MasterMaq's Blog - Edmonton Blogger

Edmonton Notes for 3/13/2010

By Mack D. Male | March 13, 2010 at 11:22 pm

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

City Council put $17 million of last year’s $33.7 million surplus into a rainy day fund.
Wearing a seatbelt has been law in Alberta since 1987, yet many Albertans still choose not to wear one. March is Occupant Restraint Month, which means police will be raising awareness about the importance of wearing a seatbelt!
The 2010-2011 Edmonton Opera season was announced this week. They’re teaming up with The Fringe!
Here is the Edmonton Startup Index for March.
The Edmonton Event Centre, The Bank, and Mirama were all fined this week for breaking fire code regulations. Almost 300 inspections were performed by fire prevention officers in 2009.
The grass at Commonwealth Stadium will be ripped out next week, to be replaced with artificial turf.
Latitude 53 has a new Writer in Residence program, and the first writer is Carolyn Jarvis.
The Christenson Family Foundation donated $2.5 million to MacEwan this week (it will be paid over 10 years).
Here are the winners of the 2009 ACE Awards!
The Winspear Centre launched a new website this week. Looks great!
More details on the City’s plan to launch an iPhone application, host an apps contest, and more.
Happy 15th birthday to local brewery Alley Kat! Also, happy 1st birthday to Alberta Primetime!
The judge who presided over the city’s first “electronic trial” says the case has offered him “a glimpse of the future.”
Lots of people are upset about the closure of the MacEwan pool. Both students and seniors have protested.
Here is the latest Edmonton Next Gen weekly newsletter.
Dragon’s Den will be in town on Tuesday and Wednesday for auditions. Details on ShareEdmonton.
Coming up next Saturday is the inaugural Yeg Swap (on ShareEdmonton), which The Journal wrote about here.

Tags: edmonton, events, news
Categories: Edmonton Notes | No Comments »

GalaGuru 2010 & Edmonton Twestival

By Mack D. Male | March 12, 2010 at 10:00 am

Guru Digital Arts College, a digital media school located in downtown Edmonton, is hosting an event on March 25 at Latitude 53 called GalaGuru to celebrate the co-mingling of the creative arts and technology. This is the second year they’ve held the event, which features local food, interactive exhibits, and Edmonton’s own The Be Arthurs!

Also on March 25, is Twestival Global 2010. Hundreds of cities around the world, including Edmonton, will be hosting local events to create awareness for the important cause of education. All funds raised will go to Concern Worldwide, an organization that provides education for the world’s poorest children. Founded in 1968, Concern’s current education programs reach over 700,000 people in 25 countries. Twestival is also a fun way to meet other local Twitter users face-to-face!

So we’ve got a local educational institution hosting a big party on the same day that Twitter users are rallying around education. Sounds like a great match! That’s why were joining forces:

WHO: You and all your friends!
WHAT: GalaGuru 2010 & Edmonton Twestival (on ShareEdmonton)
WHEN: March 25, 2010 at 6 PM
WHERE: Latitude 53 – 10248 106 Street
WHY: To celebrate creative arts, technology, and education!

If you’re planning to attend, please RSVP and if you’re on Twitter, add your name to the wiki. You can donate to Concern online (use the widget on the right here), or bring your donation with you to the event. Hope to see you there!

Tags: concern worldwide, edmonton, galaguru, guru digital arts, tweetup, twestival, twitter
Categories: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Edmonton City Centre Airport Lands Master Plan Principles

By Mack D. Male | March 10, 2010 at 9:30 am

A report went to City Council today outlining the vision and principles for development of the City Centre Airport lands.

The ECCA lands will be home to 30,000 Edmontonians living, working and learning in a sustainable community that uses 100% renewable energy, is carbon neutral, significantly reduces its ecological footprint, and empowers residents to pursue a range of sustainable lifestyle choices.

You can download the report here. A few of the highlights for me:

The challenge is to be experimental, not to wait for the perfect solution to arrive.
Common goal is defined by: design excellence, empowering people, reducing consumption, offering lifestyle options, innovating, measuring achievements.
Examples mentioned: Vastra Hamnen (Western Front), Malmo, and Hammarby Sjostad, Stockholm, both in Sweden, and One Planet Communities.
The goal is to achieve LEED Gold certification for all buildings, and to encourage LEED Platinum.
Under transportation: LRT is a focus, of course, but also “designs to discourage high speed traffic”, “bike paths and multi-use trails to provide fully connected routes”.
Technology is identified as a key component of the Master Plan: “A key to success in adapting new technologies will be the engagement of three major local players: EPCOR, the University of Alberta and NAIT.”
Our climate is highlighted: “It must be recognized that Edmonton has severe winter conditions, which bring their own challenges, but these need not stand in the way of achieving sustainable development.”

The report also highlights the historical significance of the lands, and states that the Master Plan must embody that through preservation, naming, interpretation, and designation:

Identify opportunities to re-use hangars as recreation facilities or other community facilities (e.g. farmers market).
Explore the idea of a “mall of museums” that would acknowledge the historical significance of structures such as Hangars 8 and 11 that are all on the Inventory of Historic Resources in Edmonton.
Acknowledge the history of the site through naming opportunities for thoroughfares, places and buildings that are associated with the past.

The Master Plan process will be guided by a new steering committee, and is broken into the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) and Request for Proposals (RFP) phases. In the RFP stage, the City is looking for 3-5 proposals. Selection would be made by “an independent jury of distinguished professionals.” Excluding formal approvals by Council, the entire process is expected to take a year.

I think the report is a great first step, but there’s still a long way to go. In the background section, there are lots of specific targets, such as the One Planet principles that include “100% of power coming from renewable energy”, “98% reduction in solid landfill waste”, “82% reduction in CO2”, and “20% of materials manufactured on site”. The section that outlines the Master Plan is largely devoid of such targets, however. I found only a couple:

At least 20% of the housing units built must be affordable housing.
Achieve an overall density of 25 units per acre minimum.

To get an idea of what 25 units per acre looks like, check out this PDF (4 MB).

Council will be discussing the report today. You can watch or listen live online here.

Tags: city centre airport, city council, development, ecca, edmonton, planning, sustainability
Categories: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Why I went to Reboot Alberta 2.0

By Mack D. Male | March 9, 2010 at 8:19 pm

I live in Edmonton, Alberta. I’m proud to call myself a Canadian.

I don’t consider myself a progressive. To be honest, I’m not even sure I know what that label means.

I enjoy the mountains.

I reject partisan politics. If you look through the archives here, you’ll see that I have voted for every major party in Canada at one time or another, for various reasons.

I yearn for a leader. Even if that leader belongs to a party.

I like learning. I know more about politics (and life) now than I did a year ago. Time marches forward.

I love meeting new people and reconnecting with existing friends and acquaintances. You never know what will come of a relationship.

I care about the future, and I try to approach it optimistically.

I believe I can help to create the kind of the world I want to live in. The kind of world I’d be happy to leave behind.

For a few hours at the end of February, I was in the mountains, meeting new friends and reconnecting with others, discussing the future of Alberta, and learning a great deal from some very smart people.

It’s true that my expectations going into Reboot Alberta 2.0 were pretty high, but in retrospect, I think they were misplaced anyway. I was expecting outcomes of some kind, deliverables even, but instead was presented with the opportunity to think. The chance to slow down for a day, to really consider things. To listen.

Maybe if I had gone to the first Reboot Alberta I’d feel differently. I completely understand why those who did might have felt like they were rehashing the same thing again.

I agree that action is important and necessary. But so are conversations. I don’t know where Reboot Alberta will go from here, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to take part.

You can see my photos from the event here.

Edmonton Tweets during the Men’s Gold Medal Hockey Game

By Mack D. Male | March 9, 2010 at 12:15 pm

I’m sure you’ve seen by now the chart that EPCOR released showing water consumption in Edmonton during the men’s gold medal hockey game on February 28th. It’s pretty amazing how closely the data matches the end of the periods! I’m sure the game had an impact on many other parts of our lives as well. For instance, tweeting!

Here’s how much Edmontonians were tweeting during the game:

I’ve also stuck February 21 and March 7 in there, so you can see the difference from normal. We posted 27 tweets per minute from noon until 6pm on game day. That’s about three times more than normal!

Here’s what we were tweeting about:

No surprise there! I’ll have more Twitter stats up soon.

Tags: edmonton, hockey, olympics, sports, statistics, twitter, twittersphere, vancouver 2010
Categories: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Recap: Open City Workshop

By Mack D. Male | March 8, 2010 at 11:00 am

Saturday’s Open City Workshop at the Art Gallery of Alberta was a fantastic event! Excellent turnout, great discussions, and lots of enthusiasm for the open data/open government movement here in Edmonton. We started the day with some opening remarks from Councillor Don Iveson, CIO Chris Moore, and FusedLogic’s Walter Schwabe. I really liked Don’s key values: transparency, empowerment, and collaboration.

Next up was the panel, featuring David Eaves, Nick Charney, Mark Kuznicki, and Alayne Sinclair. They talked about what open government meant to them, took an odd detour into voting, and took some questions from the audience as well. Here are a few of the key things that stood out for me:

The idea of government as a platform is not new!
It’s about empowering citizens to make the city their own, enabling them to go after their passions.
Engagement is often a sign that you need to do something differently, not necessarily that you’re doing something right.
Civil servants are citizens too!
Open government is part of a broader cultural shift, and citizens have a responsibility to become participants.

I really enjoyed the panel – it was the highlight of the day for me. It was great to finally meet David, Nick, and Mark in person too.

After some forced networking and a break for lunch, the unconference part of the day got underway. We broke into smaller groups to discuss things like the role of journalism and storytelling in open data, the digital divide, thinking beyond technology solutions, and timelines/deliverables.

I attended the role of journalism and storytelling first, and we seemed to reach the consensus that storytelling is vital for open data/open government to succeed. We need everyone to tell stories, so that we achieve a diverse range of views. We also felt that journalism has a role to play in bridging the gap that exists between those who “get it” and those who don’t. The second session I attended was on engaging residents not familiar with technology. We ended up talking a lot about deliberative dialogue, and I was left with a lot to think about – how will access to open data affect the way a citizen looks at the world? We’re naturally selective, does open data change anything in that regard? For some thoughts on the other two sessions, check out Stella’s recap.

Another really great aspect of the day was that it was streamed live online by FusedLogic in both English and French. There were dozens of people participating virtually, from Edmonton and around the world! I understand that they even held their own breakout discussion in the afternoon! Kudos to the FusedLogic team for taking on such a big task, and making it work so well.

At the end of the day, Chris Moore took the stage once again to make a few announcements:

An RFP has gone out for the design and implementation of the next generation of productivity technologies at the City of Edmonton.
The City of Edmonton is partnering on open311.org, to bring open standards for 311.
On April 19, the City of Edmonton is planning to launch an iPhone app called CityWatch, developed by local company Touchmetric.
The City of Edmonton is calling for the creation of a “Code for Canada” organization, modeled after Code for America.
There will be an Apps4Edmonton app contest in the near future, with the prizes and winners to be showcased at GTEC2010 in October.

Exciting stuff! Congrats to Chris and his team for putting on a great event.

Stay tuned to the #openyeg and #yegdata hashtags on Twitter for updates, as well as the City of Edmonton’s open city page. You can see the rest of my photos here, and you can see the City’s photoset here. You can see a list of the attendees on Twitter here.

I’ll leave you with this TED video of Tim Berners-Lee talking about open data:

Bring on the data!

Tags: edmonton, events, open city, open city workshop, open data, open government, technology, yegdata
Categories: Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Notes for 3/7/2010

By Mack D. Male | March 7, 2010 at 11:52 pm

Feeling very behind at the moment. Here are my weekly notes:

Here are the top 25 technology predictions from futurist Dave Evans.
Wired on Google’s algorithm and how it rules the web.
This is a neat visualization: The Human Body as a Subway Map.
Paula Simons on the Tim Horton’s immigrant ad that ran during the Olympics.
Interesting post: Moving the Cow Path.
Joel Spolsky, author of the popular blog Joel on Software, is quitting the blogosphere.

Tags: mastermaq, notes
Categories: Weekly Notes | No Comments »

Edmonton Notes for 3/6/2010

By Mack D. Male | March 6, 2010 at 10:43 pm

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Thanks to some fantastically warm weather, all City of Edmonton outdoor rinks and toboggan hills are now closed. Stay off thin ice!
It is still winter though, so be sure to answer the City’s Snow & Ice Control Survey.
As you know, the Dawson Bridge is closed for renovations. Here’s a great hyperlocal post on the bridge closure by Adam at the Unknown Studio.
The Crowne Plaza Chateau Lacombe was sold this week for $47.8 million.
Council is looking at ways to enliven Churchill Square, a discussion that led to my favorite quote of the week: “That’s the most expensive door I’ve ever heard of.” – Councillor Kim Krushell on the $500,000 pricetag for a square-facing door for Tix on the Square.
WestJet now has non-stop service between Edmonton and Maui!
The City of Edmonton is looking at licensing LRT mezzanine space in the downtown core to local retailers.
Here’s an update on the Federal Building redevelopment on the legislature grounds.
Students at the University of Alberta voted with an 89% majority this week to renew the U-Pass agreement for three more years.
The City will open its first new transit garage in 25 years when the Centennial Garage opens in April.
MacEwan took the first step this week in a 25-year plan to create a single, sustainable downtown campus.
Apparently the recent LRT expansion has resulted in the largest spike in ridership since the LRT started operating in 1978.
Edmonton has a new climbing habitat, called Climb Edmonton.
Few event recaps: Edmonton’s First Ruby Meetup, Edmonton Foodie Meetup 3, and Launch Party Edmonton 1.
A hiring freeze and rebound in the economy helped the City of Edmonton to an unexpected surplus in 2009 of $33.7 million.
The Edmonton International Airport launched a new campaign this week called Stop The Calgary Habit, intended to encourage Edmontonians to fly directly from Edmonton, rather than making a connection in Calgary.
Coming up on Saturday is TEDxEdmonton (on ShareEdmonton). Here are the speakers on Twitter. If you didn’t get invited, why not attend ALExEdmonton the night before instead?
Also on Friday is Illuminations, Winter Light’s closing event (on ShareEdmonton).

Tags: edmonton, events, news
Categories: Edmonton Notes | 2 Comments »

Open City Workshop & Participation Inequality

By Mack D. Male | March 5, 2010 at 10:00 am

The City of Edmonton is hosting a workshop tomorrow at the Art Gallery of Alberta called Building Community through Open Information (on ShareEdmonton). It’s a follow-up to the open data workshop that happened last year and the conversations that have taken place since, but is focused on connecting stakeholders, increasing a shared understanding of Government 2.0, and planning the way forward. Devin wrote some great thoughts on the workshop here.

I’m really looking forward to seeing a diverse local crowd, representing a variety of agencies and interests. I’m also looking forward to meeting special guests David Eaves, Mark Kuznicki, and Nicholas Charney in person. All three are key players in Canada’s open government space.

And while I’m hopeful that we’ll see some new data released tomorrow, I’m mindful that data is not the focus. The three objectives listed on the event details page are about establishing Edmonton as a leader, and then lots of talk. I think the way you establish yourself as a leader is by actually doing things, but I’ll keep an open mind tomorrow

One thing I do want to talk about at the workshop is the divide that a number of people have picked up on. It’s great that Edmonton and other places are making progress on opening up data, but how does that impact the average citizen? There’s definitely a perception that only techies understand and can use open data. I don’t think that gives the average citizen enough credit, but I’m willing to concede that open data is not as accessible today as it needs to be. There’s lots of room for improvement.

Having said that, I think it’s important to keep participation inequality in mind:

All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don’t participate very much. Often, they simply lurk in the background.

If we think of open data (and open government) as a large community, then we should absolutely expect that a small subset of that community will be responsible for most of the activity. In the context of the 90-9-1 rule, 90% of the community won’t participate (they just observe or read), 9% will occasionally participate, and 1% will participate a lot.

Here’s one way to visualize the open community:

I’m sure there are other ways to break it down, but this makes the most sense to me at the moment.

Goverati: these are government employees, folks from related agencies, non-profits, etc.
Creative Professionals: these are people such as myself, developers, designers, etc.
Business: for-profit organizations.
Citizens: ultimately, the beneficiaries of all this open government stuff!

Of course, this picture is somewhat misleading, because all goverati, creative professionals, and business folks are also citizens, but let’s set that aside for now. I think the goverati and some creative professionals fall into the 1% category, the rest of the creative professionals and business fall into the 9% category, and citizens account for the 90% category.

The 90-9-1 pattern can be seen in action all over the web, perhaps most notably on Wikipedia. A tiny percentage of Wikipedia’s user base is responsible for the vast majority of all content produced. I think we can do better with open data/open government, however. Through applications, interactive visualizations, and the other interesting things that the goverati, creative professionals, and businesses build, I think more and more citizens will move from the 90% category to the 9% category.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that considering how the average citizen benefits from open data is important, but we shouldn’t let that hold us back from making progress at this point. We need to empower businesses and creative professionals to build things that the average citizen will ultimately benefit from. As we do that, there’s an opportunity to educate citizens if they want to be educated!

There’s only a few hours left to register for the event. Hope to see you there!

Tags: business, edmonton, events, government, open city, open data, open government, politics, technology, yegdata
Categories: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Recap: Launch Party Edmonton 1

By Mack D. Male | March 3, 2010 at 11:52 pm

Tonight I attended Edmonton’s first Launch Party, and I’m happy to report that it was awesome! Including the presenting companies, investors, and media, there were about 250 people in attendance, a fantastic turnout and great show of support for Edmonton’s startup scene. There was food, drinks, a DJ, great conversation, and of course, some of Edmonton’s best and brightest entrepreneurs and developers.

Ten local companies setup tables around the room, available to demo their products and to talk with potential investors and customers. Each company also got to do an elevator pitch in front of the entire crowd (and all of them did a great job). I wrote about the companies here, but once again, here are the ten that participated tonight:

Each company had a slightly different approach to greeting interested individuals, but Yardstick stood out. They had margarita machines at their table, and gave out free drinks all evening long! Overall, I’d say the event had the same kind of vibe as an artsScene party (for a quick look at what the evening was like, check out this video).

I asked as many of the companies as I could about their thoughts on the evening. All of them told me that the opportunity to meet so many people at once was truly valuable. And the opportunity to meet with such different people too – investors, techies, customers, etc. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves while learning about the companies.

Like many of the people I talked to tonight, I was impressed with the diversity of the crowd. I feel like I know a lot of people in the local tech community, and there were a lot of people there tonight that I had never met before! It was like a bunch of different communities came together, which is really important for growing the local startup scene.

Kudos to Mark, Ken, Cindy, and Cam for putting on an excellent event. Can’t wait for the next one! Stay tuned to the Startup Edmonton site, and follow them on Twitter for updates.

You can see the rest of my photos here. You can watch Ken welcoming everyone here.

Tags: business, edmonton, entrepreneurship, events, launch party, startup edmonton, startups, technology
Categories: Uncategorized | 10 Comments »

Preview: Launch Party Edmonton 1

By Mack D. Male | March 2, 2010 at 10:00 am

Edmonton’s first Launch Party is set to rock your socks off on Wednesday evening (on ShareEdmonton). There won’t be any formal presentations or panels, but the event will be a great opportunity to network with some of Edmonton’s best and brightest entrepreneurs and developers. It’s also a chance to celebrate the creative and interesting things happening here!

Ten local “startups” will be featured, as announced here. Here’s what you need to know about these companies and the people behind them:

Beamdog
TWO WORDS: Game Distribution
WHAT: A digital distribution service for games (think Steam).
KEY PEOPLE: Trent Oster, formerly of BioWare.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: This is the startup I know the least about! There are some amazing folks in the game industry here in Edmonton, and Trent is one of them. Video games continue to move further into the mainstream, and onto dozens of mobile devices. There’s lots of opportunity.
Connect13
TWO WORDS: Youth Advertising
WHAT: A social media advertising network targeting Canadian youth.
KEY PEOPLE: Kevin Swan of Nexopia, Boriz Wertz of W Media Ventures (AbeBooks, Nexopia, Techvibes, others), and others.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: The team’s experience with Nexopia (a social network focused on youth) is what gave birth to Connect13. They are web savvy, they know how to reach young people, and they’re using social media to create an innovative new advertising platform. Large, growing market that is currently being underserved.
FOLLOW: Twitter
Edistorm
TWO WORDS: Social Brainstorming
WHAT: Online brainstorming service that lets you share with others in real-time.
KEY PEOPLE: Reg Cheramy, serial entrepreneur (ZigTag, Book That Bet, One Clap, others).
PREVIOUSLY SEEN AT: DemoCampEdmonton4, Start Me Up at ICE 2009
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: We brainstorm all the time, but typically we’re limited to sticky notes and whiteboards. Edistorm brings brainstorming to the web, so that you can brainstorm with people all around the world, in real-time. Lots of opportunity for decentralized teams, events, etc.
FOLLOW: Facebook, Twitter
Empire Avenue
TWO WORDS: Monetizing Influence
WHAT: Measures influence online for monetization via advertising.
KEY PEOPLE: Duleepa Wijayawardhana formerly of BioWare and Sun/MySQL, Tom Ohle, experienced marketer, Brad Grier, social media guru and blogger for Future Shop, and others.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: People love rankings, and Empire Ave offers a fun way to see how you compare to others online. It’s also an interesting approach to online advertising, a welcome innovation in a world dominated by AdWords.
PREVIOUSLY SEEN AT: Empire Avenue Launch Party
FOLLOW: Blog, Facebook, Twitter
FotoJournal
TWO WORDS: Photographer Blogs
WHAT: Blogging platform built specifically for photographers.
KEY PEOPLE: Kyle Fox, designer and web developer, formerly of Lift Interactive, currently at Yardstick Software, Jon Smelquist, designer and web developer.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: The proliferation of digital cameras means there are more photographers than ever, making it harder for the pros to stand out from the crowd. WordPress is great for text, but not so great for photos – that’s the void that FotoJournal fills.
FOLLOW: Facebook, Twitter
Mailout Interactive
TWO WORDS: Email Services
WHAT: Professionally designed email newsletters and management.
KEY PEOPLE: Gregg Oldring, founder, Jon Larson, business development, and others.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Already eight years old, Mailout Interactive is well-established in Edmonton and elsewhere. Dozens of organizations use Industry Mailout, including the City of Edmonton, Original Fare, Homeward Trust, and others. They have a proven, powerful email platform, and email isn’t going anywhere.
FOLLOW: Facebook, Twitter
PureInbox
TWO WORDS: Information Synchronization
WHAT: Information synchronization service, wirelessly to any device.
KEY PEOPLE: Sam Huang, co-founder of Gennux Microsystems, and others.
PREVIOUSLY SEEN AT: DemoCampEdmonton4
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Email, contacts, calendars, task lists, files – we have more than ever, and we want to access them from any device, no matter where we are. That’s the heady challenge that PureInbox is tackling, with support for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, the iPhone, and more.
Seek Your Own Proof
TWO WORDS: Smart Entertainment
WHAT: Online community for kids to investigate history and science.
KEY PEOPLE: Ken Bautista, one of Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40, Norman Mendoza of Redengine, and others.
PREVIOUSLY SEEN AT: DemoCampEdmonton9
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: They won TEC VenturePrize, accepted financing from Foundation Equity, and recently signed a deal with Discovery Kids. An all-star team off to an incredible start – keep an eye on this one!
FOLLOW: Facebook
SnowSeekers
TWO WORDS: Winter Content
WHAT: Highlights winter destinations in Alberta & British Columbia.
KEY PEOPLE: Jim Barr, former journalist, and others.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Fresh off the Winter Olympics, winter tourism in Western Canada is booming. SnowSeekers takes the traditional destination guide to the next level, with in-depth information, mobile apps, and regularly updated content.
FOLLOW: Blog, Facebook
Yardstick Software
TWO WORDS: Web Testing
WHAT: Web-based training and testing software and services.
KEY PEOPLE: Chris LaBossiere, co-founder, Don Riep, co-founder, Greg Kureluk, business development, and others.
PREVIOUSLY SEEN AT: DemoCampEdmonton8
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Experienced team, active in the community, highly decorated, with a large, loyal customer base, and a culture tuned to change and fast growth. Yardstick surrounds itself with great people, and is well-positioned for additional success. A gem among Edmonton tech companies.
FOLLOW: Twitter

You can follow all of the above organizations and individuals on Twitter here.

It should be a great evening. The festivities get underway at 6:30pm at the Matrix Hotel. If you don’t already have tickets, you can buy them here for just $10 (some will be available at the door for $15). Follow StartupEdmonton for updates. See you there!

Tags: business, edmonton, entrepreneurship, events, launch party, startup edmonton, startups, technology
Categories: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Notes for 3/1/2010

By Mack D. Male | March 1, 2010 at 7:48 pm

I’ve been feeling a little under the weather lately, but I still made it out to Kananaskis this weekend for Reboot Alberta. Hopefully I didn’t get anyone else sick! I decided to just go to bed last night, so here are my weekly notes:

The Winter Olympics wrapped up yesterday, and the big news is that Canada broke the record for the most gold medals at a single Winter Olympics with 14. Okay, maybe the big news was that Canada won gold in the hockey game, defeating the USA 3-2 in overtime! Either way, it was a great day for Canada.
Some new Blue Marble photos from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Very interesting read – MySQL and Memcached: End of an Era?
Also for geeks – Key Software Development Trends. Cloud Computing and Parallel Computing are probably the two I’m most interested in at the moment.
Homeless people have favorite Oscar picks, but for different reasons than the average person: “I hope ‘Avatar’ wins so they keep it in theaters longer," he said. "It’s three hours long, so you get more time to sleep.”
Another awesome infographic: Number of People to Have Lived versus Been Killed.

Despite the head cold, it was still great to spend a few hours in the mountains:

Tags: mastermaq, notes
Categories: Weekly Notes | No Comments »

Edmonton Notes for 2/27/2010

By Mack D. Male | February 27, 2010 at 11:53 am

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Fantastic post from Sharon – Edmonton’s Downtown Dining Week: Stagnant and Uninspired?
Here is Avenue Edmonton’s 25 Best Things to Eat in Edmonton.
The Edmonton Arena District, Katz’s organization supporting his arena vision, launched a website this week annoyingly named Revitalize Downtown. Also on the topic of Katz, check out this picture.
Planning Academy starts again on March 2nd. It’s a great way to learn more about land use planning, urban design, and transportation.
City Council’s expense reports for 2009 are now available.
The City’s emergency office is embracing social media.
Local startup Empire Avenue launched this week. Brittney has a good write-up of the site here.
The deadline for filing complaints on 2010 property assessments is March 5.
Edmonton International Airport is on the shortlist for international recognition at World Routes 2010 in Vancouver.
The City is launching a temporary “wheeled recreation” site this summer near the Stanley Milner library.
Edmonton Stories launched a redesigned website this week. I wrote about what’s next for the program here.
Good post from Xanthe on Pecha Kucha – The Sound of Chit Chat.
You can now get RSS and iCal notifications on road and traffic updates!
Edmonton’s Municipal Development Plan, The Way We Grow, passed second reading this week.
Launch Party Edmonton takes place on March 3 (on ShareEdmonton).
Also taking place March 3 is Edmonton Foodie Meetup 3 (on ShareEdmonton).

Tags: edmonton, events, news
Categories: Edmonton Notes | 1 Comment »

What’s next for Edmonton Stories?

By Mack D. Male | February 25, 2010 at 11:05 am

The last time I wrote about Edmonton Stories, I questioned the value of the initiative. Here’s what I wrote back in September:

I think Edmonton Stories is a great concept, and I’m glad to see that Edmontonians are contributing stories. The project was created to help market the city elsewhere though, and I don’t think it is accomplishing that yet.

I didn’t see any connection between the fantastic collection of stories that Edmontonians had contributed to the site and the marketing of Edmonton to others. Based on the reaction to that post, I don’t think I was alone in wondering what the next step was for Edmonton Stories.

Last week I sat down with Mary Pat Barry, Communications Branch Manager at the City of Edmonton, to try to get an answer to that question. We talked for about an hour in her office at City Hall, looking at the website itself, statistics, a case study, and marketing materials. The fact that I had been critical of the project in the past didn’t seem to bother Mary Pat. Not because she didn’t care, but because she was so excited to convince me of the value of Edmonton Stories. She could see the bigger picture, and she wanted me to see it too.

First, here are the latest statistics (May 14, 2009 to January 31, 2010):

272 stories posted

176 user generated
55 containing video
5 containing audio
6 non-English language stories

515 comments posted (100 stories have comments)
Users in 3,929 cities from 162 countries have visited the site
Total Visits: 203,685
Total Unique Visitors: 162,313
Total Page Views: 542,488
Time on Site: 00:01:42
59.3% of visitors came from outside Edmonton

The statistics have also been broken down into two phases: the contesting phase (May 14 to September 15) and the post-contesting phase (September 16 to January 31). The number of visits and page views have both declined from the first phase to the second, but after talking to Mary Pat, I’m not sure that matters much.

At its core, Edmonton Stories is all about labor and visitor attraction. It exists because the old or standard ways of attracting skilled labor or visitors to Edmonton either are not very effective, or are very expensive. It exists because the best people to share why Edmonton is a great city are Edmontonians themselves. With that in mind, I think it’s useful to think of Edmonton Stories as a two-stage project:

Gather stories from Edmontonians
Attract labor and visitors using those stories

Mary Pat said she was “awed” with regards to the first stage. That so many Edmontonians took the time to write and share their stories is not something to take lightly. The collection of stories is a great asset.

The second stage is the answer to what’s next. Instead of just explaining it to me, Mary Pat showed me a recruitment partnership case study with the Edmonton Police Service (EPS).

In the fall of 2009 EPS was set to launch a recruiting initiative in select locations in the United States (Seattle, Cleveland and New York City). Confident that the EPS Recruiting Unit could effectively extol the attractiveness of the police service and the work it demands, EPS turned to the City of Edmonton for advice on how they might promote Edmonton as a potential home for recruits and their families.

The City of Edmonton’s solution? Edmonton Stories. The idea was to use the content on EdmontonStories.ca, the personal, tangible experiences of real people, in a targeted way to help EPS recruit new members. I remember reading about the recruitment efforts, but the news articles never mentioned that Edmonton Stories was involved. Here’s what Edmonton Stories did to help:

Built a dedicated page featuring stories written by Edmonton police officers: http://www.edmontonstories.ca/eps
Created a guide for on-site recruits describing how best to use the dedicated page
Produced branded “conversation cards” to hand out at hiring fairs
Promoted the dedicated EPS page on Twitter, Facebook, and Google AdWords.

The experiment was a great success. Edmonton Stories had 6.7 times more visitors from Cleveland after the recruitment fair, and 8.1 times more visitors from New York City (the first city, Seattle, was sort of used to figure things out). According to candidate surveys, 74% had not considered Edmonton as a place to live before the recruitment fair, while after, 76% reported they would likely or very likely relocate to Edmonton, and 84% planned on submitting an application to EPS within the next six months. Most importantly, EPS received an “unprecedented” number of detailed applications from potential recruits met at the recruitment fairs. The total number is 6, but for an application process that can take 18 months, that’s seen as very successful.

It’s difficult, of course, to separate the effect Edmonton Stories had on the campaign from the rest of the EPS recruitment efforts, but those involved feel Edmonton Stories had a significant impact.

The City of Edmonton can now take what was developed for the EPS and apply it to other industries. They can provide specific industry stories, the recruiters guide, conversation cards, and much more to recruiters to help attract talent to Edmonton. The stories that Edmontonians have shared are finally being put to use.

I asked Mary Pat if the focus on helping recruiters would take away from maintaining the website itself. While she conceded that less effort has been put into attracting new stories, she said that the website certainly remains a focus. She highlighted two things – translations and a redesign. The team is working on 19 languages for 36 stories, with 10 languages available at launch. The translations take time, because Edmonton Stories works to get approval from each of the authors before posting. The redesign, live as of today, brings a fresh look, a news section, new ways of discovering stories, and tighter integration with social media services.

I think that asking whether or not Edmonton Stories is delivering a return on investment is still a fair question. However, it’s clear to me now that there’s direction and a way for the site to deliver on its core objective of attracting labor and visitors to Edmonton. I think the EPS case study is exciting, and demonstrates that Edmonton Stories can provide value.

Tags: city of edmonton, edmonton, edmonton police, edmonton stories, eedc, eps, recruitment, social media, travel, yegstories
Categories: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Edmonton’s Municipal Development Plan passes second reading

By Mack D. Male | February 22, 2010 at 10:58 pm

City Council passed the Municipal Development Plan in second reading tonight. Titled “The Way We Grow,” the document is Edmonton’s strategic growth and development plan, meant to shape urban form and guide future land use. It must now be approved by the Capital Region Board, after which it’ll return to Council for third reading (expected in the May-June timeframe). Here are a few notes on the evening:

Councillors Henderson and Krushell pounced on the removal of the words “winter city” from the plan. Councillor Henderson’s proposed amendment was passed unanimously, changing the wording to something like the following: “That all urban design reflects that Edmonton is a winter city, allowing citizens to enjoy it in all seasons.”
Councillor Iveson pushed for stronger language around intensification targets, arguing that we need to move beyond simple aspiration to achieving meaningful outcomes. His amendment was passed unanimously.
Mayor Mandel said that Councillor Iveson’s amendment was a clear statement that Council wants more aggressive intensification, something the Mayor has supported. He again urged creative solutions to cost difficulties for infill development.
There was quite a bit of discussion on the topic of gravel mines in the river valley. I suspect we’ll hear more about that in the future.

The Greater Edmonton Alliance has played a key role in the evolution of the MDP, through it’s campaign to “create a vibrant and sustainable food economy.” Hundreds of Edmontonians once again filled City Hall this evening to show their support. Here are a few photos:

If you’d like to be notified about future GEA events and initiatives, consider joining their mailing list.

GEA has had great success with the campaign, perhaps most memorably with The Great Potato Giveaway. It’ll be interesting to see which issue GEA turns its attention to next.

You can see a few more photos from the evening here.

UPDATE: Don posted his thoughts here.

Tags: agriculture, edmonton, food, gea, government, greater edmonton alliance, mdp, planning, politics, urban
Categories: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »