_CIRA is the not-for-profit organization mandated to operate the dot-ca top-level domain. As President of “Canadian Internet Registration Authority”:http://www.cira.ca/ (CIRA), Mr. Turcotte is responsible for ensuring that all technical, organizational, and financial goals and processes are in support of CIRA’s mandate._
*One Degree: I understand that you are working with “FUSE Marketing Group”:http://www.fusemg.com/ to develop a marketing strategy to sell people on the idea of registering dot-ca domains. Why did you select FUSE?*
We wanted to give as many firms as possible the opportunity to work with CIRA so we posted an open call for proposals on CIRA’s website and in Marketing Magazine. All the submissions we received from interested parties reflected a great deal of competence and expertise. Our decision was a difficult one, but we selected FUSE because they seemed to have the best understanding of our current needs and corporate direction.
*One Degree: The development of a marketing strategy suggests that marketers aren’t always aware of the value of a dot-ca domain. Why do think is the case?*
Category: Five Questions
Alexander Younger is the founder of MGT Communications, whose client list includes some of Canada’s most recognized brands ranging from large financial and retail organizations to museums, television shows and artists. It holds a number of awards to its credit including a Gemini Award for Most Popular Website for Room Service, a people's choice award for designer Sarah Richardson's website and Best Investor Relations website for RBC Insurance. Alexander's expertise includes leveraging technology to gain business efficiency; web site design, strategy; and online communications. He has been featured in the National Post, City TV, Globetechnology.com and Profit magazine and is an accomplished speaker.
One Degree: The sites MGT builds are gorgeous, but they break all kinds of usability guidelines and best practices. For example, you have splash pages (generally considered the height of poor design) on most of your client sites. What gives?
We have high regard for usability experts like Nielsen, but we also believe that 'usability' has evolved as the technology has evolved. Usability started as a way of making old technology (crummy browsers, slow connection speeds) work better for the majority.
We incorporate usability testing (which we conduct in our designated, in-house MGT Lab) into our experience-based designs, ensuring that a highly usable website is wedded with the complete brand experience. All of our sites are tested on real users to get their feedback, understand what they need to get to and to uncover ways we can make our sites better. Creating experiences is what good design is about today – and the technology (bandwidth, browsers) is now there to support it on the web. Designers are going to be able to do more and more to create experience-driven sites without sacrificing on ease of use and access to information.
I agree that splash pages were a horribly overused (and in those cases with bad animation and tinny cloying music, overused horribly!) ‘trend’ that thankfully dissipated due to user outcry. However, for brands that rely on a strong visual component and in some (and I stress some) cases, a splash page can be an elegant introduction to a site if done properly.
One Degree: I really thought that Jakob Nielsen, Jeffrey Zeldman, Dan Cederholm, Joe Clark, 37 Signals, and others had done a really good job of explaining why it was crucial that we design using web standards instead of sticking with table-based design. Doing a "view source" on sites you've built shows your crew is still coding like it's 1999. Do companies demand this or are you just sticking with what you know?
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David Kines is Vice President of MuchMusic / MuchMoreMusic / MuchLOUD / MuchVibe / MuchMoreRetro / PunchMuch / Razer. I believe he has the longest business card in the world.
A driving force behind the distinctive Much style of live television, David has been key to the brand’s popularity within the ever-changing pop culture landscape. He took on the role of Vice President for MuchMusic and MuchMoreMusic in November 2000, and continues to develop and grow music and youth lifestyle brands for CHUM across multiple platforms – MuchLOUD (2001), MuchVibe (2001), MuchMoreRetro (2003), and in 2005 Razer and PunchMuch.
One Degree: Tell us about PunchMuch. What do viewers see on screen and in other media?
PunchMuch is North America’s first and only 24/7/365 all-request music video channel that uses wireless SMS technology for viewers to make their requests.
The enriched TV screen for the channel currently consists of 4 active areas:
- A live window where requested videos play.
- A bar along the bottom of the screen where a list of available music videos crawls, along with a 3-digit code for each video.
- The request leaders ranking. The top 4 most-requested videos are displayed along with the percentage of the total votes each has received.
- A live SMS chat window. This is active during certain hours of the day. It is manually moderated to ensure appropriate messages make it to air.
Viewers watch the channel or website (and soon their cell phones) to find out the 3-digit code for a music video they want to request. They then SMS that 3-digit code to a PunchMuch short-code. The request, a.k.a. vote, is instantly and automatically tabulated and reflected in the on-screen request leaders chart and the viewer receives a return SMS message confirming their request has been received. Three seconds before the end of the music video currently on-air, the software "freezes" the voting and picks the video with the most votes to play next. The video’s vote-count is reset to zero, though that doesn’t stop viewers from requesting it again and the video playing almost as soon as its first play is ended!
One Degree: It looks like you are thinking of mobile phones as the primary "backchannel". Will the Net play a supporting role or is it integral?
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