Washington DC Trip: Day 4

By Mack D. Male · May 21, 2009 at 9:17pm

I’m pretty tired tonight so to change it up, I’m gonna do this entry in point form:

We started off with coffee at the Starbucks near our hotel, then took the Metro toward the White House. It was another great day weather-wise, at around 27 degrees Celsius.
The White House Visitor Center was mostly unimpressive, especially when compared with the Visitor Center at the Capitol. We did find the short video they were looping informative, however.
About a minute or so after leaving the Visitor Center, we crossed 15th Street at E Street, and with sirens coming closer noticed that many people had stopped to look. We figured it was an emergency vehicle of some kind.
We realized fairly quickly that something bigger was happening. Half a dozen police motorcycles had appeared, with a few cars behind them and four or five tour buses behind the cars. Policeman started ensuring all pedestrians were a few feet back from the roads.
Then, from a different direction, more police motorcycles drove past, turning off 15th Street west onto E Street. More vehicles with lights went by, then we saw Cadillac One and a number of other presidential vehicles drive past. We got to see President Obama’s motorcade!
After the cars had passed we walked toward the White House, but couldn’t get very close. We took a picture as close as we could get.
Our next stop was the Museum of Natural History. We tried to go through relatively quickly, but still spent quite a bit of time looking at everything!

We then took the Metro to Union Station, where we did some shopping and exploring. Sharon bought some really nice clothes, and we stopped for cookies and an iced coffee at Au Bon Pain.
With about two hours to kill before a walking tour, we decided to stop at the Air & Space Museum (which we later learned is the busiest of the Smithsonian museums). We didn’t have much time there before it closed, so we zipped through it.
After the museum closed, we sat outside for a bit, then made our way to the meeting point for a free walking tour.
Though the tour covered all the places we had already seen (Washington Monument, war memorials, etc.) it was worthwhile for all of the stuff we learned. Lots of history, and some great trivia too! For instance, we learned the Secret Service codenames for the First Family: Barack is Renegade, Michelle is Renaissance, Malia is Radiance, and Sasha is Rosebud.
The tour ended at the Lincoln Memorial, where we remained until sunset. We wanted to see the Korea War Veterans Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial at night, and neither disappointed. We also got some great views of the illuminated Washington Monument and the Capitol.
We walked back across the bridge toward Georgetown, but didn’t quite get that far. Instead, we picked up some dinner from Safeway at Watergate, and came back to the hotel.
I think I should have brought or bought better shoes – all the walking has made my feet incredibly sore! Sharon seems to be doing a bit better, but we’re both fairly exhausted this evening!

Tomorrow we’re going to do some shopping in Georgetown, among other things!

Washington DC Trip: Day 3

By Mack D. Male · May 20, 2009 at 10:06pm

We planned to walk less today than we did yesterday, but I’m not sure we accomplished that! We started off early once again, making our way to the The Capitol Building to line-up for tickets. We found a distinct lack of signage outside the iconic building. It wasn’t clear which entrance was for visitors, nor where to line up for tickets. The interior of the Capitol Visitor Center was only marginally better.

Eventually we made it inside and near the front of the line for the 8:50am tour, which started with a 13 minute video describing some of the history of the Capitol. It was a bit over-the-top but I appreciated the refresher. Next we got to see the inside of the Capitol itself, starting with the magnificent center dome. It was really interesting to hear about some of the history. For instance, the artwork around the top contains the Wright Brothers and their plane, even though the Capitol was built during the time of Lincoln! The reason is that the last 30 feet of the painting were not finished until the mid 1900s.

We also got to see the “whispering room” and a bunch of other unique halls and rooms inside the Capitol (one contained a beautiful chandelier that was apparently purchased not too long ago for just $1500). Most surprising to me were the incredible number of statues! Apparently each State can have two inside the building at any given time, and they can be replaced after ten years. After the tour, we stopped in the cafeteria for a coffee, and went to get tickets for the House and Senate galleries!

Considering it’s not trivial for international visitors to get into the Capitol in the first place, we were surprised that all you had to do to get tickets to the galleries was walk up to a counter and ask. We did so, and decided to go sit it on the House of Representatives for a bit. After a couple more security checks, we found ourselves in a mostly empty room. A few representatives were discussing the recent credit card legislation and there were about a dozen other visitors. It was pretty cool to see, but we didn’t stay too long.

Next we stopped across the street at both the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. The former was underwhelming because we didn’t get to see much, and the latter was better than I expected. The interior of the Library of Congress is pretty impressive. I particularly liked looking at Jefferson’s Library. After a quick walk around, we decided it was time for lunch, and walked a few blocks east to a small diner called Jimmy T’s. It was pretty ghetto looking but hit the spot – I had the eggs benedict (they serve breakfast all day) and Sharon had the cheeseburger and fries. It was nice to be able to walk through some residential neighborhoods along the way.

After lunch, we hopped on the Metro and headed downtown. Our first stop was the Canadian Embassy, an impressive building on the outside that we didn’t get to see much of on the inside. We wondered how they managed to snag such prime real estate – Pennsylvania Avenue and 5th Street, with a clear view of the Capitol. Right next door to the embassy was our main stop of the afternoon – the Newseum.

At $20 per person, Newseum was the first attraction of the trip that wasn’t free. The building itself is incredible, and includes two incredibly large, hydraulic elevators. There are six floors to Newseum, and we visited each one. I particularly enjoyed the News History exhibit, the 9/11 exhibit, the Future of the News exhibit (where they had a Twittering the news section), and the Pulitzer Prize Winning Photographs exhibit. They also display the front pages of newspapers from around the world. There was so much to see, and all of it so interesting. Newseum also includes a large number of interactive displays and consoles – dozens and dozens of touch screens that allow you to explore even further. I really enjoyed it!

With a bit of time to kill before dinner, we found a nearby Starbucks and sat down for a while. Our feet enjoyed the brief break! Eventually we made our back toward Georgetown, and right outside the Foggy Bottom Metro station discovered a small Farmers Market! Sharon was quite excited, so we had to stop and check it out. We ended up purchasing fresh strawberries (enjoying them right now) and a lavender teacake.

Our dinner reservation this evening was at Founding Farmers, a restaurant with a serious focus on local and sustainable food (and is the first LEED certified restaurant in DC). I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy sitting at a communal table, but it worked out just fine. We had the mini cheeseburgers to start, and I tried one of their local beers. For dinner, Sharon ordered the meatloaf and I chose the lobster mac and cheese. It was delicious, but we both left the restaurant feeling stuffed. I’m sure Sharon will have much more to say about it in her review.

We took our time walking back, detouring to see the Kennedy Center and Watergate along the way. We discovered that both are just about three blocks from where we’re staying! Tomorrow we’re going to the White House (well, to the visitor center and as close as we can get) and thankfully, it won’t be quite as early a start!

I’ve got a ton of photos to upload, but it’s taking quite a while to do so. You can find them in this photoset as I get them uploaded.

Washington DC Trip: Day 2

By Mack D. Male · May 19, 2009 at 9:25pm

Our first full day in Washington was a busy one! Sharon had checked before we left home to see if there were any advance tickets available for the Washington Monument, but there weren’t. That left us with one option: lining up at 7am to get tickets. We woke up just after 6am and made our way to the monument (taking the very efficient Metro). Part of me thought that Sharon was the only tourist crazy enough to line up so early but sure enough, there were about a dozen people already in the line! I should have known better than to question her!

In our rush to get there however, we didn’t have time to stop for coffee. As we had to wait an hour and a half until the ticket office opened anyway, that gave me lots of time to find a Starbucks and return with coffee and breakfast sandwiches. Before long, we had our tickets in hand and went to line up at the Washington Monument!

We made it to the front of the line for the 9am tour, just ahead of about six tour buses, thankfully. It’s pretty cool that you can go up to the top of the Washington Monument, and once you’re there you have a clear view of many of Washington’s major attractions, including the Capitol Building, the Lincoln Memorial, and the White House. It was very cool, and the staff were all so welcoming and entertaining – it was definitely a highlight of the day.

Next we made our way to the World War II Memorial, the Reflecting Pool, the Lincoln Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the Constitution Gardens. It all looks relatively close together on the map, but make no mistake, we walked a lot. There were tons of tour groups at each memorial. I think my favorite was the Lincoln Memorial – it was just so impressive. We also found the spot on the stairs where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his historic speech, marked by the words “I Have A Dream”.

After the Memorials, we made our way back toward the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Once we got there however, we decided it probably made more sense to get some lunch first. We wandered toward the office buildings, passing the Old Post Office and the J. Edgar Hoover (FBI) Building, eventually spotting Teaism. Continuing with our good timing, we just beat the lunchtime office crowd, and managed to snag a seat inside. I ordered a Chicken Bento Box, Sharon ordered the Chicken Udon soup, and since it was a tea place, we shared an Iced Black Tea. Everything was pretty tasty, and Teaism proved to be quite popular – the line was out the door for most of the time we were there (they do both eat-in and take-out). On our way back to the museum, we decided to check out the Old Post Office, taking the free tour up to the top of the clock tower. Compared with the Washington Monument, it was a bit underwhelming.

We spent most of the afternoon inside the National Museum of American History, visiting all three floors. There was lots to look at of course, including a couple of relatively new exhibits. One was the “Star-Spangled Banner” exhibit, and the other was the “I Do Solemnly Swear” (pictures from Obama’s inauguration). I really enjoyed looking at all of the shots from that event. The Lincoln exhibit was a nice complement to our visit earlier in the day, and I also liked the “Lighting a Revolution” and “America on the Move” exhibits. Sharon was excited to see Julia Child’s kitchen. We would have spent more time in the Pop Culture exhibit, but it was packed with tour groups of kids.

By the time we were finished at the museum, we were both getting pretty tired. Up since 6am and walking almost non-stop since then was starting to take its toll! We decided to walk over to the National Mall to sit for a while before going for dinner. We did some people-watching, and tried to imagine the 2 million people who where there for Obama’s inauguration. At one point, Sharon remarked “Jogging – Washington’s Official Sport” – there were definitely a lot of joggers passing by (all day actually).

We hopped back on the Metro, and made our way toward Chinatown. We still had a bit of time before our reservation, so we walked around the area, passing the Verizon Center and many familiar logos (though interestingly, many of them had both English and Chinese signs). Eventually we walked to Proof, one of the restaurants Sharon had picked out. At first I was a little worried that we were underdressed, but it turned out to be fine (not nearly as awkward as our Gramercy Tavern experience in NY). We decided to go with the Charcuterie and some appetizers, in addition to a variety of 2oz samples of wine. Sharon will be writing all about it later, but I can say that we really enjoyed it. The cheese and meats were fantastic, as were the appetizers (spicy meatballs, pork confit, and gnocchi). It was a great dinner!

We briefly considered walking over to the Jefferson Memorial afterward, but decided to come back to the hotel to rest instead. The weather today was great – warm and sunny but not sweltering or unbearable. Hopefully it’s more of the same tomorrow when we’re off to the Capitol Building, among other places!

You can see my photos from the Washington Monument here – the rest of today’s photos (nearly 250) will be uploaded later!

Washington DC Trip: Day 1

By Mack D. Male · May 18, 2009 at 8:56pm

Yay we made it to DC! Sharon and I started our adventure early this morning, leaving Edmonton bright and early at 7 AM. It was a chilly morning back home, so we were definitely looking forward to some warmer temperatures in Washington. We flew through Toronto, and happily the flights were uneventful (though Sharon didn’t enjoy the turbulence on the small plane from Toronto to Dulles). We took a taxi from Dulles International into Washington, which was expensive but stress-free and somewhat relaxing. Our driver told us we were lucky as the traffic was relatively light.

We arrived late this afternoon at the George Washington University Inn, located in Foggy Bottom. The area is kind of like Old Strathcona, but with lots of walk-ups and much more greenery. Upon check-in, we were informed that we had been upgraded to a large suite for no extra charge – always a good way to start off! We took a quick nap, and set off for Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

I used Google Maps to locate the nearest one, which turned out to be closed when we got there (as it was inside a food court of sorts). That was just as well, because it allowed us time to walk through Georgetown, eventually making our way to the location at 1335 Wisconsin Ave. We marveled at the little shops and cafes inside old houses along M street. It’s a little like Whyte Avenue with less traffic, more pedestrians, and much older buildings. We stopped at IceBerry, which serves frozen yoghurt (Sharon tells me the cold treat is really catching on in DC lately). We decided to share a small strawberry cup, with blackberries. It was good, but we both agreed it would have been better with strawberry chunks in it!

When we finally made it to Five Guys, we were both famished! There was an interesting mix of patrons inside the restaurant, including groups of young people and guys in suits. Sharon ordered a single cheeseburger, while I opted for the single bacon cheeseburger. We also split small Cajun fries. After a short wait, our order number was called out and we retrieved the brown paper bag containing our meal, grease stains already starting to seep through it. The burgers and fries really hit the spot, however! I particularly enjoyed the fries, which were not overly spicy. Sharon couldn’t resist filling a small tray with peanuts, and was happy that we had started our trip with a “dive”.

After dinner we made our way back to the hotel, stopping at Gap to get me a dress shirt (I packed dress pants, but totally forgot to pack a shirt to go with it) and Starbucks for a coffee. M street was definitely quieter after dark than it was earlier, though I suppose it is Monday. The busiest place seemed to be the Haagen-Dazs!

We walked quite a bit this evening, but nothing compared to the amount of ground we’re planning to cover tomorrow! You can see the rest of my photos here.

Notes for 5/17/2009

By Mack D. Male · May 17, 2009 at 9:52pm

Here are my weekly notes:

We had an open house at the Questionmark office here in Edmonton on Friday, which went fairly well. Thanks to everyone who stopped by! I posted some photos here.
Sharon wrote about our trip to the City Market this weekend. We ran into a few people while we were there, and evidently missed a whole bunch more who got there earlier than we did. Maybe we’ll have to do a City Market Tweetup one Saturday!
Something I read and bookmarked last week in the Times: The American Press on Suicide Watch.
A new “fact engine” called Wolfram Alpha is launching tomorrow (soft launching tonight). Here’s a search for “Edmonton”. Looks pretty interesting. Sadly, when I type in “mastermaq” it says “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.” You can read more about the service at Search Engine Land.

Sharon and I leave for Washington D.C. bright and early tomorrow morning. We’re there for a quick vacation, returning late Saturday evening. I’ll be blogging this week, but it might all be trip-related, just to warn you! And of course, I’ll be tweeting our adventure (unless Sharon manages to steal and hide my BlackBerry, that is).

I’ve found that one of the best opportunities for me to read is while I’m on a plane. I’ve got two books with me on this trip: Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe, and Judith Estrin’s Closing the Innovation Gap.

Edmonton Notes for 5/16/2009

By Mack D. Male · May 16, 2009 at 3:26pm

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Have you checked out EdmontonStories.ca yet? The City launched its creative marketing campaign on Thursday.
The downtown City Market opened today! Sharon and I went, but missed the opening ceremonies unfortunately (didn’t know there was such a thing tbh). You can check out the market on 104th street every Saturday from 9am until 3pm.
The Great Divide Waterfall on the High Level Bridge will be turned on for the first time this year tomorrow to celebrate Victoria Day.
The latest issue of Vue Weekly features its annual Golden Fork Awards, and an article by Sharon on how local restaurants are dealing with the current economic situation.
EIA has been receiving numerous requests for information the City Centre Airport, so they posted a fact sheet this week.
Don Iveson wrote a great post outlining some of this thoughts on the EPCOR news from last week, and also tackles some myths he’s been hearing.
The #twilightYEG charity event takes place on Wednesday at Hundred Bar & Kitchen downtown.
Friday is the deadline to register for the Youth Emergency Shelter Society’s Homeless for a Night event, which takes place on June 12th.
Despite some snow this past week, spring is here, so the Front Yards in Bloom program is underway. The deadline for nominations is July 4th.
The first two Movies on the Square nights are Friday the 22nd (Hotel for Dogs) and Saturday the 23rd (The Tale of Despereaux).
The City of Edmonton passed 1000 followers on Twitter this week – congrats!

Edmonton Stories

By Mack D. Male · May 14, 2009 at 10:30am

The City of Edmonton just launched a new campaign called Edmonton Stories. The goal of the campaign is to offer citizens an opportunity to share their stories about Edmonton with one another, and with people around the world. These stories will then be used in targeted marketing to attract labour and visitors to the city. There are two aspects to the campaign – the Edmonton 2030 video/vision that was unveiled at last week’s State of the City address, and the EdmontonStories.ca website.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to an Edmonton Stories preview earlier this week with a dozen or so other community members. Project lead Mary Pat Barry took us through some background information and a walk-through of the website. She explained that the City has done a lot of research into how Edmonton is perceived both internally and externally, and they found a big discrepancy. It turns out (according to their survey data at least) that Edmontonians view their city far differently than people who live elsewhere do. In fact, it’s almost the exact opposite. And across almost all measures, Edmontonians view their city positively. Hence the push to get Edmontonians to share their stories.

Here’s how it works. They’ve seeded the website with roughly 60 stories covering a variety of topics. Anyone can go on the site and submit a story of their own. All entries are moderated, but the goal is a turnaround time of less than 72 hours for each one to be posted. In addition to text, you can attach images or video. Currently the site is focused on the city itself, but the entire capital region is a goal and input is not currently limited to any geographic area (in fact, “Calgary” was the default in the demo…minor glitch I’m sure). I haven’t been able to try it it yet, but posting a story looked simple enough in the demo.

Roughly $1 million was approved last year for the 2009 campaign. Most of that money is being spent on the website and the team of people who will manage and curate it. The website was built by Parcom Marketing Inc. and Yellow Pencil, and will be managed by the City of Edmonton and Parcom. I think it’s very attractive and well designed, but it’s not without flaws. For instance, there is now an RSS feed, but you really have to look for it. Also, there should be one for each category. I’m sure everything will be sorted out shortly, however.

I think the City is on the right track with Edmonton Stories. Despite being yet another place to create content, I can see how it serves a specific purpose. There are probably a significant number of people who have a story or two about the city to share, but not enough to warrant creating a blog. Edmonton Stories gives them a place to share a few things.

That said, I think Edmonton Stories faces some challenges:

Getting people to post stories is the key challenge. Will enough Edmontonians head over to the site to share something?
Ensuring stories are shared over time is another issue. To continue to have an impact, the site can’t go stale.
Maintaining a certain quality will be a challenge. What if many of the submissions are just a few sentences long? On the flip side, what if a story is clearly a marketing piece for a business or other organization? The moderators have their work cut out for them!

Not insurmountable, but challenges nonetheless.

Edmonton Stories is a more creative approach to the problem of how to market our city than the typical branding/marketing campaign, so kudos to the City for the concept. Now we’ll see how successful it is, and if it resonates with Edmontonians or not.

Take a look at the site and read the about page. What do you think? Also, you can follow @edmontonstories on Twitter.

UPDATE: There are more details on the campaign at the City of Edmonton website.

Recap: DemoCampEdmonton7

By Mack D. Male · May 13, 2009 at 11:02pm

Another successful DemoCamp is in the books! Tonight was our seventh here in Edmonton. I didn’t actually count the attendance this time, but I’d say it was a bit less than DCE6. Still a strong turnout and some great demos. Tonight we did something new as well – a “hack” demo. The idea is to show one really rough project at each event. Reg and Sean started things off with TwitClipper, a bookmarklet service to tweet highlighted text via Twitter’s OAuth API. Impressively, it was built on the 3-hour drive down to Calgary for their last DemoCamp!

We had five demos tonight:

Chris Olsen showed us LeagueSmart, a recreational sports league management application. It’s unique in that it attempts to get team admins and players involved in addition to the league organizers.
James Matsuba showed us IdleTime, a service that aims to help you make money with your spare time. It’s like Monster.com for part-time and one-off jobs. You can both search for and post jobs.
Shawn Abbott showed us one of his portfolio companies, Tynt. They have demoed before, but now have a new direction and app called Tracer. It lets you see what people are copying and pasting from your site.
Andre Prefontaine showed us MapKat, a map-based service that lets you create a diary and slideshow of your trips and adventures.
Sean Healy and Joel Jackson showed us SnackPanda, or tried to. They had a bunch of technical issues, but essentially it’s an online ordering system for restaurants that do delivery.

The general feeling I got from talking to people afterward was that all the demos were fairly impressive. The favorite seemed to be Tynt, probably because of their slick “copy/paste heat map” which shows you the sections of text on your website that were copied the most. I thought IdleTime looked great too, a very polished UI.

Tweet of the night definitely goes to Graham Batty, who said:

Why does everyone always want to show us their signup page? They’re all the same. #democampyeg

So true. Perhaps we’ll have to incorporate that into the unofficial DemoCamp rules!

Two event announcements tonight: TransitCampEdmonton, taking place on May 30th, and BarCampEdmonton2, taking place on June 13th. Stay tuned for details on both of those!

Thanks to everyone who came out tonight. See you at the next event!

UPDATE: Rob Davy posted some videos of the evening here. Thanks Rob!

The Edmonton City Centre Airport debate on Twitter

By Mack D. Male · May 13, 2009 at 10:30am

Edmontonians have been debating the future of the Edmonton City Centre Airport (the “Muni”) for years. With a “final” decision expected next month, the amount of discussion has definitely increased lately. As part of my own research into the subject, I turned to Twitter. I’d like to share with you what I found.

I started with a data set consisting of all tweets posted by local users in 2009 that contained either the word “airport”, the hashtag #ecca, or both. From January 1st until May 11th, a total of 852 tweets matched that criteria. Next, I narrowed that data set down to tweets specifically about the City Centre Airport. I ended up with 225 tweets in total. Obviously this data set doesn’t include all tweets that might be about the airport, but I’d say it’s fairly representative.

The first thing I wanted to look at was the general sentiment among local Twitter users. Should the airport be closed or not? This required manually looking at each of 225 tweets and making a judgment call. To clarify, here’s an example of each:

Pro-Airport: “dmac666: ATCO: We need the airport, #ECCA keeps edmonton competitive. #yeg http://tinyurl.com/cusb9f”
Pro-Closure: “eglinski: Shut down the Edmonton City Centre Airport. Please. #yeg #citycentreairport #ABLeg”
N/A: “Carywill: Anyone know if there are websites that present the case for closing of #citycenterairport? #yeg”

Here’s what I found:

Anecdotally, these results seem accurate. The debate seems fairly balanced in the media and “on the street” in that there are roughly equal numbers on either side, so it should be that way on Twitter too.

Next, I looked at the quantity of tweets per month:

As you can see there was a big jump in April, and I suspect May will be close when all is said and done. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s a drop off in July.

Next, I wanted to know what people were linking to. There were 57 links inside the 225 tweets in the data set. Here are the top destinations:

Curiously, there weren’t many blogs in the results. I wonder if that will start to change?

Finally, here are the top ten tweeters (most tweets first): Carywill, dmac666, DebraWard, journalistjeff, AB_get_rich, davecournoyer, CityofEdmonton, michaeljanz, jdarrah, edmontonjournal.

Interesting data? Maybe. The ability to explore sentiments regarding local issues is of particular interest to me, and I’m going to look into that further in the months ahead.

Soon I’ll write up what I’ve learned and what my thoughts are on the ECCA issue.

Winter Light 2009 by the numbers

By Mack D. Male · May 12, 2009 at 2:00pm

At tomorrow’s City Council meeting, John Mahon, Executive Director of the Edmonton Arts Council, will share the Final Report on Winter Light Festival 2009. This year’s festival is being described as successful, so the Community Services Committee will recommend:

That one time funding of $450,000 from 2009 Council Contingency, to fund the Winter Light Festival 2010, be approved.
That Administration, in consultation with Edmonton Arts Council, prepare a base funding budget submission of $750,000 for continuation of a winter festival.

Let’s take a look at some numbers from the final report (in Word format):

Beginning on January 8 and ending on March 21, 2009, Winter Light produced 9 events, supported 3 existing winter festival events, 1 City winter event, and produced 15 community workshops.
Roughly 12,000 people attended the 9 events produced by Winter Light.
Over 62,000 people attended all Winter Light related events.
The estimated impact on the local economy was $1.7 million.
A total of 55 local producers, marketers, artists and recreation workers were directly employed by Winter Light.
To continue with the model used this year, it will cost the city $750,000 in 2010 and $675,000 in 2011.
Private sector fundraising will attempt to raise at least 10% of the total budget to be used in 2011.
An audience survey showed 50% of respondents were between the ages of 30 and 45, roughly 15% were between 18 and 30, and 32% were aged 45 to 60.
Over 94% of respondents said “yes” to the question “Do you think Winter Light was a good investment for the city?”
The winterlight.ca website received 3 million visits in 3 months.
There were more than 800 print, radio, television, and website articles mentioning Winter Light.
Over 1500 people subscribed to the Winter Light mailing list.

And some numbers related to expenses:

Deep Freeze Festival received $27,000 from Winter Light.
Ice on Whyte received $15,000 from Winter Light.
Silver Skate received $37,000 from Winter Light.
Total revenue for Winter Light 2009 was $808,500 (all but $28,500 of which came from the City).
Total expenses were $807,672.
A total of $119,031 was spent on a marketing campaign which included outdoor advertising (billboards and buses), print advertising, radio advertising, and electronic advertising.

The report also includes a goals & aspirations assessment. Here’s a wordle of the report (with Edmonton, Winter, and Light removed):

Back in March I wondered if Winter Light 2009 was a success. I concluded that while the concept is sound, there’s lots of room for improvement when it comes to the execution. Final attendance numbers were much lower than originally estimated, which I think supports that argument.

The challenge for Winter Light 2010 (if approved) will be to increase attendance and impact without increasing expense. Hopefully a strong foundation was established this year for accomplishing that.