Rob Cottingham's blog | Social Signal

Google Engage for Agencies came to Canada a year ago, training agencies in AdWords and other Google products so they can then offer those products to their clients. Yesterday Google celebrated the program's first Canuck birthday with a four-city conference, connected by Google Hangout, looking at marketing trends facing digital agencies and their clients.

After reviewing 1,000 Facebook posts and updates from 20 non-profits with large followings on the site, Capulet's Theo Lamb and Darren Barefoot can report

Every once in a while, titans team up. Sometimes the results are catastrophic (Lex Luthor, meet Brainiac) — but once in a while, you get something so wonderful ("You got chocolate in my peanut butter!") it's almost enough to rehabilitate the word "synergy".

Maddie Grant of DC-based SocialFish has done a lot of thinking about connecting online audiences with speeches, panels and presentations.

As we Like, tweet, post, pin and share our way through our daily lives, we're adding to a staggering repository of information. Exactly what are we creating – and do we have a choice in how it's used?

This episode features Holly Ross from NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network. She's a great speaker in her own right – and every year, NTEN hosts the Nonprofit Technology Conference. It's a huge gathering (but remarkably relaxed and collegial), and we talk about what it takes to connect that many people online at a conference - and how speakers can make the most of a connected audience.

When you want solid advice on social media, backed up by years of experience with both non-profits and businesses, you go to JD Lasica.

And so did I, for a half-hour conversation that touched on everything from why letting your audience see your slides in advance may not be a bad idea, to how speaking and community-building go hand-in-hand.

Listen to JD, then explore these links for some terrific resources:

• JD Lasica: home page, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Vimeo, Flickr, Slideshare - and his Wikipedia entry
• Darknet, JD's book on Hollywood's assault on digital-age freedoms
• Socialmedia.biz, the business-focused social media consulting firm JD founded
• Socialbrite, JD's firm focusing on non-profits and social enterprises 
• The Socialbrite sharing centre, a learning hub for non-profits and changemakers
• Creative Commons and Creative Commons search on Flickr

It's hard to say just where Nancy Duarte has had the biggest impact: as the architect of Al Gore's presentation on climate change in An Inconvenient Truth... as the author of two profoundly powerful books on crafting and delivering presentations, slide:ology and Resonate...

...as the co-creator of Duarte Design, a firm that has been redefining the art and science of presentations for nearly a quarter-century...

...or as a pioneer in integrating social media and public speaking around the central driving idea of story.

If you spend any time teaching people about online tools, or documenting them, or pitching them, chances are you've thought about screen capture software. And last week, a post on the Web of Change email list asked for recommendations on just that topic.

I weighed in on the side of Telestream's ScreenFlow, and I'm sharing it here in case you're looking for something for your next computer or Internet tutorial: