Month: May 2016

Edmonton Notes for May 8, 2016

Happy Mother’s Day! Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Headlines

  • What started out as a fairly normal week quickly became anything but when the Fort McMurray wildfire swept through the city on Tuesday, destroying more than 1,600 buildings and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people. The fire grew quickly throughout the week and is expected to continue burning for months. Rain is badly needed to help fight the fire. A province-wide fire ban is in place.
  • As of 4pm today, more than 12,000 people have received assistance from Edmonton’s Reception Centre at the Edmonton Expo Centre, and more than 500 people are staying there overnight, down from 2,000 at the peak. Edmonton’s response has also included sending firefighters and supports to the Fort McMurray area to help battle the blaze. Lots of businesses, community organizations, and individuals have stepped up throughout Edmonton, which is great to see. The pancake breakfast fundraiser held on Friday morning at Churchill Square was a big success.
  • “It’s always been Edmonton’s instinct to help, and help we have,” Mayor Iveson wrote. “Over the next days and months our Wood Buffalo neighbours will need our ongoing support, because the recovery will be like nothing we’ve ever done before.”
  • The latest update from the Province says that more than 1500 firefighters are fighting wildfires around Alberta, including the 161,000 hectare blaze around Fort McMurray.
  • Edmonton will no longer host the Canadian Finals Rodeo (CFR) after this year now that Council has decided against pursuing a bid for 2017. “This does not mean that the door for rodeo in Edmonton is closed forever,” Mayor Iveson wrote, noting that the Oilers Entertainment Group is looking to bring a Professional Bull Riding Association event to Edmonton.
  • In looking at the future of LRT development in our city, Council has decided that the west leg of the Valley Line will be its top priority, followed by the extension from NAIT to Blatchford. All other lines will be prioritized by a future Council.
  • Douglas R. Stollery was elected as the University of Alberta’s 21st chancellor on Friday. His four-year term starts June 15.
  • Edmonton Public Library CEO Pillar Martinez has received the Presidents’ Award from the Library Association of Alberta.
  • The Government of Alberta has restored $16 million in funding for NorQuest’s expansion. The Province is “investing a total of $61 million in NorQuest’s expansion and retrofit project in 2016-17.”
  • Vue Weekly has released its 2016 Golden Fork Awards. Congrats to all!
  • From The Gateway: What’s stopping Chinatown’s revitalization?
  • I love this: photographer Jerry Cordeiro has teamed up with the Inside Out project to help showcase the people of the inner city. You can see the first series of images at the Quasar Bottle Depot on 95 Street.
  • For the third year in a row, the City of Edmonton is in the running for the annual We Love Cities people’s choice award. The challenge ends June 19.
  • This weekend the new Rogers Place scoreboard arrived in Edmonton. It was assembled in Las Vegas and is 46 feet wide by 36 feet high on four sides. “It’s going to be special,” said Bob Nicholson, CEO and vice-chairman of the Oilers Entertainment Group.
  • Earls has backed down and released a statement saying, “we made a mistake when we moved away from Canadian beef.” I can understand why they’d go this route, but I wish they had stood by their original position.
  • Looking to beat the heat? Spray parks and the City Hall pool are all scheduled to be open by May 20.
  • For more recent headlines, check out ShareEdmonton.

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Premier Notley & Mayor Iveson at the Edmonton Reception Centre

Upcoming Events

  • The Sage Awards take place on Wednesday, honouring the outstanding achievements and contributions of seniors in our community.
  • The Edmonton Heritage Council’s AGM takes place on Wednesday evening at City Hall.
  • Edmonton’s economy will be the topic for Thursday when the Edmonton Real Estate Forum takes place at the Shaw Conference Centre.
  • The Eskimos are launching their season with a party on Thursday!
  • Thursday evening is the 2016 season kickoff for the 124 Grand Market! Note the market has moved further south to 102 Avenue this year.
  • The Edmonton Bike Swap is slated to take place on Saturday.
  • Saturday is the final City Market at City Hall of the season. The market moves back to 104 Street on the May long weekend!
  • #YEGSEMICOLON‘s fundraising event takes place on Sunday at the Princess of Wales Armouries.
  • For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

Edmonton Emergency Relief Services
Lots of activity at Edmonton Emergency Relief Services this week

The last 25 years of wildfires in Alberta

Like all of you I have been watching the images and stories coming in from Fort McMurray and elsewhere in the province with horror and fascination. Horror because of the incredible devastation caused by the wildfires and fascination because of the incredible response of Edmontonians and Albertans to help all those affected.

The wildfire that is wreaking havoc in Fort McMurray grew very rapidly and is approaching 200,000 hectares in size. It has been nicknamed The Beast by officials. Wildfires are not a rare thing in Alberta of course, we have our fair share every year. I found myself wondering how this year compared to previous years and how this fire compared in size. I was pleasantly surprised to find all of the data readily accessible in the federal and provincial open data catalogues.

Here’s a look at the number of fires and the number of hectares burned in Alberta from 1990 through most of 2015:

alberta wildfire stats

A large number of fires doesn’t always mean more area burned – some fires are just more destructive than others, weather conditions play a role, etc. The worst year in the last 25 years in terms of area burned was 2011 when more than 806,000 hectares burned. One fire that year, the Richardson Fire, was nearly 600,000 hectares in size, the second largest in Alberta history (after the 1950 Chinchaga fire).

The average size of a wildfire in Alberta from 1990 to 2014 was about 120 hectares. There have been a few years with fires over 100,000 hectares in size, but the largest is about 70,000 hectares on average. Here’s the largest fire size by year (for 1990-2014):

YEAR SIZE (HECTARES)
1990 11,810
1991 1,559
1992 475
1993 7,820
1994 13,138
1995 132,679
1996 452
1997 2,800
1998 163,138
1999 10,349
2000 2,147
2001 104,534
2002 238,867
2003 29,936
2004 107,829
2005 43,000
2006 18,204
2007 63,000
2008 11,600
2009 11,506
2010 33,075
2011 577,647
2012 134,603
2013 8,819
2014 4,173

Another thing I was curious about was the cause of these wildfires. The data shows that for the 25,000+ wildfires that burned during the 1996-2014 period, lightning causes about 43% of them and residential or recreational activities cause about 38%.

alberta wildfire causes

This year isn’t the first time Fort McMurray has been significantly affected by wildfires, though there’s no question the damage this year is unmatched. A large fire in 2002 caused a number of evacuations of communities near Fort McMurray and threatened Highway 63 before it was eventually contained. The highway was shut down in 1995 when a large fire caused more than 500 people to flee their homes.

Alberta Wildfire Data

If you’d like to dig into the data yourself, here are the relevant datasets:

Updates

For the latest updates on the current wildfire situation, here are the official links:

Also note that a province-wide fire ban is in place. If you’d like to donate to the cause, you can do so at the Red Cross online.

Recap: DemoCamp Edmonton 31

Tonight was robot & games night at Edmonton’s 31st DemoCamp which took place at the Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences (CCIS) on the University of Alberta campus. After missing the last two, it was great to be back to see some inspiring new projects and entrepreneurs. You can read my recap of DemoCamp Edmonton 29 here.

If you’re new to DemoCamp, here’s what it’s all about:

“DemoCamp 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 over 200 people attending each event. The rules for DemoCamp are simple: 7 minutes to demo real, working products, followed by a few minutes for questions, and no slides allowed.”

In order of appearance, tonight’s demos included:

DemoCamp Edmonton 31
Bento Arm

Rory & Jaden showed us the latest version of Bento Arm, a 3D printed robotic arm. It features pressure sensors in the finger tips, servo motors that track velocity and other metrics, potentiometers, and even includes a camera embedded in the palm. The idea with having all of those sensors is to use machine learning to improve its capabilities over time (for instance the camera might recognize objects to help the arm pick them up). The demo showed how the hand could be controlled using a joystick, moving the arm around, and opening and closing the fingers. Bento Arm runs on the Robot Operating System and the team plans to open source everything, hardware and software. To the end the demo, they played rock-paper-scissors against the Bento Arm, which won. Welcome to the future!

DemoCamp Edmonton 31
vrNinja demo

Nathaniel & Alexendar were up next and they showed us vrNinja, a ninja simulation game built for the Oculus Rift VR headset. In the game you are a ninja and you must learn and use new weapons as things get faster and faster. The game features positional audio and requires you to move quite a bit in order to play (so be careful what’s next to you). The team are hoping to release it in the Oculus store in the next month or so, and they have plans to look into the HTC Vive VR headset as well. If you’d like a closer look, you can check out the game this weekend at GDX Edmonton.

DemoCamp Edmonton 31
Anthrobotics

Next, Ian & Evan showed us what they have been working on with Anthrobotics. The idea is to build robots that do all the boring, redundant tasks that we all need to do each day. They showed three prototypes. The first was an anthropomorphic named Robio who sat in a wheelchair. Unfortunately the demo gods got the better of him and the speech demo didn’t work. They said they liked the humanoid form (even though it is difficult to build) because they think it has the greatest potential for being useful in our world. The next two prototypes were a hand that featured and opposable thumb and a leg that could move both entirely and just the foot. They are using Arduino boards right now but have plans to add Raspberry Pis in the future. Their robots are very much in the prototype stage, but if this is what they’re doing in high school, I can’t wait to see what they build in the future!

DemoCamp Edmonton 31
Hugo, the Twitter-powered robot

Jeff and couple of his colleagues from Paper Leaf were up next to show us Hugo, the Twitter-powered robot that you probably tweeted inappropriate things to last year when it launched. The way it works is you tweet something with the hashtag #hugorobot and Hugo will speak it aloud. You can read more about Hugo here. Hugo was a big success, and even helped Paper Leaf to win an ACE Award. At the experiment’s peak, Hugo was receiving 3100 tweets per hour and more than 7000 people watched the livestream. Hugo was posted to Reddit, 4chan, and 9gag, all of which meant that the team had to work hard to keep the blacklist updated. It’s a fun project and Jeff says you could apply the same concepts of social media and crowdsourcing elsewhere.

Our final demo of the evening was from Matt & Logan who showed us RunGunJumpGun. It’s a 2D side-scrolling “helicopter-style” game that they first prototyped at least year’s GDX Edmonton. Now a year later, they have improved and refined the game, and plan to release it this summer. The game features 40 levels that increase along a difficulty curve so that as you progress you should master the skills needed to win. Though honestly the last level looked impossible to pass! There’s a certain amount of frustration that comes along with the style of play, but it also has a high degree of replay-ability. They plan to launch an iPhone version at some point too.

DemoCamp Edmonton 31

Some upcoming events to note:

  • Monthly Hack Day is coming up this Saturday at Startup Edmonton
  • GDX Edmonton takes place Saturday and Sunday at the Robbins Health Learning Centre downtown
  • Preflight Beta takes place Tuesday at Startup Edmonton and “helps founders and product builders experiment and validate a scalable product idea”
  • The full Preflight program started today!
  • The next ROS Robotics Meetup takes place on May 19 at Startup Edmonton

Over 150 meetup events took place at Startup Edmonton last year! Keep an eye on the Startup Edmonton Meetup group for more upcoming events. They have also added a listing of all the meetups taking place at Startup to the website. You can also follow them on Twitter.

See you at DemoCamp Edmonton 32!

Media Monday Edmonton: Update #201

Here’s my latest update on local media stuff:

  • After dozens of events, Social Media Breakfast Edmonton (SMBYEG) is shutting down due to changing personal circumstances for the organizers and a very different online world than when the meetup started five years ago. “It is possible that we may re-boot SMBYEG in a different format or transition it to new volunteers in the future, but for now this is the end.” A sign-off event will take place tomorrow at 5:30pm at Denizen Hall.
  • Here’s the Edmonton Journal obituary for Patrick Cardinal. “Cardinal survived far longer than doctors expected and did his best to make that time count.”
  • According to CBC Edmonton, the media was been banned from an Edmonton police disciplinary hearing. “A lawyer representing CBC and the Edmonton Journal will ask for a reconsideration of the decision to ban the public from the hearing.” They won that fight and the hearing was subsequently held in public!
  • It turns out that Heather Boyd, the former Western Canadian bureau chief for Canadian Press who wrote a review for the Province on media access, now works for the Public Affairs Bureau. “Boyd started as director of media planning for the government on April 25,” CBC Edmonton reports. “Notley said Boyd was not a political hire, as her job is within the civil service. She said she was told that Boyd won an open competition among 100 applicants.”
  • As mentioned previously, Global Edmonton’s Gord Steinke honored with the 2016 RTDNA Lifetime Achievement Award. Here’s a tribute from Global Edmonton.
  • Trish Audette-Longo has more details on the Journalist Interrupted panel coming up later in the month. I’m really looking forward to it!
  • Episode 38 of the Seen and Heard in Edmonton podcast features Trent Wilkie, blogger of The Undad.
  • Here’s a preview of the May edition of Avenue Edmonton magazine on Global. The issue is out now of course, and features an article on sports broadcaster Jay Onrait as well as a look at Jana Pruden’s home.
  • NAIT recently held a Radio/TV Advisory. Let them know if you have feedback!
  • You have until May 13 to apply to Tanner Young Publishing’s part-time opportunity with WHERE Edmonton.
  • Marty Forbes reports that 630 CHED Santas Anonymous will soon be moving into the new Jerry Forbes Centre for Community Spirit!
  • From Raising Edmonton, here are five local blogs to follow. Solid list!
  • David Ward, also known as Kiviaq, has died of cancer at the age of 80. A former lawyer, boxing champion, and city councillor, he was also the host of an open-line radio show on CJCA and a member of the Edmonton Broadcasters Club.
  • I came across Third Verb recently which is a series of “intensive writing workshops…for those new to writing and for those well versed in the craft.” It is run by Jessica Kluthe and Jennifer Lavallee.
  • From Seen and Heard in Edmonton, here are the latest podcast and blog roundups.
  • As previously mentioned, Culinaire Magazine is coming to Edmonton with the first issue becoming available on May 5. A new letter from the editor says that “we have increased our print run by a third to 20,000 copies ten times a year.” Mike Chalut is the only Edmontonian featured in an article on media personalities’ favorite eats.
  • Just a quick note for those who might have missed it: there will not be a Yeggies this year. “We’re planning to take a break this year, spend the spring and summer planning a fantastic event for 2017, and come back to you better than ever.”

don iveson at the state of the city 2016
Mayor Don Iveson took questions from #yegmedia, photo by Edmonton Chamber

And here is some slightly less local media stuff:

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 May 1, 2016

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Headlines

Path To The City
Path To The City, photo by Jeff Wallace

Upcoming Events

Training Day
Training Day, photo by Kurt Bauschardt