Having taken on the new office of President and Group Publisher at IT World Canada Inc., I wanted to have the ability to touch our strategic stakeholders, partners and industry affiliates not only on a regular basis but also to have the ability to spark discussion.
We’ve all heard about how technology has evolved old media models, to arrive at a new landscape of global aggregators of content to self-publishing entities forging new audiences and delivering new types of messages. I wanted to reach out and tell you what we are doing that helps you, our customer, drive customized and targeted messages to Canada’s elite technology audiences. It all centers on “community” for it remains a fundamental need for people to interact and reach out and touch someone of like interest. New technologies are allowing us to take this to new heights. From this perspective the real challenge is how we continue to nurture and build communities of interest relating to technology in large, mid-size and small organizations, both private and public. In using imagination, innovation and investment to deliver back more value to our customers and ultimately our targeted audiences, an established media group has blossomed into Canada’s number one IT digital media company.
Today, IT World Canada uses technology to deliver the more innovative and highly measurable campaigns our industry applauds. An example of this is the recent honor of winning a COPA Award, bestowed upon our annual ComputerWorld IT Blogging Idol contest, now entering its 4th year. With such recognition and 60 bloggers currently involved in our network, IT World Canada is best positioned to form Canada’s most trusted IT Blogging Network that will incorporate our annual ComputerWorld IT Blogging Idol Program, under the editorial award-winning direction of Shane Schick, our Editor-in-Chief.
This comes at a serendipitous time. In May the launch of a new division called Visability was rolled out, offering strategic digital media services, with design to help an agency, a vendor or stakeholder organization leverage a professional content technology-enabled company. Its entire mandate is to build online visibility through the development of creative assets, resulting in nurtured leads and deeper market intelligence. In turn, this helps to feed core client strategies through amplifying through a respected voice at arms length, issues and messages that will make a difference in market perceptions. This is but one of the many areas IT World Canada continues to invest, with hiring the right people, be it editorial, customized digital content creation and online marketing with proven results. This is but one leg of IT World Canada’s new table.
With technology developments, and having the largest most qualified technology audience in Canada, emphasis remains on continuing to nurture and add value to specific technology communities with purchasing authority. In the New Year, IT World Canada will launch its product directory, aptly named YouFINDit.ca, with over 350,000 product SKUs, with feature comparisons that are fully searchable by any criteria with the ability to search resellers by postal code and inventory levels served to us by distributors, VARS and manufacturers. This takes the Canadian channel business, and product search for all end users to the next level of digital relevance, as well as site engagement. It is these types of product innovations that keep our communities loyal, fully engaged, growing and attracting like audiences to valued brands.
As president, my vision is to ensure IT World Canada remains highly relevant to all our constituents, using technology to serve all stakeholders. Our brands began with print product offerings. Today, through extensive investments, we can offer a full mix, combining the latest technologies for integrated cross promotions, using all channels. In order to undertake such complex campaigns IT World Canada formed a project management office (PMO) to ensure effective, seamless and efficient coordination of large campaigns to end delivery.
Visit ITWorldCanada.com to stay abreast of evolving or new products and services. Here are but a few to check out:
Jobs.itworldcanada.com— the most comprehensive ICT job board now available in this country, partnering with JobServe and already ranked on the 1st page of Google
TechLearningSpace.com – a comprehensive e-learning platform for professional management development, partnering with Professors from credible universities such as Waterloo University, Boston University, and global strategists in social media such as Dr. Cindy Gordon.
YouFINDit.ca – IT World Canada’s new Tech Directory (available January 1, 2011)
PROFIT.ca – A new marketing program for the Channel
Technicity.ca – the exclusive forum to grow the ICT cluster for the City of Toronto and GTA
m.itbusiness.ca & m.itworldcanada.com – We are mobile
Print and Digital Brands – In 2011 all publication brands content will be accessible through all Smartphone’s: iPad, Blackberry, Android, iPhone.
I look forward to your thoughts, ideas, suggestions.