Year: 2010

Edmonton Notes for 6/26/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

I had my first waffle from Eva Sweet today at the City Market:

Also today was Safe Streets, a community fair in Central McDougall:

City of Edmonton launches Apps4Edmonton Competition

On Wednesday the City of Edmonton officially launched its Apps4Edmonton competition, which challenges residents to submit ideas for apps and developers to actually build them. There is more than $50,000 in prizes available, and everyone has a chance to win an Apple iPad. Here’s what the competition is all about:

Every Edmontonian can be an active participant in reshaping our city. Together with community partners the City of Edmonton is proud to launch Apps4Edmonton – a contest which encourages residents to develop applications that will benefit Edmontonians.

Using data sets from the Edmonton Open Data Catalogue, we’re challenging you to develop an app for either a smart phone, mobile device, or PC web browser. Mash up a map, create a visualization, or analyze data in a new way, the choice is yours.

To support the competition, the City has also released an update to the Data Catalogue. There are now 25 datasets available, including Ward boundaries and a list of City facilities. Even more datasets should be available soon, and if there’s something specific you’d like to have, request it from opendata@edmonton.ca.

If you have an idea for an app, submit it here. It can be anything, so be creative! Even if your idea isn’t possible or a developer doesn’t want to take it on, it might serve as inspiration for other apps, so don’t be shy. If you’re building or have already built an app, submit it here. You have until August 27 to do so. The FAQ has some good info, and be sure to familiarize yourself with the rules too.

Applications will be judged on four criteria: Accessibility, Usability, Creativity, and the number of community votes received (voting runs online from August 27 to September 10). In addition to three overall prizes (Gold, Silver, Bronze) there are six categories:

  • The Way We Live
  • The Way We Grow
  • The Way We Green
  • The Way We Move
  • The Way We Plan
  • The Way We Prosper

I’m very happy to see that IT has aligned itself with Transforming Edmonton for this competition! I am hopeful that Apps4Edmonton can help introduce more Edmontonians to those important documents that help guide us toward becoming a more innovative, inclusive, and creative city.

To learn more about Apps4Edmonton, visit the contest site. There should be lots of chatter about the competition at Startup Weekend too, and tonight at the Emerging Business Leaders’ Patio Party.

I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with!

Recap: ONEdmonton Leaders Forum #2

Yesterday morning was the second ONEdmonton Leaders Forum, hosted by EEDC at the Shaw Conference Centre. After a good experience at the first one, I was excited for another opportunity to chat with everyone and eager to see if the organizers would indeed make more time for that. EEDC Board Chair Henry Yip and EEDC President Ron Gilbertson gave very brief introductory remarks, and we got down to business.

Our moderator for the day was Anne McLellan. She started by presenting the following question (I’m paraphrasing a bit):

What are your top five opportunities, challenges, and priorities for Edmonton as we work toward becoming one of the world’s leading mid-size cities?

She then numbered everyone off into 8 groups, and we started discussing. For about half an hour, groups talked amongst themselves, with each member having the chance to share their top 5 issues (or less). This exercise was something I was prepared for, given my Pecha Kucha 7 talk, so I started in my group. Here are the three I shared:

  1. Density
  2. Storytelling
  3. Creative Economy

I added “Living Local” after everyone had shared their issues, and I agreed with most of the table who mentioned EXPO 2017. There were some other duplicates, but I wrote down over 20 things from our group alone. It was a great discussion and it was really interesting to hear where everyone was at. Some of the more memorable things mentioned at my table were “winter city”, “homelessness”, and “waterfront development”.

During a short break the organizers tallied up all the lists to identify the overall group’s top 10 opportunities, challenges, and priorities. Here’s the result (issue with percentage of the group that identified it):

  1. Downtown revitalization (46%)
  2. Crime (29%)
  3. Education / R&D (29%)
  4. Transportation / Infrastructure (25%)
  5. Homelessness (19%)
  6. Brand / Identity (19%)
  7. River Valley Development (17%)
  8. Regional Partnerships (15%)
  9. Promoting the city (15%)
  10. Aboriginal Integration (14%)

A moderated discussion followed, which of course felt like it wasn’t long enough. A few really good comments were made. One I’ll share was from Homeward Trust Executive Director Susan McGee, who said that language is important, and that the word “integration” in #10 on the list probably was not the best choice of words. I thought it was a great point.

Crime & Safety

We finished off the morning with a presentation from EPS Deputy Chief of Police Norm Lipinski. He shared some really great information about the EPS approach, as well as some positive stories about crime in Edmonton. Here are the EPS objectives:

  1. Reduce Crime
  2. Reduce Disorder
  3. Enhance Traffic Safety
  4. Maintain Public Trust

Some of the ways they accomplish those objectives are through community policing, hot spot management, offender management, and business practices. He mentioned the broken window theory, and said he was a big fan of having a visible presence. Norm’s takeaways were that overall crime is down in Edmonton over the last three years, that the rate of solving crime is up, and that we have a top tier police service (also a very young police service). He finished with a funny slide comparing his appearance to that of Kevin Bacon (the resemblance is uncanny). A discussion followed his presentation but I had to leave so I missed it.

I thought the second ONEdmonton forum was great – kudos to EEDC for acting on the feedback for the first event to make this one a success. I look forward to the next forum, where we’ll hopefully start trying to address the execution side of becoming one of the world’s top five mid-size cities.

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – May 2010

Welcome to the fifth State of the Calgary Twittersphere of 2010, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Calgary, AB. You can see last month’s stats here.

For information on the data, definitions, and other background, click here.

For May 2010:

# of local users: 10547 (an increase of 439 from April)
# of tweets by local users: 507017
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 21053 (4.1%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 152349 (30.0%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 153152 (30.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 22158 (4.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 16966 (3.3%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

  • Just over 48% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  • Local users posted roughly 11.4 tweets per minute in May (compared to 11.6 tweets per minute in April).
  • The day with the most local tweets posted was May 27 at 19816. On average, 16355 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 16661 in April).
  • Of the 152349 replies posted by local users this month, 47020 or 30.9% were to other local users.
  • A total of 1959 users posted 50 times or more in May. In comparison, 1610 users posted just once.

Here are the top ten most followed local users:

  1. douglasi
  2. calgrasley
  3. NatbyNature
  4. MarkIsMusing
  5. ahhhgolf
  6. CassieSTROM
  7. WestJet
  8. VeronicaHay
  9. TOMIMWizard
  10. twitty7x

Here are the top ten most listed local users:

  1. douglasi
  2. NatbyNature
  3. VeerUpdate
  4. WestJet
  5. NHLFlames
  6. accruing
  7. CarlaYoung
  8. ProtruckR
  9. izzynobre
  10. uppercasemag

Here are the top ten most active local users:

  1. smoothjazznow
  2. CalgaryBizcaf
  3. MarketingHits
  4. izzynobre
  5. arizonaa
  6. Mariia19
  7. Kristinnuendo
  8. nscafe
  9. that_angela
  10. VaughanBuilders

Here are the top ten most active local users using #yyc:

  1. WeatherCalgary
  2. CgyCa
  3. Calgary_News
  4. C_DIG
  5. CalgaryBeacon
  6. Hughes4MayorYYC
  7. CalgaryBeacon2
  8. lonnietaylor
  9. petrodude73
  10. calgaryherald

Three are clearly bots so here are the next three:

  1. jillianwalker
  2. nscafe
  3. yogicrystal

Here are the top ten most replied to local users:

  1. Kristinnuendo
  2. that_angela
  3. nicolesaxton
  4. yogicrystal
  5. nscafe
  6. dantric
  7. Diegirl
  8. C_DIG
  9. WESTcalgary
  10. twowheelgeek

Here are the top ten most retweeted local users (by other local users):

  1. calgaryherald
  2. CBCCalgary
  3. CTVdavidspence
  4. whlhitmen
  5. YYCLostPet
  6. CTVCalgary
  7. calgarystampede
  8. WESTcalgary
  9. cityofcalgary
  10. X929

Final Thoughts

A decent jump in users and Calgary has finally broken the 500,000 tweets per month mark! There was a noticeable increase in the number of tagged tweets this month too. As with Edmonton, the official Twitter clients are climbing the charts.

Who’s behind Envision Edmonton?

Last week, the City Centre Airport was once again in the news thanks to a “new” group calling itself Envision Edmonton. Though City Council voted to close the City Centre Airport nearly a year ago, the issue has never really gone away. First there was the delay to accommodate the Edmonton Indy, then there was the lawsuit from Airco (they lost their bid for an injunction to stop the closure last week). The Edmonton Flying Club has also filed suit trying to keep the airport open.

With the AEG turning its attention toward the oil sands, it’s almost like the local media were salivating for someone to reopen the issue. Here’s what the Envision Edmonton press release said:

In response to Mayor, Stephen Mandel’s challenge issued during his State of the City speech – to convince City Council that the City Centre Airport should stay open – a group of local business people stepped forward to propose alternatives.

A group of concerned Edmontonians created “Envision Edmonton” – an independent community organization formed specifically to develop a suitable and economically viable plan to revitalize the City Centre Airport.

I’m really disappointed with how this has been covered in the local media so far. Here is how they reported the “news”:

I’m sure there was a 60 second piece on the evening news that day too. If you read through those stories, you’ll find that they don’t provide much information beyond what was contained within the press release (as is so often the case, unfortunately). Here are some of the questions that sprung to mind immediately that were not answered:

  1. Who’s behind the group, and is it really new? Have they been involved in the issue in the past?
  2. Where have I heard that name before?
  3. Where can I learn more about the group and its proposed alternatives?

Simple stuff really. Maybe those questions didn’t come to mind for the writers and editors working that day, or maybe they found that answering them was too daunting a task (that might be a valid excuse actually, given that Envision Edmonton still doesn’t have a website…yes, seriously). To be fair to Gordon Kent, his piece did at least treat the group with some skepticism.

It gets much better though. All of those stories use quotes from or paraphrase the press release, which is pretty standard. I’m wondering how they chose what to include, however. Here’s the last paragraph of the press release:

Envision Edmonton is primarily funded by individuals and businesses, many of which have no direct investment in or association with the City Centre Airport, but who are instead dedicated exclusively to helping to make Edmonton a great city.

That’s a pretty cut-and-dry statement, and it ties in nicely with my first question. So I set out to find the answer. Turns out it is completely false (not the last part of course, I’m sure they all want to help make Edmonton a great city).

Here are the Envision Edmonton board members:

  1. Charles Allard (Chairman)
  2. Ian Barrigan
  3. Dr. Joseph Fernando
  4. Phil Milroy
  5. Barry Breckenridge
  6. Bob Bentley
  7. Dr. Kerry Pawluski
  8. Ralph Henderson
  9. Ed Schlemko
  10. Eugene Strilchuk
  11. Bruce Ritchie
  12. Dean Braithwaite

No direct investment or association with the City Centre Airport huh? Right.

I also have answers for the other two questions I mentioned above. The name “Envision Edmonton” has been used a few times, but was probably best known as the former name for the City of Edmonton’s Strategic Plan. That certainly raised my eyebrows. Of all the names they could have picked, they went with the name of an important City document.

Where can you learn more about Envision Edmonton? That’s a good question. For now you can follow them on Twitter, or you can check them out on Facebook. I suspect you’ll hear more about the group later today after they hold another press conference, this time to actually unveil next steps (the last press conference was a meet-and-greet I guess). Here’s what I think you’ll hear:

  • Envision Edmonton will announce that they are launching a campaign to gather 78,000+ signatures to force a plebiscite.
  • One alternative, not many as the press release stated. They will announce loose, high level plans to expand business activities at the City Centre Airport, while retaining (and perhaps improving) medevac facilities.
  • A website. Maybe. It is 2010 after all.

What you probably won’t hear but might want to know:

  • The group has been raising a lot of money to support the campaign. I have heard numbers as high as $700,000. Their total budget, confirmed by Charles Allard, is $500,000. They’re also actively recruiting volunteers.
  • They have been making the rounds, and not just locally. Some members of the group visited Yellowknife back in May to try to get the GNWT on board.
  • Over the last few months they have been making an effort to leave comments on blogs and post updates on forums (example 1, example 2).

If you know something else that I’ve missed, let me know.

I invite you to read my posts on the City Centre Airport. In particular, you should read this post that outlines some responses to the most common questions (medevac, economic activity, etc) and contains links to additional documents. You might also want to read Scott McKeen’s column from last week. There are also lots of links to resources at NotMyAirport.ca.

UPDATE: As expected, Envision Edmonton announced plans today to get 80,000 signatures to keep the City Centre Airport open. Their campaign website includes the proposed plebiscite and other information. Part of their proposal is a new LRT route, running alongside NAIT to the east of the airport. The group has already raised half of their budget, and will start an ad campaign on TV and radio later this week. I asked Charles if they get the signatures and it goes to a vote and citizens want to close the airport, what’s next for Envision Edmonton? He told me “we’d have to respect the decision of the electorate”. Gordon Kent from The Journal asked a ton of questions, including lots about the funding. He is suggesting (and is correct in doing so, I think) that this could be the most heavily funded campaign in the fall election, more than any other race. He also asked if many of the members or funders of Envision Edmonton are involved with the City Centre Airport. Charles told him no, but as you can see above, that’s just simply not true.

Startup Weekend comes to Edmonton

This weekend Edmonton will host an event called Startup Weekend (on ShareEdmonton), which brings together developers, designers, marketers, inventors, investors, and anyone else interested in startups to see what they can build in just 54 hours. Will the next big thing emerge out of Edmonton? Will the community create something small that positively impacts the lives of Edmontonians? Maybe both!

Startup Weekend has happened in dozens of cities around the world. Their goal is to hold 60 events this year, and 100 in 2011. Here’s some background:

Startup Weekend is a non-profit organization based out of Seattle, WA USA. Startup Weekend is a small team of three along with community leaders around the world. Startup Weekend’s primary mission is to be the most valuable and influential organization in startup communities around the world. Startup Weekend doesn’t have to teach entrepreneurship in a boring classroom setting, we model it in a fun, interactive, and results driven way. As a result, we have become one of the leading catalysts for startup creation, co-founder dating, and entrepreneurship education in startup ecosystems around the world.

You can download a one-pager on Startup Edmonton in PDF here.

The way the event works will be somewhat familiar to anyone who has attended a *camp. It starts with the pitch – ideas for new startup ventures. The favorites are selected, and teams of 4 to 10 people are formed to tackle each one. The rest of the weekend is spent trying to build a prototype, demo, or maybe even a finished product!

The Edmonton event, organized by Startup Edmonton, is taking place at Enterprise Square downtown. The weekend kicks off on Friday evening at 6pm, with introductions and idea pitches. Then the real work begins! Here’s what attendees get out of the event:

Startup Weekend provides an unprecedented level of networking, team building, learning, and life changes for its attendees and their communities. Don’t forget that there will be 6-7 meals and drinks provided. There is a reason that most attendees come back for every event – it’s just plain fun and provides amazing opportunities you can’t get anywhere else. Sometimes a company emerges, sometimes one doesn’t, but every time people leave with more experience, insight, knowledge, friends, and resources than they came with.

Startup Weekend should be a lot of fun! Tickets are $99, which includes meals and beverages for the weekend (there are a few available at half price if you hurry). You can follow @StartupEdmonton on Twitter for updates, as well as the #SWEdmonton hashtag. See you there!

Click here to register for Startup Weekend Edmonton!

Notes for 6/20/2010

Happy Father’s Day! Here are my weekly notes:

It was a busy weekend for Sharon and I! Last night we were at Slow Food Edmonton’s Summer Solstice Dinner, where everything was cooked inside a backyard-wood-burning-oven (which got as hot as 900 degrees Fahrenheit):

Summer Solstice Dinner

This afternoon we went to Councillor Don Iveson’s campaign launch party:

Don Iveson's Campaign Launch

We spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening at Rundle Park:

Rundle Park

Edmonton Notes for 6/19/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

It was another beautiful & busy day at the City Market today!

City Market DowntownCity Market Downtown

Also downtown today was the first ever Park(ed) – Car Free Day:

Park(ed) Car Free DayPark(ed) Car Free Day

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – May 2010

Welcome to the fifth State of the Edmonton Twittersphere of 2010, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton, AB. You can see last month’s stats here.

For information on the data, definitions, and other background, click here.

For May 2010:

# of local users: 8051 (an increase of 378 from April)
# of tweets by local users: 430714
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 32901 (7.6%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 152459 (35.4%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 105836 (24.6%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 22356 (5.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 14753 (3.4%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates – the official Twitter clients continue to grow in popularity:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

  • Just over 50% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  • Local users posted roughly 9.6 tweets per minute in May (compared to 9.4 tweets per minute in April).
  • The day with the most local tweets posted was May 28 at 16908. On average, 13894 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 13492 in April).
  • Of the 152459 replies posted by local users this month, 57401 or 37.7% were to other local users.
  • A total of 1640 users posted 50 times or more in March. In comparison, 1175 users posted just once.

Here are the top ten most followed local users:

  1. revtrev
  2. Pat_Lorna
  3. randyfritz
  4. biofeed
  5. dancinginlife
  6. masseffect2
  7. subunit1
  8. dragonage
  9. LesM
  10. todd_herman

Here are the top ten most listed local users:

  1. biofeed
  2. randyfritz
  3. revtrev
  4. masseffect2
  5. dragonage
  6. paradepro
  7. redneckmommy
  8. dancinginlife
  9. DaBaby
  10. NHL_Oilers

Here are the top ten most active local users:

  1. EdmontonBizcaf
  2. Lekordable
  3. rootnl2k
  4. SGT_ZamboniGuy
  5. etownmelly
  6. DWsBITCH
  7. GuitarKat
  8. frostedbetty
  9. meechelledeeiaz
  10. RECEdmonton

A couple of those are bots, so here are the next two:

  1. ZoomJer
  2. trinamlee

Here are the top ten most active local users using #yeg:

  1. WeatherEdmonton
  2. edmontonjournal
  3. yegsphere
  4. EdmCa
  5. iNews880
  6. Tamara_Stecyk
  7. ctvedmonton
  8. DebraWard
  9. ZoomJer
  10. oilersff

And because three of those are bots, here are the next three:

  1. cbcedmonton
  2. mastermaq
  3. CityofEdmonton

Here are the top ten most replied to local users:

  1. frostedbetty
  2. ZoomJer
  3. britl
  4. GuitarKat
  5. angelzilla
  6. adampatterson
  7. mspixieriot
  8. bingofuel
  9. foomanizer
  10. SaySandra

Here are the top ten most retweeted local users (by other local users):

  1. edmontonjournal
  2. ctvedmonton
  3. bentrem
  4. mastermaq
  5. CityofEdmonton
  6. bingofuel
  7. iNews880
  8. ZoomJer
  9. CBCEdmonton
  10. Paulatics

Final Thoughts

We’re back over 8000 active users this month! We’re inching ever closer to 500,000 tweets per month as well. I suspect that the numbers won’t look as good for June given all of the downtime that Twitter has had recently. It’s interesting that three of the top ten active users using #yeg are bots. That’s the downside of a popular hashtag I guess. More on that next week!

Edmontonians magazine calls it quits, the edmontonian celebrates 1 year

After 21 years of publishing, Edmontonians magazine is calling it quits. Citing declining advertising revenues, publisher Sharon MacLean announced today via email that the June edition of the magazine will be its last.

“The news business is caught in the cyclone of change, fueled by the tremendous growth in popularity of access to news and information on the Internet. Both readership and revenues have declined significantly; major dailies have closed their doors, as have a number of magazines.”

Edmontonians had started to cultivate an online presence, amassing over 4400 followers on Twitter, but the publication remained firmly rooted in print. Perhaps anticipating a question about where the industry is going, Sharon wrote “there is much hope for the future of publishing – we simply ran out of time to bridge the transition.”

I can’t say that I was a fan of Edmontonians, but I know many people in the city really liked the publication. So far no announcement has been made on the website, so I’m not sure what will happen to the content available there. There’s also no word on what Sharon will be up to next.

The decision to cease publishing Edmontonians magazine comes at the same time that local website the edmontonian is celebrating its first year. And what a year it was! Jeff reports:

75,000+ people have checked us out. We’ve averaged 3 posts per day. We’ve got more than 2 comments per post. In the last year we’ve posted more than 780 times. We’ve also shown off more than 1,500 photos of Edmonton. We had 40+ contributors who wrote, took photos, shot video, gave us prizes, and did lots of other great stuff, all helping to tell Edmonton stories.

Of course, if you read Jeff’s actual post, you’ll see that the above stats are mixed in with his trademark writing style. Free from the constraints of print, Jeff and his partner-in-crime Sally have been able to produce content the way they want to, when they want to. That has resulted in a publication that I and many others enjoy going back to (or subscribing to) each and every day.

The similarity of their names notwithstanding, I think these publications are a great representation of two completely different worlds. The advertising-supported physical print model is increasingly under fire from the more flexible online digital media model. Will the edmontonian be around for 21 years like Edmontonians was? Almost certainly not, at least not in its current form (who knows what kind of technology we’ll have when 2031 rolls around). But for right now, its pretty clear that the edmontonian is the more sustainable model.

Congrats to Edmontonians on 21 years of telling Edmonton stories! Congrats to the edmontonian on a fantastic first year!