A vision for the future of transportation in Alberta

The Province is currently working on a new long-term transportation strategy for Alberta. Over the last two months, public discussions have been held throughout Alberta and in the spring, an online survey will be released.

“This Strategy – which will focus on all forms of transportation, connections and ways to move people and products – provide an overarching vision for Alberta’s transportation system over the next 50 years. It will also help guide government decisions on transportation investments, policies and programs.”

That’s a big challenge. But it’s exciting to consider!

Since I missed the meeting here in Edmonton, I took a look at the feedback form. It includes a number of questions that aim to capture what the public thinks about the strategy. One of the first deals with the proposed vision for the Transportation Strategy for Alberta:

“A world-class transportation system that is safe, sustainable and innovative, and that supports Alberta’s economy and quality of life.”

I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, but it just seems rather bland, doesn’t it? It’s very expected. And phrases like “world-class” are just meaningless. The proposed vision is also incredibly similar to others. For instance, here is Transport Canada’s vision:

“A transportation system in Canada that is recognized worldwide as safe and secure, efficient and environmentally responsible.”

Needless to say, I’m not a fan of the proposed vision. It doesn’t tell me anything about what transportation in Alberta will look like in the future, especially as you could credibly argue that it reflects the current state of Alberta’s transportation system.

Welcome to Alberta by Magalie

What could it be instead? Well let’s consider the context.

The shift from rural to urban has been dramatic in Alberta. According to the 2011 federal census, more than 56% of Albertans now live in population centres larger than 100,000 people in size, and 83% live in urban areas of any size (compared to 81% nationally). We’re an urban province now more than ever. The economic power of cities cannot be ignored.

We know that vehicles are dangerous. According to the World Health Organization, “road traffic injuries are the eighth leading cause of death globally, and the leading cause of death for young people aged 15-29.” Here in Alberta, traffic fatalities have declined significantly from 2007 through 2011, but there are still too many of them. We also know that vehicles have a negative impact on the environment. They contribute to global warming, they contribute to smog, and they take up an incredible amount of land that could otherwise be used more productively.

There are lots of other factors to consider, but I think these are the two most important. Reducing our dependence on vehicles and recognizing the importance of cities should be central any vision of the future of transportation in our province. Unsurprisingly, the two biggest cities in Alberta have already recognized this.

Our neighbours to the south have the Calgary Transportation Plan, which says:

The decisions made today about where and what to build will affect Calgarians for 100 years or more – just as decisions made in the past affect us today. Going forward, the transportation system must perform a wide variety of roles and consider the context of surrounding land uses, be they natural or manufactured. It must provide more choice for Calgarians – realistic choices that are convenient, affordable and attractive. These choices include walking, cycling, transit, high occupancy vehicles (HOV or carpooling) and single-occupant vehicles (SOV).

Here in Edmonton, we have the Transportation Master Plan, The Way We Move. It is even more aggressive:

We are building a 21st century city, shaping an Edmonton that will meet the needs of our diverse and growing urban and regional population. Growing environmental concerns, acknowledgment of the ongoing investment needed to maintain our transportation infrastructure and the rapid growth of our city demand a shift in transportation priority setting. It is a shift from single passenger vehicle use to more public transit; from building outward to a compact urban form. From an auto oriented view of transportation to a more holistic view of an interconnected, multi-modal transportation system where citizens can walk, bike, bus and train efficiently and conveniently to their desired location.

I recognize that Calgary and Edmonton have a completely different context and set of challenges than the rest of the province does, but I think their transportation strategies are informative. Let me also say that I don’t think creating a vision statement is easy. I know a lot of hard work, thought, and difficult discussions are needed to come up with them. That said, I’ll take a stab at it.

Here’s my attempt at crafting a stronger vision for the future of transportation in Alberta:

An innovative and sustainable transportation system that emphasizes high occupancy vehicles and strengthens the global competitiveness of Alberta’s urban areas.

What do you think?

Want to solve the space problem for the arts in Edmonton? Stop shaving that yak!

In software development there’s an expression we use to avoid scope creep. “Don’t shave that yak!” we’ll say. It’s shorthand for staying focused and working on solving the problem at hand, not other problems that we might notice along the way. As far as I know the phrase comes from a Ren & Stimpy episode and was coined by Carlin Vieri, a Ph.D. at MIT back in the 90s.

“Yak shaving is what you are doing when you’re doing some stupid, fiddly little task that bears no obvious relationship to what you’re supposed to be working on, but yet a chain of twelve causal relations links what you’re doing to the original meta-task.”

I quite like Seth Godin’s example of yak shaving. This GIF illustrates it well too:

yak shaving

I was chatting with someone in the arts community recently about the Edmonton Downtown Academic & Cultural Centre project, and I remarked, “I just don’t know how we got from ‘arts organizations need space’ to ‘a $1 billion project is the answer’.” But thinking about it later, I realized that I know exactly how we got there. We’re shaving the yak.

It was back in November 2011 that the Mayor’s Arts Visioning Committee released its recommendations for how we could “lift Edmonton to international recognition as a city of the arts by the year 2040.” They followed a public engagement process, learned about the challenges facing the arts in Edmonton, and developed recommendations to try to address them.

One of the challenges identified was space:

“Edmonton artists and arts advocates described a critical need for additional creation, rehearsal, exhibit and performance space. Developing or designating new arts space is paramount to the vision in this report.”

It’s worth noting that this wasn’t a new challenge – The Art of Living identified it in 2008 too. As a result, many of the recommendations dealt with space. The third recommendation was titled “Downtown Arts District and Performance Centre” and was relatively simple:

“The City of Edmonton endorse, in principle, a landmark performing arts centre (PAC) downtown, and designate land for such a development in the city core.”

The report goes on to detail the need and provides background and context. I understand from my conversations with those in the arts community that there is a real need for more space, especially smaller, black-box space that is multi-purpose.

So that’s the problem we’re meant to be solving: a lack of performance and rehearsal space. How did we start shaving the yak? I think it went something like this:

City Council put up $100,000 for the newly created Edmonton Performing Arts Centre Foundation to develop a business case. In developing the business case, the foundation connected with the University of Alberta which expressed a desire to link its music and art & design programs with the downtown arts community. There’s not enough money for all of that, so the vision needed to be made broader. The “revitalize downtown!” mantra evidently worked for others, so the group decides to go after that as part of the vision. To compete with the other big, fancy space known as the arena, a big, fancy space known as the Galleria was designed. In order to pay for that, a commercial office tower was added to the plan, along with a new campus for the University of Alberta. But those projects were deemed unrealistic unless there was a connection to the new Royal Alberta Museum and the LRT.

Before you know it, the group has taken arts out of its name completely, and we’re talking about a $40 million dollar pedway.

Weren’t we supposed to be finding new space for the arts? Stop shaving that yak!

Media Monday Edmonton: Update #101

Here’s my latest update on local media stuff:

This news broke on Valentine’s Day but I haven’t had the chance to mention it yet: congratulations to Kerry Powell who is joining Global Edmonton as managing editor! Looking forward to it!
Congratulations to all of the finalists in the Alberta Magazine Awards! The gala takes place on March 20 in Calgary.
Here is Linda’s latest Social Media Notes. I had the opportunity to chat about social media with her and Brittney at Saturday’s ONA Edmonton conference. We talked about having some fun and showing that you’re a real person through your social media posts. You may know that one of the ways Linda does that is by sharing pictures of her cats. I joked that I should start including pictures of puppies. So, here you go!

We met Ellie in July at the Avenue Goes to the Dogs event!

CJSR is broadcasting the annual Homelessness Radio Marathon on Wednesday. There are a lot of great stories as part of CJSR’s Street Bytes series.
The next Art of Conversation takes place on March 14 at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald on the patio and in the Wedgewood room. Graham Hicks, Rob Christie, and Audie Lynds are your hosts.
Avenue Edmonton is looking for an editorial intern. The deadline to apply is April 4.
On February 13, J’Lyn Nye had an hour long chat with Graham Hicks on the 630 CHED Afternoon News. Graham wrote, “We had a wonderful wide-ranging conversation about Edmonton, charities and the transition into the less-hectic life of semi-retirement, if you can call it that!” I thought their conversation about his column was great.
David Johnston is moving on from the Journal (his next move is still to be decided). I like the farewell cake that his colleagues Lucas and Ryan made. Paula wrote a farewell post on Facebook, calling him her “social media mentor.” Here’s his final Relinked column.
If you haven’t gotten your nominations in yet for The Yeggies, what are you waiting for?! Nominations close Friday, so take a few minutes and share with us your favorites from 2013.
Apparently Edmonton filmmaker and journalist Dave Walker is missing, somewhere in Cambodia.
Thomas Alliance Inc. is looking for a community newspaper reporter/photographer to join its team. The deadline to apply is March 7.
I like this comment Jennie Russell made on Saturday:

"Investigative journalism is not a beat. It is how you do your job." @jennierussell_ #yegmedia

— ONA Edmonton (@ONAYeg) February 22, 2014

I can’t remember where I saw this link, but I’m looking forward to reading the Verification Handbook: A definitive guide to verifying digital content for emergency content.
Have you noticed the new paging that the Journal has added to its website? It looks like this:

paging

How annoying! First of all, it’s rare that an article is long enough to warrant that functionality (there’s usually only a paragraph or two on the second page). But worse than that, when I click either “2” or “View as one page”, it jumps back to the top of the screen (I’m using IE11). I have no idea why they introduced this. It doesn’t even do a page load, so it can’t be for page views.
While I am complaining about the Journal, I think the ads have gotten worse. I want the ads to be there so that they can make some money, but they’re so intrusive and they slow the page so much that I’m tempted to use an ad-blocker just to make the site usable. This is what the front page looked like for me tonight:

edmonton journal

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 2/23/2014

The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games wrapped up today, and like most of you I was up by 5am to watch the Canadian men’s hockey team defeat Sweden 3-0 to take the gold medal. In case you missed it, ATB Financial lit up its new building downtown every time Canada scored:

Canada finished 3rd in the medal standings with 10 gold and 25 medals total, one less than our haul in Vancouver four years ago. Edmonton-born athletes did well too. Now attention turns to the Paralympic games, with the opening ceremonies taking place on March 7.

And if you’re like me, you’re now counting down to World Cup 2014 – just 108 days to go!

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Headlines

Though he seems to be doing some great work behind-the-scenes, Mayor Iveson made it clear this week that he’s not afraid to get out and be vocal about important issues, launching a social media campaign to build support for funding of the Valley Line LRT. Here is the video he launched with:

Citizens are encouraged to share their support for LRT expansion using the hashtag #yeg4LRT. It very quickly became one of the most popular hashtags on Twitter. Here is Dave’s take on the news.
Speaking of Mayor Iveson, he sat down recently with Adam and Scott to talk about his first few months in office.
The City has gotten a head start on filling potholes this year, though I expect the recent drop in temperatures has put that plan on pause. The budget for pothole repairs this year is $5.9 million, a little less than the $7 million that was spent in 2013.
Here is Paula’s take on the proposed, $40 million pedway for the Galleria: “If you want an illustration of everything that’s wrong with the proposed Galleria arts campus in downtown Edmonton, you can find it in the special request that came before city council’s executive committee Tuesday.”
I have been outspoken about the pedway and the larger project too, but David Staples says to not be so hasty to reject it. I remain unconvinced that the project is worthwhile.
Think you can design a better flag for Edmonton? There’s now a community-wide design challenge that invites you to do just that. Dustin Bajer has already submitted his design, in both winter and summer versions, with an explanation here.
Here is a good piece on Edmonton’s Poet Laureate, Mary Pinkoski.
Residential infill in Edmonton shouldn’t be so difficult, says Tegan Martin-Drysdale.
Congratulations to the City of Edmonton on winning an award for the Citizen Dashboard!
Starting Tuesday, the ramp connecting Anthony Henday Drive and Wye Road in Sherwood Park will be closed to allow construction to take place. Another step closer to the completion of the ring road!
In case you missed it: the lights are now on at Edmonton’s outdoor Neon Sign Museum! Spacing has some more great photos. You can learn more about the signs and history here.
Don’t miss this feature on Edmonton’s lost Chinese Market Gardens. “Look carefully, and the urban landscape will reveal reminders of these gardens, and the people who once tended them.”
Monday was Family Day, and with great weather there were lots of families outside enjoying winter activities! Here’s a look at Churchill Square:

Upcoming Events

The Edmonton Public Library is celebrating Freedom to Read week through March 1. Monday evening they’re hosting a speaking event with Amanda Lindhout.
The Google Apps for Education summit takes place at the Edmonton Expo Centre on Monday and Tuesday this week. I’ve heard it is the second largest such summit in the world.
The next UX Edmonton Meetup takes place on Tuesday evening at Startup Edmonton.
The Oilers are back in action this week, hosting the Minnesota Wild at Rexall Place on Thursday evening. The Flames are in town on Saturday.
Social Media Breakfast Edmonton returns on Friday morning with a session on defining, building, and managing your brand.
On Friday evening, I’ll be down at Rexall Place cheering on the Edmonton Rush as they host the Toronto Rock.
Heads up that the next Green Drinks event, focused on local food, is coming up on March 5. Here’s a preview.
For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

Sharon getting a drink from the vodka ice luge at Latitude 53’s Parka Patio Party on Saturday night. More photos here.

International Open Data Day in Edmonton

Today is Open Data Day around the world, and here in Edmonton we celebrated with a hackathon at the Edmonton Public Library’s new Makerspace. A few dozen people came out to learn more about open data, to hear ideas from others, and to start exploring and building.

The day started off with “speed data-ing”, where anyone who wanted to could pitch an idea to the room. Once the pitches were done, there were a lot of great conversations taking place as everyone figured out how they wanted to spend their time for the rest of the day. Teams slowly self-assembled, and then everyone got to work.

At the end of the day, teams had the opportunity to show off the progress they had made throughout the day. One team worked on visualizing open datasets so that they could be more easily accessed and used by educators. Another team looked at visualizing how many dogs there are and which breeds are most popular in different areas of the city. The winning idea was a visualization of tree data in Edmonton. Hackathons are typically longer than just a few hours, so it was impressive to see what everyone was able to come up with given the time constraints!

There has never been a better time to be an open data developer in Edmonton. The City of Edmonton’s open data catalogue now contains more than 400 datasets, and the Citizen Dashboard that sits atop the catalogue recently won a national public-sector leadership award. The Government of Alberta’s open data catalogue also has more than 400 datasets now, and it only launched last May. The Government of Canada recently expanded and updated its large open data catalogue. And just this week, Strathcona County launched its own data catalogue featuring more than 60 datasets.

Many other cities around the world hosted hackathons today too. Here’s what Open Data Day is about:

Open Data Day is a gathering of citizens in cities around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption open data policies by the world’s local, regional and national governments.

Open Data has come a long way over the last few years. It has been adopted by governments around the world both large and small, and even organizations like the G8 have adopted an Open Data Charter. Countless apps and services have been developed to take advantage of all that information, and I think the best is yet to come. If you’re looking for an open data primer, check out the Government of Canada’s Open Data 101 or check out the Apps Gallery.

Thanks to the City and EPL for hosting a fun and creative day at the Makerspace! You can see more photos from the day here.

The lights are on at Edmonton’s Outdoor Neon Sign Museum

Dozens of Edmontonians braved the cold tonight to join Mayor Iveson, Councillor McKeen, Councillor Knack, and Downtown Business Association Executive Director Jim Taylor for the official launch of the Edmonton Neon Sign Museum on 4th Street Promenade. After probably a bit too much talking, the signs were introduced and the lights came on one-by-one.

Here’s an overview of the museum:

The primary purpose of this project is to develop an outdoor historic neon sign museum in downtown Edmonton to celebrate the history of neon signage in the city, and to create an engaging outdoor space for cultural tourism as part of the bustling 104th Street Promenade. This unique museum fosters activity and walking traffic in the surrounding area, acting as a light-based form of urban beautification for downtown Edmonton.

The project has been years in the making. Work began in 2008 and the museum has been consistently championed by city planner David Holdsworth, who originated the idea.

The City of Edmonton Heritage Planning has been collecting the historic neon signs at The City of Edmonton Archives over the past few years, salvaging them from both demolished buildings and from buildings where new businesses moved in and removed the signs. The City has collected twelve signs that represent some of the early signage styles and iconic signage forms in Edmonton. The Museum will continue to grow as additional signs – a goal of 30 total – are added in the coming years. Each of the current signs has an accompanying plaque with text panels that tell the stories of the signs, and by doing so the signs speak to the history of Edmonton.

For more on the history of the project, check out Omar’s piece.

The museum currently features signs from Mike’s News Stand, Canadian National Railway freight-telegrams, Northern Alberta Railway, XL Furniture, W.W. Arcade, Cliff’s Auto Parts, an unidentified drugstore, and Canadian Furniture. Signs still to come are from the Princess Theatre, Pantages Theatre, the Georgia Baths, and a second sign from the W.W. Arcade.

Sponsors of the museum include the City of Edmonton and the Alberta Sign Association, and community partners include TELUS, the Downtown Business Association, and The Places.

You can see more photos here. Stay tuned for much better photos from the local Flickr group as well!

Recap: DemoCamp Edmonton 24

Edmonton’s 24th 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. There was a pretty good turnout tonight, and lots of new faces in the crowd.

We had seven demos tonight, three of which were projects created at the recent 24 hour Computer Engineering Club Hackathon. In order of appearance:

Gregg and Stephen showed us Industry Mailout‘s new email editor. The existing editor hasn’t really been changed since 2004, so a fresh approach was long overdue. The new editor looks very slick, and in addition to being easier to use with a live preview, it’s more advanced too. Users can easily include tweets and other elements in their templates. It also supports Liquid.
Ross and Andrew were up next to show us their project from the hackathon called Stall. It’s a mobile app that lets you play mini games simply by scanning a QR code that has been placed somewhere. So imagine getting into an elevator, scanning the QR code, and playing a quick game. They also implemented a high score feature, so you could try to top the leaderboard in that elevator. Cool stuff!
Our third demo was from Michael who showed us Renturly. It’s an app that helps to match buyers and sellers in off-market, NPN (non-performing note), and REO (real estate owned) real estate. I must admit I don’t understand the business, but I gathered that this isn’t a tool you’ll use to buy your next house. It’s for people looking to buy and sell apartment buildings, hotels, and golf courses. I’m not really sure where the name comes in or why the logo is a bird, but it sounds like Renturly already has a number of paying customers.
Next up was Indragie and Ali who showed us their Smartwatch Light Bulb Controller, which took first place at the hackathon. Their solution enabled a Pebble smartwatch to control the color and state of a wifi-connected lightbulb (they used LIFX). It was neat to see such a visual demo that just worked! Currently it requires a server and a phone, and it requires everything to be on the same wifi network, but in theory they could make it run from the cloud.
Our fifth demo was from Myst.io. Logan and his team showed off the cross-platform API using Visual Studio! Myst makes it easy for developers to add features to their games like cloud saving, multiplayer, and achievements. It sounds like their API is fairly complete, though they are still working on the deployment and management.
Sixth was Ranek who showed us his hackathon project called URSA. As he himself admitted, it solves a problem that students try to solve every couple of years – a better way to search and select from the University of Alberta’s course catalogue. His solution did look pretty slick, and there are lots of potential improvements he could make. Interestingly it doesn’t simply scrape data, but actually gets the bulk of it from an LDAP server the university makes available. Progress!
The final demo of the evening was from Kris, Damien, and their team, who showed us GameSys. They work in the online gaming (as in casino) space, and showed us some nifty tech that can help to detect fraud, collusion, and other “abhorrent” behavior in online poker. We basically saw a Virgin-branded poker game being played, followed by a peek at the admin interface they would use on the backend to detect foul play.

Here are some video highlights from the event:

All of tonight’s demos were relatively quick – I don’t think anyone used their full seven minutes actually! I am really happy to see what Industry Mailout is up to as their service is used by so many local organizations (I feel like I interact with it daily due to all the email newsletters I get). I loved seeing all of the cool projects that students were able to create in just 24 hours, it’s really impressive. Even if their solutions don’t have a commercial future, it’s great to see such creativity.

Great job to all the demoers!

Here are the upcoming events and other announcements that were highlighted at DemoCamp:

Startup Edmonton is hosting an open house each Friday afternoon. It’s a great opportunity to check out the space and to find out what it is like to be a member.
The next Go Meetup is on Monday night. There are also meetups for Ruby, Python, and many other technologies so check them out! One of the newest is an AWS Meetup, the first meeting of which will be during lunch on March 20.
There’s an interesting lunch event coming up next Wednesday called Lunchalytics. Taking place at Startup Edmonton, the event’s theme is Predictive Analytics in the Public Sector.
TEDxEdmonton is coming back this summer with the theme of “uncertainty”. They’ve recently changed the date to June 14 to watch for future details in the weeks ahead.

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

See you at DemoCamp Edmonton 25!

DemoCamp Edmonton 24 is on Thursday!

Looking to connect with local entrepreneurs, investors, and other creative Edmontonians? Look no further than the next DemoCamp, taking place at the U of A on Thursday.

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. For presenters, it’s a great way to get feedback on what you’re building from peers and the community, all in an informal setting. Started back in 2008, DemoCamp Edmonton has steadily grown into one of the largest in the country, with 200-300 people attending each event.

If you’ve never been to a DemoCamp, I think you’ll enjoy the format. The reason it is called DemoCamp is because you have to actually demo something!

The rules for DemoCamp are simple: 7 minutes to demo real, working products, followed by a few minutes for questions, and no slides allowed.

Following the demos, a large group usually heads to a local pub for drinks. It’s a great opportunity to ask the demoers about their stuff and to meet some new people.

Photo of Edmonton’s first DemoCamp in March 2008

You don’t need to be a programmer to appreciate DemoCamp. The demos are approachable and don’t usually dwell on any technical details. There are plenty of people in the room who are not developers, so you won’t be in the minority if code scares you! Come and get inspired by what others have applied their talents to.

Here are the details for Thursday’s event:

WHEN: Thursday, February 20, 2014 at 6:45pm
WHERE: TELUS Centre 150, University of Alberta

The demos this time will include:

Industry Mailout
GameSys
Renturly
Myst Game SDK
Three U of A Hackathon teams

Here’s a teaser on CTV Edmonton!

Don’t miss it! You can RSVP on Meetup here. If you can’t make it, follow along on Twitter using the #democampyeg hashtag.

If you’d like to read about previous DemoCamps, you can see my recaps here. Here’s my recap of DemoCamp Edmonton 23, which took place in November. Thinking you might want to demo in the future? You can apply here.

See you Thursday!

Media Monday Edmonton: Twitter Statistics

Though numbers are only one part of the story of how local media are using tools like Twitter, I find them interesting nonetheless. I have posted Facebook statistics for the local media a couple times, but never Twitter! In this post, I have taken a snapshot of the local media’s Twitter stats.

The following numbers were all gathered today using Twitter Counter and are sorted by followers.

Organization	Followers	Following	Tweets
Edmonton Journal	47,389	122	76,503
CTV Edmonton	43,933	658	54,336
Global Edmonton	41,037	93	22,409
CBC Edmonton	30,205	407	28,912
Edmonton Sun	20,001	4,294	41,855
SONiC 102.9	15,992	301	29,289
91.7 The Bounce	15,068	15,540	18,596
Avenue Edmonton	13,264	641	5,847
Metro Edmonton	13,125	1,196	27,204
102.3 Now! Radio	13,107	14,386	46,021
Vue Weekly	13,006	420	4,223
CISN Country 103.9	12,617	12,108	23,874
HOT 107 Edmonton	11,306	2,277	24,829
CityNews Edmonton	10,872	158	4,402
BT Edmonton	10,271	2,932	13,913
100.3 The Bear	9,531	5,376	17,506
CKUA Radio	9,049	948	6,323
iNews880	7,517	1,615	40,046
TSN 1260	7,138	746	10,768
630 CHED	6,569	424	21,509
96.3 Capital FM	6,548	571	6,115
104.9 Virgin Edmonton	6,277	306	25,396
K-97 Edmonton	6,199	3,785	11,528
Alberta Primetime	6,155	416	5,365
CJSR 88.5 FM	4,094	733	1,925
up! 99.3 FM	2,224	998	5,980
105.9 Shine FM	1,486	878	4,755
92.5 Fresh FM	1,318	542	14,085
95.7 CRUZ FM	1,292	997	11,533

You can see some other Twitter stats in my State of the Edmonton Twittersphere for 2013. Based on that data, the ten most retweeted local media accounts are:

What do you think? Do the numbers make sense given what you know of these organizations on Twitter?

You can see past Media Monday Edmonton entries here.

Edmonton Notes for 2/16/2014

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Headlines

At a news conference featuring Daryl Katz himself, the City and Oilers announced the guaranteed maximum price for the downtown arena was met and that construction can move ahead.
Following on from the arena news, PCL announced that a groundbreaking will take place in March with construction scheduled to complete in time for the 2016-2017 NHL season.
Here’s a look at a couple of other projects being built nearby – the RAM and the new City office tower.
The Federal government announced the new Building Canada Fund this week, and Mayor Iveson thinks it could help Edmonton build the Southeast LRT extension.
Mayor Don Iveson used a pair of scissors delivered by a small robot to cut the ribbon on the Edmonton Public Library’s Makerspace. Open during regular hours at the Stanley A. Milner library, EPL Makerspace “offers incredible technology and equipment for the public to create on.”
Here’s the latest Council Roundup. The City of Edmonton was named one of Alberta’s top employers for 2014!
On Monday, the Province announced it will invest in three new schools in Edmonton, plus an expansion to Lillian Osborne High School. Premier Redford said: “One of the cornerstones of our Building Alberta Plan is education and preparing our kids for their future. Last spring, I committed to building 50 schools and modernizing 70 others and that is exactly what we are doing. Before the month is over, all of those projects will be underway.”
Here’s an interactive map of Edmonton schools from the Edmonton Journal. Great visualization!
Starting Tuesday, dozens of trees will be removed from the ravine above Groat Road to make way for the construction of a new bridge. The new bridge is expected to cost $32.2 million and is slated to open in October 2015.
Sobeys as forced to sell a number of grocery stores in Western Canada in order to proceed with its purchase of Safeway’s Canadian locations, including four here in Edmonton. All four were purchased by Federated Co-operatives and will remain open.
I’m still not convinced that the proposed Downtown Academic & Cultural Centre is a good idea, but it’ll be before Council again this week to discuss a potential land sale.
The Edmonton Rush defeated the Minnesota Swarm on Friday night to improve to 7-0 on the season. It’s looking like it’ll be a great season!
Congrats to local startup LoginRadius on securing another $1.3 million in financing. The company has also opened an office in Sunnyvale, California.
Will we have more local beer choices in the future thanks to recent provincial policy changes? Beer Revolution’s general manager Luke Sifk thinks so.
The Edmonton Eskimos have announced their 2014 season!
Edmonton will soon be home to four Bitcoin ATMs, two of which will be at Remedy Cafe, one at West Edmonton Mall, and one in Sherwood Park.
Applications are open for the Edmonton Youth Forum, taking place on March 28 at City Hall. The deadline to apply is March 7.

Here’s a different way to see Edmonton: from above!

Upcoming Events

The Silver Skate Festival started on Friday and continues through February 23 at Hawrelak Park.
Looking for something fun to do on Family Day? Check out activities at Churchill Square and the Legislature between noon and 4pm!
Broadway Across Canada presents West Side Story at the Jubilee Auditorium this week beginning on Tuesday.
The next speaker series event organized by The Way We Green will take place at City Hall on Wednesday during the lunch hour, focused on water conservation.
Saturday is International Open Data Day, and the Edmonton Public Library is hosting a hackathon to celebrate.
Also Saturday is the Online News Association Edmonton’s first conference.
Latitude 53’s popular Parka Patio Party returns on Saturday evening.
Tickets are on sale now for Pecha Kucha Night 18, coming up on March 6.
Heads up on an interesting event taking place from March 5 to 8 at Characters restaurant: Taste of Iceland. It’s another creative way to promote the new direct flight to Reykjavik.
For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

Great long exposure of the skyline from Jeff Wallace

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