January TGGD - Innovation in Tough Times with Candice Faktor from TorStar Digital

Happy New Year to all you girls out there in geekland! We're gearing up for our first dinner of 2009, and registration is now open on the TGGD wiki!

10th TGGD with Candice Faktor,
sponsored by FITC
Hot House Cafe
Church & Front Streets
Toronto, ON
Wednesday January 14th, 2009, 7 pm

Our speaker for the evening will be Candice Faktor, Managing Director, Corporate Development and Innovation, TorStar Digital. Candice will speak to us about the role and importance of innovation in a tough economy.

An innovator and strategist in the Canadian online media industry, Candice is passionate about where the web is headed.

Most recently, Candice was promoted to Managing Director, Corporate Development and Innovation where she is charged with fuelling innovation in the company and exploring acquisitions and partnerships to drive Torstar Digital's growth and leadership in the industry. Prior to this, Candice held the role of GM, toronto.com, one of Torstar Digital's most prominent and trafficked consumer websites.

Candice has also distinguished herself as founder of ourfaves.com, a site that harnesses the power of user-generated content, city search and social networking, allowing users to share and discover local favourites on a citywide scale. Since its launch in May 2007, traffic has grown tremendously and the site will launch in other cities across North America soon.

Candice was instrumental in the 2005 creation of Torstar Digital. She played a key role in the foundation of several start-up ventures and partnerships including Olive Canada Network, which has become one of Canada's most successful premium online ad networks.

Before joining Torstar, Candice spent four years with the Monitor Group, a top tier strategy consulting firm, acting as consultant to a range of international organizations.

Candice has a genuine love for new technology and media and finds keeping up with where the web is heading fun. Candice is also passionate about enjoying the city, reading, movies, traveling to new countries, spending time with her family, friends and husband Corey, learning new things and giving back to the community.

As per last months' dinner, we'd like the evening to be open and collaborative, with lots of time for group discussion - so bring your questions for Candice and each other, and please sign up on the wiki if you plan to attend!

We also have a very generous sponsorship provided by FITC conferences for those who work in the new media development and design field - free admission for all January TGGD attendees to FITC Toronto 2009 April 25-28, a $650 value!

TGGD#9: Roundtable on Innovation was a Hit!

This is a guest post by Connie Crosby, who facilitated the round table discussion on Innovation at the last TGGD on November 20th.

There is no better time to create a community of friends who can come together and execute on your brilliant idea. - Passion is recession proof, 12Seconds blog (Oct. 9, 2008)

We had a fantastic turn-out for the first ever Girl Geek Dinner round table, with excellent participation by everyone. And the feedback has been very positive. I was invited to summarize the session for us--if I missed your idea, or if you have additional thoughts, please do add to the comments.

The Warm-Up

We started out the discussion after dinner with a warm-up exercise. I asked everyone to write words or phrases that describe "innovation" onto sticky notes. We then posted them to a wall, and we had three fine volunteers sort them by theme. This is what we came up with:

visionary | ideas | progressive ideas

strategic | progressive
expanding resources | more efficient | efficiency | improvement
change | sustainability (vs. consumerism) | rethinking or improvising
new technology | technology
open-mindedness | progress | ingenuity | uniqueness | resourceful
synthesis | problem solving| challenge | creativity applied
creative destruction | creativity | creative problem solving | creative forces at work
different | an overused buzzword
awesomeness in action! | risk | the way to win customers
the right conversation at the right time
using what you've already got for something new
survival | identifying opportunity & taking action | creating something unique
trial and educated error | staying ahead of the game | change
change that gets results | the future | speedy evolution
putting together things that already exist in a new way
old problems new solutions | new approaches | what hasn't been tried before
seeing old/existing things in a new way
out of the box | new ideas
new
something different than usual, new ideas
new objection motivation sacrifice | new concepts | new & exciting | new methods
new, improved concept that improves life
the next generation | new & improved
imagination

The energy just jumps off the page as you read through that list, doesn't it? And I love that cartoon that someone added in! What struck us is that there were very few mentions of technology. It was more about ways of thinking.

Two Questions

Our second exercise was to answer these two questions:

1. How do you get new ideas?
2. How are you already innovating?

We went around the whole room on the first question, and it was amazing the number of ways that people use to either focus themselves down or broaden their thinking. There were some who tap into the subconscious by going for a walk, taking a shower, exercising or sleeping. Others changed something as a stimulus, such as learning something new or even moving some place new. Others had more practical suggestions, such as looking to areas outside their own for ideas, copying others, or walking backwards through a problem to find a solution. There were some who found playing with children opened them up to seeing things with fresh eyes. For the second question, people described their various projects and ways of working. It was good to be a little introspective.

Your Questions

We then opened the questions up to the room. Here is a summary:

1. Q: Are bad economic times an opportunity or a challenge?
   
   A:
   
   • it depends upon your organization
   • being on a smaller budget helps you stay focussed and come up with creative solutions; it is easier to watch what you are spending with $20 than it is with $100,000.
   • look for people already in your organization for hidden interests and skills and leverage those
   • it forces you to listen to your customer, become more customer-focussed.
     
     
2. Q: How do you get a conservative company to innovate?
   
   A:
   
   • persistence
   • patience
   • find someone who will listen
   • celebrate and build on small victories
   • you have to show the company that it will hurt the organization not to innovate
   • if the guy at the top cannot see the benefit, it may be too difficult in the end

My Suggestions (& Questions) for the Next Step

The number of deep thinkers in the room was impressive, and I was amazed as to how engaged in the topic everyone was. This is indeed building into a real community!

We didn't have enough time to talk about it, but I believe the next step in making this group valuable is to find ways for us to further support each other in our projects and career aspirations. We already do that on a one-to-one basis as we meet each other and get to know what we all do. But how can we take that to a more organized level? How can we promote one another so that we all succeed?


Ideas for Another Round Table?

I believe our illustrious organizers Jenny Bullough, Leona Hobbs and Maggie Fox would like to try another round table discussion in the future. If you have a topic you would like to discuss, or if you would like to volunteer to lead a discussion, let them know.

Thank you to Leona for inviting me to facilitate this discussion. And a big thank you to PriceWaterhouseCoopers who sponsored the dinner!

Cheers,
Connie