Rob Cottingham and Alexandra Samuel are early movers in the social media world. Their combined online presence leaves a big impact. Alex’s articles appear online for the Harvard Business Review and Oprah.com and Rob’s cartooning is a mainstay of several well read blogs. Most interesting to me is their commitment to the ideals of their chosen tools; they are “open-sourcing” some of their intellectual property from Social Signal. In other words; teaching people how to create a social media agency – no strings attached.

I interviewed Rob at Northern Voice about his company and how the social web can use a laugh every now and then. (I should note that in former lives we worked on the same NDP election team, he was the dashingly funny speech writer who swanned in with brilliant bon mots – I was the rumpled press flack in the corner with the cell phone smoking a pack-a-day. At least that’s how I remember it. And, yes I’ve since quit smoking.)

Interview with Rob Cottingham from Ian Capstick on Vimeo.