Why 2012 is going to be a big year for Startup Edmonton

By Mack D. Male · January 4, 2012 at 7:37pm

I can’t believe it has been nearly four years since Edmonton’s first DemoCamp took place! Who could have imagined, on that winter evening in the dungeon-like basement of the University of Alberta’s School of Business building, that sixteen DemoCamps would take place over the subsequent years. But they have, and they are still as popular as ever, regularly drawing 200 people from a wide variety of communities – entrepreneurs, programmers, designers, investors, and lots of others. DemoCamp Edmonton 17 is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, January 18 – don’t miss it!

I also never imagined that DemoCamp would eventually lead to Startup Edmonton, but I’m glad it has. Ken, Cam, Sam, and Tiffany recognized that DemoCamp was actually part of something bigger, and they decided to do something about it.

We help connect creators, innovators and entrepreneurs to start and scale bold new ideas through events, mentorship, workspace, and accelerators. Our vision is to make Edmonton a hotbed for creativity and entrepreneurship. Our mission is to amplify creative innovation and activate startups. Our goal is to invest in 500 creative entrepreneurs over the next 5 years.

DemoCamp helped showed us that Edmonton is full of smart, talented, creative people with really innovative ideas. But having an idea is not enough – you need to take action. That’s where Startup Edmonton comes in.

The organization has been around for a while now, organizing events like Launch Party and TEDxEdmonton in addition to DemoCamp, but it became much more official on December 5. That’s the date Startup Edmonton turned into a fully-fledged non-profit company. Here is the board of directors:

Todd Babiak – Co-Founder, Story Engine Inc.
Brad Ferguson – CEO, Strategy Summit Ltd.
Veer Gidwaney – CEO, DailyFeats.com
Chris LaBossiere – Co-CEO, Yardstick Software
Chris Lumb – CEO, TEC Edmonton
Mack Male – Co-Founder, Paramagnus Developments Inc.
Gregg Oldring – Co-Founder, Mailout Interactive / Inkdit
David Quail – Co-Founder, Attassa
Darin Rayburn – Executive Vice President, Melcor Developments
Kevin Swan – Principal, iNovia Capital
Sheetal Mehta Walsh – Founder/CEO, Shanti Microfinance

Though not everyone could attend the first meeting in person, there was great energy in the room as we went through introductions and got down to business. Here is our management team:

Ken Bautista – CEO
Tiffany Linke-Boyko – COO
Cam Linke – Director of Product/Community
Sam Jenkins – Director of Development
Edwin Radke – Controller

Rock stars, each and every one of them!

The year ahead

Ken and the team spent countless hours last year planning, networking, connecting, pitching, building – basically doing all of the things a startup needs to do. They’ve put a solid foundation in place, and they’re the right team to drive the organization forward. With the help of our founding partners, I really feel like Startup Edmonton is going to make a big splash in 2012.

The investment ecosystem in Edmonton (and Alberta) is pretty good at funding things that already have momentum, but there’s a serious lack of viable products flowing into that funding pipeline. Yet we know from DemoCamp and other events and initiatives that there is no lack of ideas. How can we get people with ideas to turn into entrepreneurs with fundable products? That’s the challenge that Startup Edmonton will tackle. Here’s how:

Inspire – DemoCamp and other events to bring the community together
Create – Hackathons, Startup Weekend, and other events focused on prototyping
Accelerate – Incubator for early stage tech startups to rapidly take their prototypes to the next level

Startup Edmonton is already pretty good at “Inspire” and efforts related to “Create” are ramping up, but it’s “Accelerate” where things will get really interesting this year. The tech accelerator program is called Flightpath, and it will invest in up to 30 early stage software/digital media startups over the next three years. These are small financial investments, but combined with mentorship, learning, and networking opportunities, the goal is to help startups make meaningful progress in a short period of time. To turn more ideas to into fundable products.

You will of course see more DemoCamps, Startup Weekends, Launch Parties, and other events in 2012. But you’ll also see the startup space that was teased a couple of months ago – a physical space downtown “where geeks, entrepreneurs, and creatives collide.” You’ll see more opportunities to share your knowledge and to learn from others. You’ll see the launch of Flightpath and the first class of startups. You’ll see a more concerted effort to build awareness of startups in Edmonton.

And I think you’ll start to see that creative entrepreneurs and Edmonton’s future are beautifully intertwined.

It’s going to be a great year – get connected!

June is Next Gen Month in Edmonton

By Mack D. Male · May 13, 2011 at 1:00pm

Last night at the Muttart Conservatory, Edmonton’s NextGen relaunched its website and brand and, along with partners in the “little-n” next gen community, launched Next Gen Month. I think the situation here in Edmonton is rather unique – local next gen organizations are actively working together to make Edmonton a better place. There’s collaboration, rather than competition. Edmonton’s NextGen committee has done some great work recently to get all of the organizations connected and meeting regularly, and I think is starting to see itself more as a hub. That doesn’t mean that NextGen will stop pursuing its own events and initiatives, but there’s a growing awareness that one organization simply can’t represent the entire next gen community.

The big news from last night is that June is going to be Next Gen Month in Edmonton. The idea came about as organizers in the next gen community realized there’s a lot of stuff happening next month. Mayor Stephen Mandel and Councillor Don Iveson were in attendance last night to make the official proclamation:

Whereas, the City of Edmonton is dedicated to supporting young, passionate, community-minded individuals who are taking the future into their own hands by creating a city that attracts and gives voice to the next generation of Edmontonians;

And whereas, through events, leadership and professional development opportunities, next generation organizations are working together to foster young leaders and help provide critical input as the city continues to grow;

And whereas, the City of Edmonton recognizes the efforts of next gen organizations who are actively working to connect people, places, community and ideas together;

And whereas, all Edmontonians are encouraged to participate in activities hosted by next gen organizations through the month of June;

Therefore, I, Mayor Stephen Mandel, do hereby proclaim June 2011, as “Next Gen Month” in Edmonton, Alberta’s capital city.

As you can see, Edmonton’s NextGen now has a new, colorful logo. It was designed by Darren Tonn, Ryan Kelly, and Dennis Lenarduzzi of the Ad Club of Edmonton. They shared some of the design elements and rationale behind the new logo at last night’s event. It wasn’t immediately apparent to me, but if you focus on the blue lines you should see an “unfinished e”, designed to represent the fact that NextGen is still building in Edmonton. I think it does a much better job of conveying what NextGen is all about. You can see their presentation on the logo here.

The new logo is featured prominently on NextGen’s new website. Credit for the new site goes to Ashley Casovan, Devin Serink, Lisa Hagen, and Greg Crossfield, who all worked really hard to bring their vision to life. The site features a much-improved Committee page, a photo gallery, a news feed with blog posts from partners, an event calendar, and more. I had a hand in that last one – the event calendar and list of upcoming events is powered by ShareEdmonton! There’s obviously room for improvement, but the new site is a solid platform for the committee to build upon.

I’m encouraged by the things our next gen community is working on, and by the fact that we’re all working together. There’s a lot of work still be done, but I think we’re heading in the right direction. It seems that hyperbole abounds whenever one talks about the next gen community, but I really do think that we can make a difference here in Edmonton!

I think it’s fair to say that it was “the usual crowd” in attendance last night. For a launch event, I think that’s okay, but it’s definitely a challenge the next gen community will need to address moving forward. With somewhere around 265,000 Edmontonians in the target demographic (18-40) there’s a lot of people that we haven’t yet connected with. On that note, check out the event calendar, get involved, and tell a friend!

You can see more photos from last night’s event here.

More than just email: Google Apps goes live at the University of Alberta

By Mack D. Male · March 21, 2011 at 10:00am

Today officials at the University of Alberta will flip the proverbial switch and 40,000 students will get access to the university’s deployment of Google Apps for Education, a significant milestone for a journey that began back in November 2008. The U of A’s move to Gmail has been talked about for quite some time, but the switch is about more than just email. This is an important step toward building the IT campus of the future – a mobile, connected community of staff, students, faculty, and alumni.

Our goal is to create the most mobile, connected academic community in Canada: anyone, anywhere, any time.

You can learn more about the broader vision here in PDF.

When Academic Information & Communication Technologies (AICT) was given the task of examining the University of Alberta’s email systems, they didn’t realize just how unwieldy email on campus had become over the years. With more than 80 mail servers spread across campus supporting nearly 150,000 accounts, it was definitely becoming difficult to audit, manage, and support. Six months after they began looking into the issue, AICT started exploring Gmail. In September 2009 the University of Alberta began legal discussions with Google, and over the next year negotiated the various contracts. There were lots of very valid concerns about privacy and security, and the university tackled those head on. There is no data mining, and there are no ads under the agreements that were finally signed in December 2010 (PDF).

Jason Cobb, Issues & Communication Manager to the VPs at the University of Alberta, explained some of the driving forces behind the migration to Google Apps. Improving the quality of the experience was really important, as was improving security. The shift will enable the university to reduce infrastructure costs, which should lead to some broader cost savings (he noted that no positions would be lost) and some productivity gains, as the mundane task of managing email can now be removed. “Most importantly, we’re trying to be transformational, not just transitional,” Jason told me. That means enabling collaboration in ways that just weren’t possible without a system like Google Apps. That’s why the U of A is adopting the full suite of apps, rather than just Gmail.

Other universities around the world have adopted Google Apps for Education of course, but the U of A is definitely one of the biggest to take on a project of this scope. Many other Canadian universities are now understandably interested in following the U of A’s lead (and Google is no doubt keen to see that happen as well). You can bet they’ll be paying close attention to the rollout.

The 80 mail servers that AICT identified are generally broken up by subdomain. Central Mail refers to the default @ualberta.ca account that all students receive, while many faculties and departments have managed their own email on separate servers, with addresses such as @cs.ualberta.ca (for the Computing Sciences department). The switch today starts with Central Mail. Students will follow a simple three-step process to convert their email to Gmail.

The first step is to understand and agree to the terms and conditions. The second step is to activate the Google Apps account, which will cause all new email sent to the student’s email account to appear in Gmail rather than in Central Mail. And the third step is to migrate any old emails into the new system (a process which can take a few hours). Students retain the exact same @ualberta.ca email address, and automatically get access to the other pieces of Google Apps such as Calendar, Documents, Chat, Groups, and more. They have the choice of switching for now – in October, Central Mail is scheduled to become read-only and students will have to switch at that point.

After completing the switch and logging in, students will be presented with the “launch pad” that will serve as the entry-point to Gmail and the other apps. When Simon Collier, Network Administrator with AICT, demoed the system for me last week, he wasn’t quite sure what to show! It really is just Gmail. The only differences are the University of Alberta logo and the lack of ads (it looks like there are one-line ads above the inbox, but those are actually RSS feeds…AICT chose to leave them enabled so that students have the option of turning the feature on or off).

The U of A has done some interesting things to make this happen. They’ve implemented single sign on, which has been rolled out for BearTracks as well. This means that Google never actually gets the user’s password, they just get a one-way hash. Security remains entirely within the University of Alberta. AICT has also done some work to make the migration process possible. Initially, they tested a migration tool hosted by Google and calculated that it would take two and a half years to migrate everything! That was unacceptable obviously, so they found another way. Now the university hosts the migration tool, and they estimate it would take just two to three weeks to migrate everything. How much data are we talking? As of mid-February, Central Mail was home to more than 228 million messages, taking up approximately 30 terabytes of space!

The next phase of the project is to migrate the other mail servers. It’s a more difficult task, because there is more business process involved. The migration will start right away with a staggered list based on failing hardware, age of hardware, business needs, and other factors. The goal is to have the vast majority of users migrated to Google Apps within a year, and to have everything completely migrated within 18 months.

The new system supports collaboration in a variety of ways. One of the simplest features is auto-complete on the “to” line when composing an email. Start typing a name and you’ll see matches from the entire campus directory! Likewise, you can now pull up anyone’s free/busy status in the calendar, which Jason emphasized will make scheduling meetings much simpler than in the past. The ability to share and edit documents using Google Docs is another big win for collaboration, especially given the new discussion features that Google recently introduced.

It’s not hard to see how this can be expanded in the future. Closer integration with BearTracks is something AICT is working on, so you can imagine registering for your courses and having your calendar get updated automatically. Perhaps students could be added to automatically created Groups for each of their courses. There’s a lot of opportunity to build atop the platform, and work is already underway to examine the possibilities.

The move to Gmail and Google Apps is a big deal, but it really is just the beginning. This is an initial step to better position the University of Alberta for the future:

We can’t be evolutionary in the changes that need to happen to our core IT infrastructure; we must be revolutionary. We must position ourselves to support the mobile, connected IT campus of the not-so-distant future, else we run the risk of being regarded as increasingly irrelevant to the needs of our students, staff and faculty.

It’s exciting to see the University of Alberta moving so boldly to make this vision a reality!

UPDATE: Here’s the official U of A post on the switch.

UPDATE2: Here’s the official Google Enterprise post on the adoption of Google Apps.

Edmonton’s future leaders

By Mack D. Male · July 26, 2010 at 4:30pm

Today in the Edmonton Sun, Marty Forbes asked where Edmonton’s future leaders are. I found the article via the edmontonian, and was happy to see that Jeff mentioned a few people in response. Here are the key excerpts from Marty’s article:

The one thing that vaults a city from good to great is its people, and over the past few months several great Edmontonians have served notice that they are retiring from their high-profile gigs here in town.

All are moving on soon and I wonder "who is going to fill their shoes?"

The part that scares me is that I’m not seeing a huge list of young dynamic people stepping in to fill many of the big jobs and needs in the community.

Now I’m sure the next generation of leaders are out there somewhere. I’d love to hear from you if you know such a dynamo so that we could start recognizing these folks in the media.

We need dreamers, builders, rule breakers, risk takers and leaders to take this city up yet another notch towards greatness. The mantle is officially being tossed.

I want to first point out that you don’t need to hold a “high-profile gig” to be a leader. Maybe that’s why Marty hasn’t heard of any upcoming leaders. The next generation generally doesn’t care for suits, invitation only events, old boys clubs, or any of the traditional places you’d find “leaders”. There are plenty of places to find them, however. Here’s a small list to get Marty and everyone else like him started:

I really don’t think the next generation of leaders is hard to find. There are lots of them, getting things done and working hard to make our city a better place in which to live. Here’s a list of the first 75 I could think of (in alphabetical order):

Alex Abboud, Trevor Anderson, Justin Archer, Jerry Aulenbach, Ken Bautista, Myron Belej, Tamison Bencz-Knight, Mark Bennett, Chris Bolivar, Nathan Box, Michael Brechtel, Will Buchkowsky, Brandy Burdeniuk, Marc Carnes, Stephani Carter, Ashley Casovan, Christine Causing, Reg Cheramy, Josh Classen, Dave Cournoyer, Xanthe Couture, Matthew Dance, Jas Darrah, Mark Donovan, Michael Donovan, Janaya Ellis, Cindy Fulton, Bretta Gerecke, Tad Hargrave, Elisse Heine, Chris Henderson, Scott Hennig, Alistair Henning, Christel Hyshka, Elaine Hyshka, Don Iveson, Todd Janes, Michael Janz, Sam Jenkins, Ryan Jespersen, Shafraaz Kaba, Alistair King, Duncan Kinney, Chris LaBossiere, Brittney LeBlanc, Cam Linke, Raffaella Loro, Shauna McConechy, Jess McMullin, Roberto Moreno, James Murgatroyd, Christian Nelson, Monique Nutter, Gregg Oldring, Jason Openo, Roland Pemberton, Darryl Plunkie, Jessie Radies, Adam Rozenhart, Zohreh Saher, Jeff Samsonow, Mari Sasano, Jordan Schroder, Amy Shostak, Gene Smith, Tamara Stecyk, Kevin Swan, Asia Szkudlarek, Daniel Tse, Zoe Todd, Brendan Van Alstine, Cary Williams, Marlon Wilson, Sharon Yeo, Mike Zouhri

They’re all passionate about different things, but together, they’re having a big impact on our city. And this is just a small list! I do my best to keep up on who’s doing what in Edmonton, but there are so many other communities that I have no connection with that are full of emerging leaders. There’s definitely no shortage of next generation leaders in Edmonton.

So Marty, I hope that gets you started. I look forward to you “recognizing these folks in the media”. And maybe next time you’ll match the effort they put in by doing more than simply asking your audience to do the work for you.

It’s impossible to make a list like this 100% complete – sorry if I missed you – so add your favorite up-and-coming leaders in the comments below (something that the Edmonton Sun article is sorely lacking). Thanks!

Restless in Edmonton? Stop complaining, start creating

By Mack D. Male · January 4, 2010 at 11:00am

Yesterday’s front page story in the Edmonton Journal suggests that Edmonton in 2010 is at a tipping point (forget for the moment that this almost certainly is not the first “tipping point” our city has faced). That this is the year in which we decide to be “a big, sprawling town or to move ahead as a city with real urban living.” And that if we don’t make the right choice, our “ambitious, educated and interesting 30-something professionals” will leave for greener pastures. Active Connect2Edmonton member Ian O’Donnell is featured in the story, and he says that the 30-somethings are getting restless.

Why does “getting restless” always have to mean leaving for Vancouver, Toronto, or Calgary? If you want to leave, I say: good luck! I’d rather have NextGen-ers in Edmonton who want to be a part of something great. NextGen-ers who don’t complain when they see something they don’t like, they go and do something about it. NextGen-ers who want to help transform Edmonton into a world class city.

We need people like William Buchkowsky and Nathan McQuay. They felt their options for connecting with other young business professionals in the city were limited, so they created Emerging Business Leaders. At least 50 people now meet regularly each month.

We need people like Raffaella Loro. She wanted a city government that was more open and accessible, so she championed the Transforming Edmonton blog to help make it happen. The blog is a fantastic complement to the City’s other online activities.

We need people like Dave Cournoyer, Justin Archer, and Michael Janz. They, along with many others, wanted to have a conversation about re-imagining government and citizenship in the age of participation. They brought ChangeCamp to Edmonton, an event attended by hundreds of Edmontonians in person and online.

We need people like Ken Bautista, Cary Williams, and Michael Brechtel. They are passionate about the creative economy in Edmonton, and recognized that strong creative and artistic communities are important for prosperous cities. They brought artsScene to Edmonton, an organization that connects young professionals with the arts, culture, and creative organizations of Edmonton.

We need people like Mark Donovan, Cam Linke, and Kevin Swan. All are very involved in the local tech scene with things like DemoCamp, and all have experience with technology startups. They recognized a lack of support for local startups, and have created Startup Edmonton to do something about it. The organization will help to ensure that next gen talent builds successful local companies that make it past the seed stage.

These are just a few of the incredible NextGen-ers making a difference in Edmonton. There are many others too, such as the members of Avenue Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40, and the members of Edmonton Next Gen (who have brought Pecha Kucha to Edmonton, among other things).

Downtown is an opportunity!

Much of the article focuses on downtown, in a negative way. I’m not going to try to convince you that we have an amazing downtown, because I agree that there’s a lot of room for improvement. But I see that as an opportunity, not as a problem. There are some incredible things on the horizon for downtown Edmonton, and increasingly it is a focus for organizations like EEDC. NextGen-ers need to educate themselves and then work to ensure our city’s decision makers follow through. Small efforts really can have a big impact – I think the City Centre Airport debate is proof of that.

We have the capacity in Edmonton to be world class. All we have to do is stop complaining and start creating.

You can read more reaction to the story in the comments and at Connect2Edmonton.

Thoughts on Edmonton 2030

By Mack D. Male · October 12, 2009 at 11:15am

A video entitled “Edmonton 2030 – It’s Our Time” is being broadcast on Global and Citytv today. It was first shown to students at Edmonton Public and Catholic schools on May 20th, and was broadcast on Access on May 23rd. Here’s what it is about:

The video links the ideas of the leaders of our major organizations and institutions with the hopes, dreams, and imagination of Edmonton’s youth. Edmonton 2030 is a provocative teaser that challenges us to consider the many positive attributes of our city and how we might imagine them in the future. It reminds us that the decisions and plans of today are creating the Edmonton our young people will inherit tomorrow.

You can watch the video online at Access.

It’s related in some way to Edmonton Stories, though how isn’t quite clear. The video was developed independently by Doug Goss and was produced by Don Metz of Aquila Productions. Funding and other contributions came from the City of Edmonton, the University of Alberta, NAIT, MacEwan, the Province of Alberta, and Alberta Health Services. Craig Simpson narrates and hosts the 24 minute video.

Doug Goss is more than just an Edmonton-based lawyer (with Bryan and Company). He’s a passionate and extremely involved Edmontonian. Doug is Chairman of the NAIT Board of Governors, Chairman of the Edmonton Eskimos Board of Directors, Chairman of the Edmonton Oilers Community Foundation Board of Directors, Co-Chair of the 2010 Grey Cup, and was Chairman of the Organizing Committee for the Heritage Hockey Classic, among other things. He clearly loves this city.

I give Doug lots of credit for getting everyone on board and for creating the video. Anything that causes Edmontonians to think about the future of the city is a good thing as far as I am concerned. I think the core message of the video – the time for us to start building the Edmonton of 2030 is now – is powerful, if somewhat obvious.

The video is far from perfect, however. Here are some of my thoughts on it:

There are dozens of Edmontonians who speak in the video, but none of them are members of the so-called next generation (aged 18-40). It’s the people in that demographic who will be building the Edmonton of 2030, so it’s a glaring omission.
On the whole, the video seems scattered. There are a few “sections” including education and health, but I think they could be more clearly defined.
The use of young children throughout certainly makes the video more approachable, but it also makes the video less about Edmonton specifically. Hovercraft? Holographs? Cure for cancer?
At the other end of the spectrum are the more senior vanguard of Edmonton’s post-secondary institutions. All of them receive some great marketing throughout the video but contribute little in the way of vision.
The truly provocative and futuristic ideas of the video, including a downtown entertainment complex and a boardwalk in the river valley, receive just a few seconds of screen time and should have played a more prominent role.
I find it extremely annoying that the video looks at 2030, while all of the Transforming Edmonton plans look at 2040 (though I recognize that ten years probably doesn’t matter much that far into the future).

I do think the video could be useful for marketing, as Doug points out, and it will get people talking and thinking. As a visionary piece however, I think it misses the mark. Watch the video for yourself – what do you think?

You’re asking the wrong question

By Mack D. Male · April 20, 2009 at 10:23pm

Last week’s issue of SEE Magazine was a “theme” issue, focusing on the future of the media industry (“print in peril”). In addition to this interesting article, there was a panel comprised of four local newspeople with lots of experience: Linda Hughes (U of A, formerly Edmonton Journal), Ron Wilson (CBC), Jeremy Lye (iNews880), and Roy Wood (MacEwan, formerly Edmonton Journal). They discussed a range of things, including the fact that the industry didn’t develop these problems overnight. The general consensus is that journalism is important, but what it looks like in the future is up in the air.

Of course, you can’t have an article on the future of media without asking who’s going to write about City Council, and the panel didn’t disappoint! Linda Hughes asks:

But with breaking news and local-level news, who is going to go sit in a courtroom all day for a three-paragraph story that is important to know about but isn’t sexy and is just part of the pubic discourse? Who is going to do that? Bloggers often provide a lot of insight, but most bloggers are not going to go to sit in city council committee meetings for five hours to keep track of what city council is doing.

Ask a sports writer about the future of news and he’ll probably use this defense, even though he never sets foot inside City Hall! It’s the easy way out, and it’s an incredibly common response lately from journalists in the hot seat. To make things worse, SEE asked the question again later in the piece:

If newspapers and mass media outlets do dwindle, then, who will be the watchdogs in society to ensure politicians don’t run wild? Who will pay for the investigative reporters who can zero in on one thing for months and all of a sudden have the biggest story of the year?

Sigh. There will still be passionate individuals who follow specific topics and do investigative reporting. Probably more now than ever thanks to easy publishing systems (blogs, wikis, Twitter, etc). And they’ll produce much more interesting content than someone who does it just because they get paid to.

Let’s ignore that argument for a minute, however. Asking how to pay a journalist to sit through meetings to get three paragraphs is still the wrong question!

The real question is, why have we ever had to pay someone to sit through five hours of City Council committee meetings? Let’s get rid of that absurd need altogether and this discussion becomes irrelevant.

This is why I’m so excited about ChangeCamp and the possibilities it represents. If we can change the way our government communicates with us, the need for a newspaper filter could go away altogether.

Let’s focus less on how we’re going to pay a journalist to sit with Council all day and more on how we can get Council to communicate with us in a meaningful way. If we can do that, the journalist will have much better things to cover!

Wishes for 2007

By Mack D. Male · January 3, 2007 at 3:48pm

Instead of predictions for the coming year, I’ve decided I’d rather just post some wishes. Lots of my predictions from last year were wishes anyway! So here they are, in no particular order.

I wish…

…the Edmonton Oilers could once again go all the way to the Stanley Cup Final after some truly impressive trade-deadline maneuvering by Kevin Lowe. And I hope they win this time!
…the Xbox Live Video Marketplace would come to Canada.
…that I could graduate and not have to go to school anymore!
…my parents would come to Edmonton for a bit in the summer!
…Spider-Man 3 could become the top box office movie of all time, eclipsing Titanic. Seriously, it’s gonna be a kick ass movie!
…that Podcast Spot could become the number one podcast site on the net.
…that I could get a MacBook. And a new desktop with Vista.
…Microsoft would release Halo 3.
…that Microsoft would fix Outlook 2007!
…that by the time August rolls around I’ve found a good apartment downtown.

This will be a “living” list, which means I intend to come back and add to it later.

Review: Predictions for 2006

By Mack D. Male · December 31, 2006 at 4:36pm

Like a lot of people, I had some fun a year ago and made some predictions for 2006. Now that the year is pretty much over, I guess I should see how I did:

SORTA RIGHT: Canada did indeed win the World Juniors, but we didn’t win the Olympic gold medal.
SORTA RIGHT: In March, RIM settled its lawsuit with NTP, but it was later sued by Visto. I don’t think that has been solved yet. On the consumer front, the BlackBerry Pearl is off to a great start!
WRONG: Ah not even close. The Steelers won the Superbowl.
WRONG: Well we did get the Zune which has wi-fi, but I guess I was a little early on this one.
MOSTLY WRONG: Apparently Toyota is still #2 in the world, but GM continues to have financial troubles.
MOSTLY RIGHT: The PS3 did in fact launch, and it was in fact really expensive. Too early to tell what level of success it will have.
WRONG: Man, who would have thought the Oilers would get so close! I don’t know why I picked Ottawa, they always choke.
WRONG: Vista RTM’d in November, not September. I am sure the usual suspects made their usual claims.
WRONG: Wishful thinking I’m afraid, but we did see Gears of War!
WRONG: I think the iTunes/iPod combo still has a firm grip on the market, despite a (disputed) report that iTunes sales fell drastically in 2006.
SORTA RIGHT: Apple launched their Intel-based machines very successfully, but I haven’t found anything that says their market share has increased. Some say it has decreased.
SORTA RIGHT: Michael Schumacher did retire, but unfortunately didn’t win an 8th championship.
RIGHT: I don’t have a link, but I seem to recall reading about Symantec suing Microsoft over security stuff in Vista.
MOSTLY RIGHT: Not sure about big numbers, but TV shows made a splash on iTunes, and there are now dozens of online video stores. And for Americans, TV shows and movies are available on Xbox Live. And in general it was a huge year for video, thanks to YouTube.
WRONG: No one bought TiVo.
WRONG: The Liberals didn’t win the election.
WRONG: Hard to say if Google stumbled in 2006. There wasn’t a big mistake, but maybe the little ones will add up.
RIGHT: Looks like The Da Vinci Code was #2 at the box office this year!
GLADLY WRONG: Thank goodness, the US did not invade Iran. The UN did recently impose sanctions however.
RIGHT: I think lots of podcasting companies (pluggd, Podcast Ready, etc.) found success in 2006, ourselves included!

On January 7th I posted about multi-core processors. While it wasn’t in my list of predictions, it could have been:

Perhaps a year from now you won’t ask someone how fast their computer is. Instead, you might ask, how many cores do you have?

I think I almost nailed that one! Except that for the moment, the question is usually “do you have a dual core?” Close enough

I’ll probably come up with some predictions for 2007 later, and hopefully I do better next year!

Read: Predictions for 2006

Net Neutrality

By Mack D. Male · April 4, 2006 at 9:16pm

I haven’t said much about so-called “network neutrality” yet, but I do think it is a very important issue. I don’t pretend to know all about it, but I have read enough to form some opinions. First off, here’s how the term is defined at Wikipedia:

Network neutrality is a proposed principle of network regulation. It asserts that, in order to promote innovation, network service providers such as telephone and cable internet companies should not be permitted to dictate how those networks are used (ie. not permitted to ban certain types of programs, or to ban certain types of devices connecting to the network).

Currently, this is a big political issue in the United States, but I am not sure if it has received much attention elsewhere. A draft bill scheduled to be voted on tomorrow will be revised to ensure that the FCC has tools at its disposal to address violations. This is the main idea behind the bill, at least as I understand it:

The draft bill says broadband providers must provide connectivity speeds “at least equal to the speed and quality of service” that the operator offers for its own content or that of its affiliates, and “make available the same bandwidth” to everyone.

I encourage you to read the article linked to above (at CNET News.com) as it contains some background information in addition to the current happenings.

I was a little torn between whether or not network neutrality is a good idea or not. My gut feeling and initial reactions were that net neutrality is vital for the future of the Internet, and it must be protected. As I thought about it a little more, I turned to economics, and thus my secondary thoughts were that the market should decide how these services are charged for and offered. Upon still further consideration, I feel that net neutrality is important and we should all ensure the Internet remains neutral.

There are too many “ifs” associated with a network that might become tiered or fragmented in some way – who knows what the providers might do. The last thing I would want as a business consumer is to have different Internet access, whether in performance or throughput or bandwidth, than a larger company simply because the Internet providers can squeeze large sums of money out of them.

One of the great things about the Internet is that it is open and available to everyone (I realize there are people who cannot yet afford access, or areas for which access is unavailable, but as a blanket statement, the Internet is pretty open). I think it’s important we keep it that way, so I hope laws concerning network neutrality are ratified in the United States, and eventually, elsewhere.