Month: February 2009

Edmonton Notes for 2/28/2009

Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

Where’s the Edmonton version of Illuminate Yaletown?

While in Vancouver last weekend, Megan and I went to check out an event called Illuminate Yaletown. Sponsored by the Yaletown Business Improvement Association, the event featured light-as-art installations spread throughout the heritage district. From the website:

Featuring light installations designed and developed by artists and architects, pyrotechnics, fire dancing, cutting edge music, interactive activities and a display of illuminated ice sculptures, Illuminate Yaletown shows off Vancouver’s hippest community in a whole new light!

We were impressed by what we saw! We started with the fire dancing and illuminated ice sculptures, and then made our way to the BMW Mini dealership that had been filled with lights. We saw another display where a video camera on the ground was projected up onto the side of a building. Down a little further were some illuminated windows with silhouettes moving about inside. There were lots of people walking around, taking in the sights!

Illuminate Yaletown

Illuminate Yaletown was developed to “brighten up a gloomy winter evening” and is the only outdoor event taking place in Vancouver at this time of year. Sound familiar? I immediately thought of Winter Light. This event sounds exactly like the kind of thing you’d expect to be a part of Edmonton’s new winter festival. But it’s not.

The closest thing is Illuminations, taking place on March 21st in Churchill Square. It too will have fire and projected light. The big difference is that it takes place only in Churchill Square. What I really liked about Illuminate Yaletown is that it got people walking around, so they could check out the buildings, shops, and restaurants in the area. It was a great combination of interesting art and community exploration and discovery.

I’m hopeful that next year’s Winter Light festival will include something similar.

You can see the rest of my photos from Illuminate Yaletown here.

Twitter, Google, and search

For some reason, the “Twitter is a Google killer” hyperbole has sprung up again in the last week or so. And this time, there are some important thought leaders like John Battelle chiming in. Here’s what he wrote in a post called “Twitter = YouTube”:

So why did Google really buy YouTube? My answer, which of course looks brilliant given it’s 20/20 hindsight: YouTube was a massive search asset. Fast forward to today. What’s the most important and quickly growing form of search on the web today? Real time, conversational search. And who’s the YouTube of real time search? Yep. Twitter.

I’ve been writing about Twitter Search since the early days of Summize – I’ve always loved it. It’s no surprise to me that others are finally starting to see the value in it. Here’s what I wrote in October, for instance:

Lots of people already contribute to the noise on Twitter, and I think their user base will only continue to grow. So they’ve got that covered. Increasingly it seems that Twitter is working to extract value from that noise. That’s the area they need to focus on most.

The improvements to Twitter Search have been minimal – the addition of the “source” parameter to results, and testing integrated search on the main website. I’d love to see some additional improvements to the service.

Others who have discussed the “Twitter threat to Google” idea include: San Jose Mercury News, Fimoculous, Search Engine Journal, and The Blog Herald. AllFacebook looks at it from another angle.

What should you take away from this? Essentially, that Twitter Search is becoming increasingly important. If you’re not already using it, start now. And don’t expect Google and others to ignore it forever.

Introducing dEdmonton – Canada’s Halloween Festival

Tonight was the kick-off meeting for dEdmonton, a new festival to celebrate all things Halloween! dEdmonton grew out of Christian Nelson’s presentation on reclaiming the word “deadmonton” as well as a general desire to celebrate Halloween and everything that goes along with it. The goal is to become Canada’s Halloween Festival, and for Edmonton to be known as the Halloween Capital of North America!

That won’t happen right away, of course. This year the focus is on establishing the brand and setting the stage for bigger and better things in the years to come. Tonight we introduced the name and nearly-finalized logo:

About thirty people attended the meeting to learn more about the idea and to offer their support. Another thirty or so couldn’t make it tonight but are also enthusiastic about the festival. I was fortunate to get involved back in November, and have been helping with the web side of things. The website will be especially important this year as our primary platform for tying the various Halloween events together. We’ve got some cool stuff in the works for it.

Our Co-Coordinators, Darryl Plunkie and Christian Nelson, have done a fantastic job of getting the right people together to get dEdmonton off the ground (the group is affectionately known as the Council of E-ville – Derek Clayton and Kenn Bur are also leading the charge, and Kevin Nienhuis and myself have been helping where we can). They’re really inclusive, and are eager to talk to anyone interested in the idea. It’s worth noting also that everyone involved so far has been volunteering their time! It’s quite impressive to see how far we’ve come in such a short period of time.

dEdmonton 2009

The main event will be 13 Days of Mayhem, running from October 19th until October 31st, 2009. The idea is to connect with the many Halloween-related events that already take place in Edmonton and area, to pool resources and do some cross-promotion. Let’s make people aware of all the cool things that already happen, and set the stage for an even bigger and better dEdmonton in the future!

What happened to the ‘a’?

You might be wondering why it’s called ‘dEdmonton’ and not ‘deadmonton’. A lot of thought went into that decision:

  • If we’re reclaiming the word, let’s get rid of the negative connotation that “dead” carries
  • dEdmonton is a new word, something that’s unique (and not already used elsewhere on the web)
  • dEdmonton is just Edmonton with a ‘d’ in front of it – we want this to be a showcase for the city

At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about ‘dEdmonton’ but now I really like it. I think it was the right decision, for sure.

How can you help?

This event is still in the early stages of planning, so if you have any ideas, feedback, or even just random thoughts, send them to info@dedmonton.com.

Beyond that, we need you to help us spread the word. We’ve just got a placeholder (and very cool teaser poster) up at http://www.dedmonton.com but we’re already working on a proper site, so check back soon. You can also join the Facebook group, and follow us on Twitter. Tell your friends!

Northern Voice 2009: Passionately Local

Of all the sessions at Northern Voice 2009, I was perhaps most looking forward to the one presented by Briana Tomkinson of Tenth to the Fraser titled Passionately local: blogging about your own backyard. As someone who is definitely passionate about my hometown, I was really curious to learn about the experiences of others.

Tenth to the Fraser is a hyperlocal blog focused on New Westminster, a city in the Vancouver area. Briana talked about some of the motivations behind the site, some of the challenges, and some of the rewards.

Here are some notes I took from Briana’s slides:

  • The Greek Chorus of New West
    • Help the ‘audience’ follow the performance
    • Comment on themes
    • React to the drama
    • Provide insight
  • Passion for community
    • A desire to dig in to a place
    • An itch to uncover more
    • A calling to share the results
  • Everyone blogs from a place. The placeblogger blogs about a place.
  • Hyperlocal made interesting
    • Reveal the character of a place
    • Represent diverse perspectives
    • Keep focus narrow
    • Balanced mix of: aggregating local information, publishing original content, relationship-building
  • Finding your nice within the media ecosystem
    • Befriend the local media
    • Extend traditional news coverage
    • Reveal opinions and perspectives that are missed in mainstream coverage
    • Geek out: food, schools, politics, shopping
  • The Rewards
    • Pride of place
    • Local fame
    • Community
    • Knowledge
    • Giving back
  • Be the change you seek in your community

I really liked Briana’s talk, even though the end was a bit rushed as everyone started asking questions and she ran out of time! There were definitely moments when I thought “I know exactly what she means” and others when I thought “that wouldn’t work in Edmonton”.

With a population of nearly 60,000, New Westminster is about 13 times smaller than the City of Edmonton, and almost 20 times smaller than the Edmonton metro area. So while a single, focused blog in New Westminster probably would work very well, I don’t think it would fly in Edmonton. There’s just too much to write about for a single blog. I think, more than ever, that aggregation is the way to go for a city of Edmonton’s size.

There are some similarities, however. Tenth to the Fraser has started the #NewWest hashtag on Twitter, similar to our beloved #yeg. They seem to write a lot about politics, which is perhaps the most popular topic here too. And they have a relatively small, but rapidly growing online community.

I think there are lots of things that hyperlocal bloggers can learn from Tenth to the Fraser. Check it out, and let me know what you think. The first thing you’ll notice is that the site is free of any advertising. Briana and her team do it because they love their city, not because they’re in it for the money. We could use more blogs like Tenth to the Fraser!

Notes for 2/22/2009

Here are my weekly notes:

  • Just got back this evening from Vancouver. Had a great time at Northern Voice! I’ll write up my post-mortem later this week.
  • I finally got my Dell Mini 9 netbook! It was delivered on Friday, so I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet.
  • Though it didn’t win for Best Picture tonight at the Oscars, The Dark Knight still had some good news this week – it surpassed $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales.
  • This is pretty coo: the hardware behind the newest WordPress.com data center.
  • For some reason, I find myself interested whenever I come across another Dubai-related link. Jason Kottke wrote recently about a post by David Galbraith, and summarized: “What’s the biggest problem with Dubai? It doesn’t have the cultural bedrock needed to support a destination city.”
  • Cool visualization, though I don’t agree with all of them: The Trilogy Meter.
  • My photos from Northern Voice are here, and my photos from Illuminate Yaletown (which I’ll write more about later) are here.

Edmonton Notes for 2/21/2009

Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

Northern Voice 2009: Teh Funny

No, that’s not a typo! Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) was the second keynote speaker today, and he led us on “a lightning tour through both the intentionally and accidentally hilarious sides of social media.” I couldn’t really blog this keynote – it’s one of those things you needed to experience. I laughed a lot, as did everyone else in the room.

Rob CottinghamNorthern Voice 2009

Which are funny?

  • Podcasting – Really funny.
  • End-User License Agreements – Yes, funny!
  • Beta – Not funny. Maybe kinda funny.
  • Memes – No, not funny.
  • Blogging – Funny!
  • Business – Rob thinks it’s hilarious, the audience isn’t so sure.
  • LOLcats – Audience is 50/50, Rob says it’s a matter of taste.

Some of the non-funny things Rob said:

  • At the heart of social media is creative self-expression and the need to connect.
  • The first Northern Voice was a techier crowd than it is today.
  • Teh funny is a big part of the way we connect on the social web. Shared laughter is something primal.
  • If you’re already doing teh funny, please, keep it up!

Two other interesting things about Rob’s keynote – first he attempted to become the first comic in history to heckle himself. He setup some scheduled tweets using HootSuite, very funny. Second, Nancy White drew an “illustrative interpretation” of Rob’s talk on the board behind him. It actually turned out quite well!

Fantastic keynote. I hope someone has some video to share!

Northern Voice 2009: On Buried Hatchets and Better Tomorrows

The first keynote of the conference was from Nora Young (@nora3000), a well-known Canadian broadcaster and podcaster. She is perhaps best known as the host and creator of Spark. I thought it was really interesting that she didn’t use any slides. Instead, she just stood at the front of the room and spoke, occasionally playing an audio clip.

Nora Young

Here are some notes I took during the first part of her talk:

  • Consider the telephone. When it first arrived, people didn’t know what to do with it! There’s always a learning curve with new communications technologies. Apparently people debated whether to say “ahoy” or “hello” when the phone was brand new.
  • Nora says we’re at the beginning with social media, and it’s up to us to shape the conversation about whether we use “ahoy” or “hello”.
  • Challenges for mainstream media: being transparent and not being the sole authority.

Looking ahead to the new “ecology of information”:

  • Mobile devices are important. More and more people are continually connected using their phones, and most people in Asia access the Internet via a mobile device.
  • If the web of 1990s was about globalism and anonymity, the web of today is about creating a layer in between online and offline.
  • The web doesn’t have to be global – it can be local, or even hyperlocal. Crime maps are a good example today.

Conclusions:

  • A huge caveat is that many people lack fast, reliable access to the Internet. Another is the digital information divide around the world.
  • The new ecology of information implies that we’re just starting to see a big shift in the economy and in culture.
  • If the information you’re getting is based on the people you know (as is often the case in social media), what does that mean? What kind of an impact does that have?
  • If public broadcasting had never existed, how in 2009 would you make the case for it? Nora says it would be based upon social media.

So what’ll it be everyone? Ahoy or hello?

Northern Voice 2009: Borrowed Content

I did a presentation today at Northern Voice in the “bootcamp” stream called Borrowed Content: What’s OK, What’s Not. The session was intended to cover the basics of copyright, fair use, and Creative Commons for bloggers. I didn’t really know how advanced the audience would be, so I decided to keep things simple. I didn’t talk about Bill C-61 at all, instead pointing people to Michael Geist’s blog. I tried to cover the very basics, and had two key takeaways:

  1. When in doubt, just ask!
  2. Remember the Golden Rule

Basically, if you don’t know whether or not you have permission to use a piece of content, ask the person or organization who owns the rights to it. Chances are pretty good that they’ll say yes. The golden rule is of course to treat others the way you’d want to be treated – give attribution, link where possible, and say thank you.

Here are the resources I mentioned during the talk:

Thanks to everyone who came to the talk and to the folks to contributed with questions/comments/suggestions!

Download the slides for this session