Month: July 2009

Notes for 7/5/2009

Here are my weekly notes:

Edmonton Notes for 7/4/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

The future of local news gathering in action

On Saturday morning Sharon and I walked to the City Market Downtown, as we often do on the weekends. Along the way, near 107th Street and 102nd Avenue, we came upon a parade of firefighters. I immediately took out my camera to snap some photos, and also used my BlackBerry to post one to Twitter via TwitPic. We followed them up the street until they turned toward Jasper Avenue, taking a few more pictures. They were a somber group, so we assumed it was a memorial march of some kind, but we didn’t know the details.

Firefighters remember Station Captain Al HarrisFirefighters remember Station Captain Al Harris

For the next couple hours, I sent BlackBerry messages back and forth with Brittney at iNews880. She had seen my TwitPic, and wanted to write a story about the march. I always tell her she can use my photos, but she asks anyway which is nice. Brittney and her team figured out what the march was for, wrote the story, and posted it with my TwitPic. When I got home, I uploaded the rest of my photos and they added them to the story.

That’s the future of news gathering in action.

Now I realize that iNews880 and some other media organizations regularly use photos from contributors but I think what’s significant here is that the story started with the photo. Would they have written about it had I not posted a TwitPic? Maybe, maybe not. In this case they saw the photo, tracked down what it was about, and were able to produce a story.

Here’s a quote you might have heard:

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right. – Ellen Goodman

In this case, I got it first and iNews880 got it right. Note that doesn’t mean that I got it wrong and iNews880 was way behind. We simply worked together to make the story happen. This is the kind of news gathering that can scale. So many of us walk around with mobile Internet devices, always ready to post a message or a photo.

What comes next? Aggregation, of course.

Why the proposed City Centre Airport compromise won’t work

Tonight was I on Alberta Primetime with David MacLean from AEG to discuss the compromise that was proposed recently by the Alberta Aviation Museum in the debate about what to do with the City Centre Airport. The compromise would see one of the two runways closed, to make room for some redevelopment. We didn’t have a lot of time to get into the issue, but we agreed on one thing: a compromise isn’t going to work. City Council needs to make a decision.

There are two runways at the City Centre Airport. There’s 16/34, which has the ILS (instrument landing system), prevents NAIT from expanding, and has the largest impact on the Outer Surface restricting building heights over downtown. The second runway is 12/30, which is slightly longer than 16/34 but lacks the important ILS. The runways are placed in an intersecting “V” configuration.

It’s true that if Council decides to shut the City Centre Airport down, it won’t happen overnight. It’s also true that it’ll take time for any development to be completed. Those two facts aren’t enough to make the proposed compromise work, however:

  • It’s not clear which runway would be shutdown. Clearly 16/34 would make more sense from a development perspective, and a financial one too as it requires about $7 million of investment (part of the $35 million in total required for ECCA over the next ten years).
  • That would largely be dependent on moving the ILS to 12/30, something which may not be possible. Actually, it may not even be desirable given how old the system is – it almost certainly needs to be replaced.
  • Shutting down 12/30 instead doesn’t make a lot of sense either, because height restrictions would still be impacted and NAIT expansion would still be blocked.

I’m told that Edmonton Airports has promised to provide Councillors with a feasibility study on the compromise in time for next week’s Council meeting. It doesn’t really matter though.

The truth is that such a compromise is just an easy way out for Council. If they don’t decide once and for all to shut it down or keep it open, we’ll just keep having this same debate every few years. Or even worse, we’ll end up with some development right next to a crippled airport. Nobody will benefit from either of those scenarios.

City Council must take a bold step to do what’s right for the future of Edmonton. Encourage your City Councillors to vote in favor of closing the City Centre Airport.

Transforming the City of Edmonton IT Branch

On Friday the City of Edmonton’s IT branch held its first ever IT Vendor Open House. The event was a big success, with dozens of local technology professionals stopping by throughout the day. Attendees had the opportunity to learn more about how the IT branch does business, and about some of the initiatives and projects that are coming down the pipe. The event also gave the IT branch a chance to share some of the work they’ve done recently to transform internally.

Chris Moore, the City’s Chief Information Officer, delivered two keynotes during the day, called “IT New Directions”. Chris isn’t your typical CIO – he doesn’t have a desk in his office, he avoids PowerPoint whenever possible, and he is always one step ahead of everyone else. For example, it wasn’t possible for anyone to run Macintosh computers at the City until recently. While everyone has been focusing on making that a reality (a few Councillors switched over earlier this year), Chris is looking at what’s next: bring your own technology. Chris imagines an environment in which employees can run whatever they like.

Edmonton CIO Chris Moore

He touched on a few main points:

  • There are around 1100 different applications and systems at the City. Only 132 of them are Access or Excel. That means there’s an incredible amount of overhead required for management and support, not to mention data in 1100 different places.
  • Throughout the spring, the IT branch held mini town halls, with about ten employees in each (there are 300 employees total).
  • Out of those discussions and other meetings, a new Agile Service Delivery Model emerged.

One of the few slides Chris showed during his keynote was a list of highlights from the past sixty years:

  • 1954: Univac 120 – First in Western Canada
  • 1960: IBM 1401 – First in Canada
  • 1966: IBM 360 – One of the first in Canada
  • 1978: Early adopter of GIS
  • 1980: City recruits IT staff from the U.K.
  • 1985: Sale of COINS to Orange County, CA
  • 1991: gov.edmonton.ab.ca, “early Internet adopter”
  • 1996: POSSE – Award winning system
  • 1999: One of the first cities to move to Enterprise GIS
  • 2009: First city in North America to use SAP CRM for 311

The slide was titled “Western Canada’s Municipal Information Technology Leader”. That’s perhaps a bit of a stretch for the last few years, but it’s certainly the goal for the future. Chris and his team want to get back to being the innovators.

On June 18th, the Information Technology Corporate Audit Report for 2008 was released and it talks a lot about the drivers behind the transformation that Chris touched on in his keynote. Here’s a Wordle of the report:

Among other things, there were two clear conclusions from the report (which you can download here in Word format):

  • That Corporate IT resources can be used in a more cost effective and efficient manner.
  • That the IT Governance Framework is not effective in prioritizing and allocating operating and capital resources for information technology.

In reality, there isn’t much of a Governance Framework at the moment, but the IT branch is already working to change that. They’ve created something they call COKESFORIT, or the “ten ways of being”:

  1. Collaborative
  2. Open
  3. Knowledgeable
  4. Empowered
  5. Supportive
  6. Flexible
  7. Organized
  8. Responsible
  9. Innovative
  10. Trusting

The idea is that everything the IT branch does should align with these concepts.

During ICLEI a couple weeks ago, visual facilitator Roy Blumenthal worked with the IT branch, and captured eighteen impressive visual notes. As a fan of open data, I like this one:

I’m excited about the changes taking place at the IT branch. I think the organization is heading down the right path: to become more efficient and more transparent. If you’ve got ideas or feedback, now seems like the right time to get in touch with them!