I tend to feel guilty when I don’t get to post as much as I would like on this blog. It’s one of those things where after writing daily for 5 months last year, and now that my book is finally out (which is in a way a second life of those posts), I feel like “hey, you could possibly be even more productive!”.  Then I look at my secret project list and am reminded that I can’t talk about some of the more large-scale stuff that goes on behind the scenes.

And then there is the day to day, non 9-5 projects that you see such as my guest posts for folks at companies like SafeNet and Juniper, plus a lot of ghostwriting that most people don’t associate with me.  Yes folks, some of those whitepapers and blog posts you come across every now and then might indeed be written by yours truly.

Oh, and there is my ongoing involvement on it/toolbox.com where I answer people’s questions on cloud computing, and other fun social media ramblings.

But one area that some of you might be aware of is my ongoing work in the cloud computing space as a startup advocate.  You see, unfortunately here in the “Great White North”, we suffer from a lack of startup resources.  Since we have a fraction of the market and population, somehow cloud companies in Canada have to work that extra bit harder to figure out how to get past the startup phase.

For almost 2 years, I have been a marketing advocate for cloud-related startups here in Canada.  What does that mean?  Well, simply put, I have lots of phone calls and meetings (I am very well caffeinated) with founders and listen to their company pitches.  You see, like most tech companies, they are started by incredibly smart folks, folks that usually don’t have a marketing background.  So what do I do?

Well, I basically sit down and hear their pitches and help them figure out a marketing strategy.  This could be things like which markets are good for them to target (vertical or company size), how to market, value proposition and anything else marketing related. I even have a few of these companies work with me on marketing collateral such as whitepapers, blog posts and marketing copy.  But what I feel is the real value is helping them get in touch with some of the industry groups here in Canada.

Speaking of industry groups, I’ve been fortunate to have been working with some of the key folks here in Canada helping to drive innovation in the cloud space.  If you are a Canadian entrepreneur involved in the cloud industry, make sure to check out a few great resources for information (in alphabetical order):

Canada Cloud Network (canadacloud.net)

Canadian Cloud Council (canadiancloudcouncil.ca‎)

Cloud Computing Best Practices (cloudbestpractices.net/)

There are some amazing resources available on the above sites, including some great projects building the Canadian cloud directory for cloud companies.  I highly recommend it if you are looking for a provider or are looking to get into the cloud market in Canada as well.