Notes for 9/20/2009

Here are my weekly notes:

  • Intuit bought Mint.com this week for $170 million. I’ve read a lot of backlash to the deal though, such as this post.
  • Another day, another front-page headline for The Katz Group regarding the proposed arena. It’s amazing how The Journal continues to pump out stories despite having zero new information.
  • I walked to school when I was a kid (granted I lived in Inuvik where you could walk from one end of the town to the other in about 15 minutes). Darren points to a New York Times article on how those days are long gone.
  • An interview with Vinod Khosla.
  • Fascinating concept: One pig, 185 different products.
  • I like looking at logos, I don’t know why. Boing Boing linked to an animated short in which the city of Los Angeles and all the characters are composed of corporate logos.
  • Sharon and I had a busy weekend! Yesterday was the Citadel open house and the Randall Stout talk on the new Art Gallery of Alberta. Today was the AIDS Walk For Life (I raised $210, thanks everyone!) and we stopped by Everyone for Edmonton too.

AIDS Walk For Life 2009

AIDS Walk For Life 2009AIDS Walk For Life 2009

Edmonton Notes for 9/19/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Citadel Open HouseRandall Stout presents the new Art Gallery of Alberta

Lucy The Elephant on Twitter

As you may know, Lucy the Elephant is the talk of Edmonton right now. Former game show host Bob Barker visited yesterday, trying to secure Lucy’s release from the Valley Zoo. There has been a lot of controversy over whether or not Lucy is healthy and happy in her current home or whether she should be moved to an elephant sanctuary elsewhere. One external veterinarian has examined her thus far, and advised against moving Lucy (critics will point out he was the only one of eleven veterinarians who advised against moving a similar elephant out of Alaska a few years back). For more, check out Paula’s latest article.

I don’t know anything about elephants or zoos, and I haven’t taken the time to do any research, so I don’t really have an opinion on the matter. I do think it’s silly that Barker travelled all the way here just to stir the pot (and that William Shatner has also gotten involved). And sillier still that this will probably go to the courts now, costing everyone a lot of money.

People will continue to talk about it though, until there is some kind of resolution. One of the places they are doing that is on Twitter. Here’s what the chatter about Lucy over the last month and half looks like on Twitter:

To clarify, that is the number of tweets per day about Lucy (or the Valley Zoo, or Bob Barker, or William Shatner) written by local Twitter users. As you can see, it jumped quite a bit yesterday with Barker’s visit and is pretty high already today.

In addition to conversations, Twitter is a good place to find the latest news. I was looking for Lucy-related stuff on Twitter, and figured I could make it easier for others to do the same! Ten dollars and an hour and a half later, and LucyTheElephant.ca was born!

Basically it pulls in the latest tweets related to Lucy (written by local users) and displays them in a manner similar to Twitter Search.

It was a fun experiment for me to create. It uses ShareEdmonton for the data, which means I got to validate some of the work I’ve been doing. If you have a moment, I have a couple questions about this:

  • Do you find single-serving Twitter search sites useful?
  • What else would you want quick access to alongside tweets?

Thanks and enjoy!

ENTS Grand Opening

Tonight was the grand opening of ENTS, the Edmonton New Technology Society. Located just a short walk from downtown at 10575 114 Street, ENTS is “a group of people from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada sharing a collaborative space in Edmonton to teach, learn and work on projects together.” Don’t be confused – ENTS is both a society and a physical space. It’s a place for members of the local tech community (by members of the local tech community) to go to work, socialize, and learn.

ENTS Grand OpeningENTS Grand Opening

The space has come a long way since I last saw it over the summer! Vice-President Rob Davy was our host for the evening. He started in “the middle space” by thanking everyone for coming (over 40 people were there at 7pm, with more coming and going throughout the evening) and gave a brief introduction to ENTS. He then led us to “the orange space” for a virtual ribbon cutting using the Microsoft Surface! The ribbon app was developed by ENTS member Grant Bowering.

ENTS Grand Opening

Bruce, the landlord of the building, cooked free hotdogs for everyone downstairs. I chatted with him a bit, and asked what the most interesting part of the journey with ENTS had been thus far. His reply? “The stuff they bring in…there’s always something else interesting coming in!” Tonight was no exception – about a dozen ENTS members helped move a giant (and very heavy) rack server enclosure up to the space. It was a good team building experience! There was also a “punch-bag revolution”, Rock Band, a sound board, various robots, a Roomba with a netbook strapped to it, and lots of other cool stuff on hand.

ENTS Grand OpeningENTS Grand Opening

The rack server and all of its components came from local social networking company Nexopia. What is ENTS going to do with it? No one is really sure. Like the rest of the tech stuff they have acquired, it’s there for members to learn about and use, if they are creative enough to come up with something. “Think about the potential, and let’s make it happen” is what Rob told everyone.

Congrats to ENTS for a great event and on making the vision a reality! I know there is still work to be done, but they’re now ready for regular use by members (you can become one here). It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.

You can see the rest of my photos from the evening here. Follow ENTS on Twitter or search #ents for updates!

What I’m up to this weekend!

I like to keep myself busy with stuff, that’s no surprise, but this month seems exceptionally busy! There’s definitely a lot going on in Edmonton. Here are a few upcoming events that I’ll be at this weekend:

  • ENTS Grand Opening
    Thursday, September 17th at 6:30pm
    10575 114 Street
    http://www.ents.ca

I’m looking forward to checking out the ENTS (Edmonton New Technology Society) space – I haven’t been there in a while, unfortunately. ENTS is going to play an important role in Edmonton’s tech space.

An annual event for software developers in Edmonton. I’ll only be there in the morning, but I’m looking forward to it!

Part of Alberta Arts Days! The Citadel is hosting a free open house featuring backstage tours, rehearsals, design presentations, information about the upcoming season, and more!

The project architect is on hand to chat about one of the most unique building projects in the city. Randall will discuss the architectural philosophy and will provide an update on the new gallery’s construction.

Sharon and I did the walk last year, and we’re excited to take part again this year! It’s for a great cause. If you’d like to sponsor me, you can do so here.

An entire event devoted to local non-profit organizations. Learn about the services they offer and the many volunteer opportunities available.

Other stuff happening this weekend that I probably won’t get to check out: Best of the West Skate Contest, Symphony 101, Alberta Fall Classic, and the City Centre Market.

If all goes well I’ll hopefully get time to finish some coding on ShareEdmonton. I’m excited to get it up and running – it’ll make posts like this completely unnecessary.

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – August 2009

Welcome to the sixth State of the Calgary Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Calgary. You can see last month’s stats here.

The source of the data this month is the same as last, primarily Twitter Search but also from Twitter directly. If a user has his or her location set to Calgary, Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane, Strathmore, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered a Calgarian. If a tweet is “about Calgary” it contains either the word Calgary, the #yyc hashtag, or both.

For August 2009:

# of local users: 6852 (an increase of 226 from July)

To clarify, that means there were 6852 users who posted at least one tweet in August 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Calgarian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Calgary users without their location set or that were not captured for some other reason.

Here are the rest of the stats for August 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 244330
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 5463 (2.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 75678 (31.0%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 67295 (27.5%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 9466 (3.9%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 6945 (2.8%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates. UberTwitter doesn’t seem to be as popular in Calgary as it is in Edmonton:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

Final Thoughts

Like the Edmonton numbers, growth in August for Calgary was minimal. It’s the summer, after all! I suspect that growth in September will be higher.

Since March, I have identified just over 13,500 local users. The number above, 6852, is how many of them were active in August.

ChangeCamp Edmonton – October 17th

As you may have heard, we recently picked a date, time, and place for ChangeCamp Edmonton! We’ve been talking about it for months now, and for a while it really felt like we’d never make any progress. We had a really hard time defining the event, though it sounds simple in concept:

Let’s get as many citizens, politicians, policy-makers, technologists, design-thinkers, change agents, and media creators as possible together in the same room to explore one central question: “How do we re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation?”

Was it a single day or many? Physical or virtual? A spark or a process? How much should we define up front? How do we get people interested? Should we borrow from cities that have already held ChangeCamps or try something completely different?

We still don’t have all the answers, but we’ve decided to move forward anyway. In the spirit of ChangeCamp and other unconferences, we’re going to have a conversation, and you’re invited! Here are the details:

WHO: You, everyone!
WHAT: ChangeCamp Edmonton
WHEN: Saturday, October 17th, 2009 from 8am to 4pm
WHERE: Lister Conference Centre, University of Alberta (map)
WHY: To start a conversation about re-imagining government and citizenship in Edmonton, Alberta

We are still working on defining how the day will unfold, but it’ll be similar to ChangeCamps in other cities. Stay tuned to the official website as well as our Google Group for updates.

If you’d like to help out, just let us know! Right now we need help spreading the word, more than anything else. Tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell your elected representatives. Let’s make October 17th a day to remember in Edmonton!

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – August 2009

Welcome to the eighth State of the Edmonton Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton. You can see last month’s stats here.

The source of the data this month is the same as last, primarily Twitter Search but also from Twitter directly. If a user has his or her location set to Edmonton, St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Leduc, Nisku, Stony Plain, Fort Saskatchewan, Beaumont, Spruce Grove, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered an Edmontonian.

For August 2009:

# of local users: 5365 (an increase of 232 from July)

To clarify, that means there were 5365 users who posted at least one tweet in August 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Edmontonian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Edmonton users without their location set.

Here are the rest of the stats for August 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 206318
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 12808 (6.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 72060 (34.9%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 41015 (19.9%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 9947 (4.8%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 6828 (3.3%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates. I’m pretty impressed by the rise of UberTwitter:

And by popular demand, a new stat this month! Here are the number of local users by community (besides Edmonton itself) for August:

Keep in mind that is based entirely on the text inside the location field of the user’s profile, and is definitely a minimum. Still, gives you an idea of the breakdown.

Some other interesting stats for the month:

 

Final Thoughts

A little bit of growth this month, but not much. It’s the summer, after all! Hopefully that means everyone was outside enjoying everything Edmonton has to offer. Growth in September should be higher.

Since January, I have identified just over 10,400 local users. The number above, 5365, is how many of them were active in August.

I’ll have the Calgary stats posted in the next couple of days!

Notes for 9/13/2009

Here are my weekly notes:

September Picnic & Walk

Edmonton Notes for 9/12/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes: