Would you trust a citizen plumber to work on your toilet?

That’s one of the questions, referring to citizen journalism, that Edmonton Journal columnist Dan Barnes asked last week in this all-over-the-place piece. Was it rhetorical? Maybe, but I’ll bite anyway.
I know you’re not supposed to answer a question with a question, but I wonder what Dan meant by citizen plumber? Did he mean someone whose [...]

CTV Edmonton launches Inner Tube blog

On Friday afternoon, just hours before the start of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, CTV Edmonton launched a new blog called Inner Tube. I’m not sure if the timing was just a coincidence or if CTV Edmonton purposefully wanted to “soft launch” the blog, but either way, this “online experiment of sorts” is something [...]

Top 10 Edmonton Posts for 2009

I wrote a lot about Edmonton last year, on a variety of topics! Which posts were the most popular? Which posts got people talking?
Here are the top 10 Edmonton posts by traffic:

Edmonton Police Service (EPS) Crime Mapping tool now online
Edmonton Transit (ETS) officially launches Google Transit trip planning
The Last 24 Hours on Twitter: Storm in [...]

Social Media in Action: Belua Designs

This post is the first in a new, semi-regular series of entries called Social Media in Action. My goal with the series is to share my favorite examples of organizations using social media effectively. To start, I wanted to highlight local monster creators Belua Designs.
Sarah Bourque makes handmade monsters from new socks and [...]

Live Tweeting at the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra (ESO) Sunday Masters

Last year, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra invited a number of local bloggers to live-blog Symphony Under the Sky. I remember reading Adam’s posts from the event, and thought it was a cool initiative; a rather unique way to try to get a different crowd interested in the ESO. When I was invited to do [...]

Questionmark enters the blogosphere

I spend most of my time at Questionmark writing code, managing projects, and performing all the other tasks that make sense for a software developer. That doesn’t stop me from thinking about how the company could take advantage of social media though! Ever since I started with the company, I’ve been looking forward to [...]

Blog posts have staying power

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 [...]

Social Media: What Edmonton Transit (ETS) could learn from TransLink

I think the South Coast BC Transportation Authority, or TransLink, is one of the most web-savvy transit organizations in Canada. Through blog posts, videos, meetups, and more, TransLink is doing a great job of fostering a community of people interested in transit. I think Edmonton Transit (ETS) could learn a lot from them!
The Buzzer [...]

Northern Voice 2009: Passionately Local

Of all the sessions at Northern Voice 2009, I was perhaps most looking forward to the one presented by Briana Tomkinson of Tenth to the Fraser titled Passionately local: blogging about your own backyard. As someone who is definitely passionate about my hometown, I was really curious to learn about the experiences of others.
Tenth [...]

Northern Voice speakers are primarily from Vancouver and use Twitter

If you visit the Twitter page for Northern Voice, the one line bio says “Canada’s social media and blogging conference” (isn’t the blogging bit redundant?). The website isn’t quite as direct, but the impression you’re left with is the same: it’s a Canada-wide event. A few days ago they announced the schedule for Saturday, [...]

Thoughts on Northern Voice’s popularity problem

Yesterday, Darren wrote about Northern Voice’s “popularity problem”. It’s a nice problem to have! This year’s conference sold out in just three days, leading Darren to speculate that individuals who aren’t “in the know” probably missed out on registering. I think he’s right. I also agree that part of the problem is that NV only [...]

Registered for Northern Voice 2009

Early this morning I registered myself and Megan for Northern Voice 2009, taking place in Vancouver on February 20th and 21st. As you may recall, I submitted a speaking proposal back in December. Unfortunately, my submission wasn’t one of the 18 selected, but that’s okay. I’m glad to hear that the organizing committee received [...]

How do you define mainstream?

Lately I’ve been thinking about the word “mainstream” and what it means. Princeton’s WordNet defines mainstream as “the prevailing current of thought” while Merriam-Webster defines mainstream as “a prevailing current or direction of activity or influence”. I think many people have a different definition however, something more akin to the one at UrbanDictionary:
Mainstream is [...]

Blogging killed by Twitter? I don’t think so

I’ll give Paul Boutin credit for writing some seriously good link bait, but that’s all his recent essay for Wired is worth. Paul argues that we don’t need blogs anymore thanks to Twitter (and for good measure he mentions Facebook and Flickr too). He advises anyone thinking about starting a blog to think twice, [...]

Scared of social media? Follow Batman’s lead

One of my favorite movies is Batman Begins. Near the beginning of the film is a scene in which a young Bruce Wayne goes to see crime boss Carmine Falcone. As their conversation comes to a close, Falcone says:
This is a world you’ll never understand. And you always fear what you don’t understand.

I love [...]