In the old days of advertising and marketing – the pre-digital age, if you will – it was all about the silos. The account team spoke with the clients; the planning team did the research; the creative team did the brainstorming and, well, creative work; the production team made sure that everything was done on time and to spec. You either had to be in one silo or another if you wanted to work within the industry.

Then, along came this little thing we like to call the internet, and we introduced a new group to the mix: the developers and digital teams. Some of the big traditional shops struggled adding the digital team to the mix, but they eventually figured it out, and the new process integrated the new silo into the mix. While digital mainly started as informational and promotional in nature, there was an inherent shift in time towards creating quality content – just as on any other medium. Some agencies kept it simple (“we create websites”) as a part of their model, which others went a little more specialized with their approach (“using interaction design and usability research, we create comprehensive web architecture and content strategies to engage consumers…” – you get the drift.) Some new media agencies acted upon many of the key learnings from video production shops, forming successful digital production houses, servicing other agencies and clients.

In the last couple of years, the art of the cross-functional team has become prevalent, where the silo walls have been lowered (if not removed), and more team members are now involved in the end-to-end project process, coming in and out to deliver key insights or feedback in order to make the project more successful. This process has resulted in more creative projects that better utilize the digital capabilities, and has expanded the mindset of the client and the agency alike in developing new programs; to this, there is no doubt. Team members that can function in a cross-functional environment and relate to their colleagues are better set up for success than those who stay in their own silos.

However, I believe the age of using digital – or most media – as an interruption tool – or as a tool that solely pushes aspirational values without participation – is over. There are many recent examples that demonstrate this – and if you’ve sought out our blog, you know many of these – and the value of participatory content has been shown over and over. Because digital serves as a tool for participation and interaction, and the most successful campaigns involve online experiences leading to offline interactions, I argue that we’ve entered the post-digital age. If you’re not integrating your digital work into your overall campaign strategy – and using it as a medium like you would anything else we do – you’re missing out on many valuable opportunities to take the engaged user online and convert them into an engaged customer offline – which is the whole point of marketing in the first place.

What is interesting to me is the mindset that this requires of people working in our industry. No longer is the ability for someone to work in a cross-functional environment an important evaluation tactic for me with any new hire; instead, I think we should be looking for cross-functional people. Cross-functional teams bring together people with different functional experience under a project manager to execute on a project. Cross-functional people have multiple experiences or key skill-sets to bring into a project, offering different viewpoint across the project spectra. While, from a tactical level, you still require all of your skills to execute on a project – creative, development, etc. – having cross-functional people as part of your organization really benefits the planning and strategic portions of the project, as utilizing these different skill sets up front allows for different types of ideas to be developed, in addition to building an added level of flexibility into the project. I want to work with a developer who is able to strategize, or a creative who is obsessed with research, or an account executive who happens to love analytics and analysis. The more people you have able to perform multiple skills, the easier it can become to adapt during a project if something isn’t at the level it needs to be.

As someone who has worked at smaller shops (and run my own agency previously), I’ve seen plenty of roles that are hybrids due to resource requirements and limited funds. I’ve heard lots of arguments again this, mainly because “people aren’t able to focus on specific tasks.” (Paraphrased.) I would argue that the hybrid is the way of the future in our business – and many other industries – and that we better get used to it.

See, here’s the deal: this isn’t anything new. Companies that have seen universal success in the social media space have done so thus far because they’ve done one of two things:

1. They’ve provided a platform for either brand evangelists to speak strongly for their brand without much intrusion (see Coke’s Facebook fan page and their efforts to have it run by the fans that started it, despite Facebook’s efforts as a key example, or Honda’s Love campaign) or provided a place for brand evangelists/brand critics to provide input on the brand (with MyStarbucksIdea and Dell’s Ideastorm being the key examples – Ideastorm taking Dell from the bottom of the pack in customer service satisfaction surveys to the top). or;
2. They’ve activated a campaign that has nothing directly to do with selling products, or pushing brand messaging around product benefits, instead focusing on social or entertainment-related movements that speak to aspriational messaging around the brand. Pepsi’s campaign is an example of this, but so is the Greatest Job in the World campaign, Mad Men’s fake Twitter accounts, the Nissan Hypercube campaign, Coke’s CokeTag Facebook application, the Halo launch ARG, etc, etc… all not pushing product messaging (“Buy This,” “Watch This,” etc,) but creating this experience around the brand, and creating the connection in people’s heads. This is strongly based on traditional marketing efforts of association, but with the added complexity of user interactivity and the ability for consumers to influence the successes of these campaigns.

In fact, this label can likely be applied to the digital space in general – yes, you need a corporate website; yes, you need information online, but if you’re looking to actually produce results (and you’re not in the eCommerce business), you need to create something that I’ll remember offline – and pushing straight product/brand messaging isn’t the way to go with that. Pepsi isn’t doing anything revolutionary; they’re just the first to throw this much cash behind an idea online that isn’t seen as helping to sell product – when in reality, it likely will.

What do you think? Do you agree with my two types of social media successes? Are there organic social media examples that live outside of this?

Rogers is no longer in the cable TV business – we’re in the video entertainment business.
David Purdy, Vice President Video Product Management, Rogers

Last night, the fine folks at Thornley-Fallis invited me out to an event for a launch of a new Rogers product. Well, that’s technically not correct; what they were doing was “leaking” this product into the hands of a few socially-minded folks for us to try and talk about.

The product is Rogers on Demand Online – a web extension of the Rogers On Demand service, and what is seemingly their answer to the Hulu/Fancast products. Public launch date is November 30th. ROD Online is an ad-supported content network online, available to any Rogers/Fido customer – including wireless, internet, home phone or even pre-paid wireless customers. Additional content is available to Rogers Cable subscribers depending on their packages – if you’re subscribed to Premium TV options, you’ll have access to more content based on the specific channels you’ve subscribed to. They see the platform as offering additional extras – though the specifics of which they didn’t do a deep dive into – above and beyond what you could find on ROD on TV.

The product itself is wrapped in a slick interface (screenshots below), and while the content on the beta now is limited to Rogers and Corus properties, Rogers VP David Purdy hinted at a major content provider signing on this week. The video is served up adequately right now – the Rogers team told me that this week is concentrating on performance in production, so many of the slight hiccups that I’ve seen are likely to be addressed during that time.

So, what’s the verdict on this? Let me break it down:

The Good:

• Free (to existing consumers): There was a lot of talk about it being a value-add piece to current packages, and all of the conversation that centred around cost spoke to a philosophy that would have it remain free (if ad-supported.)
• Quick: Despite all of the disclaimers that the Product Manager gave about it being a beta, and having performance issues, I haven’t really seen that. The videos have been for the most part snappy, page loads haven’t been long (4 seconds or so, and the Lead Architect was telling me he wanted to make it down to 1 or 2 seconds before launch), and the video streams incredibly well, with only a minimal waiting time if you’re scanning through the video.
• Slick: This isn’t your usual Rogers digital product. The interface is well-thought out from the landing page, and presents the various video options above the fold. The site organization seems like it’s had a significant amount of thought put into it, and it was intuitive to use. While I’m curious as to how the UI/UX will change to integrate in social and community features (something promised for early 2010), or for the mobile integration they’re launching in Q2 2010, so far, they’ve got it right.
• Easy to Provide Feedback: Feedback controls are present up-front, and while the labels could be a little more intuitive (I’d hate to be on the team that will have to moderate the current “Feedback” area; more direction please!), the fact that it’s an integral part of the interface while viewing a video shows the thought behind listening to the userbase. In fact, I Tweeted last night about my surprise about Rogers’ desire for ongoing user feedback – that’s not the Rogers that I’ve seen over my 10+ years as a consumer – but I got the sense that the product team actually believed it. If they’re willing to let their userbase help shape features and content, this would be a move we’ve NEVER seen from a Canadian carrier.

The Not-So-Good:

• The Ads: Okay, so I want to have my cake and eat it too, but the ads do irk me a bit. While the answer to the question of how frequent the ads are last night was “it depends on the provider,” the fact that some programs will have the same amount of total (unskippable) ad time as commercial TV in a day and age where PVRs are the norm doesn’t make sense. Yes, I like that it’s free; no, I don’t like the fact that some of it has to be ad-laden to do so.
• The Content: This also isn’t really fair – and this point may change as the service goes along – but right now there just isn’t enough compelling content. As their “deep library” (read: old movies, seasons of TV shows, etc) expands, this may become less of an issue, but there is currently significantly less content than is available on the TV-based Rogers on Demand service.

The Elephant in the Room: What about the Data?
There was one question in the room that was left unanswered, or at least, without a satisfactory answer, and that is what impact this will have on the monthly data caps as a Rogers consumer. While you can access this program as a Bell, Teksavvy, or other internet provider, it’s how current Rogers consumers will see this changing their usage or billing that remains a question. To be fair, this is not a question that anyone in the room, save perhaps Purdy, should’ve been expected to answer – the Product team should be worried about putting together the best product possible, not about some of the repercussions that it has on other Rogers services. In my opinion, Rogers needs to handle this VERY carefully with the average consumer, so that the shell-shock of bandwidth overage doesn’t reflect negatively on what is a solid, and needed product.

At the end of the day, there is one quote that sticks in my head. David Purdy started off the presentation by saying that Rogers “is no longer in the cable TV business, but the video entertainment business.” He also identified wanting to be the “first mover” on this. With this product, Rogers is offering high-quality video of quality content – and a channel to promote Canadian content – for free. This is a move unlike many of the carriers, and has in fact been one of the first carrier-supported moves to market in North America (along with Comcast’s offering.)

If Rogers can work with the content providers and build out a library of thousands of videos, add-ons and extensions, and integrate mobile and TV so that I could pause a show on one device and resume it somewhere else on another, this is a gamechanger for Canadian video. I know the product team believes this is possible; it’s just a matter of time before we see if their plans can come to fruition.

Thanks again to Thorney-Fallis (especially Dave Fleet and Michael O’Conner Clarke) and the Rogers team present – David, Lara, Jeremy, Dennis, Keith and Rob – for the chance to preview this!

See Mark Goldberg’s post on why he thinks this IS a gamechanger for another point of view.

UPDATE: April has a good viewpoint on why she liked the Rogers approach to releasing things this way – identifying what your detractors may say before public launch can prove useful as well.

RODO Landing Page (click for full)

RODO CityTV Channel Page (click for full)

There’s a reason for that. I’m excited to announce that I started a new gig just a short time ago. I’m now a Digital Project Manager at Spider Marketing Solutions, a marketing communications company that I share a lot of their values with. In addition to the PM work I’m doing, I’ll be assisting Spider with their social media strategy. The move was simple – I was sharing office space with these guys before, so I just had to move across the space. It’s been a great experience so far, and I’m looking forward to things continuing to ramp up, and to be able to produce quality products for our clients.

Some of you know that I was working with Verne and Satish before on a few things. Those two are still doing their thing full steam, and my role with them finished up recently. They’re doing amazing things, and I’m excited to be able to see their progress first hand, and I can’t wait to see their brand launch soon!

Look for some more content to be posted in this space soon – I won’t let it die again!

Web designers were brought into the marketing world long after print work existed, which has led to a number of problems within the web design world. Namely, it seems that much of what we do is in the creation of “pretty pictures” that marketers are stereotyped into doing. What I (well, what Willis) means by this is that far too few web designers and companies use web native content; instead, much of what exists is print in disguise. If I could take your website and place all of its content in a brochure, it’s print in disguise. If your content is static, it’s print in disguise. If it looks nice but isn’t usable, it’s not only print in disguise, but it’s also terrible web design. The web has in fact not become the medium in its own right that technology enables it to be. It’s time to change that, and take advantage of what the web offers us.

Willis uses what he called the “Grammar of the Web” – 5 specific things that the web has going for it, and where we should be looking with our design work. They are as follows:

1. Random voyeurism
   
   Users like to watch what others are doing. Facebook, Flickr, Twitter; all of these social networks are based around that principle. As designers, we need to realize that the user and the content are what is key; how can we play into this tendency and keep users engaged with our site? Can we create content or interactions that will encourage this phenomena?




2. Self-aware (but uncontrollable) content
   
   Content is no longer as key as what it means in a literal sense, but the metadata associated with content affects the meaning of it. Willis uses the example of Googlebombing as a demonstration of this; googling miserable failure used to link to George W. Bush’s presidential biography, until Google removed it. By allowing content to know what other terms associate with it like that, but without giving control of that to the content itself, we create unique experiences that create a shift in power from the author to the reader. YOU determine what’s important with the content.




3. User-created Context
   
   Context is EVERYTHING – the mood of whatever content is on your page can be changed easily because of what is around it. This is most apparent on a page with dynamic content (like a blog, or a news site) where articles can have their meaning affected by the content that has come before or after it chronologically, or by related content. It can also be affected simply by the path your user took into getting to your content – important to know, even if you can’t control that.




4. Ambient Awareness
   
   This is probably the term that is the most “meaningless” in terms of the combination of the words – it describes the knowledge that a user gains by aggregating a significant number of data points. In this context, microblogging – Twitter – is a perfect example of this; as Willis put it, Twitter is both trivial (on an individual update level) and profound (in terms of the conversations and learning that happens as a result of these individual updates.) Ambient awareness is important on a macro level as well. The information that a user may have about you or what it is that you’re talking about will affect how your content is interpreted. As you can see, this is closely related to the last point.




5. Experiential Content
   
   And now that I’ve used content in each of the previous points, I’m going to blow up the concept of what content means. It’s no longer just the text and media that appears on a page – that’s certainly a component of the content, but the inherent definition of content is shifting towards the experience that a user has while interacting with others, or your platform. It’s not just what the content is, but it’s what it DOES for the users.

Remember, design isn’t just visual design. Design inherently is intended to solve problems, and to provide creative solutions. Visual design is merely a component of the overall design process. Don’t hide bad design with pretty pictures – if your site isn’t functional, or doesn’t provide your users with value from their visit, you’re not doing it right.

Let’s talk about a case study, so that the less technical can understand what it is that I’m getting at here. There are a TON of examples of industries that are not taking advantage of what the web has to offer them. The most obvious of these is the newspaper industry. As more and more people get their news content online (reportedly, over 40% of ALL web traffic in North America is to sites classified as news sites), newspapers have failed to take advantage of what it is that they could be offering their users. By basically putting their print edition content online, linked via whatever section it may correspond to, they’re not using web native content to its capabilities. So, what could they do? Tell stories through the content that exists online – create linkages to articles of related manner, and let the reader browse through the articles based on the specific subject, not based on the general section topic. More interestingly, what if you aggregated data from within these articles so that you can compile statistics, and aid in telling stories through this manner as well? Recognize that your readers are just as interested in this information as they are the stories that they can likely read in multiple papers – especially wire pieces. Those are just a couple of examples of moves that web-native content allow to happen easily – I’m sure you can all think of more. Some properties are starting to do this quite well – the Globe and Mail comes to mind – but others are years behind in this process.

As I’ve stated consistently, Dan Willis does a much better job explaining these concepts. Read his article prepared for SXSW on it here (Opens a PDF), and share any thoughts you may have in the comments. Do you agree with the 5 elements Dan identified?

Let me share a personal anecdote. Recently, I was presented with an offer to relocate to a city that I am planning on living in at some point in my life. 3 or 4 months ago, had I seen this offer, I would’ve accepted it in a heartbeat, and dealt with the minor issues that it would’ve brought up at the point. Now, however, the responsibilities didn’t seem in line with what I’m looking for, I recently got involved in a new venture that I wanted to put some time into, and it just didn’t seem right to leave the community here, and the social capital (or “social capital”) that I’ve built up. It took some thinking about, but in the end, I feel I made the right decision – at least, for now.

However, I had the decision to make. While I made the “it’s not the right time” argument, it was completely under my control, and I could’ve chosen to do it if I wanted to. It’s important to recognize that timing won’t always be ideal, but that alone shouldn’t rule out making a decision one way or the other. Whether it’s with your business or with your personal life, it’s important that you make what you perceive to be the best decision in your life. I suppose it’s all part of the “live in the moment” philosophy that I like to preach.

Sometimes that means making decisions that hurt those around you. Sometimes that means being selfish. Those questions, though, are what you need to answer, not “is it the right time?” – if you wait around for the right time, it’ll never come. It’s such a subjective concept that I think you can always come up with reasons why it’s not the right time – or why it is.

Food for thought, anyway. What are your thoughts on timing, and how it works in life?

This week, I’m trying an experiment. Due to long hours and a general sense of apathy, probably 95% of my meals consist of some sort of pasta or bread-based products. Subway is a mainstay of my diet, and I don’t do a lot of cooking past pasta (hah, wordplay) in my place. Eating out while trying not to break the bank for every meal does present itself with limiting options. In addition, I snack a ton on top of that – I have an insatiable sweet tooth that probably corresponds to the fact that my elementary school in Grade 7 and 8 was directly beside a then-Becker’s, and it corresponded with my first source of income from a paper route. The snacking is bad enough for my diet without all the heavy carbs on top of it.

In addition, this is my least active summer thus far. That may change without much effort due to some sports leagues I have coming up, but being stuck at my desk for 10+ hours a day has caused my ordinarily skinny body to start to round out. (At this point, I realize that I’m seriously impacting my dating prospects, but hey, work’s doing that well enough as is by taking up most of my time. I swear it’s not me.) So, I wanted to try something. Not only was I going to make an effort to eat healthier this week and exercise more, I also wanted to cut out all bread and pasta from my diet this week. I started this Sunday afternoon, and have had 4 days of it under my belt.

So, what’s the result? While there aren’t likely any noticeable physical results yet (let’s face it, I am still fairly skinny), I’m feeling a LOT better. Salads and parfaits are surprisingly more satisfying than I remember, and I have more energy than I should, given that I’ve been up at 5:45 every day this week. I’ve also avoided the mid-afternoon lull, where I normally have to resort to heavily caffeinated drinks to avoid QWERTY-face. (Commonly caused by falling asleep at my desk.) I’ve rediscovered my love for the formerly-named Lettuce Eatery (now Freshii), discovered an awesome salad as Fusaro’s, and rekindled my enjoyment of chicken and fish. Although I haven’t quite stayed away from all snacks (thanks, Satish), I’m doing a ton better, and it’s made a noticeable difference in my demeanor, at least.

If you’re feeling a little slow in the afternoon, or in general, examine the heavy carbs that you’re eating. I do find that it makes a big difference in these warm months.

It may even be enough to keep me away from Subway – a bold statement, given that I once ate at Subway 14 days in a row, and 25 days out of 30. (yes, I kept track.)

I’ll be frank; this $10 fee that TTT is charging will ensure that unless the speaker is someone absolutely spectacular, I likely will not attend any future TTT events. This isn’t a bad thing; I’m not the direct target market for these events, so maybe by not attending I’ll help them get who they’d like.

However, if the purpose of your events are to bring a community together while helping to promote the individuals involved in it, I’m not sure that the nominal fee is the way to go. One of the commentors on Joe’s post said that the industry standard is to open it up to 2.5 times your capacity to account for no-shows. That seems pretty smart by me; opening up for just your level of capacity will never allow you to have a full venue, as something always comes up.

If you’re implementing a fee just to reduce no-shows, I’m not sure that fits with the community building aspect. There’s enough going on in town right now that I don’t need to pay to network with the current Refresh Events crowd, for example. (I still will, but that’s beside the point) Adding a fee to recurring events will certainly help distinguish you from the other events going on, but perhaps not in a good way. If you are planning on adding a fee, at the very least you need to do it at an event that can be perceived as having a higher value of the events in the past. That way, you reduce the shell-shock from having to pay for events which you previously attended for free, and can help ease your crowd into the new system. If you’re still developing your events, your target audience, or the logistics surrounding them, it may not be the best idea to charge a fee. (If, like Third Tuesday, you can’t get your event on the date it’s supposed to be on because that’s what you’re named after, you also might want to think about that – but that’s a personal quibble I have with the Third Tuesday events.)

Just my two cents. What do you think?

7. Do you have any advice for someone starting out with trying to move their blog to a full-time employment opportunity?

Work hard and don’t expect success to come overnight. So many people start blogging because they think it’s a “get rich quick” thing, and nothing could be further from the truth! To be honest, I think blogging is one of the LEAST easy/quick ways to make money online. You have to work really hard, write well, motivate yourself, stay creative, and update as often as you can to see success, and even then success isn’t guaranteed. It’s definitely not for everyone – you have to be willing to work hard for next to nothing for a few years before you’ll see real income.

Interesting thoughts from a full-time blogger. One of the things that I’ve always thought you’d have to be able to pull off as a full-time blogger would be living on a reduced budget, because Zephyr definitely has a point regarding it being incredibly difficult to make money blogging. If any of you have been thinking about writing or blogging as a career, this post is a good read for some of the pitfalls or issues to expect.

Emma’s certainly winning the creativity portion of this content – in her 7 days of posts, she has a picture, a video, and an interview among her content, where I just have myself blathering on. Go check her posts out if you haven’t yet already!

I’ll be honest, before Jason messaged me last week asking if I wanted to participate in the event, I hadn’t ever heard of it. However, I had nothing planned for today, and said “sure, why not.” As the week unfolded and I got more details, I was both intimidated and excited for today. So how did it go?

Holy awesome.

It strongly exceeded anything I had ever thought of the event, and we bettered what our personal goal was, it being our first CityChase and all. I think it also helped us bond a little more; perhaps for better or worse. Figured I’d share what our personal experience was and how the day unfolded.

The day kicked off when I rolled into Metro Hall (the event start/finish line) shortly after 8:00 to meet Jason, operating on 1 Red Bull (sugar-free, natch) and about 4 hours of sleep, due to the decision I made last night to watch the first Transformers movie. Jay was already energetic and ready to go; I’m not sure that I was quite at the same level yet. After a quick Tim Horton’s breakfast and some strategizing, we gathered with the rest of the racers for the kickoff meeting. We were team 2312, Awesome Sauce, thanks to Jason’s creativity. At the kickoff, we ran into my buddy Andrew and his friend Geoff, who were a team, and their friends Diane and Michela (whose name I’m sure I’ve butchered), and got a little friendly competition going. After a speech from the event founder, we were told how to get our clue sheets – it was a scavenger hunt, to the chagrin of a few in the crowd. (The groans could be easily heard.) After pairing up with another team, as per the rules of the hunt, we managed to gather 6 of the 9 required items within about 15 minutes. We got: 1 penny from each of the 70s, 80s and 90s, the time of the next Air Canada flight to Quebec City (the location of national finals this year), a picture of two team members with their clothes completely backwards, a Molson bottle label, a page of news from a newspaper from Thursday, and the bible chapter and verse that the founder quoted during his opening speech. (Things we didn’t do? Recite the first verse and chorus of Nickelback’s “If Today Was Your Last Day,” take a picture with at least two people mooning, one of whom must be a non-participant, and apply a red Mitsubishi mark somewhere on a participant’s body.)

Clue sheet in hand, we headed off to the Rees Street Slip for our first challenge. Jason and I had raised $50 in donations beforehand for Right to Play, the event charity, so we already got our first ChasePoint credited to us without having to do anything. Awesome! The first task we had to do was to get into a pair of kayaks tied together, and maneuver our way through a short slalom course in the water. Other than getting soaked when I first got into my kayak – I thought it was going to tip – and Jason’s occasional overexuberant paddling, we managed to get through it with pretty much no problem. ChasePoint #2 in the bag!

Following this, we returned back to Metro Hall to do an event called Eight Legs or None, but they weren’t ready for us – even though we were there right when that station was supposed to open. After arguing to try to get the free ChasePoint, we settled for a 10 minute time deduction instead. From there it was to the Boxing Loft, for what was easily our most strenuous physical activity of the day: 5 two-minute workouts based around boxing. We paddled imaginary bicycles and did pushups; skipped rope and did burpees, bobbed and weaved under a suspended rope, shadow-boxed with dumbbells (where I’m sure Jason got tired of hearing me say “Keep those hands up,” due to the fact that if either dropped our hands, we both had to do 10 pushups. I was already about 45 or 50 pushups in at that point, I had no desire to do any more), and finally, spent our last 2 minutes taking our frustrations out on punching bags. Exhausted, we collected our stamp, and had ChasePoint #3 in the bag. I was worn out enough that I was struggling to drink from my water bottle, but we persevered on to our next task.

Arriving back at Eight Legs or None, we were pleasantly surprised to see no line-up – and less pleasantly surprised to learn that we were dealing with a tarantula and a snake – hence the name. A flip of the coin determined which we had to put on our bodies. Jason flipped first and got tails – which meant that he had to have the tarantula on his bare stomach for 30 seconds. I wanted nothing to do with that tarantula, so I was pleased when I flipped heads, and had to put an 8-foot snake on my shoulders for 30 seconds. I’ve had a 30-foot boa constrictor on my shoulders before, so this badboy was nothing. Completing our tasks concurrently, we successfully reached ChasePoint #4, after about an hour and a half involved in the contest thus far.

At this point, our lovely operators Becky and Dave, who were helping us scout out locations, e-mailed us with our remaining route, so we went right to it. ChasePoint #5 was located at Canyon Creek on Front Street. We discovered that one of us – me – would be blindfolded and have to smell 6 items and taste 6 items and correctly identify all 12 of them. For each one I got wrong, Jason had to eat a live cricket. After joking that I’d get them all wrong, much to Jason’s dismay, I set to work. I got 5 out of 6 on the taste test – nailing the balsamic vinaigrette but missing garlic, of all things, but only ended up with 3 of 6 on the smell test. I identified all of the alcoholic scents – red wine, white wine and tequila – but totally whiffed on the other three. Not a huge surprise, but it meant Jason would have to eat 4 crickets. I felt a little sheepish until I saw that the two groups that went in front of me had to eat 7 and 8 respectively. After a quick ingenious thought – to drop the crickets in a glass of water and chug the mixture – we successfully completed our challenge and got our 5th ChasePoint. Jason complained of feeling a little queasy for the remainder of the day; I suppose I can’t blame him. We were just under 2 hours in, and we had 5 ChasePoints, including a bonus. Not bad, but little did we know our best was yet to come.

ChasePoint #6 found us taking the subway up to Trinity Square, which is connected to the Eaton Centre. Hat-tip to the lovely Aussie lady on the subway who confirmed the location of it for us. There, we had to construct a wearable balloon piece of clothing using 3 different balloons. Jason’s old summer camp days came right back to him and I pumped the balloons up while he fashioned a hat in about 30 seconds. He then had to wear it for the rest of the day, which was amazing. 6 ChasePoints down, and we did this one in record time!

ChasePoint #7 was just up the Yonge line at Church and Wellesley, where we had to do a quick photo/video scavenger hunt within a 30 minute timeframe. We checked in at 12:15, got our Blackberry Curve to take pictures/video with, and were off to work. This was honestly one of my favourite moments of the day. I’m not sure whether it was the hot dog vendor we convinced to do the actions to “I’m a Little Teapot” while Jason sang it – she was more into it than he was! – the picture of a temporary tattoo underneath a garbage can, because there was a typo on our clue sheet of taking a picture of a tattoo “below the waste,” or the man that we had Jason share a powerbar with, Lady and the Tramp style, and he ate more than his fair share of the bar. We checked back in at 12:22, a mere 7 minutes after we left; 2 of which were taken up by the SickKids canvasser we did a random act of kindness for. We were one of the quickest groups to finish, and by the fact that we had a lot of amazement over the 7 ChasePoints we had, we knew we were doing well.

ChasePoint #8 found us at the Rogers store on Yorkville Ave, where we found ourselves signing out another Blackberry – a Bold this time – to take shots of pieces of QR code posted in the area. After a bit of struggling with the BeeTagg program – which wasn’t very intuitive – we got our 6 snapshots in and collected ChasePoint #8 – only two to go!

There’s not really a lot I can say that would do ChasePoint #9 justice. After finishing up in Yorkville, we hopped the Bloor subway line to Bathurst, and took the streetcar down to Queen to do our last mandatory ChasePoint, simply entitled Pole Position. That’s right, our team of guys needed to do pole dancing. My back still being a little tender from the poor weather and the boxing workouts, Jason stepped up to learn a quick routine from the pole dance instructor, while I coached. She demonstrated it to him once, and then did so a second time while I filmed her – in the interest of getting the routine so we could review it, of course – while he mimicked his way along. He then said he’d try to get through it right then, without any video review. We only had three chances to get this right, but we didn’t need them; Jason got the dance bang-on the first time. Seeing him do the squat and spread, the Fireman’s Spin, or smack his ass at the end of the routine… well, it was almost too much to handle. Regardless, we had ChasePoint #9 in the books, and only had one left to go – and it was only 1:15 or so, meaning that we had only been out there for 3:15! We were excited, since we had seen past winning scores near 3:30, and we knew that we’d likely exceed our expectations.

ChasePoint #10 was just around the corner – and directly across the street from my office – at the Toronto School of Art. Prior to arriving at this challenge, we had to collect 3 recyclable items, so we arrived with 3 bottles. Perfect choice, as it turned out that we had to create a replica of a famous tower in the world. We randomly drew a model – the name of which I honestly forget; it was P-something Twin Towers – and went to work with our bottles and the supplies that they provided us. After a mash of bottles, glue-dispensers, tape, popsicle sticks and my trusty knife later, we managed to create a reasonable replica of this tower. While I’m not sure our judge totally approved – she kept calling it the “black towers of death” due to the black masking tape we’d used – we were permitted to go through, and collected our 10th ChasePoint. Now, just a quick 2 block sprint to the finish!

… Or not quite a sprint. We were pretty worn out, and half-jogged, half-walked until we arrived back at Metro Hall. A final push – including Jason running through the fountain out front – and we crossed the finish line as the 76th team to finish the race. However, because of our delay earlier in the day at the Eight Legs or None challenge, we had our 10 minute time deduction, leaving us officially at 54th place, with an overall adjusted time of 3:35:45. We were ecstatic to place in the top 10% of all entrants, especially looking around at those who finished near us; a sea of fit, toned bodies, something which Jason and I are not. We travelled roughly 20km today, based on my GPS Tracker – a pretty good jaunt.

We hung around the finish line and recouped, waiting from Andrew and Geoff to come in (they finished a very respectable 137th, without collecting the donation ChasePoint), and then headed over to Montana for a much needed complimentary beverage and some chow. Diane and Michela joined us later; I’m not sure where they finished, but they completed the course in roughly 5 hours. It was a great way to wrap up the event, and what was a very fun day.

So what tips do I have?

• Train for the event! Jason and I both struggled with long-distance cardio, costing ourselves precious minutes. If we were in better shape, we would’ve been in the top 50 easily.
• Get great support. Our two operators, Becky and Dave, helped us whittle down our clue sheet of 40 into a solid route of 10. This definitely saved us time, and we had backup plans in place just in case anything went wrong.
• Get past your fears. Jason had to do a few nasty things today – mostly the luck of the draw – but he fought past them and helped get us ahead of a lot of other groups. Don’t let your fears stop you once you’re at a challenge; just get past it and you’ll be more successful. Competitiveness hides fear, after all.
• Have fun! Regardless of the mediocre weather, or the physical exertion, Jason and I both had an absolute blast today, and would do it again in a heartbeat. It’s a great bonding experience – although Jason suggested it as a first date opportunity for people; something my competitive nature would never let me do if I wanted to see the girl again.

The second Toronto CityChase qualifier is on August 15th – I encourage you to check it out and give it a shot! I know I’m thinking about it, although Jason’s already in it with his sister, so I may be looking for a partner…