Monthly Archives: March 2009

Edmonton Notes for 3/21/2009

By Mack D. Male ·

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Northern Voice 2009: My Post-Mortem Post

By Mack D. Male ·

I’ve been meaning to write this for nearly a month now! Better late than never, I guess. For the fifth straight February in a row, I was in Vancouver for Northern Voice. While there are some similarities from year-to-year, each edition of Northern Voice is unique. Last year I was a little disappointed, but not enough to keep me away.

This year, I had a much better time.

I’m not sure why exactly, because some of my criticisms from last year are still relevant. The event still wasn’t downtown. The wireless was still spotty. But many of my criticisms were addressed. The website was completely revamped this year. The schedule was much more interesting and varied.

Most important of all, there were a lot of people new to blogging and social media in attendance this year. That surprised me, especially given that the conference sold out so quickly. I think that having so many new people brought some excitement back to the event!

Some other highlights for me:

  • Rob Cottingham’s keynote entitled Teh Funny. He was hilarious and completely entertaining, I loved it!
  • Like last year, lunch was included, and it was great! Very yummy.
  • Finally got to me Rob from Techvibes in person.
  • No surprise here, but Twitter was used heavily during the conference. It was great to be able to follow some of the other sessions I couldn’t get to.
  • Sun and grass. It was nice to get away from the snow for a weekend!

On Monday, the organizers sent out a post-conference survey. Due to the Olympics next year, Northern Voice isn’t going to be held in February. Combined with the desire to address the increasing demand for the event, I think it’s safe to say that NV 2010 is going to look quite a bit different than past years. That’ll be a good thing, in my opinion. It never hurts to change things up once in a while.

See you in 2010!

Talking Twitter with CTV Edmonton

By Mack D. Male ·

It’s no secret that the local media have jumped aboard the Twitter train in recent weeks. They seem completely smitten with it! Almost all the media outlets in Edmonton are now on Twitter in some capacity. The two big television stations, Global and CTV, have been really great about accepting feedback and assistance as they figure out how Twitter can best work for them. A couple weeks ago Karl Kovacs spoke to the Global Edmonton newsroom, and yesterday, I was fortunate enough to speak at CTV (there were also some folks from Access and 91.7 The Bounce in attendance).

I guess “speak” isn’t really the right term. I started with a bullet list of some key concepts (such as terminology and that Twitter Search rocks) but didn’t have any prepared slides or remarks. Instead, I had a browser open and encouraged everyone to fire away with questions. And fire away they did!

Questions ranged from “why do people follow other people” to “how can we best use Twitter during our newscast”. We also took some time to talk about the #teachctv discussion I had started on Twitter in the morning. I think it was a good eye-opener for most in the room to see how quick and easy it was for me to gather a bunch of feedback from the Twitter community. Thanks to everyone who posted a tweet in response.

I don’t know what CTV is going to do with the things we talked about, but the feedback I got was that everyone found the “primer” useful. I think I was able to start some interesting discussions, and I look forward to seeing what they come up with in the weeks ahead.

What I hope they took away from our chat was the following:

  • Links are important! I’d rather see a link than “coming up at 6” and I think most others on Twitter would also.
  • You’ve got to be willing to experiment. Some things will work, others won’t.
  • Twitter will not replace the TV or website, it is simply another tool. If used correctly, it can compliment CTV’s other channels.
  • Twitter is about people and relationships. You’ve got to show that there are humans behind the Twitter accounts! Be personable.

Those points are valid for any business on Twitter of course, not just for CTV.

Thanks to Carrie Doll and her team for the opportunity to discuss my favorite topic! I think it’s great that CTV Edmonton is so keen to utilize Twitter. Exciting times ahead!

To follow CTV on Twitter: @ctvedmonton, @carriedoll, @darylmcintyre, @joshclassen, @JoelGotlib, @robbywilliams, @ErinIsfeld, @davidjamesgreen, @crnkylttlmnky

5 Days for the Homeless 2009 in Edmonton

By Mack D. Male ·

I think homelessness is a very important issue, and like many others I’d love to see it come to an end. It’s crazy that there are more than 3000 people without a permanent place to sleep in Edmonton. Fortunately, the issue has received a lot of attention lately. On January 29th, the Edmonton Committee to End Homelessness released its 10-year plan (which called for nearly $1 billion in funding). On February 4th, City Council unanimously endorsed the plan and established the Edmonton Homeless Commission (pdf). Yesterday, the Alberta Secretariat for Action on Homelessness released its own 10-year plan to end homelessness in Alberta, at a cost of $3.3 billion.

It doesn’t take a report and billions of dollars to make a difference, however. That’s why I was particularly interested to chat with Tim Hankinson, a business student at the University of Alberta spearheading this year’s 5 Days for the Homeless event. Here’s their mission:

“To raise awareness of the issue of homelessness, monetary donations for local charities around the country, and help change the image of business students.”

The concept behind the campaign is simple. Participants are homeless for five days (March 15th to 20th). They receive only food and drinks received through direct donations, have only a pillow and a sleeping bag (plus a cell phone for emergencies/media, and a camera to document the experience), have no access to showers, and must sleep outside.

Five Days started in 2005 at the University of Alberta’s School of Business. After a very successful first year, the event began to grow. There are now 16 schools participating across the country!

Tim explained to me that money is raised through donations on the website, not pledges. The donations in each city go toward a local charity. Here in Edmonton, all money raised will be donated to the Youth Emergency Shelter Society. The goal for this year is to raise $30,000 locally, and over $100,000 nationally.

Equally important is raising awareness. Tim said the biggest impact the campaign has is on making their fellow students and others in the community aware of the problem. To that end, they’ve made an effort this year to make use of social media to spread the word. Like most of the participating cities, Edmonton has a Facebook group and a Twitter account. Participants have also been making use of the #5days hashtag.

The total amount raised for Edmonton is currently $3349, while the national total sits at $51,120.12. National Bank Financial is matching student donations up to a maximum of $10,000. Other local sponsors include Time Line Construction and Xerox, both of which will be spending some time outside with the participants. I’m planning to do so also – you can see their schedule here.

I think 5 Days is a fantastic initiative. It’s a great example of how a handful of people can make a big difference. Well done to all participants and supporters!

Notes for 3/16/2009

By Mack D. Male ·

As I mentioned in my last post, I didn’t touch a computer all weekend. I can’t remember the last time I went that long without using a computer! I wasn’t completely disconnected however, I read email and posted updates using my BlackBerry.

Here are my weekly notes:

Calgary ZoorushMack & SharonMack with EdmontosaurusSharon @ Dairy Lane CafechoklatMack @ Peter's

Edmonton Notes for 3/16/2009

By Mack D. Male ·

I didn’t touch a computer all weekend while I was in Calgary, so I missed posting these on Saturday. Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting for the week ending 3/14/2009:

Will Speaker Ken Kowalski come to ChangeCamp?

By Mack D. Male ·

I’m not sure how much overlap there is between the readers of my blog and the readers of Dave Cournoyer’s blog, but I wanted to highlight a post that Dave made on Wednesday. He wrote a letter to Ken Kowalski, current Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Here’s a small excerpt:

I would urge you to revisit your initial reaction to the use of online communications from the floor of the Assembly. I agree that Members should respect the institution and proud traditions of the Legislature, but it is important to understand the limitless potential that these technologies now play in connecting elected Members to citizens outside the Dome.

I think Dave’s letter is very well-written, not to mention incredibly important. Banning the use of Twitter and other online communications tools from the floor of the Assembly is shortsighted, to say the least. I suspect that Speaker Kowalski, like so many others, is just afraid of social media because he doesn’t understand it.

This is the kind of issue I hope we can address with ChangeCamp Edmonton. We need to help politicians like Speaker Kowalski get over their fear of social media. We need to help educate them about its power. And we need to make it clear that we want social media to play an important part in our democracy.

I look forward to the discussion, should Speaker Kowalski be willing to participate.

Recap: DemoCampEdmonton6

By Mack D. Male ·

Last night was our sixth DemoCamp here in Edmonton, and I think it was probably our best yet. We had around 140 people in attendance, which isn’t much different than DCE4 but it somehow seemed bigger. Maybe it was all the cameras and video cameras? We had Peter Urban and the Smibs TV team record all the demos – watch for the video there soon. I was also really surprised that so many people had never been to DemoCamp before. We’re definitely reaching new people, and I think that’s great!

We had five demos:

  • I showed the first little bit of ShareEdmonton, and EdmontonTechScene. It wasn’t the best demo in the world, but it wasn’t bad for having just two days :)
  • Graham Batty showed us bittablog, an interesting microblogging service that he recently cooked up.
  • Ryan Leland showed his unique take on social networking – you-vs-me. It was a definite crowd pleaser thanks to the humorous topics like Cougar-vs-Bear. You can use the democamp invite code to check it out.
  • Mark Matichuk showed us Clinitrust, a secure messaging platform for medical professionals.
  • Our final demo was Peter Urban and Paul Bellows, who showed us their new joint venture (between Smibs and Yellow Pencil). It’s a tool to help move content from one CMS to another.

The general consensus afterward was that Peter & Paul’s was the demo of the night. Though they did a little too much talking in my opinion, the product is definitely intriguing. It’s not hard to see that there’s a big market for what they are doing. It’ll be a time saver, indeed. Hopefully we’ll get to see more of it soon.

DemoCamp Edmonton 6DemoCamp Edmonton 6

See what I mean about the tripods and cameras? After the demos almost everyone wandered over to RATT (Room At The Top) in the Students’ Union Building. A little too much drinking and karaoke ensued, but it was a fun time!

Twitter featured more prominently this time at DemoCamp. We had TwitterFall up on the big screen before we got started, and that encouraged lots of people to start tweeting. Soon after the demos started, we broke into the top ten trending topics at Twitter Search, and eventually rose as high as #7. Very cool!

Don’t miss Walter & Alain’s great list, 10 things I liked about DemoCamp Edmonton 6. Brittney also has a funny post of fun facts about DemoCamp Edmonton 6. Also, Cam and I did an interview with The Gateway, who wrote about DemoCamp and IDEAfest today.

I can’t wait until DCE7! Thanks to everyone who came out last night. If you’d like to be notified about future DemoCamp and BarCamp events in Edmonton, sign up for the mailing list here.

Blog posts have staying power

By Mack D. Male ·

Fascinating post over at TechCrunch today by Brian Solis. He talks about the declining authority of blogs and attributes the loss to the “statusphere” – essentially micromedia services like Twitter and FriendFeed. This is the key passage:

Links from blogs are no longer the only measurable game in town. Potentially valuable linkbacks are increasingly shared in micro communities and social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed and they are detouring attention and time away from formal blog responses.

Ignoring the fact that he talks about Technorati a lot (I never use it anymore), I think Brian makes a good point. Even just looking at my own activities, I definitely respond less to other blog posts using my own blog than I used to. Instead, I tweet about them. Actually, I would say Twitter is affecting my social bookmarking activities too! I save things in Delicious far less frequently now, choosing instead to tweet them.

What does this mean for bloggers? Mainly that it’s more difficult to track the discussion about a blog post. Brian mentions a number of services in his post that you can use, but they’re not yet what I would call foolproof. They are getting better though.

This trend toward micro-responses doesn’t make blogs any less important, however. Probably the opposite, actually. I could tweet all day about a topic, but my tweets would be largely lost the next day. Blog posts have staying power. That’s probably why I still get more traffic from Google than from Twitter.

Anyway, give Brian’s post a read.

Twitter 101

By Mack D. Male ·

On Saturday at IDEAfest, I gave a short presentation on Twitter. I wasn’t sure who would be in the audience, so I decided to do some very introductory slides. Some of the content was based on a post I wrote back in November – suggestions for getting started with Twitter. I’d still recommend looking at that post as it has more detail than the presentation on some points.

Here are the slides for my “Twitter 101” talk:

You can download the presentation in PDF here.

If you have any feedback, let me know! Thanks to everyone who came out to my talk.