Chris Nadeau (YourTeamOnline) did a great review on a Saint John, NB startup Facebook application Scrapbook Your Memories. Creativity, entrepreneuralism and drive runs in this family as this startup was founded by Chris’s wife Jodie and his mother Bonny. Congratulations on creating a facebook application with value that is appealing to a broad audience, particularly the 30+ range and WOMEN. 2008 will hopefully start to see a shift in applications from fighting zombies to applications like Scrapbook Your Memories  that have meaning.

Geeks on Ice covered The Rising Stars awards for knowledge industry professionals in NB. 10 out of 25 nominated IT professionals will be awarded a Rising Star trophy and will be enrolled in the year long mentorship program. Congratulations to the 25 finalists! The few finalists that I’ve had the opportunity to meet so far are very deserving in their nomination.

When: Thursday, January 17, 2008
Where: Delta Beauséjour Hotel, Moncton

For more information check out the RisingStars.ca site and the facebook group.

Derek Hatchard founder of Moncton based ChurchRadius.com and podcaster at Devcasting, blogged today that he is giving away citizenville.com. Leave a comment on his blog saying why you want it and he may give it to you.

Thanks to David Alston at radian6, we’re having our first Third Tuesday (actually being held on Wednesday) Social Media Meetup in Fredericton (January 9th, 7:00 pm).  Jason Falls, Social Media Explorer from Kentucky is in town next week and we’ll have the opportunity to talk with him.

As David says;

Jason is definitely a pioneer when it comes to social media. If you are on Twitter you would probably be aware of his social media experiment with Robby Gordon’s Baha1000 race. Not only is Jason extremely knowledgeable in the use of social media but his posts are very entertaining. He has a great sense of humour and uses it to convey his points on a regular basis. It promises to be a great evening of sharing, stories and networking. Make sure to RSVP and bring along a guest.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this year is about making connections in real life. So let’s start off the New Year right.

You can follow Jason on twitter.  Join Third Tuesday NB Social Media Meetup to find out more details about the event.

2008 will be the year that;

1. A barcamp/democamp/startup camp etc. will be held in Atlantic Canada. Possibly PEI at Rob’s place. Harold has made the great suggestion of it being a Kitchen Camp. Perfect maritime flavour.

2. We will have tweet ups to meet fellow twitter friends. An attempt was made over the holidays but everyone’s schedules were a little crazy, so no luck.

3. Dan Martell will hopefully organize an event for us to watch a video of the Future of Web apps. Possibly Fredericton. Date TBD.

4. If you can, you should try to attend The Power Within in Halifax, Feb. 26. We will have the opportunity to meet up with others from Atlantic Canada involved in this industry and we can all corner Mitch Joel to pick his brain;)

5. The AIM (Atlantic Canada Internet Marketing) conference is in Moncton this year, May 4-6.  Another great opportunity to engage with others.

6. We all love social media. We’re twittering, facebooking, seesmicing, blogging, Second Lifeing and so on. It’s wonderful we can connect up with like minded people. Yet you’ll notice all these above points are about meeting people in person. Making real life connections on top of the virtual connections. David Alston from Radian6 expressed it well that his number one resolution this year is to find balance - to invest in both social media and traditional family and friends relationships.

Here’s to a connected and balanced 2008 in Atlantic Canada!