Art Burn at the Silver Skate Festival

The recent temperature plunge came at the worst possible time for the Silver Skate Festival. It was easily thirty below with the windchill this evening, and you could really feel it in the relatively wide open Hawrelak Park. To be honest, had it not been for the fact that Sharon and I had agreed to guest judge the 2011 Art Burn fire sculpture competition, we might not have made it out tonight. But I’m glad we did, because it was quite the show! And what’s a winter festival without a little cold, right?

There were six Art Burn fire sculpture artists: Maria Butler, Randall Fraser, Will Truchon, Tanya Garner-Tomas, Vergilio le Paz and Marissa Kochanski. Here’s a little photo tour of the evening.

We arrived early enough to check out the awesome snow sculptures.

Some artists were still busily working!

Sharon just had to sit in the Yelp throne.

Gather around the fire, that’s how you keep warm!

Vibe Tribe performed just before the Art Burn.

I know they had fire in their hands, but I bet they were still freezing.

This was Marissa Kochanski’s sculpture before the burn.

Here it is during the burn. Her sculpture was the winner!

More sculptures burning!

Randall Fraser’s “hand” sculpture was another favorite.

You can see the rest of my photos here.

Sunday night is “Fire in the Belly”, during which a larger communal sculpture created by the artists will be ignited. So if you missed out on the fire tonight, you still have an opportunity tomorrow! Just make sure you bundle up.

Thanks to Erin and Ritchie for having us, and congrats on another successful year!

City’s Standing As Metropolis Declared To Hinge On Coliseum

Recently I have been doing some research on the history of Rexall Place. I thought it would be useful to understand what happened in the past when trying to make sense of our current downtown arena debate. As part of that research, I spent some time at the City of Edmonton archives. I wasn’t sure what to expect or how to approach my research, so I simply asked for anything related to the construction of the Coliseum. Sherry Bell, Reference Archivist at the Archives, was incredibly helpful and came back with a thick file folder labeled “File 1, 1963-1974”. She told me it was the first of many, just the tip of the iceberg.

I read through the entire folder, taking notes as I went. The documents inside, mostly clipped Edmonton Journal articles, tell the story of how the Coliseum came to be, from the push for a downtown arena in the early 1960s through to the construction of what we now call Rexall Place in the early 1970s.

The title of this post comes from an article in the Edmonton Journal published on September 12, 1963. In it, Alderman Les Bodie made his case for the proposed downtown coliseum of the day, saying:

“I think the successful city will be the one with a stable economic base combined with a stimulating economic climate, and the coliseum will be a major factor in attracting interest in our city.”

It was one of many gems I found in the file, some of which I have shared below, and some of which I’ll share in future posts.

In total, I recorded 93 headlines (I skipped some). Here’s the breakdown of the articles I looked at by year:

Lots was written early on in the debate, and less was written as construction got underway and progressed. Here’s a sample of the headlines:

Coliseum Site Studied – May 11, 1963
City Approves $10 Million Coliseum Plan – June 25, 1963
City Has ‘Escape Hatch’ If Coliseum Voted Down – August 29, 1963
City’s Standing As Metropolis Declared To Hinge On Coliseum – September 12, 1963
Mayor Hits Coliseum Critics – September 24, 1963
Coliseums Seem To Spark Growth – September 28, 1963
Coliseum Complex Rejected By Almost Half Ratepayers – October 17, 1963
Mayor Anticipates Verdict On New Coliseum Proposal – March 1, 1965
A Coliseum Or A New Arena? – March 25, 1965
Alderman Warns City Taxpayers Will Have To Subsidize Coliseum – July 20, 1966
Ex arena to be constructed just north of Gardens – April 22, 1972
Oilers won game but public the real winner – November 11, 1974

I was immediately struck by how similar today’s debate is to the debate in the 1960s. In short: a downtown arena is proposed and tied to the future of the city, people argue over the location and other details, but the process really gets stuck on the money.

One of the first documents I found in the file was a pamphlet published by The Hamly Press (which as far as I can tell no longer exists) entitled, “the Coliseum Plebiscite: a test of our Faith in Edmonton as a Great Metropolis of the North West”. Here are some of the statements found inside:

“A downtown showplace that will publicize Edmonton as a progressive, positive-thinking city, developing rapidly in all phases of modern city live and endeavor.”
“The Coliseum Complex will lead the way in revitalizing downtown activity.”
“A Vital Necessity for Downtown Development!”
“Construction of the Coliseum Complex will be the city’s first step in the fulfilment of Edmonton’s remarkable plan for the renewal of the downtown city centre. There is little doubt that perseverance with this project now will be a decisive factor in the eventual completion of the entire Civic Centre plan.”
And a quote from Mayor Roper: “This plebiscite will be a test of the vision of the ratepayers of our city. How much do we want Edmonton to lead all Canada in bold, imaginative downtown development?”

Edmonton Journal writer Ben Tierney, working in the City Hall Bureau, wrote a lot about the proposed project. In a September 24, 1963 article entitled “Other Cities Find Value in Coliseums” he highlighted what he saw as “three basic benefits”:

Attraction of major sports, entertainment and cultural events that the city could not otherwise hope to obtain.
Attraction of outside dollars to the city through increased convention activity as well as non-local attendance at coliseum events.
Increased tax revenue for the city through construction of new downtown building encouraged by the coliseum’s construction, and a revitalized city centre.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Of course, the initial plan never came to fruition, and subsequent attempts to rescue it failed also. On October 17, 1963 the Edmonton Journal reported the results of the plebiscite that would have authorized the City to borrow $14,250,000 to finance the coliseum:

“The coliseum complex was strongly backed by the former city council, the Edmonton and District Labor Council, the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce and Jaycees, the Edmonton Exhibition Association, the Edmonton Area Civic Centennial Committee, and the Edmonton Building and Construction Trades Council.”

“55% of voters favored the two money bylaws…but a 2/3 majority was required. Opposition to the project centered on the costs involved.”

Over the next ten years, various attempts to salvage the idea were made, but ultimately the cheaper Edmonton Coliseum was built instead. I wonder how different things might have been had the downtown complex gone ahead?

Recap: Startup Weekend Edmonton 2

Edmonton’s second Startup Weekend was held this past weekend at the Computing Sciences Centre on the University of Alberta campus. It was a fantastic event that saw seven teams create some really interesting things in just 54 hours. Around 50 people participated – lots of programmers, some designers, some writers, and many others. Here’s how the weekend played out.

Friday night was pitch night. Fifteen people got up and made an elevator pitch for one or more ideas, which we stuck up giant post it pages on the walls all around the room. Everyone then had a few minutes to walk around and chat with the idea people, to determine which team they wanted to work on. In the end, seven teams were formed, with sizes ranging from two people to more than a dozen. Teams did a little bit of brainstorming and preparation that night, but I don’t think any code was written.

Saturday was a work day, with teams arriving and getting started around 9am. The atmosphere was exciting if a little relaxed. People lingered at lunch and dinner, taking advantage of the opportunities to chat with others. Some people stayed working past 11pm that night, while others went home to relax or out to party after a long day of hard work.

Most people arrived again Sunday morning around 9:30am, focused on completing as much work as possible before demo time. It was interesting to see the shift in atmosphere from Saturday to Sunday – no time was wasted on food or breaks on Sunday. People called out tasks and things like “it’s checked in!” as they worked furiously. Getting everyone to leave the building for Original Joe’s as 6pm approached was challenging!

Team Victory working right down to the wire at Original Joe’s.

There was a great turnout for the demos. Here’s what was built:

A flash-based gamed called Flatlander, a 2D game similar to minecraft.
Eartonic, an iPhone app that helps train people to learn music by ear.
Google Earth Sounds, a really interesting tool that enables people to add sounds to Google Earth. It’s such a great idea – with StreetView you can see what a street looks like, so why not find out what it sounds like too?
Swift, an attempt to make the experience of sending and finding invoices easier.
Another game, called Rubber Chicken Assassin. You take a photo of your friend with your iPhone, then beat them with a rubber chicken. It could then share a fun obituary on Facebook!
Helping Manual, a crowdsourced website to answer questions like “how do I get a social insurance number”. It’s targeted at communities such as the homeless or immigrants & newcomers, as well as the people who work with those communities. Another really great idea.
Team Victory, the team I was on, built LaunchWith.me. It’s part project directory and part people finder. We focused on a single question – would you work with someone again? LaunchWith.me is a way to answer that for colleagues you’ve worked with at companies, on projects, and in groups. You can check out a screencast here.

The weekend was a great opportunity to meet new people, to work with someone you might not otherwise had have the chance to, and to use and learn new technologies. I did all of those things, and also felt the sense of accomplishment that comes from working together to go from idea to working product in such a short period of time. It sounds so cliché, but it’s amazing what you can accomplish if you focus and work hard! Check out Rachelle’s recap for more.

I would like to see more even team sizes at our next Startup Weekend, tentatively scheduled for the fall, but part of the magic of the weekend is that the outcome is entirely up to attendees. Everyone had a role to play this weekend, even on the large teams, so if you have hesitated about attending because you’re not a programmer, keep that in mind for the next event!

Thanks to everyone who participated this weekend, and to everyone who came out to see the demos! You can see the rest of my photos here.

Love that Menu: Valentine’s Day 2011 in Edmonton

Sharon and I decided to collaborate on this post. Enjoy!

Mack:

Last year, Sharon and I collaborated on a Valentine’s Day post. We decided it would be fun to compare the special and regular menus at a variety of local restaurants in order to find out which one offered the best deal on Valentine’s Day. It was a nice mix of my penchant for stats and Sharon’s knowledge of the local food scene. This year, we wanted to do something different.

Sharon:

Eater nicknames Valentine’s Day “Black Monday” for a reason – restaurants pull out all the stops, hoping to woo diners with their prix fixe menus. Though I’m sure most of them are well intentioned (and Mack and I have certainly indulged in many Hallmark holiday dinners), some seem to be really over the top.

After perusing over a dozen Valentine’s Day menus, we’ve collected some observations. Here are our tongue-in-cheek picks for the best and worst of what the city’s restaurants have to offer this weekend.

This Dish Gets Around
- Aside from fondue, which is a Valentine’s Day staple, Chicken Supreme was the most common dish on the menus we examined. It is featured at Homefire Grill, Vic’s Steakhouse, Sorrentino’s Downtown, and even Hardware Grill. Those chickens really get around, don’t they?
Most Appealing Menu
- Last year we picked Hardware Grill as the tastiest-sounding menu, but this year the honor goes to Madison’s Grill. Five courses with two choices each (plus a dessert course) means there’s a good chance both you and your date will find something to enjoy. Pan seared scallops, pulled pork crepe, and grilled Spring Creek Ranch beef tenderloin are just a few of the delicious sounding options!
Best Bang for Your Buck
- At $45 per person, The Manor might not be the cheapest option, but with three courses (which include a choice of three entrees, with nary a chicken supreme in sight), we’re confident that between the food and their cozy rooms, couples will be well taken care of, and for a price less than a third of the most expensive meal in the city.
Big Spender
- That brings us to the five course prix fixe at Red Ox Inn. If you’re on a budget, this one isn’t for you – it will set you back $160 a person (which includes food, gratuity and tax). Each course is paired with a wine though, and given the meal has been at the same price point at least two years in a row, it has likely continued for a good reason.
Best Dish Name
- With images of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in our heads, Zinc’s “Cheek to Cheek” entrée is hard to beat. Comprised of a Spring Creek Rank beef cheek and a butter-poached halibut cheek, it also probably tastes as good as it sounds. We used Zinc’s photo above.
Worst Dish Name
- Maybe we need to get out of the city more, but there’s nothing particularly romantic to us about two slabs of meat. That’s what you’ll get at Teddy’s with “Lovers’ Steaks” – an 8oz New York and a 6oz Fillet Mignon. The dish comes with prawns, Caesar salad, and three cheese mashed potatoes for $49.
Say Cheese
- We really thought restaurants would be more forthcoming with the extras they would shower on you and your date, but no dice. So almost by default, The Melting Pot wins this category. You have the option of “enhancing” your meal with different feature packages, such as “The Cupid’s Arrow”, which includes one dozen roses in a vase, rose petals on your table, a bottle of sparkling wine, two champagne flutes to keep, and a framed photo of you and your Valentine. The price tag? $225, which also covers a four course dinner for two.
What’s the Point Prix Fixe
- With a Valentine’s Day menu that is so similar to the regular menu, we have to wonder why Chop even bothered! All of the entrees and most of the appetizer platter can be found on the regular menu. Only the dessert, Dark Chocolate Pecan Banana Cake, is new. If you’re superstitious you might like this option, however – the three course meal is priced at $88 per couple.
No Date Required
- Who says you need a table for two on February 14? Take a look at the menu from Bistro La Persaud and tell us you’re not seduced (braised boar bacon? poached lobster?). Best of all, it’s priced per person! Ooh la laa!

Mack:

However you choose to spend Valentine’s Day, we hope it is filled with love!

Fun with Open Data and Excel: Edmonton’s Busiest Streets

Today the City of Edmonton added a new dataset to the open data catalogue – average daily street traffic volumes from 2004-2009. Here’s the description:

Include traffic counts obtained with automatic traffic recorders over the past six years. The volume shown is a total of all vehicles in both directions, over a 24 hour period, for a typical weekday in a year. Volumes shown as a dash "-" indicate no count was undertaken that year. Seasonal adjustments are made to reflect an average weekday during the year. An increase or decrease in volume does not necessarily indicate a trend for a given roadway. Road construction or the introduction of more advanced equipment in 2009 affect the traffic volume numbers.

I’d like to build something interesting with this data, perhaps as part of a future ShareEdmonton release. But to start, I decided to open the data up in Microsoft Excel, something I often do with new datasets. Here’s what I discovered.

First, a few summary points:

There are 1496 street locations in the dataset.
Of those, 823 were counted in 2009. The year with the most counted locations was 2006, at 1076. Just 32 locations were counted every year (2004-2009). There were 531 locations counted in three years or more.
One of the first things I noticed is that every count ends in zero. I know the description outlines that the data is an average, adjusted seasonally, and perhaps for other reasons, but I wonder how close to reality the numbers really are.

Looking at 2009 simply because it is the most recent, there’s a hint of a long tail for the counted locations:

Here are the 200 busiest locations in Edmonton according to the 2009 count:

[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.shareedmonton.ca%2Fstatic%2FEdmontonTraffic2009Top200.kml&aq=&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=49.444078,74.443359&ie=UTF8&ll=53.531329,-113.487396&spn=0.285692,0.719604&z=10&output=embed” frameborder=”0″ width=”525″ marginwidth=”0″ scrolling=”no”>
View Larger Map

To create that map, I used a free utility called Excel to KML. There are all kinds of useful free KML tools online!

Here are the top ten busiest locations in Edmonton, according to the 2009 count:

Calgary Trail SW North of Gateway Park Road SW
Capilano Bridge
178 Street South of 81 Avenue
Highway 216 NE North of Sherwood Park Freeway NE
Anthony Henday Drive North of 87 Avenue
HIghway 216 NE North of Baseline Road NE
Anthony Henday Drive West of Calgary Trail
170 Street North of 95 Avenue
Groat Road North of Victoria Park Road
Highway 216 NE North of Whitemud Drive NE

Some of those are expected, some perhaps not. I decided to look at locations that were counted in at least three different years. If you look at the average daily volumes for that subset, here are the top ten busiest locations in Edmonton:

Quesnell Bridge
Yellowhead Trail West of 231 Street
Calgary Trail SW North of Gateway Park Road SW
Capilano Bridge
Whitemud Drive West of 149 Street
Yellowhead Trail West of Fort Road
Cloverbar Bridge
Yellowhead Trail West of 97 Street
Yellowhead Trail West of 107 Street
Yellowhead Trail West of 127 Street

Plotting the top 25 on a map gives a better sense of the really busy roads – Yellowhead Trail and Whitemud Drive:

Interesting, isn’t it? Of course, it could get a lot more interesting with some mashups. I’d love to have collision data for the City of Edmonton, to see how closely the number of collisions is correlated with traffic volumes. That’s just one example.

Check out the new dataset in the open data catalogue. If you do something interesting with it, I’d love to hear about it!

Expanding the Shaw Conference Centre (again)

The Shaw Conference Centre is once again in the news. City Council’s Executive Committee will receive a report tomorrow that suggests the facility needs to be expanded. That recommendation should not be a surprise. On July 22, 2009, City Council passed this motion:

That Edmonton Economic Development Corporation prepare for Council’s approval a long-term (30 – 40 year) development plan to address the needs of the convention market in Edmonton.

If you ask EEDC what should happen with the convention market, of course they’re going to focus on the facility that they operate.

The Edmonton Journal’s editorial board published a piece on the issue today. Here’s the key paragraph, in my opinion:

But there are plenty of reasons for caution. Taxpayers have just spent $150 million to expand Northlands’ rival convention and trade show facility, the new Expo Centre. Is there really an economic case to be made for two competing super-facilities, each publicly funded, run by two competing civic agencies?

Competition is a generally a good thing, but increasingly I find myself wondering why we have both Northlands and EEDC. Two organizations, both largely funded by taxpayers. If they weren’t competing, would things have turned out differently? Would the above recommendation have been different? Would we still have gone ahead with the Edmonton Expo Centre when we did? The success of that facility, which is still being paid off, has been questioned by many. Though as the City’s Chief Economist told me, that skepticism might be a little unfair. “It was developed and then we ran into a sour economy. You need to give them a full business cycle.”

Here’s what the current breakdown of rentable convention space looks like in Edmonton, according to the report:

There’s no denying that the amount of space at the Shaw Conference Centre (SCC) is significantly less than at the Expo Centre. But that alone is not reason enough to expand the facility. Here are the most up-to-date statistics on SCC usage, provided to me by EEDC:

In an average year, SCC receives 330,230 visitors (based on the last five years). A visitor is a person who has attended a function at SCC.
The split in visitors is roughly 70% regional versus 30% non-regional.
There are 20 to 25 days per year where SCC has no or the least number of bookings.
Using 2006 as a typical year and defining 75% occupancy as full, SCC was fully booked 115 days out of the year.

Compared to a few other Canadian conference venues, SCC’s visitor stats stack up quite nicely:

I’m not sure exactly which facilities they were comparing with, but clearly SCC is being used. EEDC says that over the last two and half years, it has turned away approximately 40 conventions and trade shows for future years. And apparently none of those have decided to go with the Expo Centre instead, which should have had the necessary space, presumably because they wanted to be downtown.

If we’re going to add more convention space, I think downtown is the place to do it. But I agree with the Journal’s position, “it’s also important that we not simply assume that if we build it, they will come.” So I guess I am left with a few key questions:

Why was the Hall D expansion so limited? If we got the forecasting wrong then, are we going to get it right this time? Are we really looking ahead 30 years?
Is expanding SCC really the best way to add more convention space downtown?
Despite the lip service paid to cooperation in the report, can Northlands and EEDC really work together to grow Edmonton’s convention market?

The next steps outlined in the report include finalizing the business case for the expansion. According to EEDC’s own backgrounder, the earliest an expansion would be completed is at least seven years from now.

Aside #1: Think back to 2004 and consider all of the technology that didn’t exist. Will large conventions as we think of them today still happen in 2018?

Aside #2: The report contains what might just be my least favorite phrase ever: “Festival City in a Box”.

Aside #3: It turns out I have an Edmonton Journal article on my desk from September 12, 1963 (I’ll explain later). Apparently we held just 42 conventions in 1962, far behind Toronto’s 657, Calgary’s 172, or even Regina’s 57. Even Moncton had more conventions than we did at 48. Our conventions in 1962 attracted 17,932 visitors who spent a total of $1,869,000, or $104 per person.

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – 2010 Year in Review

Welcome to the State of the Edmonton Twittersphere: 2010 Year in Review, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton in 2010! You can see my recap of 2009 here.

I’ve done my best to ensure all of the data in this post is accurate, but I make no guarantees – use it at your own risk. The data comes from the Twitter API, and has been collected over the past year. If a user has his or her location set to Edmonton, St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Leduc, Nisku, Stony Plain, Fort Saskatchewan, Beaumont, Spruce Grove, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered an Edmontonian, and thus a “local user”.

If you compare the monthly statistics here to my monthly State of the Edmonton Twittersphere posts, you’ll notice they are slightly different. The monthly posts represent a snapshot – this post reflects the most up-to-date information I have been able to gather as of the end of 2010.

Summary

Here are the highlights for 2010:

There were 22,000+ local users.
Those users posted more than 4.9 million tweets. That works out to 9.4 per minute.
Of those 4,948,409 tweets:
- 381,752 contained #yeg or one of the #yeg-related hashtags (like #yegfood) (7.7%)
- 357,206 were retweets (7.2%)
- 1,715,507 were replies (34.7%)
- 668,368 were replies to other local users (13.5%)
- 1,331,306 contained links (26.9%)
- 191,060 were twooshes (exactly 140 characters) (3.9%)

Let’s look at users. While more than 22,000 local users were on Twitter last year, only 10,200 of them were active during the month of December (active means they posted at least one tweet). But that was up from just 5601 who were active during the month of January.

When 2010 started, local users were posting about 260,000 tweets per month. By the end of the year, that number had grown to more than 525,000 tweets per month.

This chart gives you a sense of the trends over the year. I think it is interesting that the lines for #yeg-related tweets and retweets are almost identical (red and green).

Roughly 50.8% of all tweets in 2010 were posted between the hours of 9 AM and 6 PM. Not surprisingly, the number of tweets posted between midnight and 7 AM is quite a bit lower than the number posted during the day and early evening. There seems to be an early morning (9-10 AM) and late night (9-10 PM) spike.

If we look at days of the week, we see that more tweets are posted on Tuesday and Wednesday than on any other day.

In the chart below I have plotted the number of tweets posted per day for each day of the year. The trend is clearly up, and the spikes and troughs reveal some interesting events. Election day, October 18, saw the most tweets posted at 23,234. On average, 13,558 tweets were posted each day in 2010.

Users

Here are the top 25 most followed users:

The average local user has 120 followers. Just 420 users have more than 1000 followers.

Here are the top 25 most listed users:

The average local user has been listed 5 times.

Here are the top 25 most active users:

The top 100 most active users accounted for 18.5% of all local tweets.

Here are the top 25 most active users using #yeg (and #yeg-related hashtags):

The top 100 most active users using #yeg and its subtags accounted for 51.8% of all #yeg-tagged tweets.

Here are the top 25 most replied to users (by other local users):

The top 100 most replied to users accounted for 32.8% of all local replies (replies from one Edmontonian to another).

And here is what I think is the most significant list, the top 25 most retweeted users (by other local users):

A total of 103 users were retweeted by other local users 100 times or more. Just 18 users were retweeted by other local users 1000 times or more.

Hashtags

The most commonly used hashtag was #yeg. Local users used #yeg roughly 6.5 times more than the next most popular hashtag, which was #FF. Here’s a word cloud of the top 1000 hashtags, including #yeg:

And here are the top 1000 without #yeg:

The average length of a hashtag was 13.7 characters (including the #). There were hashtags that were just two characters, and hashtags that were 140 characters. Here are the top 10 hashtags:

Here are the top 10 #yeg-related hashtags:

Clients

There were more than 2000 different clients used by local users to post tweets in 2010. Here are the top ten clients:

Text messaging was the next most popular client. Here are the top ten in graphic form (percentages are of the total number of tweets, 4.9 million):

The top ten clients accounted for 76.2% of all local tweets in 2010.

Final Thoughts

Twitter continued its impressive growth all around the world in 2010, and Edmonton was no exception. Though the number of people with Twitter accounts in Edmonton pales in comparison to the number of people with Facebook accounts, I don’t think that is necessarily the best comparison to make. You need a Facebook account to access most things on Facebook, you don’t on Twitter. Twitter reaches far beyond the 22,000+ local users with accounts.

There were lots of tweetups in 2010, but fewer and fewer focused just on Twitter. Because so many more people have joined, even non-Twitter events seem like tweetups! I thought that geolocation might play a bigger role in 2010, but it didn’t really. Just 3124 users have enabled geolocation (up from 270 in 2009). Perhaps 2011 will be the year that geotagged tweets take off? You need to enable it in your settings.

I hope you’ve found this look at the Edmonton Twittersphere in 2010 interesting and informative. Thanks for reading!

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – December 2010

Welcome to the twelfth State of the Edmonton Twittersphere for 2010, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton, AB. You can see the stats for November here.

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

For December 2010:

# of local users: 10198 (an increase of 259 from November)
# of tweets by local users: 529387
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 37063 (7.0%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 191871 (36.2%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 141953 (26.8%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 34255 (6.5%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 22703 (4.3%)

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 under 50% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 11.6 tweets per minute in December (compared to 12.2 tweets per minute in November).
The day with the most local tweets posted was December 14 at 21297. On average, 17077 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 17527 in November).
Of the 191871 replies posted by local users this month, 78509 or 40.9% were to other local users.
A total of 1923 users posted 50 times or more in December. In comparison, 1667 users posted just once.

Here are the top ten most active local users (not including bots):

Here are the top ten most active local users using #yeg (not including bots):

Here are the top ten most replied to local users:

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

Final Thoughts

Edmonton finally broke the 10,000 active user mark! Aside from that, however, it was definitely a holiday month. You can see a noticeable drop in the number of tweets posted around Christmas. Also fewer tagged tweets and more replies in December, which suggests to me less news being posted and more conversation taking place.

I should have my 2010 year-in-review up later this week. If you’re interested, stop by Twitter Talks on Thursday evening for even more twittersphere stats!

As always, keep in mind that the stats above rely upon users setting the location field of their profile to something like “Edmonton”. Users who leave that field blank or who put something like “Canada” are not reflected in the above stats.

Daily Deals in Edmonton

I’m amazed at how many “daily deal” or “group coupon” sites there are in Edmonton now, let alone the rest of the world. I’m sure you’ve heard of Groupon, and maybe one or two others such as GoodNews, but did you know there are at least ten such sites in Edmonton? Here’s a list of the ones I have found:

There are also a bunch of sites preparing to launch in our city:

Daniel has created a Twitter list for some of the services here.

I don’t see how that many sites are going to succeed. My guess is that most won’t. Some are so similar in form and function that I wonder if they’re actually the same company. Others have obviously picked up on this trend, as there are dozens of “daily deal aggregators” out there so that you don’t have to sign up for each service individually. Here are some Edmonton-related ones I have found:

I’m sure there are many others that I have missed.

The most popular item on daily deal sites seems to be spa packages, so you may or may not find value in these services. I have used Groupon a couple of times, and I think they are here to stay. LivingSocial seems to be the second biggest of the sites, at least in the US. SwarmJam should be able to leverage its existing relationships with advertisers, so maybe they’ll find success. GoodNews has a bit of a twist in that it supports local charities. As for the rest – who knows.

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – November 2010

Welcome to the eleventh State of the Edmonton Twittersphere for 2010, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton, AB. You can see the stats for October here.

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

For November 2010:

# of local users: 9939 (an increase of 318 from October)
# of tweets by local users: 525804
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 40905 (7.8%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 184033 (35.0%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 145767 (27.7%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 38958 (7.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 22722 (4.3%)

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 50% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 12.2 tweets per minute in November (compared to 12.0 tweets per minute in October).
The day with the most local tweets posted was November 23 at 20311. On average, 17527 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 17252 in October).
Of the 184033 replies posted by local users this month, 73837 or 40.1% were to other local users.
A total of 2030 users posted 50 times or more in November. In comparison, 1394 users posted just once.

Here are the top ten most active local users (not including bots):

Here are the top ten most active local users using #yeg (not including bots):

Here are the top ten most replied to local users:

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

Final Thoughts

We got really close to 10,000 users in November! The number of tweets overall was slightly lower than in October, which is partially explained by the month having one less day and partially by the election that took place in October. The average number of tweets per day was almost exactly the same as in October, however.

I should have December 2010 and my 2010 year-in-review up later this week. Also, stop by Twitter Talks on Thursday evening for even more twittersphere stats!

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