Category Archives: Paramagnus

Your Guide to Summer Festivals & Events in Edmonton!

By Mack D. Male ·

Exactly a year ago, I posted a listing of as many of the summer festivals happening in Edmonton as I could find. We truly are Festival City – there were 25 festivals in my initial list. Lots of people found it useful, so I thought I’d do the same again this year!

Once again powered by ShareEdmonton, here are a list of 29 festivals you can look forward to over the next few months, complete with iCal feeds and some basic social media information.

You’ll note that each one has a link to ShareEdmonton, where I list the festival dates and locations as accurately as possible. As I get more information I’ll update the listings.

Here’s the information for all festivals:

You can subscribe to that iCal feed using Outlook or your favorite calendar application. In Google Calendar, you can “Add by URL” and just copy/paste the iCal link above. I’m sure there are more festivals happening over the summer that I’ve missed. If your favorite isn’t on the list, let me know. If you subscribe to the iCal feed above, any new festival that gets added to the ShareEdmonton calendar will show up automatically!

Of course, ShareEdmonton has more than just festivals. You can also keep up-to-date on your favorite local sports teams:

There are hundreds of other events in the calendar too (for example, a listing of all the farmers markets). Check out the featured events listing or calendar for some of the highlights (or subscribe using iCal). If you know of an event that isn’t in the calendar, add it!

Happy summer!

Edmonton Election 2010: It’s election day!

By Mack D. Male ·

There’s just a couple of hours left to vote today, so if you haven’t already done so, go vote! You can find out where your voting station is here. I voted this morning and spent the day with Dave visiting campaign offices and getting a feel for the election. So far, turnout is looking decent.

As of 4pm today, a total of 77,947 Edmontonians had voted. If you add the 17,658 who voted in advance voting, the total is 95,605, which is nearly 26,000 higher than the 69,638 for the same period in 2007.

If you’re looking for a place to see the results tonight, check out the ShareEdmonton election results dashboard!

There weren’t any lines to deal with when I voted at 10:30 this morning. I ran into a couple of Mandel supporters on the way back:

Mandel supporters

My next stop was City Hall, to get an update on the morning voter turnout from Edmonton’s Returning Officer Alayne Sinclair:

Edmonton Clerk Alayne Sinclair

Dave and I then began our tour of election campaign offices, starting with Mayor Stephen Mandel’s:

Stephen Mandel's Campaign OfficeStephen Mandel's Campaign Office

The mayor himself was pretty happy with the effort put in by his team!

Stephen Mandel's Campaign Office

Our next visit was David Dorward’s office, where we had a great chat with David MacLean. Most of the team was out getting people to the voting stations, but the office was getting setup for a party.

David Dorward Campaign OfficeDavid Dorward Campaign Office

From there we travelled to Daryl Bonar’s office, but there was no one there. They were out getting people to vote, as they should have been!

Daryl Bonar supporters

We headed back north of the river for our next stops, starting with Scott McKeen’s campaign office:

Scott McKEen Campaign OfficeScott McKEen Campaign Office

A short trip away was Tony Caterina’s campaign office. We caught him just as he was leaving!

Tony Caterina Campaign OfficeTony Caterina Campaign Office

We stopped at Don Koziak’s campaign office, but there wasn’t anyone there. Our last stop, on the way back to City Hall, was at James Johnson’s campaign office:

James Johnson Campaign Office

You can see the rest of my photos here.

Of all the campaign offices we visited today, I’d say that Mandel’s felt most like what I was expecting. There were lots of people there, phones were ringing, people were running around – there was energy!

Results

We should start to see results coming in around 8:15pm tonight. Stay tuned to #yegvote on Twitter and check out the election results dashboard at ShareEdmonton. You can quickly see the overall results, and if you click on a ward, you can get more detail about just that race.

Edmonton Election 2010: Video Resources & Statistics

By Mack D. Male ·

With less than five days to go until the election, time is running out for candidates to spread their message and for Edmontonians to get informed. I suspect there will be lots of people “cramming” over the weekend! Currently, 90 out of the 112 candidates running in this election have a website. Most of those websites have information on issues, platforms, etc. That information is great, but it can be hard to get a sense of someone through text alone.

Video can help you learn about a candidate in a different way. Body language, intonation, and emotion are all important aspects of communication that are lost when all you’ve got is text. From a practical perspective however, video is difficult to use. It can take significant time and effort to both create and consume. And if recent research is to be believed, it can be hard to justify the cost when nearly 20% of viewers abandon a video after just 10 seconds!

That might help to explain why just 12 of the candidates have YouTube pages. In total, they have uploaded 76 videos this election season, which in total have been viewed over 10,000 times (about 134 times each, on average).

In total, I have aggregated 1046 videos related to the election at ShareEdmonton (so far). You can see all videos, videos by ward, or videos by candidate. For example:

Here are some statistics on the aggregated videos:

  • Every video has been viewed at least once. In total, those 1046 videos have been viewed more than 26,000 times.
  • The average number of views per video is 25.
  • Daniel Dromarsky’s video on the Downtown Arena is the most viewed.
  • There are 104 videos with comments (9.9%).
  • The average number of comments on those videos is just under 2.
  • Daniel Dromarsky’s video on the City Centre Airport has the most comments.
  • There are 142 videos with ratings (13.6%).
  • The average rating on those videos is 4.2. There are 108 videos with an average rating of 5.

The vast majority of those videos have been uploaded within the last month or so.

That lonely video off to the left is from Ward 1 candidate Andrew Knack, who definitely started early.

There have been two key producers of election-related video: CTVnewsEdmonton and edpublicschools. Of the 1046 videos, those two users have uploaded 916. As a result, most candidates have some kind of video online, and a number of them have simply embedded CTV’s or Edmonton Public Schools’ videos on their own websites.

There are lots of other places to find election video (and audio):

And hey, what’s a post about video without an actual video! Here is one from the edmontonian on the basics of the municipal election:

You can watch part two here.

The final mayoral forum takes place tonight at Eastglen School, and election day is Monday! On election night, only CTV is planning to have live coverage on television, but there will be lots of online coverage. ShareEdmonton will be updating live with results, I’m sure #yegvote will be busy on Twitter, and the edmontonian will be broadcasting live.

Make sure you vote!

Edmonton Election 2010: Nomination Day Statistics

By Mack D. Male ·

Yesterday was nomination day, the day that all candidates in the upcoming municipal election needed to file their paperwork and pay their fees. Dave was at City Hall and has a nice overview of how things went.

Now that we know who’s running (though some may still drop out) let’s look at some stats. In total, there are 113 candidates vying for the role of mayor, councillor, public school trustee, or catholic school trustee. Here’s a breakdown of the various candidates:

I wondered about gender, since that is often a hot issue in politics. Here’s the gender breakdown for the candidates:

The web is going to play a very important role in this election. It’s the first place people turn to when they want to know more – they search. How many of the candidates could be found online as of last night? And which details did they make available?

As you can see, candidates have some work to do.

Quite a few people, myself included, followed along yesterday on Twitter. Kudos to Dave and John for live-tweeting and posting lots of photos! Here’s what yesterday’s #yegvote activity looked like:

Candidates could file their paperwork between 9am and noon, which explains the big spike in the morning.

I hope Edmontonians take the time to learn about their candidates, and to voice their concerns and thoughts on the issues facing our city. I have updated ShareEdmonton to (hopefully) help make that easier. Here’s what’s new at the Election 2010 site:

I’d love your feedback on how I can improve the Election 2010 site at ShareEdmonton. And if you find additional candidate information that I’m missing, let me know. I’ve got a few planned improvements on the way, so stay tuned!

Your Guide to Summer Festivals in Edmonton!

By Mack D. Male ·

With dozens of festivals happening throughout the year, Edmonton is rightly known as Canada’s Festival City. During the summer in particular, it seems as though there’s a festival of some sort happening every day. I guess that’s because there is!

Here’s a list of 25 festivals you can look forward to over the next three months, complete with iCal feeds, and social media information (see below for an iCal feed for all the festivals):

You’ll note that each one has a link to ShareEdmonton, where I list the festival dates and locations as accurately as possible. Festivals like Creative Age and Improvaganza have really good detail, while others like the Fringe do not (they haven’t released the schedule yet). As I get more information I’ll update the listings. You can also see related tweets for each festival, and very soon, related photos and blog posts too!

Here’s the information for all festivals:

You can subscribe to that iCal feed using Outlook or your favorite calendar application. In Google Calendar, you can “Add by URL” and just copy/paste the iCal link above.

I’m sure there are more festivals happening over the summer that I’ve missed. If your favorite isn’t on the list, let me know. If you subscribe to the iCal feed above, any new festival that gets added to the ShareEdmonton calendar will show up automatically!

Live Music in Edmonton now at ShareEdmonton with YEG Live

By Mack D. Male ·

It’s difficult but not impossible to discover all of the events that happen in Edmonton, and I’m continually working to improve the listings at ShareEdmonton. One of the ways I’m doing that is by working with others who already have large, accurate collections of events. The latest such example is YEG Live, Edmonton’s source for local live music, artist, venue, and event listings. You can now see all YEG Live events at ShareEdmonton!

I can’t remember how I was introduced to YEG Live – it might have been via Twitter, or it may have been because they use one of my photos for their header background. In any case, I was impressed. Founders Chris Martyniuk and Cameron Gertz have created an excellent online hub for local music in Edmonton. Most importantly, they really care about the accuracy of the data on the site. As a result, YEG Live has a superb collection of artist profiles, venue profiles, and of course, live music events. I contacted Chris to see if he’d be interested in working together, and fortunately, he was!

Now when you browse entertainment events at ShareEdmonton, you’ll see the ones that come from YEG Live highlighted with the icon to the left. When you click through to an event, such as tomorrow evening’s show featuring Sweet Thing at Haven Social Club, you’ll see all of the usual details you’d expect at a ShareEdmonton event page (start & end time, location details, related tweets, etc) as well as links and short bios for the artists performing (which link to YEG Live). There are also prominent links to the YEG Live event and ticket information pages.

Thanks to Chris for all the work he did to make this integration possible! There’s no sense in duplicating the tremendous effort he’s already putting into creating an accurate calendar of live music events in Edmonton, so I’m glad we were able to work together. It’s a win-win-win as I see it: ShareEdmonton is a little more complete, YEG Live gets a little more exposure, and Edmontonians are more likely to discover great live music events happening in the city!

Edmonton Public Schools & Open Data

By Mack D. Male ·

Today I’m very excited to announce that Edmonton Public Schools has taken a big step into the world of open data by releasing a data set containing information on all of their schools, including the six opening later this year. I understand the data will be made available in the City of Edmonton’s Open Data Catalogue early next week, but you can download the CSV file today if you like.

Download the Edmonton Public Schools Data in CSV

Back in early February I met Jeremy and Paul for lunch to chat about open data and the community here in Edmonton. One of the things we talked about was how Edmonton Public Schools could get involved. In addition to attending events like the Open City Workshop, Jeremy and his team also started working behind-the-scenes to pull together data that might be useful to share. I helped define the fields that should be included and did the geocoding work, but they did all the rest. The result is a great data set of public schools in Edmonton, containing the name, address, lat/long, grade levels, programming information, and contact details for each.

Edmonton Public Schools follows in the footsteps of the Edmonton Public Library in embracing open data. Both organizations should be applauded for being “early adopters” and for their enthusiastic participation in the open data movement here in Edmonton. They have set an example that others can follow. Specifically:

  • Start small! EPL released branch locations, EPSB released school locations.
  • Work with the community! In both cases, I was able to help with some of the work. There are many others in the community who are eager to help as well.
  • Engage the City! In addition to getting the data in the catalogue, which is really important to have a central repository, the City has also offered some suggestions for improvements.

Thank you to Jeremy and the rest of the team at Edmonton Public Schools for making this happen!

No post about a new data set would be complete without mentioning that the data is now available at ShareEdmonton! You can now see a list of all public schools and on the details page for each one, you can see the relevant school ward, grade level, and programming information on the right side (for example, McNally, the high school I attended). More improvements coming soon!

Edmonton Neighbourhood Census Data

By Mack D. Male ·

For a long time I’ve wanted to get the City of Edmonton’s neighbourhood census data in CSV format (or really any usable format other than PDF). Recently, with the help of Laura (and Sandra) at the City’s Election & Census Services department, who I met at the Open City Workshop, I finally got it. And now you can have it too!

Download the Edmonton Neighbourhood Census Data in CSV

I’ve also emailed this to the City’s open data team, so hopefully they can get it in the data catalogue soon.

Visualizing the Data

Why is having the census data in a format like CSV useful? Well for one thing, it enables creatives to do stuff with that data through code or other tools. For instance, I was able to generate a heat map for the City of Edmonton:

The darker sections are more heavily populated, the lighter yellow regions are less populated.

Not all neighbourhoods are reflected, as the City does not release details for neighbourhoods with a population between 1 and 49. Here are some other things we can learn from the data set:

  • Total population in the data set is 777,811, which means there are 4628 individuals unaccounted for (total for 2009 was 782,439).
  • The average neighbourhood population is 2424, or 3039 if you exclude neighbourhoods with a reported population of 0.
  • The median neighbourhood population is 2216.
  • Oliver and Downtown are the only two neighbourhoods with a population greater than 10,000.
  • More dwellings are owned (192,171) than rented (121,953).

ShareEdmonton

Another reason having this data in CSV is useful is because app developers can more easily integrate it into the things they are building. For example, all the census data is now available at ShareEdmonton! So when you view a neighbourhood, you’ll see the census data on the right side (see Alberta Avenue for example). You can also browse neighbourhoods by population. I’ve also fixed the neighbourhood search, so it works better now.

This is just the first of a few neighbourhood-related updates this month, so stay tuned for more!

Apps4Edmonton

Yesterday the City released more information on the Apps4Edmonton competition. The first phase, from now until May, is “accepting community ideas”. Basically they want you to tell them what data you want. Aside from the obvious “we don’t know what we don’t know” problem, I think the community has done a pretty good job of defining desired data sets already.

They City had a great start in January with the launch of the data catalogue, but we need more data. Especially data like the census data, which myself and many others have been asking for since the day the PDFs were released. There are clearly some internal issues that need to be worked out if I was able to acquire this before the open data team was. I hope they get everything resolved for the competition, because it’ll be a pretty boring one if we still only have twelve data sets (New York and other cities had dozens, maybe even hundreds, before their competitions).

That said, I know there are passionate, smart people working on it. Email opendata@edmonton.ca if you have data set requests or want to get involved in Apps4Edmonton.

Update on ShareEdmonton

By Mack D. Male ·

I’m still working on improving ShareEdmonton, slowly but surely, and I wanted to provide a brief update on my progress. Over the last couple of weeks, my primary focus has been on improving the event calendar. Making it faster, more complete, and easier to browse. There’s still a lot of work to do, but here are some of the recent improvements:

  • There’s now a Featured Upcoming Events page where I can highlight specific events.
  • Related events have been improved. For example, if you look at the page for this Saturday’s Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market, you’ll see other upcoming dates as well.
  • That feature highlights something else – events on ShareEdmonton are as granular as possible. Instead of just having one event for The Citadel’s upcoming run of Sweeney Todd that starts on February 6 and ends on February 28, each individual show time gets its own page. That’s important in helping to answer the question, what’s happening in Edmonton at a given time and place? There are only a few exceptions to this, such as International Week.

I’m going to continue to make it easier to find and browse events, especially by tag, like valentine’s day or family day. I have made good progress on making the calendar more complete too. Currently, there are more than 200 unique events in ShareEdmonton for February, with more than 600 different instances (a unique event would be “Sweeny Todd”, and each showtime would be a different instance). There are probably hundreds more that I don’t yet have in the calendar. It’s a tricky problem, but I’m working on it!

Another thing I’ve been working on is improving Places in ShareEdmonton, which includes adding more places! Most recently, I started adding places that have been made available as part of the City’s open data catalogue, such as Police Stations. That’s a handy page to see all the police station locations in Edmonton. I’ve got some more neat stuff coming with this, so stay tuned.

If you have feedback, let me know!

What’s happening at your local library?

By Mack D. Male ·

Ever wonder what’s happening at your local Edmonton Public Library branch? Today, finding out becomes easier than ever! I’m excited to announce that ShareEdmonton now contains all EPL events, with new events being continuously added. The events will show up in all the usual spots, but there are a few sections of the website I wanted to highlight:

The EPL has had event listings on its website for a long time now, and while they are quite detailed, they aren’t necessarily the easiest to find or browse. The ability to subscribe to events is also somewhat limited – you can choose the next 2 weeks of all EPL events via RSS, or events at your branch via email. Still, the EPL is ahead of most organizations in that they’ve been able to aggregate all events into a single place.

Shortly after ShareEdmonton launched, Peter Schoenberg, Director of eServices at EPL, got in touch with me to see if we could work together. I explained the idea behind ShareEdmonton, and he outlined some of the digital initiatives the EPL is undertaking. We identified a couple of actions. The first was for EPL to get started with Open Data, by releasing a data file of library locations. The second was for ShareEdmonton to import those locations and all the events taking place at them.

Importing events required a little bit of custom work on both ends – thanks to Peter and his team for working so efficiently and for their patience! Having the EPL events in ShareEdmonton helps us both. For the EPL, it helps users find out about their local libraries, and exposes EPL events to a different and potentially wider audience. It also makes it possible for users to subscribe to events in Outlook, Google Calendar, or any other calendar application supporting iCal. For ShareEdmonton, it’s another important step toward becoming Edmonton’s de facto calendar.

Check out the EPL branches and events on ShareEdmonton!