As social media has become increasingly popular, we are exposed to people's dirty laundry more than ever.  For my liking there is too much detail on line about break ups, the bad day, week or month that people are having and more. The posts that say: "I'm sad today", ("please ask me why so I can openly share my woes")  "Life sucks",  "Some people are so negative & toxic, you know who you are..." etc...  A friend of mine once stated that posts like this are from "immature narcisistic attention seekers" and as he started to see a pattern of more and more such posts, he started to either delete these people from his friend list or hide their posts.

Many years ago I did something similar and I cleaned my "cupboards" so to speak, of those people who were energy drains.  You know the type, the person who has a black cloud hanging over them all the time, the person who never can see anything as good in their lives and when you ask how they are, their comment is "same shit, different day".  Good health isn't just about what you eat and how much you exercise, it is also about what you allow into your consciousness.   If you watched only bad news on TV, how would it affect you?  It is the same with the social media.  Sometimes it can be like watching a bad train wreck.  Where is the value in it?  How it is improving our lives?

It has been said that you are as successful as the sum of the five people who you hang out with the most. Sometimes it can be difficult to remove friends from your life because they have been there forever but when you do, a shift happens.  It is not only a shift for yourself but often a shift for those friends.  To have a rewarding, fulfilling and peaceful life, we need to surround ourselves with positive people.  Like attracts like and if you are hanging out with a sad sack, you too will turn into a sad sack.  This emotional energy is draining and our emotions have a direct impact on our physical health.  So eating well is important, exercise and cleansing is important but let's not forget about the mental aspect of good health.

Cari-Lee Stevens is a speaker, trainer and coach.  She also owns CL Stevens Fitness Inc. a company that specializes in on-site corporate and community based fitness such as yoga & Pilates.

Follow her on twitter@cleansegirl.com
Blog: www.cleansegirl.com
Lectures: www.carileestevens.com
Health Challenge: www.isachallenge.com

By Marc Smith

With the influx of tourists and locals alike into the DT core many long established restaurants made the decision to increase their prices along with adding auto-tipping onto the bill. Reason's for these practices have included increased staff and food costs and a tourist crowd not used to North American style tipping. Many traditional journalists have covered this story and you can click here to read one of them.

This post is not about the validity of the restaurant claims or even if it was right or wrong. What this post is about in essence is the power of social media and it's near immediate impact on a business or organization. How a business responds to it's customers and their feedback  says a lot about them and the people using Social Media aren’t shy about making their views known.

One such chain is Earls. Locally grown here in BC, Earls has come under some major fire for it's pricing and auto-tipping policies. An example is a gentleman who had an unpleasant reaction to the price and tip increases immediately went onto Twitter to voice his thoughts. Within 10 minutes over 20 responses and conversational engagements occurred creating a slew of online heat for Earls. Click here to see some of the conversations if you use the search terms Earls and Tip. What some businesses don't understand is that each person engaged in a Twitter conversation potentially has at least 300 followers and upwards of 10,000 +. That is a very large reach.

Earls Restaurants gets it and has a person dedicated to following the conversation online and is responsible for taking the pulse of its customers good bad or indifferent. After much criticism here is the response from Earls about the price increases and tipping policies for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.

Earls Yaletown will be hosting a special locals-only event on Sunday, February 28th. On Sunday morning, Earls Yaletown will be opening one hour early, at 9 am for a complimentary brunch for local patrons only.

From 9 am to 11 am, Earls Yaletown will only be open to locals with a BC Drivers License or other form of BC Identification. All locals will receive a free brunch, they will get a chance to ‘take their seat back’ and amidst all of the madness, they will be able to secure a table for the Olympic gold medal hockey game at 12:15 pm.

We would also like to share with you that as 9 am this Sunday, February 28th, all menu prices will have officially returned to normal, and automatic gratuities will be removed from ALL BILLS.

Earls Yaletown will not be taking reservations for the locals-only event on Sunday morning. The event will be on a first-come-first-serve basis, so get there early, get your free brunch and enjoy the last day of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games at Earls.

So you decide. Is this effort by Earls enough to win the locals back? Only time will tell. I’ve talked here about Earls but trust me they are not alone in creating a backlash of anger and disappointment from their local customers.

I would really love to hear your thoughts and trust me I will be sure to pass them on the the management team at Earls.

Marc Smith is Vancouver based event planner and will be reporting daily on various events happening around Vancouver. http://twitter.com/amuseconsulting

Yesterday I came across a retweet by social media pundit and cartoonist Rob Cottingham, referencing a blog by Seattle-based cartoonist David Horsey.  In the post, David talks about being scammed by an individual who gave him a hard luck story and asked for money for transportation.

I realized with a start that my husband and I were also victims of the same man.  He had stopped us on West Georgia in front of the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, asking if we could give him enough money to get him to the airport.  He said that his money, passport, etc. had been stolen from him and he needed to get back to the US. I think he took us for tourists because I had a camera and my husband was looking at a map - only because we're still new to town and he was double-checking our location.

He was believable enough that we gave him $4 - a small sum, to be sure, but I felt just as shamefaced as if I had given him $20.  How could I be taken like that?

The fact is, it's all too easy.  Our natural inclination to be kind and compassionate can overwhelm our common sense sometimes.  But I've learned a few valuable lessons.

• I will make sure we walk briskly, with confidence as if we know exactly what we're doing and are totally comfortable with our surroundings. Scammers are less likely to hit on locals.
• We won't pull out a map in public. Instead, we'll find a hotel lobby, coffee shop, library, restaurant, etc. where it won't be so obvious.
• If someone assumes I'm a tourist because I have my camera, I'll say I'm 'on assignment' (which, of course, I am!)
• It's unfortunate, but I personally am not going to stop when approached.  The longer you engage with this kind of person, the more likely you'll be to give money.

Hope this experience of ours will help others out there who, like me, would rather trust.  It's disheartening that we can't do that, particularly during major events like the Olympics.

Cathy Browne is a PR and social media professional. She is @CathyBrowne on Twitter and blogs at Cathy's Clean Slate.

Did we take something away from the kids by not closing schools or did we just give them an opportunity to find the games on their own?

When Vancouver was awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics, a number of campaigns began to allow students in the province to experience the games first hand by closing schools and allowing parents to bring their kids to the events without fear of missing any class.

A number of voices appeared and the consensus was that closing schools to allow only a handful of ticketholders attend events was not reasonable. Childcare and transportation issues became serious concerns for elementary school aged parents. Some school districts altered their schedules to allow students a chance at seeing the events by starting the school year earlier or by adding minutes to each week and balancing out the number of missed classes.

The majority of schools are using this opportunity to open dialogue and allow students to bring their own stories and experiences to the classroom by using social media to connect students by bringing media generated at the events forward. Students are busy uploading content to their profile pages and bringing the content into school via smart phones and digital cameras.

Those who don’t get to experience the events firsthand are experiencing the games vicariously through their friends at school and the benefits are outweighing the number of tickets sold. Imagine a gymnasium filled with students in Osoyoos or Nanaimo watching Canadian athletes competing in Whistler on a Monday afternoon or cafeterias filled with chatter as students surrounding an iPhone are reviewing medal standings.

A student in grade 10 at Magee Secondary School and a Grade 12 student at David Thompson Secondary administrate a group on Facebook to petition schools to close during the games. Although their attempt to close schools has failed the group currently has 65, 500 members and is being updated daily with event info, Olympic opinion and a huge amount of patriotism.

But then we look at the kids at Sardis Secondary who participate on the drum line team.

These students have been the talk of Whistler playing an array of songs and generating a buzz beyond the mainstream acts on stage. Principal Long of Sardis Secondary told me today that these students raised their own funds to get to the games, had local businesses help raise money, are sleeping in the gymnasium of Howe Sound Secondary and bus to Whistler everyday from Squamish to entertain the crowd.

Social media has given these kids a voice and fan base on Facebook and on Youtube. With the Olympics in town they’re getting a worldwide audience in their home province and hopefully a legacy of tours and musical experiences.

We take in this magical time in a number of ways; I’ve seen the events on television, on my smartphone, in person and across social networks. I have taken steps to enjoy the Olympics in my city and I cannot think of a better spirit to the games than a group of students from Chilliwack who invests so much into themselves for the benefit of others.

Check them out -
or in person - They will be performing outside GM Place (Canada Hockey Place) before and after the quarter final and semi final hockey games on Feb. 24th & 26th.

Jesse Miller

www.millerconsultingservices.ca

Applications like this one that Yahoo has put together for the Olympics are what is referred to as Augmented Reality. Layering data onto our environment using technology. This is one of the tech trends on the frontier of New Media Marketing and it's great see creative and fun applications like this being used during the winter games.

Shane Gibson is co-author of Sociable! How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside-down and is an active member of the Vancouver Board of Trade and Social Media Club Vancouver. Learn more about Shane at http://ShaneGibson.tel or follow him on Twitter @ShaneGibson.

by Adam Kambeitz

It is not only the architecture and the occasional star lighting up Vancouver at night, these days the city of Vancouver has transformed its landscape with a number of beautiful public works of art throughout the city. A few of those works, although visually stimulating and inspiring by day, take on whole new meaning when viewed at night.

One piece in particular stood out for me, the sculpture entitled “We”, created by internationally renowned artist and sculptor Jaume Plensa. It is located a few metres south of the intersection of Thurlow Street and Beach Avenue in English Bay, and was constructed as part of the Vancouver Biennale.

The Vancouver Biennale, which is a bi-annual event that celebrates art in public places, describes the sculpture as a celebration of “Vancouver’s linguistic and cultural diversity” which seemed quite fitting as Vancouver prepares to host the world later this week. The 16 feet tall aluminum piece combines a number of letters chosen from 8 different alphabets (Latin, Greek, Russian Cyrillic, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Arabic, Chinese) to create a shape resembling a man sitting on the ground with his knees tucked into his chest. Lights have been placed in the floor of the “womb” created by the structure and light upwards through the white lettering to create a beautiful glowing effect.

I had the pleasure is of being introduced to Miriam Blume this week, who is the Director of Communications for The Vancouver Biennale. She was kind enough to describe to me the main of objective of the project and mention a few tips to make the experience more enjoyable.

Our objective is to situate art where people live, work and play, creating cultural experiences for people as they move about their daily lives. Our open-air museum includes some of the most renown artists from around the world and some new rising super stars that can't be missed.

A downloadable map is available on our website, and we encourage people to hop on their bikes, or take the Canada Line or do a series of walks to see all of the sculptures during the exhibition.

During the Olympics, we invite the city to join us nightly at Sunset Beach Park to watch the Vectorial Elevation light show in and amongst some of the most spectacular Biennale sculptures. Completely free and family-friendly, it's an incredible way to spend an evening. Watch for the Biennale team in bright yellow jackets giving away collector pins and postcards.

To find out more about the other sculptures and the artist behind them check out the Vancouver Biennale website or follow them on any of their social profiles Facebook, Twitter or Flickr.

Adam Kambeitz is the owner of Nine Point Ten Marketing a social media based marketing company and is interested in all things Social Media.
Follow Adam on Twitter @adamkambeitz or @ninepointten