September 2015 - Page 3 of 5 - The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

A chart that will help you understand Stephen Harper’s “Old Stock Canadians” phrase

The phrase from last night’s Canadian leadership debate (for those of you who aren’t Canadian, there’s a national election going on) is the one uttered by incumbent, Prime Minister, and dickish control freak Stephen Harper during the part about immigrants and refugees. It’s at the 20-second mark in the video below:

“Old Stock Canadians.” It’s got the same dog-whistle tone as the Quebec phrases pure laine, which translates literally as “pure wool”, and is better translated as “dyed in the wool”, and de souche, a 19th-century term invented by anti-Semites in France which oddly enough, translates as…old stock.

“Old Stock Canadian” is an especially interesting turn of phrase since Harper’s Conservative Party, who have been facing a steeper uphill campaign than they’d expected, recently hired pricey Australian campaign strategist Lynton Crosby, who’s known for using xenophobia in his election-winning playbook.

If you’re still not sure of what “Old Stock Canadian” means, you’re in luck. Rachel Décoste came up with a handy chart, and I’ve spruced up its typography and wording:

old stock vs those people

VarageSale is looking for a community manager based in Central Florida

varagesale - community manager

My friend Sarah Baird is the COO of the Toronto-based startup VarageSale, an online, local-focused marketplace that competes with Craigslist by focusing on mobile platforms. VarageSale has expanded to cover all of Canada and most states in the U.S., and now they’ve got their eyes on Florida. In order to establish a presence here, they need a community manager, and they’re looking for one based in Central Florida.

varagesale app

VarageSale — that’s short for “Virtual Garage Sale” — is the brainchild of Tami Zuckerman, who came up with the idea out of frustration while trying to clear out her house by selling stuff through Craigslist and similar marketplace sites. She and her husband developed an app that helped her sell her excess stuff with her smartphone, and while they didn’t start out intending to create a business, the idea grew into one.

VarageSale connects people through their Facebook profiles, and uses volunteer moderators to approve new members. You post items for sale and an asking price, and the app lets prospective buyers comment, haggle over price, or say “sold”! The service has grown in popularity, the Canadian tech news site TechVibes named them Canadian Startup of the Year for 2014, and in March, they raised $34 million in venture money from Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. So to answer a question you might have already asked: yes, it looks like they’ve got a future.

I’ll personally vouch for VarageSale’s Chief Operating Officer, Sarah Baird, as someone who knows how to get things done. I know her through my developer evangelism work in Toronto with Tucows, Microsoft, and Shopify, and through her work at Interactive Ontario (a not-for-profit industry trade organization that encourages the growth of the interactive digital content industry in the province of Ontario), the social game development shop Social Game Universe, and at various industry events in Toronto’s thriving tech scene. She gets stuff done, and my feeling is that so will any company that where she’s COO.

florida - toronto

If you get the job, you’ll be working remotely from Florida and in regular communication with the team at the head office in Toronto, Canada, which you’ll have to visit from time to time (it’s a great city). You’ll be part of the Growth Team and the “face” of VarageSale in the Sunshine State, get people hooked up with VarageSale and building up the community of Floridians who use it to buy and sell things. You’ll be part of their global expansion effort and working closely with their Launch, Marketing, and Happiness Teams to kick off their push in Florida and building and nurturing Florida’s VarageSale communities on an ongoing basis.

Some things about the community manager job (these are distilled from their job posting):

You’ll need to be able to communicate your passion and care for the community not just in person, but, more importantly, online.
You have to be comfortable being the celebrity in the grocery store and the go-to online resource for all VarageSale communities. This is a job for someone who can get in front of a crowd, “shake hands and kiss babies”, and get them to take action — namely, using VarageSale and getting them to get other people to use it as well.
Your job will be to grow VarageSale communities in Florida. This means building bases of users all over the state, finding and cultivating influencers to help get the word out, and organizing and hosting VarageSale events. That means showing up, which in turn means you’ll have to do some traveling.
You should be comfortable working remotely in a startup culture, and you should have some marketing and/or community management experience. If you’ve ever had to be the “face” of a product or service, that’s even better. And you’ll need to know how to work a community.

If this sounds like your kind of gig, go to their Florida Community Manager job page and apply now! Tell them Joey sent you.