WordCamp Edmonton 2011

By Mack D. Male · November 4, 2011 at 1:24pm

WordCamp is coming to Edmonton on November 18 and 19! WordCamp is a gathering of all things WordPress, and is intended for bloggers, content creators, developers, designers, and publishers. Here’s a little more information about the event:

WordCamps are casual, locally-organized, non- profit conferences covering everything related to WordPress, the free and open source personal publishing software that powers over 25 million sites on the web. WordCamps come in all different flavors, based on the local communities that produce them. In general, WordCamps include sessions on how to use WordPress more effectively, beginning plugin and theme development, advanced techniques, security, etc.

We’ve got an awesome little promo video for the event:

WordCamp Edmonton from ThinkMojo on Vimeo.

WordCamp Edmonton will take place at the Shaw Conference Centre in Salons 5 and 6. I’m pretty excited about the schedule we have been able to put together! We’ve got some excellent speakers, and a wide variety of topics. We’ve also built in some time for conversation, so it’ll be a good opportunity to connect with others in Edmonton who are using WordPress. Tickets for the event are just $40, and that includes both days of content plus lunch on Saturday.

I took the WordPress plunge back in February 2008, converting my entire blog to WordPress 2.3 from Community Server. It was a great decision, and I haven’t ever considered changing platforms since. WordPress is highly capable “out-of-the-box” and has one of the most vibrant plugin and theme communities of any software product. WordPress is now at version 3.2 and it just keeps getting better. Whenever I need to build a new site, I turn to WordPress.

A big thanks to all of our sponsors for helping us make WordCamp happen here in Edmonton, in particular our Gold Sponsors, Jetpack and EEDC. Also, a shout out to the organizing team of Kory, Jeff, and Sebastian, who have had help from myself, Ashley, and Dana. Everyone has worked hard to get this event put together!

We hope to see you there! Get your tickets here! You can follow @wordcampyeg on Twitter for updates.

Leading the Way: LRT Dance Party in Edmonton

By Mack D. Male · May 14, 2011 at 7:46pm

Ever wonder what a dance party on the LRT would look like? I had the opportunity last weekend to find out! The Saturday evening activity for delegates of the 2011 Youth Summit on Sustainable Transportation was a DJ Dance Party on a chartered ETS LRT train.

While we were touring the D.L. MacDonald LRT Garage in the afternoon, staff were busy getting the train prepared, adding streamers, disco balls, and lights to the interior. DJ Rob Wong also got setup with all of his gear and two giant speakers, one at each end of the train. After a quick dinner, we all boarded the party train! The train circled the garage a few times, apparently to make the most of our time.

We then travelled the length of the LRT line, from Clareview all the way to Century Park, before travelling back as far as Churchill Station to let some people off downtown. In all, we spent about an hour and half on the train.

The music was loud, and slowly but surely most people started dancing! It was easier than you’d think to dance on the moving train, though whenever there was a sudden jolt it was just another reason for everyone dancing to yell and cheer. There were a few people who chose to just sit through the entire experience. It kind of reminded me of a high school dance in that way – slow to get going, with some people sitting off to the side the entire time.

Here’s DJ Rob doing his thing:

Most of the dancing happened as we passed through a station. People on the platform would look at the train with bewilderment, and occasionally someone would give a thumbs up or clap. Faces filled with confusion just made everyone on the train dance and cheer even more! It became pretty obvious who among us were the exhibitionists. Here’s what it looked like for someone on the platform:

Unsurprisingly, the best part of the trip was the underground portion where it was darker. Tinted windows, dimmed lights, and some…uh, lubricant…would have made the dance party more like a dance party and less like a bunch of people moving around on the train! Maybe I’m just getting old.

That said, it was still a lot of fun. I absolutely love the concept of taking the LRT, normally seen as somewhat mundane (trains just get you from A to B), and using it for a completely different purpose. I think everyone enjoyed themselves! Obviously ETS doesn’t normally charter trains for this purpose, but I think they could if they wanted to. It’s certainly a unique experience!

You can see more photos here, and see more videos here.

Leading the Way: 2011 Youth Summit on Sustainable Transportation

By Mack D. Male · May 7, 2011 at 9:04am

This weekend at the Lister Conference Centre on the University of Alberta campus, about 56 youth from across the prairies and territories are gathered to learn about and discuss public transit and sustainable transportation. Leading the Way is the first regional summit to take place in Canada, other chapters of the Canadian Urban Transit Association will follow suit with their own events later this year.

The conference kicked off last night with opening remarks from Charles Stolte, Manager of Edmonton Transit and Chair of the Canadian Urban Transit Association. He welcomed everyone and shared a few anecdotes from his many years of transit experience. We also heard from Kevin Joll, Manager of Red Deer Transit. He talked about the organizations Vision 2040, an initiative to define the role of public transit in Canada for a 30-year time horizon. He shared this video with us:

Next up was our keynote speaker, Edmonton City Councillor Don Iveson. He spoke about “making a difference” and shared some of his experiences with bringing the U-Pass to life. He had four main pieces of advice for delegates:

Make a strong argument.
Be patient.
Have fun.
Walk the talk.

He noted that it takes time for public transit projects to happen, so even if you make a strong argument you need to be patient. Having fun can help you be patient, and there’s no better way to destroy a strong argument than to not walk the talk!

His slides were fantastic, and contained lots of little nuggets:

“You come out ahead when you invest in public transit.”
If everyone around the world lived the way we do in Edmonton, we’d need about 4 planet Earths to sustain ourselves.
A bus with 12 people is a better investment than a Prius with 4 people. LRT, of course, is even better.

He closed with his popular video on transportation that uses Lego!

The rest of the evening was devoted to brainstorming on the six major questions posted to delegates. The questions align with Vision 2040, and by the end of the weekend each group is going to have a pitch ready to make in a Lion’s Lair competition. It should be interesting to see what everyone comes up with!

The conference runs all weekend, and includes tours of the D.L. MacDonald LRT Garage and the new LEED-certified Centennial Garage. There’s also going to be a dance party on a chartered LRT car! You can follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #LTWSummit. I’ll be posting photos of the event here.

TechDays 2010: Edmonton

By Mack D. Male · October 6, 2010 at 2:54pm

This year Microsoft finally brought TechDays, its Canadian technical training conference, to Edmonton. Some of us had been asking Microsoft to add our city to the cross-Canada tour for a while, and when enough people spoke up, they listened. And it paid off too. Initially Microsoft was expecting 250-300 people to register for the Edmonton event, but we blew that out of the water! Nearly 500 people registered! And judging by the large crowds, I’d say that most of those people attended too (it’s probably quite uncommon pay the registration fee and then not attend).

There is always criticism of the sessions offered at TechDays, but I think they had a decent mix this time around. Lots of introductory stuff I suppose, but that seemed to match the makeup of the audience. The addition of the Local Flavours track was a good start toward including some more diverse content as well. I was the track host for the “Optimizing the Development Process” track, and I did two presentations of my own.

My first presentation was Top 10 Mistakes in Unit Testing, adapted from a similar talk that was done at TechEd. The goal of the session was really to get people thinking about the little things that can help them be more successful with unit testing. I included three demos: a simple MS Test demo, a more involved demo using Ninject and Moq, and finally a demo showing JavaScript unit testing. Here are some resources for the session:

For my second presentation, I teamed up with Devin Serink to present A More Programmable World with OData. We talked about open data in general, about the work the City of Edmonton is doing, and then showed how easy it is to create and consume OData services. We spiced things up by using some PHP and Google Charts in the demos! Here are some resources for the session:

I thought both talks went well, and I hope people found them useful!

Given the success of the inaugural TechDays in Edmonton, I’m sure they’ll be back again next year. You can follow along as TechDays continues to travel across the country using #techdays_ca on Twitter.

Joey wrote about Day 1 here, and you can see the rest of my photos here.

Heritage, Innovation & the Livable City: A Heritage of Local Food

By Mack D. Male · October 3, 2010 at 6:48pm

The final session at the Edmonton Heritage Council’s symposium was on the heritage of local food. I thought it was a great idea to include a topic like food, something we don’t always associate with heritage, though obviously it makes sense to do so. The session was moderated by Liane Faulder, and panelists included Kathryn Chase Merrett, Jessie Radies, and Patricia Myers.

How might the history of local food production and marketing in Edmonton relate to people’s contemporary interest in local food? This session will discuss how this history connects to current concerns and developments on sustainable food systems.

Here are my notes:

In addition to moderating, Liane was also a panelist. She started by sharing some recent local food stories. She talked about three local producers: Donna & Bohdan Borody (The Jam Lady), May Ellen & Andreas Grueneberg (Greens, Eggs & Ham), and Gordon Visser (Norbest Farms). She also mentioned the Culina family of restaurants.
Liane noted the recent desire that many people have to reconnect with their food producers. She also talked about the importance and popularity of farmers’ markets, saying “the farmers market is the new church”.
Kathryn, who has literally written the book on the history of the Edmonton City Market, talked a lot about her view that food is a big part of what makes a city livable.
It might be hard to visualize but from 1900 until 1965, market square was where the current Stanley Milner library sits.
She said the market has not always been seen as a positive thing in Edmonton, at least not by those in power. Old city councils viewed it negatively, and tried a number of times to displace it. Nothing has ever really worked though, because citizens and food producers have always loved the market.
Kathryn also touched on foods which used to be plentiful in Edmonton, such as strawberries. She read a passage from an 1894 Edmonton Bulletin article that described the “crimson trail” left behind as you walked, because there were so many strawberries.
To Kathryn, a livable city is one that can feed all of its people, but which also takes the time to enjoy and to share.
Jessie recounted her experiences of growing up on the farm, describing the various skills she learned, such as canning. It was a great story.
She also talked about her recent work with Original Fare and Live Local. She said that both the local and global food systems are necessary, and must be strong.
Patricia collects antique cookbooks and shared some of the reasons behind her hobby.
She said she doesn’t care so much about having particular editions, but she loves acquiring different books to see what she can learn from them.
Patricia said she views the cookbook as a repository of women’s history. Typically cookbooks are dismissed as historical works, and Patricia is trying to change that.
She said you can learn about the technology and cultural norms through the cookbooks. For example, she said books that contain lots of sandwich filling recipes were likely from a time when picnics, fundraisers, and other activities were quite common.

I was really intrigued by Patricia’s idea that you can trace technology through the cookbooks. It made me wonder what else is out there that we don’t typically think of as being important heritage pieces.

Heritage, Innovation & the Livable City: Edmonton’s (Lost) Spaces, Places, & Neighbourhoods

By Mack D. Male · October 3, 2010 at 6:19pm

This session sounded interesting and I was hoping it would provide me a neat list of places to check out. That didn’t happen, unfortunately, but I still learned quite a few things. The panelists included: Tyler Dixon, intern architect with ziola newstudio architects; David Holdsworth, one of the two heritage planners at the City of Edmonton; and Ken Tingley, Edmonton’s first historian laureate.

Edmonton could be described as a city in the habit of remaking itself. As a result, historic spaces, places and events are obscured, lost or ignored. Panelists will discuss this heritage of “remaking” and what has been ignored, overlooked or misunderstood and how it might be reclaimed.

Here are my notes:

Ken started by showing pictures of early Edmonton and describing the disappearance of First Nations people from the urban setting.
He described an effort in 1911 to eliminate First Nations as an attraction from western exhibitions, something Edmonton complied with the following year.
Ken also talked about some of racial incidents from our past, such as when local hotel and restaurants banded together to get rid of non-white labour.
David spent most of his time talking about heritage areas. The City of Edmonton has just three official heritage areas: Westmount, 104 Street, and Whyte Avenue.
Heritage areas must have regulations and guidelines for development, must allow new or alternative uses, and must have community support.
David described the Edmonton trend of breaking from the past – tearing down the old to make way for the new.
He showed one slide with photos of what looked like the same house, except that each photo was from a different city, all around the world. David say that both now and 100 years ago, there’s not much architecture unique to Edmonton.
Much of his discussion centered around “theming” and whether that is a good thing or not. Think of the warehouse buildings on 104 Street for instance, and how the new Icon towers were built to mimic that design.
David said he never asks for duplication, but wants to prevent building another “anywhere place”.
The Edmonton Design Committee will be considering the 81 Avenue area as another potential heritage area (most of the buildings there have false facades).
Tyler talked about aging and the stories that aging buildings can tell.
He also touched on urban sprawl, saying Edmonton is filled with holes (parking lots), and that the boom-bust cycle has nudged us toward certain building materials and styles.
Tyler was much less enthusiastic about the theming David talked about, saying he fears it leads to “just-add-water” instant heritage.
Ken had said during his talk that Edmonton is caught between progress and nostalgia. Tyler picked up on that, and said that both can be beautiful.

I thought David’s introduction to heritage areas was really good, and that’s a topic I’ll likely try to follow-up on. Another thing that was discussed that I didn’t mention in my notes was the importance of intangible heritage. After all, out of sight, out of mind.

Heritage, Innovation & the Livable City: A Northern City

By Mack D. Male · October 2, 2010 at 5:41pm

There were three concurrent panel sessions this morning, which means we had to choose. I ended up going to the one called A Northern City. The panelists included: Rod Macleod, retired professor of History & Classics at the University of Alberta; Mark Nuttall, professor and Henry Marshall Tory Chair in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta; and Heather Zwicker, associate professor of English at the University of Alberta.

Tagged as the “Gateway to the North”, Edmonton has also been described as “a northern city of art and ideas”. Yet its northernness is often overlooked in understanding the city and region, as well as its connection to the “south” and other northern places.

As someone who grew up primarily in Inuvik, NT, this panel caught my eye. I was quite familiar with the idea of Edmonton as “a northern gateway to the south” – something the panelists talked about. Here are my notes:

Rod started by highlighting the two things that we think about as a northern city. The first, climate, gets a lot of attention. The second, isolation, is something we think about far less. Rod says to draw a 500km circle around northern cities. With the exception of Edmonton and Moscow, you’ll find lots of other places in those circles.
Despite the creation of the rival city of Strathcona, the construction of the railroad from Calgary had surprisingly little effect on our northern orientation, according to Rod.
He talked at length about our history as a transportation hub more than a trading post, noting that the air freight industry was practically invented here. He talked about the arrival of the airplane, and how it replicated the region’s previous economy: bringing furs south, taking supplies north.
Something to look up: the Aerosmith map of 1832, which has great detail north of Edmonton but not much south.
Rod suggested that while “facing north” has made us culturally self-sufficient, being a part of the northern frontier has ingrained in Edmonton a reluctance to plan and build for the long-term.
Mark picked up here, nothing that although there are lots of places further north than us on the globe, northernness actually has very little to do with latitude.
He noted that in Canada, the term “north” has often been synonymous with “marginalized”. That’s not the case in other places. He also observed that as places develop, “north” seems to move further north. When a Walmart arrives in Whitehorse, is still the north?
Mark finished by discussing the Arctic Council and how the north is becoming centre stage, thanks to climate change and other global issues. Canada assumes the chair of the council in three years, which provides an opportunity for Edmonton.
Heather discussed the literature surrounding Edmonton as a northern city, starting with Alice Major’s Contemplating the City, and Erin Knight’s Bribing the Boundary God.
She said the river plays a key role in most of the literature, either positively or negatively – is the river an obstacle, or a way in and out of the city?
I thought the notion of Edmonton as “the cosmopolitan north” was quite interesting. Heather said the notion of “cosmopolitan” is up for grabs, saying that “Brooklyn is the new Manhattan”.

Another interesting concept came up in the questions. Mark had said that before moving to Edmonton, he had never lived away from the sea. And while Edmonton doesn’t have a traditional port, we are something of a “port city” thanks to Fort McMurray and other northern communities. I immediately thought of the Port Alberta initiative as well.

What I took away from the session is that being a northern city is much more a mindset than anything else. There are physical elements of course, but it’s the intangible part of being in “the north” that has probably had the biggest impact on Edmonton’s development.

Heritage, Innovation & the Livable City: The Future of History in Edmonton

By Mack D. Male · October 2, 2010 at 1:00pm

The keynote address this morning at the Edmonton Heritage Council’s first symposium was delivered, fittingly, by Edmonton’s first Historian Laureate, Ken Tingley. Titled The Future of History in Edmonton, Ken’s talk introduced a number of the topics that would be discussed throughout the symposium. It was immediately followed by “20 questions” from Linda Goyette, a sort of response that really got people thinking!

Ken talked quite a bit about the “old timer’s” and the impact they have had on the preservation of Edmonton’s history. He pointed out that although their early efforts to preserve our local history were valuable, they were often done for self-congratulatory or other selfish reasons. Linda picked up on this, asking: “Who gets to tell Edmonton’s stories? Which are excluded and which are preserved?”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Ken pointed out that history in Edmonton has always been linked to the idea of progress and to the march of civilization onward. This has had a number of impacts, not all of them positive, and Ken mentioned the way people native to the area were treated when settlers arrived as one specific example. Linda touched on this as well, and said the Rossdale lands should be the site of the proposed civic museum, an idea that garnered lots of applause.

At one point, Ken mentioned the idea that instead of “gateway to the north” we should be known as “Gibraltar of the north”. A quick search reveals that Luxembourg has already claimed that title! Linda had a quite a number of memorable comments herself, such as the idea that we should start protecting modern buildings for the future now, just as we sometimes defend our built heritage (she made it clear that we often don’t do enough).

Technology wasn’t really mentioned in the opening sessions, except for Linda asking why the complete Fort Edmonton history still hasn’t been digitized. If we’re going to be more innovative about how we preserve and share our history, I think technology is going to be key.

Ken closed his remarks with a bit of a challenge, stating that the presentation of our local history is getting more sophisticated, and could be just as innovative as other parts of urban culture. Linda’s final question complemented that idea quite nicely: “How can we work together?” Though she was referring mainly to the heritage workers in the room, I think that question applies to Edmontonians more broadly as well.

Heritage, Innovation & the Livable City: Spying on E-Town

By Mack D. Male · October 1, 2010 at 9:43pm

Tonight was the kickoff of the Edmonton Heritage Council’s first ever community symposium, called Heritage, Innovation & the Livable City (on ShareEdmonton). I came across the event online a few weeks ago, and thought it would be really interesting and likely very educational. Here is the EHC’s introduction to the symposium:

“Heritage”, “innovation” and “livability” are terms not often used in relation to each other. To many people, interest in heritage seems contrary to the spirit of innovation and has little currency in the pace of urban life.

This inaugural symposium brings together community members, heritage organizations and engaging speakers to explore how Edmonton’s unique heritage has shaped—and is shaping— the city and region.

Linda Goyette was our keynote speaker this evening. She delivered a very spirited talk entitled Spying on E-Town. Linda took us on a journey across Edmonton, pointing out well-known features like the High Level Bridge as well as lesser known ones, such as the many statues around the city that help to tell the story of Edmonton. Along the way she highlighted and paid tribute to the many archivists, historians, and other heritage workers, some of whom were in the room, that ensure Edmonton’s history is not forgotten.

I wrote down a few notes from Linda’s talk to follow up on:

There are 23 distinct museums in Edmonton, but no civic museum.
A book that caught my eye, because of the subtitle as well as the publication date (2009) – Aboriginal Edmonton: A Statistics Story.
Ian Mulder, an artist responsible for many murals throughout the city. He has apparently just relocated to Toronto, unfortunately.
The City of Edmonton Archives recently hired someone dedicated to the digital side of things. Anyone have any further details?
Christian Nelson’s 3D models of Edmonton buildings are really neat and take advantage of modern technology, but they too are a form of digital preservation.

Tomorrow starts with a keynote address from Ken Tingley, Edmonton’s first historian laureate. I’m looking forward to it!

Recap: Tech·Ed North America 2010 Day 4

By Mack D. Male · June 11, 2010 at 11:26pm

Yesterday was the final day of TechEd North America 2010 and the start of a max exodus of geeks out of New Orleans (they’re hard to miss wearing the official TechEd backpacks or other clothing emblazoned with tech company logos). I’m sure some people skipped the final day, but it still seemed pretty full. As you can see in this video I recorded mid-afternoon, many people were still attending the final sessions:

After a leisurely morning, John and I attended Mark Russinovich’s session on Pushing the Limits of Windows. Mark is one of just a handful Technical Fellows at Microsoft, and probably knows more about how Windows works internally than anyone else. As expected, Mark packed one of the larger auditoriums at the convention centre. He didn’t strike me as a natural-born presenter, but I still very much enjoyed his talk (and learned quite a lot). As John remarked on the way out, “my brain hurts.”

I couldn’t resist attending the Coding4Fun session in the afternoon, titled Learn Windows Phone 7 Development by Creating a Robotic T-Shirt Cannon. Daniel Fernandez and Clint Rutkas walked us through how they built a Windows Phone 7 app to control the robot (affectionately named Betty) that debuted at Mix back in March. Along the way, they shot out a few dozen t-shirts and weren’t afraid to show off the robot’s capabilities! Here is a video I recorded of the robot in action:

It was a fun way to get some exposure to Windows Phone 7 development. If you’ve never checked out Coding4Fun before, you really should! You can find the source code for the app they built here.

The final session I attended at TechEd was Programming AppFabric: Moving Microsoft .NET to the Cloud, presented by Pluralsight’s Aaron Skonnard and Keith Brown. Despite progressing a little slowly at times, I thought the talk was fantastic. In particular, the way Aaron started it was memorable. He fired up a console app running on his laptop and asked everyone with Internet-connected devices in the audience to hit a public URL. Immediately requests started appearing on the screen, prompting the very distinctive “how did he do that” murmurs among everyone in the room (turns out it is the magic of the AppFabric Service Bus).

TechEd officially finished with a large party in the evening at Mardi Gras World. Buses took thousands of geeks to and from the event, which featured a number of live bands, magicians, jugglers, palm readers, and an Xbox gaming room, among other things. It was fun to just walk around the party, taking in the sights and sounds.