What is in a Name? @Crexia

Posted by Vic Okezie on January 30th, 2012 | No Comments

I have always been asked this question: What does Crexia mean? Now and again, I write this post in my head, but never get a chance to publish here. Well, until now!

For a start, Crexia is a Social Media in HR Conference business. I started it as a Talent Search and Employer Brand venture back in 2008. Today, it has evolved into a Social HR events and content company. And the evolution is ongoing, as all businesses in the new economy.

So, what does Crexia mean? I’d provide some answers and insights below, and feel free to connect with the meaning that suits your imagination.

Corporate Branding

I registered the domain name crexia.com in 2004. Yes, back then I was messing around with domain names and thinking of what a future company might be called. I wanted something short, simple, smart – without an immediate meaning; something that doesn’t specifically say what a company does; a versatile name and that is potentially potent.

Family Reference

I didn’t quite think about this when it the domain was registered, but probably considered a strong personal element when I decided to set up a company in that name. My mum’s name is Christine Okezie, so when planning to take that leap into running a business, I went for Crexia – which could create the combo of Chri Zie = Crexia.

French Connection

The domain name was registered while I lived in France. Hence the logo has always had something ‘French’ about it. A lot of people have asked if the name is French, even during some client pitches in the past. The funniest reference to the logo and its identity was when I asked a UK creative chap what he thought about the logo, and he just gave one word: ‘Foreign’. Yes, I walked right into that one!

Sardinian Meaning

Something in 2009, I started doing some more research about the word Crexia, and behold, it does have some ancient meaning in Sardinian language, spoken in the Island of Sardinia, Italy. In its form, the word ‘crexia’ relates to ecclesia, chiesa, igresa, which all means ‘church’. In a way, this meaning becomes more interesting the last 2 years, as we now bring people together via meetings and forums to discuss topics, albeit subjects definetely NOT of religious nature.

Phillipino Nickname

Like I found out in 2010, Crexia is also a popular nickname in Phillipines, when I embarked on trying to claim the twitter handle @crexia – a story I documented last April, on How I Acquired a Twitter Username. That was an interesting revelation, but I never found out its meaning in Tagalog.

So, there you go – the reasons are out there, both intentional ones and ones I learned along the way. I will be interested to learn how others, esp small business owners choose a business name and set about to create a brand around it.

Blogging Again and #SRCONF Paris Video

Posted by Vic Okezie on December 18th, 2011 | No Comments

Sunday. A day to restart blogging again. Typical. Its cold. Dark. December. End of Year. Tiring. Looking forward to the holidays now. It has been a rather busy 2011. Our last event was held over 2 weeks ago. In Paris. Now planning for 2012.

However, a blog restart is best to highlight a positive. So, yes, it was great to expand our events into Europe. The video below tells a 2 mins story of SRCONF Paris. See for yourself!

My Video Interview about #SRCONF 2011

Posted by Vic Okezie on June 9th, 2011 | No Comments

Our second Social Recruiting Conference will be held on 30th June 2011. I got a chance to chat with Hung Lee and Alan Whitford about #SRCONF a few weeks ago via skype video. Watch!

Another Warm Spring to Remember

Posted by Vic Okezie on May 13th, 2011 | No Comments

I love the spring. It brings light to  life and a brightness that is second to none. After a dark and cold winter, and the snow and chaos that comes with it, the months of March and April always have a refreshing feel about them – the warmth, the Sun. So, I love spring.

We have done a lot of outdoors this time, including a holiday in the South coast and our first stay in a caravan as a family. It was fun. Now I am sharing one of the photos taken at a beach, where Mia and a friend were running off carefree. Find more family pictures from Spring 2011.

How I Acquired a Twitter Username

Posted by Vic Okezie on April 13th, 2011 | No Comments

I am founder of a company called Crexia. A future post will explain the idea behind the name. Anyway, last year, I decided to acquire the twitter username @crexia – and realized it was owned by a Filipino girl. Apparently, ‘crexia’ is a nickname used in Philipines. Who knew!

Using the name @crexia is something I haven’t particularly thought about in 2009, as I was heavily active via my personal account @vicokezie and also just acquired @socialrecruiter from a US Talent Acquisition Manager, who was kind enough to let go of that name, following a ‘combined’ advisory service he provided my other venture, www.socialrecruiter.co.uk

Crexia’s business shifted to events in 2010 with our debut Social Recruiting Conference. And back then, I knew we will be focusing on multiple conferences within Social Media, and hence set out to find out if it will ever be possible to have access to @crexia on twitter. According to Twitter, in order to claim back a username, you can either hold the trademark or submit a request. I didn’t have the former so I tried the later. I got a nice stardard email that explained how they release unused twitter usernames. I followed the process through, but nothing happened. It used to work before and these guys were successful. But for many people trying to acquire a username via twitter, they always hit a brick wall!

So I decided to track the person with the name and try to ask politely. By then, the username had no tweet and it was following 1 person (a tours company). However, the girl’s real name was in the bio area (I won’t reproduce it here – lets call her X) including her location. So, I did what anyone will do. Google it. I received lots of results of that name with various spellings. But the top ranked results where names from Facebook. I clicked on a few of them and wondered which was the real person. Anyway, I logged into FB, and did a search for that name (selected all) cos I figured that if someone with this name has a twitter account, they must surely be on FB. I got around 7 results within a FB search – 3 had photos and the other 4 didn’t. I sent messages to all – just a simple, “are you the owner of this twitter handle? I’d really appreciate if you give me access to the name if you are not using it … blah blah.” I got nothing back.

Then I recalled that I had worked with someone in Philipines in 2008 when I was starting out with Crexia’s recruitment efforts in Asia. I wanted someone to do lots of research and data entry and so hired a freelancer (Y) there over a period. I searched my box and found her email, so I sent her one out of the blue (March 2010) to explain if she can help in tracking/researching who X is, based in Philipines. Ok, I got a reply the next day and she suggested using FB too. Blimey!

Y now runs a small IT company after her MSc in Engineering and growing her business. So, she did same search and sent friends request to all of the 7. Alas, 3 or so accepted the request and somehow she managed to gather 2 email addresses. Then, she sent emails to those two addresses in English/Tagalog asking if they own the username and again blah blah. We heard nothing. That was March 2010.

I gave up, so was starting to contemplate using a @crexiauk or @crexiamedia or @crexialimited. I never got around to any and sort of was closing that chapter. Then in December 2010, while reading The Facebook Effect, I decided to friend 3 of the ones with the same real name (X) on FB. And also send messages about the username. A few days later, I got a response in broken English but quite apprehensive too. Basically, it states: yes its mine, and what do you want from me. So, we started a conversation. Some days it took 5 days to hear from her. I found out a lot more about her. She uses FB on her mobile and she was just over 20. Anyway, the discussion was going nowhere as she didn’t quite understand why someone from the UK was interested in a twitter username. Then I got Y involved again. Emailed to say our X was responding and can she speak with her to allay her fears etc and explain that a UK company called Crexia was interested in her username, for some strange reasons.

Long story short, Y sorted it all. She got to speak with X, arranged to sort the username transfer (I got the login details via a FB message) and she later hired her for a freelance project. And naturally, I compensated Y for her efforts and assistance. Username was mine by mid-March and everyone was happy. The experience thought me how one can be determined but also patient, in order to get to a destination. But more importantly, how our contacts (anywhere they might be in the world) can come in very handy when we need them.

And finally, how Facebook has brought the world closer. Now then, you can follow @crexia and next time I’d write about this very cool name. That should be interesting. Ciao!

My Daughter’s Card for Grandparents

Posted by Vic Okezie on April 8th, 2011 | No Comments

Now that I am trying to clear my desktop, I stumbled on a scanned image I made last week – one of my daughter’s anniversary card for her Grandparents (and my in-laws), and I just decided to spend a few minutes and upload it here. She will be 5 in June. Isn’t it lovely:-) Made my day.

Moving Out of My Comfort Zone

Posted by Vic Okezie on February 28th, 2011 | No Comments

Yes, a nice dramatic title that might as well be attention grabbing. But this post is about a new journey into new areas of interests.

For the last few years, I have been doing stuffs in and around recruiting. Even back to the early days when I worked with an International Student organisation – exchanging engineering students globally by matching their skills for paid Internships in other countries.

Since then, I have progressed into an in-house Recruitment role (which was cool), and then Recruitment Consultancy (which was ok) and dabbled with Recruitment Media (websites, seo etc) and in the past 12 months, ran a Recruiting Conference, albeit with a Social Media flavour.

With the success of #SRCONF last year and the prospects ahead, Crexia is now realigned into a Social Media events company (sort of) with some focus on ‘Social HR’ at least in 2011. Hence, this year will see me/us explore conference(s) away from recruiting. That is why I will be announcing 2 new future events in March 2011 that will examine the impact of Social Media in those specific sectors.

This will be new territory for me, but something I am very much looking forward to. The first of the announcements will be made tomorrow. And I can’t contain my excitement!

For Conferences, Content is King!

Posted by Vic Okezie on February 1st, 2011 | No Comments

Ok, the plan for this year is to push out positive posts on plans and projects. I’d really love to leave the rants to others. But this blog post is a reflective one that offers a dose of reality to ‘our’ world of conference organising. Following the success of #SRCONF in November 2010, Alan and myself are planning another for June 2011. And Crexia is working on a new ‘Social’ event for November 2011. More on that much later.

Anyway, last month has seen a fair number of HR and recruitment conferences organised by major media companies. And while I didn’t attend the main ones, its quite easy to follow events via Social Media e.g. twitter and/or read reviews after the events.

The impression from some of the events have been a seeming ‘selling’ of services and products via the hashtags with little or no ‘new’ content coming through from the delegates and atimes speakers. And when we see a bit of content, you just wonder if we are back to 2008 (or late).

I am all for commercialisation of conferences, and will continue to search for ways to add value to sponsors, but a disregard by conference organisers to seek out presentations with relevant content and current trends within an industry will no longer go unnoticed. People will be talking and tweeting and Social Media has now made live feedback available for everyone to see.

For #SRCONF last November, some of the feedback we received was that we might have over delivered on the volume of content and case studies within Social Recruiting for a 1 day gig. But I’d rather be well-fed with lots of ideas and food for thoughts, than go home hungry.

We are now spending time to search for exceptional speakers with insightful case studies and forward thinking strategies for #SRCONF 2011. Again, we will focus on delivering a consistent theme on the value and ROI of Social Media in Recruiting in realistic and practical scenarios.

Our approach in conference organising and production will be aimed at providing value to all involved: delegates with great content and networking; sponsors with access to target audience to showcase products without being too ‘salesy’ and speakers who can share quality presentations while learning from their peers. And hopefully for us, it will be good business!

So, conference organisers, get a grip with the content you are serving! And if we all can agree that Content is King, then Presentation is the Princess – beautifully dressed and delivered for the world to see. Please take the last sentence at face value :-)

Bye 2010; You Have been a Brave Year

Posted by Vic Okezie on December 30th, 2010 | No Comments

Well, it has come to the time of the year, when I try to review it in the context of my personal and/or professional life. In the last week or so, our website www.crexia.com has been redesigned, while my personal blog has gotten a neater and nicer look. But let’s go back to the very beginning of 2010.

We started off the year recognizing that we needed to further incorporate Social Media into our business model. I decided to shift from Recruitment Consulting, which was generating good money by end of 2009 to Recruitment Media, due to my strong personal interests in the later.

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Attracting Diverse Conference Speakers

Posted by Vic Okezie on December 17th, 2010 | No Comments

Ok, a few days ago I tweeted about seeing a conference speakers list and out of about 20 or so, only 1 was female. For me, it seemed more like window dressing that anything else. Yes, one can easily see these things and not notice them at all, depending on who you are and what you do.

Having attended a few conferences the last few years and organised one last month, attracting and involving a diverse speakers list for a conference is critical. It is not a case of bringing in people just to fill in some sort of quota or inviting mediocre speakers just because you want to tick the diversity box. No. It is about attracting and inviting people from a wider pool who may share their own (gender / diverse) perspectives on the topics in question.

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