Year: 2010

Edmonton Notes for 6/5/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Edmonton’s Food Bank showcased the winners in its Expressions of Hunger contest at City Hall on Tuesday, which was National Hunger Awareness Day. The works will be exhibited at a few locations around the city until July 7.

Edmonton's Food Bank: Expressions of HungerEdmonton's Food Bank: Expressions of Hunger

Local Action, Global Recognition at PKN7

I was one of the presenters at yesterday’s Pecha Kucha Night 7 here in Edmonton. I’ve been thinking about pitching a topic for a while, but for whatever reason never submitted anything. This time around, however, I felt compelled to at least apply to speak. As Jeff said in his post, I sort of became the face of the disappointment over Pecha Kucha 6. I’ve been to every Pecha Kucha Night we’ve had in Edmonton, and I’ve blogged about each one. I have been both critical and positive about past events and speakers, but I’ve tried to be fair. In any case, I figured if I was going to dish it out I had to be willing to take it as well.

Pecha Kucha Night 7

I approached my talk at PKN7 the way I think it should be done. The topic had to be something I was passionate about (it’s almost always immediately obvious when a speaker is not passionate about their topic) and had already given some thought to. I worked hard to find images that represented my ideas, and I consciously stuck to Creative Commons licensed photos (see below). I created an outline for my talk, and then researched each idea to ensure I could back up what I was saying. Then I practiced – a few times on my own to get the timing right, and then a few times for Sharon, and once for my parents over Skype. I wanted to practice enough that I could pull it off, but not so many times that I’d be thrown off track when something inevitably changed during the actual talk.

Here’s the video of me presenting last night. I guess I went a few seconds longer than I should have. During my presentation I ended up saying slightly different things than I had practiced. Notably, I threw in the “feel free to cheer for your favorite” line which worked great for audience participation, but also meant my timing wasn’t quite as tight as I had practiced.

Here are my slides with the audio overlaid on top:

I received some great feedback on my talk, which was great to hear! I’m definitely harder on myself than others are, and if I could do it again I’d try to improve a few things. I think I looked down too much, and my excuse for that is that all I could see was the first row or two of people. I guess six minutes and forty seconds wasn’t enough time to adjust. I also would have tried to slow the pace down a little. Overall though, I am happy with it!

Here are the images I used (minus the two slides that just contained logos). You can click on each one to get the original.

Edmonton SkylineBendy RoadEpcor Tower
Edmonton Skyline
TEDxEdmontonEdmonton Skyline

Local Action, Global Recognition

The premise of my talk was that Edmonton can be recognized on the world stage if we focus on making Edmonton a better place for Edmontonians. I think there’s three key things we need in order to achieve the recognition that we seek:

  1. Density
  2. Storytelling
  3. Creative Economy

If we can succeed at all three, I think there’s no question that we’ll become recognized around the world. Other cities will strive to be more like Edmonton.

With more time, I’d have expanded on the “how” in all of this, but last night I simply encouraged the audience to find something they’re passionate about and to do it here in Edmonton.

I would welcome any thoughts or comments on this – thanks!

Pecha Kucha Night: Edmonton #7

Edmonton’s seventh Pecha Kucha Night took place this evening at the Citadel Theatre in the wonderful Maclab Theatre. There were probably a little over 400 people in attendance, the vast majority of whom had never been to PKN before. I think I may as well just get right to it: PKN7 was a huge improvement over PKN6, and reaffirms to me that this event can be great!

All of the presenters brought their A-game tonight. In order of appearance, and with their topic titles:

  1. Gregg Oldring, Designing a Business
  2. Darryl Plunkie, Phobias
  3. Daniel Tse, Accessibility Technology
  4. Zoe Todd, Edmonton as an Aboriginal City
  5. Alistair Henning, Photographs Create Our Collective Visual Idea of Place
  6. Don Iveson, Brick by Brick: Lego & Urban Design
  7. Tamara Stecyk, Expressions of Hunger Online Photo & Poetry Contest
  8. Mack Male, Local Action Global Recognition
  9. Jason Openo, Leadership Edmonton
  10. Tad and Arlen, Improv!

It actually wasn’t Arlen (he couldn’t make it), but I can’t remember the name of his replacement. You can follow all of the presenters with Twitter accounts here.

After the debacle that was PKN6, it was refreshing to see 9 presentations with very little self-promotion. There were also very few umms, ahhs, and awkward pauses. I thought all of the talks were true to the spirit of Pecha Kucha – to share ideas that are inspiring or interesting or perhaps controversial, and that spark a conversation.

Pecha Kucha Night 7

Without a doubt my favorite talk of the evening was Don Iveson’s (and I think most everyone in the audience would agree with me on that). He used Lego to share some ideas about urban planning and the kind of built form that he would like to see in Edmonton. It was smart, funny, and well-presented, as expected from Don! A close second for me was Daniel Tse’s talk on accessibility technology. He did such a good job of relating it to the audience, and so many of the people I talked to tonight were excited to learn more and to get involved. He also tweeted during his talk using an automated thing he had setup before the event – such a great idea! I agree with John that Tamara’s talk was the most emotional – her passion really shone through. I think Zoe’s talk made me want to learn more about her topic the most. As for my talk, I thought it went quite well, and I received lots of positive feedback on it. More on that in my next post.

Some other thoughts on the evening:

  • Our hosts, Ryan Stark and Brian Murray, did a great job of welcoming everyone and keeping the evening flowing smoothly.
  • There wasn’t an official theme this evening, but the theme of “Edmonton” seemed to emerge. Either that or iPads (there were a lot of them in the audience, and Alistair used one on stage).
  • We trended to #1 in Canada on Twitter, this time for positive reasons!
  • Hosting the after-party at the same place as the event was smart. You lose less people that way.
  • The venue was great. I love that the stage was kind of in the audience, much more intimate than some of the venues we’ve had in the past (Myer Horowitz for instance).
  • I thought the start time of the event could have been a little tighter…it seemed to take a while to get going, and to restart after the break. No doubt because of all the great conversations that were happening!
  • The final presentation, the improv, was probably a safe bet (smart on the part of the organizers) but it worked really well and was quite funny.
  • Props to Stephanie Chan and Gabe Wong for the awesome PKN7 posters and graphic design.

Pecha Kucha Night 7 was organized by Edmonton Next Gen, and was sponsored by the City of Edmonton and Capital Power. The next event, PKN8, is scheduled for September 23 at the brand new Interdisciplinary Sciences Centre at the University of Alberta. Stay tuned to @EdmNextGen on Twitter, or sign up for their excellent weekly email newsletter.

Thanks to Edmonton Next Gen for a great event, to all of the volunteers for making it happen, and to my fellow presenters for delivering the goods!

UPDATE: Here’s a fun video montage of PKN7 made by Raffaella.

Your Guide to Summer Festivals in Edmonton!

For the 2015 edition, click here!

With dozens of festivals happening throughout the year, Edmonton is rightly known as Canada’s Festival City. During the summer in particular, it seems as though there’s a festival of some sort happening every day. I guess that’s because there is!

Here’s a list of 25 festivals you can look forward to over the next three months, complete with iCal feeds, and social media information (see below for an iCal feed for all the festivals):

You’ll note that each one has a link to ShareEdmonton, where I list the festival dates and locations as accurately as possible. Festivals like Creative Age and Improvaganza have really good detail, while others like the Fringe do not (they haven’t released the schedule yet). As I get more information I’ll update the listings. You can also see related tweets for each festival, and very soon, related photos and blog posts too!

Here’s the information for all festivals:

You can subscribe to that iCal feed using Outlook or your favorite calendar application. In Google Calendar, you can “Add by URL” and just copy/paste the iCal link above.

I’m sure there are more festivals happening over the summer that I’ve missed. If your favorite isn’t on the list, let me know. If you subscribe to the iCal feed above, any new festival that gets added to the ShareEdmonton calendar will show up automatically!

Edmonton IT Community: What are your top 5 needs?

Along with a few other usual suspects I’ve been invited to take part in an informal IT Circle later this week. The goal is to come to some consensus about what the top 5 or 10 needs of local startups and growing IT companies are, so that we can start trying to address them. I feel very strongly that we need to be doing more for the tech community in Edmonton, particularly the part of the community that is often overlooked – web & software. I’ve written about this in the past, most notably here.

The meeting is being hosted by EEDC, who I openly criticized in that post. I’m encouraged by the progress I’ve seen them make over the last six months – I think they’re really making an effort to listen, to learn, and slowly to participate in the community. I hope to see that trend continue, through this meeting and other initiatives.

So now I need your help. If you’re a member of the local IT community, whether it’s biotech, public sector, startups, or something else, what are your top needs? What’s on your wishlist? How can we make the tech community in Edmonton better? Let me know, and I’ll bring that to the table this week. Thanks!

FWIW, here are a few on my list:

  • Micro/seed funding. Small amounts of money to enable entrepreneurs to try things out.
  • Exposure to external experience. How can we connect with people who in other places that could teach us a lot?
  • Storytelling. I talk about this a lot…how can we do a better job of telling local success stories to others?

Live Music in Edmonton now at ShareEdmonton with YEG Live

It’s difficult but not impossible to discover all of the events that happen in Edmonton, and I’m continually working to improve the listings at ShareEdmonton. One of the ways I’m doing that is by working with others who already have large, accurate collections of events. The latest such example is YEG Live, Edmonton’s source for local live music, artist, venue, and event listings. You can now see all YEG Live events at ShareEdmonton!

I can’t remember how I was introduced to YEG Live – it might have been via Twitter, or it may have been because they use one of my photos for their header background. In any case, I was impressed. Founders Chris Martyniuk and Cameron Gertz have created an excellent online hub for local music in Edmonton. Most importantly, they really care about the accuracy of the data on the site. As a result, YEG Live has a superb collection of artist profiles, venue profiles, and of course, live music events. I contacted Chris to see if he’d be interested in working together, and fortunately, he was!

Now when you browse entertainment events at ShareEdmonton, you’ll see the ones that come from YEG Live highlighted with the icon to the left. When you click through to an event, such as tomorrow evening’s show featuring Sweet Thing at Haven Social Club, you’ll see all of the usual details you’d expect at a ShareEdmonton event page (start & end time, location details, related tweets, etc) as well as links and short bios for the artists performing (which link to YEG Live). There are also prominent links to the YEG Live event and ticket information pages.

Thanks to Chris for all the work he did to make this integration possible! There’s no sense in duplicating the tremendous effort he’s already putting into creating an accurate calendar of live music events in Edmonton, so I’m glad we were able to work together. It’s a win-win-win as I see it: ShareEdmonton is a little more complete, YEG Live gets a little more exposure, and Edmontonians are more likely to discover great live music events happening in the city!

Notes for 5/30/2010

Here are my weekly notes:

We took my Grandma out for brunch today to Cafe Haven to celebrate her birthday. Happy Birthday Grandma!

Edmonton Notes for 5/29/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

It has been another very wet weekend in Edmonton. Here are a couple of photos of today’s City Market Downtown and the Highlands Street Festival:

City Market Downtown - May 29

City Market Downtown - May 29City Market Downtown - May 29

Highlands Street FestivalHighlands Street Festival

Highlands Street FestivalHighlands Street Festival

You can see more photos here.

I’m going to Tech·Ed North America!

Tech·Ed is one of Microsoft’s most important annual conferences for developers and IT professionals, held in several places around the world. This year, Tech·Ed North America is in New Orleans in June, and I’m going to be there! I was invited by Microsoft Canada to attend, an opportunity I jumped at. I’ll be there with John Bristowe, taking in the sessions and labs, learning as much as I can, meeting other developers & IT pros, and generally having a good time. And of course, I’ll be blogging, tweeting, photographing, and otherwise recording & sharing the whole experience.

The conference runs from June 7 to 10. There are literally hundreds of sessions during the week, as well as a couple of keynotes and other special presentations. There’ll be some awesome parties too! The sessions are organized into 21 technical tracks, everything from Architecture to Office & SharePoint. I’m particularly interested in sessions on:

  • Open Data (obviously)
  • WCF and WF in .NET Framework 4
  • Windows Phone 7
  • Azure (cloud computing)

If you’re going to Tech·Ed, what sessions are you planning to check out? If you’re not going to Tech·Ed, what do you think I should see? Let me know!

I’m going to blog about my experience a little here, but also at Techvibes and the Canadian Developers blog. I’ll be tweeting about it too, using the official hashtag #teched. Can’t wait!

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – April 2010

Welcome to the fourth 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 April 2010:

# of local users: 10108 (an increase of 194 from March)
# of tweets by local users: 499825
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 18291 (3.7%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 148981 (29.8%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 147895 (29.6%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 27169 (5.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 16932 (3.4%)

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 under 49% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  • Local users posted roughly 11.6 tweets per minute in April (compared to 10.6 tweets per minute in March).
  • The day with the most local tweets posted was April 28 at 20061. On average, 16661 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 15259 in March).
  • Of the 148981 replies posted by local users this month, 41125 or 27.6% were to other local users.
  • A total of 1883 users posted 50 times or more in April. In comparison, 1502 users posted just once.

Here are the top ten most followed local users:

  1. douglasi
  2. calgrasley
  3. MarkIsMusing
  4. NatbyNature
  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. uppercasemag
  10. izzynobre

Here are the top ten most active local users:

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

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

  1. WeatherCalgary
  2. CgyCa
  3. CalgaryBeacon
  4. C_DIG
  5. mtroyaltransit
  6. lonnietaylor
  7. walkerjill
  8. LisaOstrikoff
  9. Calgary_News
  10. Hughes4MayorYYC

Here are the top ten most replied to local users:

  1. that_angela
  2. nscafe
  3. alex_ruiz
  4. C_DIG
  5. WESTcalgary
  6. Kristinnuendo
  7. nicolesaxton
  8. gotkube
  9. twowheelgeek
  10. Darren_Krause

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

  1. WESTcalgary
  2. cbccalgary
  3. calgaryherald
  4. CTVCalgary
  5. cityofcalgary
  6. NHLFlames
  7. CatchCalgary
  8. alex_ruiz
  9. YYCLostPet
  10. AvenueMagazine

Final Thoughts

Calgary crossed the 10,000 active user mark this month! And came tantalizingly close to breaking the 500,000 tweets per month mark too. User growth was smaller than the month before, at least partially due to improvements I made in my algorithm for identifying local users.

I think the “most retweeted” list is useful for measuring influence, though it alone doesn’t tell the whole story. Just to clarify, the most retweeted list only accounts for standard-style retweets (those using Twitter’s retweet feature or those starting with RT @) made by other local users. I hope to improve this over time.