Month: May 2009

2009 Festival Volunteer Fair – May 13th

As summer approaches, the number of festivals taking place in the Edmonton area will start to increase! We’ve got some really great ones, including Capital EX, the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival (25th anniversary this year) and the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival. You can find a full list at FestivalCity.ca.

All of these festivals require great volunteers, of course. That’s why Volunteer Edmonton is hosting another Festival Volunteer Fair on Wednesday:

This "one-stop festival volunteer shopping" experience is your chance to learn more about Edmonton’s diverse festivals all in one place and sign up to become a volunteer for one OR more festivals!

The event takes place on Wednesday, May 13th from 3pm to 8pm at the TransAlta Arts Barns (map). It’s completely free to attend, and you can take a look at the list of participating festivals here (warning: pdf). Last year around 20 festivals participated; this year, that number has grown to 32. Also new this year – increased marketing. I’ve seen posters and numerous online mentions of the fair, so I hope there’s a great turnout!

From the press release:

The estimated total number of volunteers required by all festivals is about 8,000 people. Statistics show that about 48 per cent of Edmontonians currently volunteer for a variety of worthwhile causes.

Let’s keep that percentage growing – tell a friend about the Festival Volunteer Fair!

Now a Certified ScrumMaster

A few weeks ago I attended a ScrumMaster training/certification course here in Edmonton, administered by Berteig Consulting. We’ve been using Scrum at Questionmark for a couple years now, and are continually trying to improve. I did a podcast interview with Michael McClenaghan back in March talking about some of the challenges we’ve faced along the way.

We recently decided that we should ensure knowledge about Scrum was consistent across the company, hence the training. Last week I received word that I am now an officially certified ScrumMaster!

Some of the key points about Agile & Scrum that were repeated throughout the training:

  • Agile is: learning
  • Agile is NOT: a defined method for delivery, nor a buffet of best practices
  • Scrum is a process that encourages learning!

In a way it’s kind of bizarre that you can be certified in Scrum, because I think you only get a handle on it after some experience – a three day training course probably isn’t enough, though it is a good way to get started.

In that regard, Scrum is kind of like social media – you can’t really be an expert in it because you’re continually learning, and the amount of experience you have is what really matters. Here’s another similarity:

Individuals and interactions are valued over processes and tools.

Social media is all about people and their relationships too!

Who knew Scrum and social media would have so much in common 🙂

Notes for 5/10/2009

Happy Mother’s Day! Here are my weekly notes:

Apple Cheddar Turkey BurgerStuffed PeppersAshtray on Whyte AveMack with Fat Franks Cheese DogFuss CupcakesChangeCamp Edmonton

Edmonton Notes for 5/9/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Edmonton’s State of the City Report 2008-2009

The City of Edmonton recently released it’s State of the City report for April 2008 – March 2009. It includes a summary of “civic programs and services delivered to meet the goals of City Council, representing the priorities of all Edmontonians.” Also included is a message from Mayor Mandel, information on the City Vision, the City’s Strategic Plan, and more.

Here’s a Wordle of the report with the words “Edmonton” and “city” removed:

You can see a larger version here, and a version with those two words included here.

State of the City Report 2008-2009

Questionmark Open House in Edmonton!

It might be hard to tell, but Twittering isn’t actually my day job! As some of you know, I’m a software developer for a company called Questionmark. Though the company is based in London, UK, we have a growing team here in Edmonton. We recently moved into a new office downtown, and we’d like to invite you to come check it out and get to know us a little better:

Date: Friday, May 15, 2009
Time: 4:00pm
Location: #806, 10080 Jasper Avenue (map)
Cost: Free

Feel free to stop by anytime after 4pm! We’ll have food, wine, beer, etc. If you’re planning to come, please RSVP by emailing me at mack.male@questionmark.com.

Also taking place that evening is the #twilightYEG Guest Bartender Friday, in support of the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation. It’s happening at Lux, which is right across the street from us, so join us for a drink at the office and then head over to Lux to support a worthy cause!

If you’re a local software developer, definitely stop by and say hello – we’re hiring!

Job Description for Software Developer & Open House Invite

Hope to see you on the 15th!

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – April 2009

Welcome to the second State of the Calgary Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Calgary. You can see last month’s stats here.

The source of the data this month remains the same – Twitter Search. If a user has his or her location set to Calgary, Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane, Strathmore, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered a Calgarian. If a tweet is “about Calgary” it contains either the word Calgary, the #yyc hashtag, or both.

As you’ll see in a couple of the graphs below, Twitter Search was down for just over 3 hours on April 19th (from about 8:48 PM until 11:51 PM MST), so tweets posted during that period of time were not counted.

For April 2009:

# of local users: 5651 (an increase of 52% over March)

To clarify, that means there were 5651 users who posted at least one tweet in April 2009 with their location set to something that makes them a Calgarian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Calgary users without their location set or that were not captured for some other reason.

# of tweets by local users: 196832
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 3107 (1.6%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 68157 (34.6%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 37838 (19.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 6373 (3.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 7894 (4.0%)

This graph shows these numbers visually:

Here are the number of local users created per day in April, using the best available data from Twitter (the spike is about the time Oprah joined):

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates (remember that web includes all unidentified API calls too):

Some other interesting stats for the month:

  • The ten most active local users (most tweets first): strategicsense, codsta, Somecitygirl, izzynobre, C_DIG, aNorthernSoul, mrrocknroll, opiatedsherpa, wikkiwild1, caninez
  • About 51% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  • Local users posted roughly 4.6 tweets per minute in April, compared with 3.3 per minute in March.
  • The day with the most local tweets posted was April 22nd at 9163. On average, 6561 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 4760 in March).
  • Of the 68157 replies posted by local users this month, 17250 or 25% were to other local users.
  • A total of 893 local users posted 50 times or more this month. In comparison, 926 local users posted just once this month.

I’m not including the top ten users by # of followers this month because I haven’t been able to update it yet, and I suspect it hasn’t changed much anyway. Instead, here are the ten “most replied to” local users for April 2009: C_DIG, caninez, Somecitygirl, darylcognito, ReaFaceToFace, djkelly, amacisaac, Wendy, CdnCowgirl, jonincalgary. This stat obviously skews toward the chatty, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

If you have any comments or feedback let me know so that I can improve these statistics in future months. You can see the April 2009 stats for Edmonton here. I should have a Calgary vs. Edmonton stats post up sometime next week.

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – April 2009

Welcome to the fourth State of the Edmonton Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton. You can see last month’s stats here.

The source of the data this month remains the same – Twitter Search. If a user has his or her location set to Edmonton, St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Leduc, Nisku, Stony Plain, Fort Saskatchewan, Beaumont, Spruce Grove, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered an Edmontonian. If a tweet is “about Edmonton” it contains either the word Edmonton, the #yeg hashtag, or both.

As you’ll see in a couple of the graphs below, Twitter Search was down for just over 3 hours on April 19th (from about 8:48 PM until 11:51 PM MST), so tweets posted during that period of time were not counted.

For April 2009:

# of local users: 4489 (an increase of 31% over March)

To clarify, that means there were 4489 users who posted at least one tweet in April 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Edmontonian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Edmonton users without their location set.

# of tweets by local users: 184015
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 9815 (5.3%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 65984 (35.9%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 31056 (16.9%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 7064 (3.8%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 8118 (4.4%)

To clarify the # of tweets containing #yeg – that number actually includes all the local hashtags that start with #yeg, so it includes #yegfood, #yegtraffic, etc. This is consistent with the stats for previous months, though it made less of an impact before. I’ll try to break out the stats by tag next month.

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the number of local users created per day in April, using the best available data from Twitter:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates (remember that web includes all unidentified API calls too):

Some other interesting stats for the month:

  • The ten most active local users (most tweets first): AndyGroenink, DebraWard, akomuzikera, TrinaMLee, Edmontonsun, fcedmonton, Etown_Jenn, britl, bingofuel, wickedmickey
  • About 52% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  • Local users posted roughly 4.3 tweets per minute in April, compared with 3.4 per minute in March.
  • The day with the most local tweets posted was April 23rd at 8069. On average, 6134 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 4876 in March).
  • Of the 65984 replies posted by local users this month, 24916 or 38% were to other local users.
  • A total of 808 local users posted 50 times or more this month. In comparison, 796 local users posted just once this month.

I’m not including the top ten users by # of followers this month because I haven’t been able to update it yet, and I suspect it hasn’t changed much anyway. Also, I hope to have a dynamic list available soon.

Instead, I have a new top ten as suggested by the Social Web Meetup gang (thanks to @britl for letting me know). Here are the ten “most replied to” local users for April 2009: britl, bingofuel, chrislabossiere, citizenfish, Sirthinks, JodieGiese, frostedbetty, angelzilla, mastermaq, Out_Inc. This stat obviously skews toward the chatty, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Tomorrow, I should be posting the stats for Calgary. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: Here are the Calgary stats for April 2009.

DemoCampEdmonton7

Are you ready for another DemoCamp? Our next event here in Edmonton is coming up fast, on May 13th! Join us at the University of Alberta to see what local tech entrepreneurs are up to. As usual, we’ll head over to RATT after the demos for Edmonton’s best networking opportunity for tech professionals. If you’re new to DemoCamp, check out my recap of our last event. Here are the details for #7:

Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Time: 6:30pm (and drinks/networking afterward)
Location: E1 017, ETLC, University of Alberta (map)
Cost: Free

The rules for DemoCamp are simple: ten minutes to demo real, working software, followed by a few minutes for questions. No slides allowed.

This time we’ve got a fantastic new sign up page for both attendees and anyone interested in demoing at this event or in the future. No more wiki craziness – just enter your name and click Register!

Help us spread the word – check out the BarCamp Edmonton blog and our Facebook group. Be sure to tag your tweets, posts, photos, and other content with democampyeg.

Hope to see you there!

Notes for 5/3/2009

Here are my weekly notes:

  • Kim & Shane moved out this weekend. My apartment now looks pretty empty! I also realized how much kitchen stuff Kim had. Needless to say I did quite a bit of shopping and cleaning over the last two days.
  • The cookie-cutter tech article (this one is about bit.ly): find a service that bloggers have written about recently, explain what it does in layman’s terms, throw out some statistics about growth, describe the business model or lack of one, cite either Google or Microsoft as companies that could destroy the service. Oh, and capitalize its name, even if the service itself never does.
  • General Electric has apparently come up with a digital storage technology breakthrough that will allow standard-sized discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.
  • This is kinda cool: The TV magic behind Hockey Night in Canada.
  • Derek is right – taking photos doesn’t, and shouldn’t, make you a terrorist. He wrote about some very odd security ads in SkyTrain stations.
  • Here’s something I could get behind: Reboot the university.
  • Sharon and I went to see Ghosts of Girlfriends Past yesterday. It wasn’t bad, pretty much as expected. We were both surprised at how little Jennifer Garner was in the movie, however.
  • I’ll be in Calgary on Tuesday covering the Web Strategy Summit.