asking how do you take your coffee?

Ben: I’ve actually just recently become a coffee drinker so for the longest time I would only drink lattés and cappuccinos but now I have my own espresso machine at home so I’ve been making Americanos. I haven’t gotten down to just black coffee yet but that’s my goal. I feel like I’ll have bragging rights then.

Kimberly: You’re originally from HRM. What makes you stay?

Ben: I’ve gotten really lucky, I think. I do hate to say it but I think this is a hard place to get started because a lot of people want to live here so badly that good opportunities are few and far between. I stay here because I really believe in the next generation of this city. I think there are great things ahead for us in Halifax and that with a little effort and a lot of luck I can play a part in them. And that’s why I stay. I stay because this is a great playground for what I want to do in the future, not necessarily right now.

Kimberly: What’s your day job?

Ben: I am the community manager for Yelp! here in Halifax. We’re an online community that helps connect people with local businesses. My day job is awesome: I work from home, I set my own hours, and when I get tired of working from home I go to my favorite coffee shops and work from there. I feel like I almost have a retirement sort of lifestyle of being able to do my own thing and  basically my entire job is uncovering the best this city has to offer and I sure as hell can’t complain about that.

Kimberly: Walk us through a day in your life.

Ben: Sure. I embarrassingly don’t get out of bed before 8:30 or 9. I then let the dogs out; I have two miniature dachshunds. Then I make my coffee. I read my blog posts—not mine but the blogs that I follow and the Tumblrs that I follow. I have them all set up on Pulse which is my favorite app. If you don’t have it you should get it. Yeah, I do that while I have my coffee and then I sort of just dive in. On a typical day I could be doing anything from just interacting with people who are on Yelp! to going out and meeting with business owners to meeting Yelpers at cool cafés to planning events. It really runs the gamut. I don’t have much of a typical day but, you know, that’s what I like about it.

Kimberly: Your job sounds like a lot of fun already but what do you do for fun when you’re not at work?

Ben: What I do for fun is actually pretty low key. I like to cook, I like to just be out in the city with great friends. Usually for fun I’m just going out and doing things with people and trying to find cool new stuff. Other than that I love writing, I love reading, I love cooking. Those are my big three.

Kimberly: What do you enjoy most about living in Halifax?

Ben: I really like that it is a bit smaller. I love visiting big cities but I’m not a big city guy. So I appreciate the fact that it doesn’t take long to get anywhere and that if you’re looking for a Thai place I can know every single one in the market. I really do like that it’s small and compact but I also really like the community spirit. It’s really easy to make a big splash here whether it’s with a personal, private, or professional project and it’s really easy to connect with like-minded people to do really great things. We don’t have to jump through those hoops of ego or bureaucracy to get to the right people to make things happen. We can just find them and get it done. And I love that.

Kimberly: What’s one thing people would be surprised to find out about you?

Ben: Probably that I’m an introvert, actually. People usually assume that I’m this outgoing extrovert—and I am when I’m out with people—but I read this great article about how being an introvert doesn’t mean that you don’t like people or you don’t like socializing but it’s that socializing takes energy away from you and that you have to recharge versus “you don’t like it.” And that’s very much how I am. I love being around people, I love having great fun, I love socializing but I really need my down time even more than that. People might think I’m a party kid but for the most part I spend way more time at home just quiet with my family, reading, doing whatever. That’s probably the biggest thing.

Or something like that.

If you travel over to the CBC Book Club today you’ll notice a pretty fabulous contest that’s inspired by the mash-up trend mixing public domain books with the likes of zombies, vampires, androids, etc. Here’s an example that I created for the Book Club with a hat tip to Costas Halavrezos, Ben Boudreau and Eric Rountree for their help.

Oh, and the dachshunds. Let’s not forget the dachshunds.

Photo credit: Magnus. from Flickr

What do Richard Simmons, the Guinness World Records, and Young MC have to do with each other?

Bust A Move!

On Monday night, Halifax Chicks were invited to a special tweetup at ONYX Dining Room & Cocktail Bar. It was a slight departure from our regular monthly events. Ben Boudreau from the local branding agency Revolve was brave enough to break our cardinal rule for Halifax Dudes by showing up without high heels. We forgave him this transgression because of the wonderful woman he had brought with him as a guest speaker (plus it didn’t hurt that he bought us all a round of fancy drinks and snacks).

Enter Bust A Move. A unique fundraising event that will donate 100% of the proceeds to charity. All the while they’ll be attempting to break two Guinness world records while having a heck of a lot of fun with none other than Richard Simmons leading one of the sessions!

Ambitious? Maybe. But you know what the best part is? It’s changing the current model of fundraising where sometimes as little as 50% of the proceeds go to the charity. And it’s a home grown idea. That’s right: born right here in Nova Scotia.

Why is it so important?

Every year in Nova Scotia, 700 women are diagnosed with breast cancer. Every second day, one of these women dies.

All proceeds raised by Bust A Move teams will go toward the purchase of a much needed digital machine for mammograms, thus increasing output by up to 75%. This one piece of equipment will allow the QEII and IWK Foundations to raise the standards across all levels of breast health.

That’s huge.

The event takes place on January 30, 2010. Up to 1,000 participants will converge on the Metro Centre in teams to literally bust a move for six hours. Check out the Bust A Move blog, follow them on Twitter, join the Facebook group, put this badge on your blog:

BAM Badge

If you can afford to donate, please consider supporting the Halifax Chicks team. Or, even better, register your own team. Whether you can physically participate in the event or not, let’s band together as a community to help get the word out, meet the goals and turn heads in the rest of Canada.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this Bust A Move flash mob that appeared at the Halifax Shopping Centre earlier this week:

Winning me over with sighs and "dachshund eyes"

No, I’m talking about my dog. Well, actually, other people’s dogs. More specifically, Ben‘s dogs who visited for an extended long weekend and subsequently won over my heart despite one of them being sick the whole time.

It makes me wonder, again, if I should add a second dog to our household? Tofu seems to like his space but the bond he has with his brother seems to me a thing of beauty. Can he get that same relationship with another dog? More on this topic over at the dog blog today.

Three's a crowd

On the dog blog today, we look at the relationship between litter mates Tofu and Calvin (who was recently visiting with half-brother Theo).

Besides, pushing each other out of the way in order to get prime spot on my lap (and sometimes posing as each other), these boys have grown up to be best buddies.

More cuteness over at Who’s Your Dachshund?

Photo credit: Matt_Hamm from Flickr

Earlier this week, Ben and I returned to our alma mater after several years out in the “real world.” We were invited by a former professor to present a guest lecture on social media as it pertains to public relations.

I developed a live case study based on a press release from the launch of a Hello Kitty Debit Master Card in 2004 and created characters sketches of potential Twitterers based on the recent criticism of a similar credit card that launched south of the border.

Now, when I say live I mean we posted the case study on the Halifax Tweetup page and asked for volunteers to help post tweets under the hashtag #kermitcard in real time.

We wanted to show how quickly a conversation can happen, what it’s really like to monitor Twitter from the perspective of public relations, and how to respond and encourage dialogue.

Risky? Sure. If it flopped, we would have had a pretty lame case study on our hands. But leave it to Twitter keeners to help show the real power of this social media tool. So, I have to give credit to all the fabulous people who participated both in the general conversation and as “characters”; and to the students who saw the power of social media in real time, asked questions, admitted to being overwhelmed, but remained ever eager to learn.

As a result, instead of being a failure, the hashtag engaged so much conversation that we were concerned it would become a trending topic and loop in the unsuspecting. With the RTs reminding people that it was indeed a case study, and keeping the discussion to within a half hour time limit before closing it, we were able to avoid the confusion for the most part.

Here are some samplings from the feed as an overview of the level of conversation surrounding this fake product. (As a side note: @laurenoostveen really isn’t over-the-top nuts about Kermit, she just made for a very convincing super fan.)

Twitter #kermitcard

So, thanks to everyone who participated in an interesting social media experiment. Now that I’ve got a taste for it, I might be back on campus for more teaching opportunities…

Hello. You’ve reached the blog of Kimberly (a.k.a. AliasGrace). I’m away from the internets right now, educating some fresh new PR minds at Mount Saint Vincent University. Together with Ben we’re creating a new army of social media mavens. A full report of our mission will be available later this week.

So, here’s the deal. While Ben at No Ordinary Rollercoaster is offering to post scantily clad pictures of himself should 50 people contribute funds to Donate4Dachshunds by midnight tomorrow, I’m throwing a good old fashioned guilt trip your way instead.

Didn’t know it was my birthday? I’m hurt. Now throw some cash at puppies to make it better.

Seriously though even the smallest amount brings us closer to our goal of providing a happy ending for many animals in need. And even if you’ve already donated (thanks, you kind soul!) please help spread this video through Twitter, Facebook, your blog, or any way you know how.

Thanks to Tracy & Julian at Firefly Digital Media Inc. for donating this lovely video. Oh, and to their wonderful children who each donated $5 of their own money last week.

To make things easy for you, here’s where you can donate: