Month: September 2013

Media Monday Edmonton: Update #90

Here’s my latest update on local media stuff:

  • I’m going to end this week with Vue Weekly’s Best of Edmonton 2013. Congratulations to all the winners in the Media category:
    • Best Radio Station: SONiC 102.9
    • Best Radio Hosts: Crash and Mars from 102.3 NOW!
    • Best Morning Radio Host: Garner Andrews from SONiC 102.9
    • Best Afternoon Radio Host: Lane Mitchell from SONiC 102.9
    • Best Late-Night Radio Host: Fitzy from 102.3 NOW!
    • Best TV Station: Global Edmonton
    • Best TV Morning Show: Breakfast Television
    • Best TV Newscast: Global News Hour
    • Best TV News Anchor (Individual): Gord Steinke from Global Edmonton
    • Best TV News Anchor (Team): Jennifer Crosby & Shaye Ganam from Global Edmonton
    • Best TV Sportscaster: Kevin Karius & John Sexsmith, both from Global Edmonton
    • Best TV Weatherperson: Josh Classen from CTV Edmonton
    • Best Podcast: The Movie Jerks
    • Best Twitterer: @creoleenvie
    • Best Local Affairs Blog: MasterMaq’s Blog
    • Best Arts/Film Blog: Fish Griwkowsky
    • Best Food Blog: Only Here for the Food
    • Best Fashion Blog: Dress Me Dearly
    • Best Music Blog: New Music Michael

UPDATE: I complete forgot to mention that CJSR’s FunDrive 2013 is now underway! Click here to donate!

You can follow Edmonton media news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegmedia. For a great overview of the global media landscape, check out Mediagazer.

So, what have I missed? What’s new and interesting in the world of Edmonton media? Let me know!

You can see past Media Monday Edmonton entries here.

Edmonton Notes for 9/29/2013

Vue Weekly’s Best of Edmonton awards for 2013 were released this week. My blog was named Best Local Affairs Blog for the second year in a row – thank you very much! I was also thrilled to be recognized as a runner-up in the Best Twitterer category, and that What the Truck?! was once again named Best Pop Up Event. It means a lot!

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Edmonton Skyline

Here are some upcoming events:

If you can’t make it out to the forums organized by Edmonton Elections, don’t worry – they’ll be streamed live online!

Here’s a promo video from Designing Downtown:

Edmonton Election 2013: Campaign Colors

In one of our earlier #yegvote Hangouts, my colleague Ryan Hastman remarked on the similarity of colors between the three primary mayoral candidates. We joked about his color theory and moved on, but recently I found myself looking at campaign colors again. What colors are most common in this election? What do they mean?

That color grid represents the primary color of all 119 campaigns. They were generated by: taking a screenshot of the candidate’s website and/or Twitter page; identifying the primary color of each using Color Thief; and doing some post-processing on the results. The white boxes are for candidates that either do not have a website or Twitter page, or that have a Twitter page with the default settings (a shockingly large number fall into this category).

While it was a fun exercise, this also serves a purpose for me. ShareEdmonton’s list of candidates has now been updated with colors, and where appropriate/possible, I’ll use these colors to represent candidates on the election night results dashboard (you can see the 2010 results dashboard with color-coding here).

There are a lot of blues, greens, and purples. Fewer red, yellow, and orange. Does this mean anything? Let’s look at Paper Leaf Design’s handy color theory quick reference poster:

Check out the full poster for all the detail, but here are some election-related highlights:

  • Red often means intensity, strength, and energy.
  • Blue often means depth, stability, and trust.
  • Purple often means power, ambition, and nobility.
  • Green often means growth, freshness, and safety.
  • Yellow often means intellect, cheerfulness, and energy.
  • Orange often means enthusiasm, creativity, and warmth.

Do candidates and their campaign teams think about these things when choosing colors?

Perhaps more importantly, do campaign colors matter to you as a voter?

Edmonton Election 2013: Update #7

We were very happy to have Deb and Breanna from The Local Good on last night’s #yegvote Hangout! We discussed the latest election news plus candidate questionnaires. You can watch the archive at EdmontonPolitics.com:

Here’s my latest election news roundup:

Michael Walters - Ward 10
Love the Walters campaign shirts!

You can follow Edmonton Election news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegvote and you can see my coverage here. Also be sure to check out the #yegvote flipboard for curated election-related stories on a daily basis.

What have I missed? Let me know!

Disclosure: I’m actively volunteering for Don Iveson’s mayoral campaign.

Edmonton’s Food Council is now real

The inaugural meeting of the Edmonton Food Council took place on Monday night at the Commonwealth Recreation Centre. I’m very excited to have the opportunity to work with fourteen passionate and dedicated Edmontonians to move this initiative forward!

Edmonton Food Council
Photo courtesy of the City of Edmonton

In November 2012, City Council approved fresh, Edmonton’s Food and Urban Agriculture Strategy. It called for an Edmonton Food Council to be established, a process which began in earnest in May of this year. By early June, 57 citizens submitted their applications to the City, a great show of interest. Interviews with 22 of them took place in mid-July, and finally on July 26 the City announced the names of the 15 citizens selected to serve on the inaugural Food Council. Here they are:

Some folks I know fairly well, others I look forward to getting to know over the months ahead. There’s a really great mix of perspectives and backgrounds, and I think we’re going to have some fascinating conversations as a result.

Edmonton Food Council
Photo courtesy of the City of Edmonton

Mayor Mandel kicked the meeting off with some introductory remarks, and made it clear that we should feel empowered as a group to decide how best to contribute to the implementation of fresh. He put a nice spin on the Food Council’s elevator pitch:

As a committee of the City’s administration, the Edmonton Food Council’s primary role is to advise on matters of food and urban agriculture and to take an active role in supporting the implementation of fresh. Other core jobs may include providing advice, undertaking research and evaluation, coordination, engagement and education.

For the rest of the evening, facilitator Beth Sanders led us through a helpful process to tease out desires and perspectives. It was great to hear from everyone and to realize by the end of the night that we had already come to some consensus on how we’ll interact as a team. I can’t say it any better than the newsletter that went out today:

What became clear is that there is no shortage of energy with this group. When discussing when monthly meetings should be held, the group quickly came to consensus that monthly meetings would not be enough to maintain momentum. They wanted to meet sooner than later. No doubt that the commitment and enthusiasm of this group will have a lasting effect on Edmonton’s food and urban agriculture landscape.

Energy is a great word – there was lots of it on Monday night! We’re all eager to get to work, and we want to actually get things done. Being nomination day, I couldn’t help but think of the phrase that so many candidates had remarked to me after filing their paperwork – “now it’s real!”

Edmonton Food Council
Photo courtesy of the City of Edmonton

Edmonton Food Council meetings will be open to the public, and there will very likely be opportunities to get involved. You can get all the information on the City’s website, and I’d also encourage you to subscribe to the Food In The City newsletter.

Edmonton Election 2013: Nomination Day Recap

Yesterday was nomination day at City Hall, the day that all candidates running in the municipal election needed to file their paperwork and pay their fees. As many of them remarked after making it through the line, “now it’s real!” It was exciting to be there to see the dozens of Edmontonians that were willing to put their names forward, not to mention all of their supporters. Of course, there was real business to be done.

Nomination Day
Returning Office Alayne Sinclair speaks to the media on Nomination Day

Dave Cournoyer and I were at City Hall for all the action, and last night along with Ryan Hastman we held a special edition of our EdmontonPolitics.com hangout to discuss nomination day. Here’s the archive:

Let’s take a look at the nomination day statistics (here are the 2010 stats). There are 119 candidates total, an increase of six from 2010. Here are the numbers broken down by race:

And here’s a closer look at the Council races in particular:

I wanted to include that chart to show just how different some of the races will be. Ward 6 has a crazy number of candidates at 16, whereas both Wards 4 and 9 have just one other candidate aside from the incumbent. The big surprise was Ward 8, which basically went from 1 candidate to 5 in a day.

Here’s a look at the candidate breakdown by gender:

Roughly 32.7% of the field is female, which is actually the same percentage as 2010. While there were no female candidates for mayor in 2010, there are two this year (including one viable candidate). The number of female candidates for Council has decreased slightly from 22.6% in 2010 to 21.7% in this election.

Here’s a look at how many candidates had contact details available on nomination day:

I was a little surprised to see email above phones, actually. And to see Twitter above Facebook. Of course, there could be more candidates with Twitter and Facebook accounts, but they hadn’t been discovered by myself or on Dave’s list by today at noon.

Speaking of email, here’s a look at which email domains candidates are using:

I am pleasantly surprised by the number of candidates that are using vanity domains! The reality is that not everyone is going to spend the $10 or so to get a vanity domain, but at least they outrank Gmail.

Nomination Day

No candidates had withdrawn their candidacy by the deadline today, so those 119 names will all appear on ballots come October 21!

If you’re looking to browse through the candidates, ShareEdmonton has you covered:

You’ll find contact details for each candidate, related tweets, and more. Stay tuned as ShareEdmonton aggregates everything you need to know about the election races.

For more photos from nomination day, check out my photoset and Dave’s photoset.

UPDATE: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that the number of female candidates was slightly higher in 2013 than in 2010, when in fact the percentage is the same.

Media Monday Edmonton: Update #89

Here’s my latest update on local media stuff:

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You can follow Edmonton media news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegmedia. For a great overview of the global media landscape, check out Mediagazer.

So, what have I missed? What’s new and interesting in the world of Edmonton media? Let me know!

You can see past Media Monday Edmonton entries here.

Edmonton Notes for 9/22/2013

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Edmonton LRT Station
Bay/Enterprise Square LRT Station, by Michael Chu

Here are some upcoming events:

E-Town Festival 2013
Guy Kawasaki with an Oilers jersey at E-Town

To help kick-off EIFF, I have a prize package to give away! To have a shot at winning two all-access passes and a gift basket, a prize valued at more than $260, simply leave a comment below with your favorite movie by 11:59 PM on Tuesday. I will randomly choose a winner and contact you on Wednesday. Good luck!

Edmonton Election 2013: Update #6

We did not host a #yegvote Hangout last night, but we’ll be back next week with a special Nomination Day episode, so stay tuned!

Here’s my latest election news roundup:

Edmonton Going to Bed
Great fall photo of Edmonton by Paul.

You can follow Edmonton Election news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegvote and you can see my coverage here. Also be sure to check out the #yegvote flipboard for curated election-related stories on a daily basis.

What have I missed? Let me know!

Disclosure: I’m actively volunteering for Don Iveson’s mayoral campaign.

Recap: DemoCamp Edmonton 22

Edmonton’s 22nd DemoCamp took place tonight at the Telus Centre on the University of Alberta campus. DemoCamp is “an event that brings together developers, creatives, entrepreneurs and investors to share what they’ve been working on and to find others in the community interested in similar topics.” You can read my recap of our last DemoCamp here. While it was still a good turnout, the crowd did seem smaller tonight than it has recently. Maybe the frost warning scared everyone back into their homes!

We had six demos tonight. In order of appearance:

  • Our first demo came from 9-year-old Ella, the youngest person to demo here in Edmonton! She was a participant in CodeCamp over the summer that Startup Edmonton hosted with Junior Achievement. Ella learned how to create a game using Scratch, a creative learning community from MIT. Ella’s game, pacman 2, is pretty cool and not as easy as it looks! Ella said she wants to be a programmer one day, and with more time she’d add more levels to her game and would make it more challenging. Great work Ella!

DemoCamp Edmonton 22

  • The second demo was SAM, which stands for Social Asset Management. James walked us through the app’s features. SAM helps media professionals curate and manage content, which they can then use in their storytelling. So I could search for and save a bunch of tweets, then using a WordPress plugin, I could insert them into a blog post. It looks pretty feature-rich already, though SAM is still in beta.
  • Next up was Galen who showed us a couple of the digital storytelling projects he’s working on. One was an app that lets you pin stories atop a map. The other was Novorapid, an interactive short film being produced by the National Film Board. Directed by Tyler Enfield, the film “uses dynamic split screens to allow the viewer to experience the film from multiple perspectives.” It looked like a really cool approach.
  • The fourth demo was Spatialtree from Ajay and James. The basic idea is that you can create a cluster of online profiles that Spatialtree will then analyze and generate reports for. So you could see who’s getting the most interactions, or how you compare to the competition. The tool has a pretty nice interface, though I’m a little unclear on practical applications for this aside from social media marketing.
  • Grant was up next to show us a game he and his team are building called Bardbarian. The protagonist, Brad, has grown tired of life as a barbarian and uses a makeshift axe-lute to “shred lute and collect loot”. It looks pretty fun, and the development team have been blogging as they progress. Here’s some preview footage:
  • The final demo tonight was Meerkat, a social network analysis application developed at AICML. Matt showed us how the tool can be used to visualize Twitter data, and to answer questions about that data such as who is most influential but not necessarily most popular. The team behind it have something pretty powerful, and are looking for interesting use cases for it. Financial analysis sounds like it has been a successful early sector to use the tool.

It was funny that so many of the demos tonight featured Twitter, leading Cam to joke that “Twitter is a thing” and “you should buy some stock!” (Twitter recently announced it is planning an IPO.) Given that I have been known to dabble in Twitter analytics and digital storytelling, I found tonight’s lineup pretty compelling! It’s hard to top an energetic, young programmer like Ella, especially when she kicks off the show with a great demo, so I’m going to pick hers as my favorite tonight. I could certainly see myself using SAM though, so I’ll be keeping an eye on that one! Well done to all the demoers.

There were a few announcements tonight:

  • Startup Edmonton’s Preflight Pre-Accelerator Program returns in October. The deadline to apply is September 20.
  • The 4th Launch Party is slated to take place on November 21. Have something to launch? Get in touch with Startup Edmonton.
  • The Software Engineering Capstone Design program at the U of A is looking for project suggestions! Get in touch with professor Scott Dick if you have one.

Here are some of the upcoming tech events you might consider checking out:

Keep an eye on the Startup Edmonton Meetup group for more upcoming tech events.

See you at DemoCamp Edmonton 23!