Women 2.0 Ottawa loves profiling women entrepreneurs and so we are pleased to share the news that Ottawa-based Sandra Lowenstein recently launched her company Lionstone Market Development.

Lionstone Market Development provides market intelligence, content development and sales related services to companies entering or expanding into new market areas. With these services Sandra helps companies to define a business strategy and to align product development with marketing plans.

Sandra has targeted her company’s services to “resource-constrained organizations wishing to augment a current marketing program, launch a new product/service or implement elements of a marketing program on a project-by-project basis.”

Sandra is a senior professional with marketing, product management and business development experience that spans the telecommunications, information technology, healthcare and defence industries. Her roles have ranged from developing and executing market strategies for new products at companies such as March Networks and FN Technologies, to program promotion at Lockheed Martin Canada and Mitel.

If you’re in need of some marketing help, email Sandra at sandra [at] lionstonemarketdev [dot] com.

Are you a women entrepreneur in Ottawa?

Well we’d love to profile you if you are! Send your bio / company background to ottawa [at] women2 [dot] ca and we’ll profile you on our blog.

- Melany Gallant
Co-founder, Women 2.0 Ottawa

Well we sure did enjoy hosting Maggie Fox from Social Media Group at our Pass the Torch event on Tuesday. We formatted the event to be interactive with lots of Q & A between Maggie and the attendees.

(L. to R. in photo: Kristina Mausser of Digital Word, Melany Gallant of Women 2.0 Ottawa, Maggie Fox and Monika Surma of Women 2.0 Ottawa)

Instead of “PowerPointing” her experience and expertise with the group - she instead talked with us, answering very specific questions about founding her own company and about social media best practices. It made (IMHO) for a truly intimate and engaging experience for everyone. The format worked so well, we intend to host more events like this in future!

You can listen to the event podcast (produced very kindly by Jeff Parks of I.A. Consultants) here:

Download Podcast (72.9 MB | length: 1:03:43)

Thanks once again to our sponsors, DigitalEve Ottawa, Ramius Corporation and Digital Word for helping make this event possible!

- Melany Gallant
Co-founder, Women 2.0 Ottawa

The Women 2.0 Ottawa Pass the Torch event with Maggie Fox of Social Media Group is days away. The attendee list is filling up fast but there is still time to register on the event wiki.

On Tuesday, February 26th, Women 2.0 will sit down with Maggie to discuss her experiences and successes in the social media space. Join us if you can.

About Maggie

Maggie Fox, founder and CEO of Social Media Group, one of the world’s largest and best-known agencies helping business navigate the world of Web 2.0, is a communications and content expert who has never met a medium she didn’t like.

Over the course of her career, Maggie has lead teams that have marketed, written and produced television and web content for some of the biggest and best-known brands in North America, including Sears, Deloitte and Disney.

Pioneers in their field, SMG has created social media strategies for Ford Motor Company, SAP, Yamaha Motor and Harlequin Publishing. Maggie is often asked to speak to the press and business groups about the importance and use of social media in the enterprise.

At our January 24th Women 2.0 Ottawa event, we discussed creating a series of discussions around the essential tools and skills you need to run your small business or startup smartly. We’ve dubbed this series the Technology Purse aka toolkit.

Out of that discussion was a question about Twitter - what it is and how to use it. So I thought I’d take a stab at explaining the benefits of of this microblogging platform and then direct your attention to some other sources of information.

First, a definition of microblogging is in order. According to Forrester Research, microblogging is “a social computing tool that allows users to send brief updates to public and private networks.” Huh. OK - that definition implies that you understand what social computing is.

Those of you on Facebook and LinkedIn, buying and selling on eBay, writing or reading blogs, using instant messaging systems and contributing to wikis - are all in the social computing game. Social computing is essentially the act of using these forms of social software to interact with others, build relationships and collaborate online. Read more »