Get School’d: BLOGGING at The Gladstone Hotel

Hey guys! On Dec. 22nd I’m hosting a session on BLOGGING at The Gladstone Hotel in their new workshop series. Tickets are going fast and I’ve been told there’s just a few more.  The night will cover tips and tricks on starting a blog and how to build an audience. Get a Ticket  The Get School’d series brings you knowledge on diverse topics such as growing and maintaining a beard, blogging, learning ukulele, indoor gardening, wine tasting etc. The goal is to be fun and educational. I’m planning to take a few upcoming classes myself. If you’re gonna be there, let me know. Feel free to come with questions, I’d be happy to answer them for you! CASIE @casiestewart will be hosting out first #GetSchoold workshop. Learn from the best #blogger in #Toronto on 22nd Dec 7 – 8.15pm. Tickets selling fast http://bit.ly/1zk6LhY A photo posted by Gladstone Hotel Toronto (@gladstonehotel) on Dec 12, 2014 at 12:27pm PST

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My Tiles Arrived! What is Tile and Why Am I Excited?

With the Tile app you can locate anything you want. I’m ashamed to admit how many times I’ve lost my phone, wallet, or something valuable. If you’ve been reading my blog for a few years, you might remember a few tragic incidents! Now, I don’t have to worry! A photo posted by C A S I E S T E W A R T (@casiestewart) on Nov 11, 2014 at 8:02pm PST Tile was a Kickstarted I supported in 2013, they surpassed their goal raising $2.6 million, the most successful campaign to at the time. Pebble watch blew this campaign out of the water with $10 million not long after. Tile is a $25 Bluetooth-enabled chip that attaches to a possession (ex. keychain, wallet, boyfriend, child) and is locatable on Tile’s iPhone app. What makes Tile different from almost every other similar device is that Tile’s users are all connected through the cloud, creating a giant search net that negates the disadvantage of Bluetooth’s extremely short range. Connecting my Tiles was super easy once I downloaded the app. Press the ‘e’ to activate bluetooth, it makes a sound, place Tile on phone screen to connect, name the device, done. I’m pretty stoked to have them since it’s the LONGEST I’ve EVER waited for something I bought online. That’s Kickstarter for ya, had to wait for production since they were just a prototype at the time. I’ve got one on my keys, wallet, and Sean’s keys so they are never lost. 😉  If you wanna join the Tile crew, check out tileapp.com. OVER APP for World AIDS Day In other news, one of my fav editing apps, Over, has gone RED for World AIDS Day. The new pack is full of great designs! I purchased it for $4.99, all proceeds go to AIDS research. This app is awesome for adding text…

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Tech | We’re All Just Trying to Figure It Out

This might be one of my fav photos I’ve ever taken. I love it. Snapped with iPhone on a whim while leaving my sisters place. It brings back memories, nostalgia, I’m not even certain what exactly, just old times. Found the quote below over the weekend and it resonated with me. I’ve been reading here and there about impostor syndrome, the inability to unable to internalize accomplishments. When you feel like someone is going ‘figure you out’, realize you don’t know what you’re doing, see right through your whole charade. ‘Impostor Syndrome is the domain of the high achiever. Those who set the bar low are rarely it’s victim’ (Forbes). — CASIE STEWART November 24, 2014 It’s ok to not know what you’re doing, We’re all trying to figure it out as we go. I used to get severe anxiety before going to events, being on stage, speaking. It’s not that people wouldn’t like me, it’s that they would, and sometimes I didn’t know exactly what I was doing but I was going on experience, and making it up as I go. Being in the world of social media before it was a business (or industry!) has taught me to realx and roll with it. Preparation, constant innovation, and trying new things has kept me ahead, made me a ‘pioneer’. (It always weirds me out when someone calls me that, the thought of ME being part of the start of something.) A photo posted by C A S I E S T E W A R T (@casiestewart) on Nov 11, 2014 at 3:17pm PST So I got to thinking about blogs and authenticity and why people even blog these days, and I thought about why they started. A blog, formerly WebLog was a place for non-tecnical users of the…

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Tech | Oculus, Wearables, and My Connected Life

One of 1188’s latest ventures is Occupied VR and last night they were on ETalk! Ben Mulroney tried the experience they designed for David Cronenberg’s Body Mind Change. (You might remember me taking part in Body Mind Change last year.) The Rift Teaser launches on the 24th of November. I tried it at the office and it was intense. It’s amazing how immersive Oculus is when you’re tapped into sight and sound. It totally freaked me out, I jumped up out my seat and screamed!   Later this week I’m attending the monthly We Are Wearables meet up at MaRS Discovery District. There’s still a few tickets if you’d like to join! (Free) There’s a Smartwatch Panel w/Motorola & TELUS with a discussion on Nielsen’s recent Connected Life survey on Canadian Trends in wearables and wearable consumers. I was really into social media before it hit the mainstream and I’m really into wearables lately. Sometimes it’s hard to believe how huge social media has become, I can only imagine the impact wearable technology will have on us over the next five years. I want to know and learn as much as I can! I’ve been thinking about how connected I am to the internet and it’s rare I go 15 5minutes without my phone having a notification, checking email, or taking a photo.  I was working away and my battery died this morning and to be honest, I was so productive for that period of time!  Techlogy makes us more productive and distracts us all the same. I’ve got lots to get done today so here’s to productivity! It may be freezing cold outside (if you are in NA) but try not to let it get you down. Put on all your winter warmies and greet the day with a smile. <3 CASIE      

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Tech | Buffer Festival Industry Day 2014

About a week ago I attended the first ever Buffer Festival Industry Day. Here’s a quick little snip of some of  my fav moments! It was great listening to top YouTubers talk about their experiences in brand building and projects. I was right up front to admire Harley from Epic Meal Time’s beard. He was my fav on the panel and it was neat to hear how the Epic Meal Time brand has evolved. A couple years ago I was at a Biz Media party and the team from Epic Meal time was there (blog post here w/ photos). They made a bacon volcano and bacon roses to go along with a suite of other epic meat creations. There was a meat photobooth too. I arrived just in time to catch my friend Brad Ford from Contiki chatting about brands, fans, and influence.  This is one of my fav topics and it was cool to hear how the other brands were working with influencers. I can speak first hand about the awesome job Contiki has done in connecting with ambassadors to tell their brand story.  I’m working on a little something new with Contiki but no details just yet…you’ll know soon enough! Take a look at my adventure to Thailand with them last year here. This was an awesome event for anyone looking to beef up their knowledge of how to make it on YouTube. I can only imagine how much the landscape will change by the time Buffer Festival rolls around next year. Something not to be missed! Hope your week is good. I’m off to the OBEY Clothing spring preview then to hang out with Globe Style and Sophie Kinsella, author of the Shopaholics series. Have an awesome day! CASIE

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Tech | Download Your Classic MySpace Blog

I’m finally getting around to seriously book writing like I’ve been talking about for 10 years. Found a blog post from 2005 where I said I was writing a book [insert crying emoji]. April marks 10 years of blogging on my own blog platform. I rediscovered my old MySpace blogs today now that you can finally download them. MySpace had originally deleted ALL blogs without warning. Downloaded a heap of posts and went through all the HTML files renaming them. It felt good. Unfortunately I’ve lost my first, first ever blog from MicrosoftSpaces back in 2004 (they stopped helping users recover them in 2012). How To Download Your Classic MySpace Blog: Dig up that old login you haven’t used in ages and login to MySpace Go to to settings Click Account On the left you’ll see an option to migrate old photos to a new album and download old blogs Download. Took about 60 seconds to download my 100 posts in a .zip file Fall in love with your elf again OR have heaps of laughs at your MySpace selfies   One of the things I learned today was I haven’t changed that much. Well, I have but some things are still the same. I’m really inspired my going back over my old stuff and incredibly thankful that I didn’t give up and stop writing even though sometimes I really didn’t feel like blogging anymore.  See 10 posts titled ‘Sometimes I don’t feel like it‘ here. Recovered these old quizzes I shared back in 2006 from MySpace. Hahahaha Buzzfeed, you’re just stealing old ideas! Still love the Olsen Twins, still style twinning Nicole Richie, and still love summer. I remember reading this quote in high school and thought, I will write things worth reading and do things worth writing about, watch me! And that was after I’d already written…

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Events | Samsung Galaxy Alpha launch party #GalerieAlpha

Came across these photos from the Samsung Galerie Alpha launch last week. It was a cool event with art stations scattered around the Neubacher Shor Contemporary art gallery, Queen West. Thanks Best of Toronto for the snaps! Almost the entire circle of Toronto Internet was there. Fun night!

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Tech | My DNA: 23andMe Launches in Canada

This week I went to the Canadian launch of 23andMe. The privately held company is located in Mountain View, California and they specialize in genomics and biotechnology. I love this stuff. I don’t know heaps about it but I want to learn so I was reading the blog made by Dan Miller that’s all about these types of kits! Using a saliva-based DNA sample, they provide genetic reports on ancestry, family history and connect you with your DNA relatives. They have over 650,000 paying genotyped customers and 20K are Canadian. CEO + cofounder Anna gave us some insight on how 23and me works. Informative article on FactCompany here -> Inside 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki’s $99 DNA Revolution. I saw Anne on CTV this morning in Montreal. All Canada’s top media was there for the Canadian launch. CBC in my face right here! One of the neat things knowing about your genetic makeup is disease prevention. For example, people who have the BRCA gene are more likely to get certain types of Cancer. Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy after testing positive for a likely lethal BRCA1 mutation. After learning about the company we were given a 23andme kit with expedited shipping so we could learn about our own genetic makeup. Mine was in the mail by the end of the day! You have to spit into this small container and put on the lid to mix in a chemical liquid with your sample. Once complete it goes into a bio bag and back in the box for shipping. I registered my sample and now I wait. It should take about three weeks to get an email that my results are in. When I get a notification, I’ll be able to login and see reports, ethnicity, ancestry, DNA relatives and more.…

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Tech | Muse Headband + Google Cardboard

Last week I got to try out Google Cardboard. It’s a small Oculus-like box that attaches to your Android phone where you can experience virtual reality games etc. I went on a roller coaster ride and it was pretty trippy. You hold up the box to your eyes then move as if you are on a coaster, I nearly fell over! 1188 Films (Sean’s company) has been working on some pretty rad VR stuff for Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard. I ca’t wait to see what they come up with next. My love for technology knows no bounds. I volunteer to test out everything! I was trying out the Body Mind Change + David Cronenberg Oculus Rift experience and did not know what was going to happen… then, a monster popped out and I totally jumped and screamed. The office at 1188 roared with laugher at me. HAHA GUYS VERY FUNNY. My other latest technology toy is the Muse brain Sensing Headband. It’s been a neat journey so far trying to make myself relax. I may seem like a care-free, fun loving person, but TBH I can be really uptight sometimes! This is a snapshot of my (lack of) calmness last week on Monday right in the middle of TIFF. The second photo is Friday afternoon, post TIFF. HUGE DIFFERENCE. I’m going to test out my cottage calmness this weekend. You unlock different milestones the more calm you are. I’m going for a SERENITY NOW mentality. After I did a session on Friday last week I took the streetcar. A man across the car was playing his music loud, like NO HEADPHONES loud. The driver even yelled for the person playing the music to turn it down. It took every ounce of my patience to hold it together, it is so frustrating…

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TheTech | Business of YouTube: Buffer Festival Industry Day

There is no doubt that video is a powerful platform to connect with your audience. If you are a brand, blogger, or you want to be famous on the Internet, knowing how to work the YouTube machine is to your advantage. The key to this is to build a large follower base and have plenty of views on your videos. Luckily, you can buy these, just make sure you use the best site to buy youtube views otherwise you might fall to victim to one of the many scam sites out there. You might not like the idea of buying views and followers but it has been proven to lead to their authentic counterpart, and many people have chosen this path to the top. There are plenty of alternatives to Youtube you can also use. I had the opportunity to travel to Thailand last year with some of Canada’s top YouTubers and it was a learning experience. There’s a real science to cracking the YouTube code and the more you know, well, the better you’ll be! I’ve partnered w/ the CFC to let you know about Buffer Festival Industry Day on October 16th. The one day event is not a YouTube fan event, but rather a chance to soak up information about the business of YouTube from some of the top YouTubers in the world. YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine (to Google) and 1 out of EVERY 2 internet users visits YouTube. Innovation is key to relevancy in our ever changing internet world, so if YouTube is on your radar you don’t wanna miss this. About Buffer Festival Industry Day: This one-day conference is for industry professionals looking to optimize YouTube as a content and talent development platform and a marketing and distribution channel. It provides a unique…

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