Avenue Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40 for 2010

The second annual Top 40 Under 40 list was unveiled tonight at the Art Gallery of Alberta at a very well-attended event. In a city that could use a little more self-congratulation, I think it’s great that Avenue Edmonton is recognizing the efforts of such a diverse and interesting group of Edmontonians:

Each year, Avenue’s Top 40 Under 40 recognizes the individuals in Greater Edmonton who are leading the city through this period of growth and change. Aside from being under 40, there is no common denominator defining them. Their focus may be on hospitality, humanitarianism or health; they are environmentalists and entrepreneurs, educators and entertainers, lawyers and fundraisers and more. Some don’t even have professions — just passions that become successful ventures, and in turn, raise the city’s profile. We recognize them individually because each one succeeds and leads in his or her field, but we celebrate them collectively because together they enrich our city.

You can read all about the Top 40 Under 40 here. There was a little discussion tonight about whether or not the average age of the list had gone up, and it has, but only slightly – from 33.4 in 2009 to 34.6 in 2010.

The lovely Tegan Martin-Drysdale is on the cover of the November issue. Here’s where to find her and the other Top 40 members online (in alphabetical order):

You can follow all the people on Twitter here.

I thought the event tonight ran very smoothly! It was still full of people, but there was more room to move this year. Here are some photos from the evening:

Chris Bolivar, Michael Brechtel, Chris LaBossiere

The crowd gathering to celebrate!

Amanda Woodward receives her award.

Chris LaBossiere with Don, Greg, and Jill.

Dave Cournoyer celebrates with Kyla!

Congratulations to everyone who made the list this year!

You can read my post about last year’s list here. You can see the rest of my photos here.

2010-2013 Edmonton City Council Swearing-in Ceremony & Inaugural Meeting

Edmonton’s new City Council was officially sworn into office this afternoon at City Hall. Following the ceremony, they held what will undoubtedly be the quickest meeting of the term, to approve council chamber seating arrangements, standing committee membership, and the meeting schedule for the next year. Nearly 400 people attended, including many of the Mayor’s and Councillors’ friends, family, and supporters.

Organized by Communications & the City Clerk, the event had a very nice printed program!

Staff Sergeant Langford Bawn piped council members into the City Room, accompanied by members of the Edmonton Police Service, Fire Rescue, and Alberta Paramedics Guards of Honour.

Council members smiled and waved as they entered. Lynda Steele served as the Master of Ceremonies. Matt Day played the piano, and Amanda Clark led the singing of O Canada.

The Honourable Don Manderscheid, Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench, administered the oath to the Mayor and Councillors.

After Mayor Mandel was sworn in, he received the Chain of Office from City Manager Simon Farbrother. After all the Councillors were sworn in, Mayor Mandel spoke about the work ahead.

Students from the City Hall School lined the second floor of the City Room, while friends and family filled the seats below.

Council Chambers was packed for the inaugural meeting! By the time everyone had piled in, the meeting was finished! A reception was held following the meeting.

2010-2013 Edmonton Mayor & City Council

You can see the rest of my photos from the event here.

UPDATE: Courtesy of Dave, here are some photos from the 2007 swearing-in ceremony.

Open Data and Municipal Election Results

As local readers will know, I created an election results dashboard for the municipal election that took place in Edmonton on October 18, made possible thanks to the City of Edmonton’s open data. I’d say it was very well-received! There was lots of positive feedback, and it resulted in the highest-trafficked day ever for ShareEdmonton. There were also hundreds of tweets about the dashboard, including some from people in other cities.

I was able to update the dashboard on-the-fly that night, fixing the graph colors and other issues as they were identified. Overall I was pretty happy with how it turned out, though I wish I had been able to add a few more features in time for the big event. Over the last couple days, I decided to extract the dashboard from ShareEdmonton and I have now added that new functionality. Specifically, the page updates automatically (no more refreshing) and there’s a mobile view as well, so it looks decent on your mobile device.

New Dashboards

Today is election day in Ontario, and thanks to open data from Toronto, Ottawa, and London, I was able to launch three new election results dashboards, all featuring the latest improvements:

2010 Toronto Election Results (Unofficial)
2010 Ottawa Election Results (Unofficial)
2010 London Election Results (Unofficial)

Some new issues have appeared that I didn’t have to worry about in the Edmonton election (for example, there are 40 candidates for mayor in Toronto, so having them all appear on the graph is difficult at best) but the sites all seem to be running smoothly. I guess we’ll find out at 8 PM EST tonight when the results start to come in!

Open Data

All of these dashboards were made possible because the cities made election results data available, so kudos to each of them for doing so. The tricky thing for a developer like me is that all four cities (Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, and London) made the results available in a different format!

Edmonton – XML/JSON using OGDI
Toronto – plaintext, pipe-separated
Ottawa – plaintext, HTML scrape, kind of a pseudo-CSV
London – XML

Fortunately, when I had created the dashboard for Edmonton, I had built in a translation-layer. So instead of loading directly from the City’s catalogue into ShareEdmonton, I loaded it first into an internal format. So to get the dashboard working with the other cities, all I had to do was write that translation piece, from their catalogue to my internal format. As you can see, that strategy has worked fairly well (Ottawa was by far the most difficult, and did not provide me with enough information to calculate voter turnout, so that was removed from the ShareOttawa dashboard).

I’m not complaining about the need for this translation layer. I would much rather have a city make its data available than delay just to try to find a common format. But I do hope to see convergence over time. It would be great if these cities (and others that offer this data, like Vancouver) could agree on a common format. That would remove the extra work required to make an application reusable, and would hopefully result in even more applications that make use of the data.

And Beyond!

I’m pretty excited about the possibilities of open data, especially as it relates to politics and democracy. There are some really great apps being built, such as Vote.ca, and we’re really just scratching the surface. If we keep at it, I’m confident that open data will have a positive impact on the way we engage with politics.

Edmonton Notes for 10/24/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Monday was election day, and more than 34% of Edmontonians took the time to cast a ballot this time. Mandel was re-elected, but the big news was down in Calgary, where Naheed Nenshi was elected. Mandel is looking forward to working with Nenshi. I don’t think social media played as large a role as it could have in the election, but Todd is right when he says that there is huge potential.
Re-elected Councillor Kim Krushell wasted no time in calling for election finance rules to be revisited in light of the Envision Edmonton campaign.
Now that the election is over, it seems the proposed downtown arena is going to be back in the spotlight. The Katz Group issued an RFQ this week for architectural and engineering services, while the City is launching an online questionnaire on Thursday, and will be hosting open houses and discussion groups in November.
The Edmonton Humane Society was recognized recently for its value-added services offered with each pet adoption at the Summit for Urban Animal Strategies.
Did you know there is a growing community of fashion bloggers here in Edmonton? Jen Fong introduces us to some of the bloggers here.
The fate of Molson House is looking grim – if a new owner can’t be found it could be demolished.
Edmonton’s BioWare was recognized as one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers for the fifth time since 2004.
The Edmonton Oilers are the first Canadian NHL team to launch a Cheer Team.
Over 4000 hours were pledged at the second Edmonton Timeraiser!
You can now watch CBC Edmonton on Bell Satellite TV.
The Beyond 2010 conference was a big success here in Edmonton this last week, as was the Hackathon put on by Edmonton Geek Girl Dinners. They worked to create an emergency preparedness app.
We’re about a week away from Movember, and there are lots of teams getting started in Edmonton!
The old Cycle Building on Alberta Avenue is being revitalized, and Arts on the Ave has all the details here.
Vote for Miss dEdmonton 2010 here! Check out the dEdmonton site for everything Halloween in Edmonton. The organization’s co-chair, Darryl Plunkie, was interviewed on the latest episode of The Unknown Studio.
For more headlines from the past week, check out theedmontonian.com.
Coming up on Wednesday is Cantoo, a screening of the 57th Annual Cannes International Advertising Reel of Winners.
The Oil Kings are in action at home on Wednesday against the Chilliwack Bruins, and again on Saturday against the Vancouver Giants.
Thursday is the 70th anniversary gala for the Edmonton Social Planning Council, featuring guest speaker Michael Phair.
There’s another Edmonton Police Service town hall meeting on Thursday, located at the Woodvale Community Hall.
Spooktacular 2010 takes place on Friday night at Fort Edmonton Park!
The Eskimos are in action again on Saturday against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

The Edmonton Journal has teamed up with Transcend Coffee for the i ❤ #yeg contest!

It was a wet, cold day in Edmonton today. Better than snow though!

UPDATE (9 hours later): Guess I spoke too soon on the snow! And really, it isn’t so bad!

CKUA Radio Network’s Fall 2010 Campaign

I spent a couple hours with the folks at CKUA Radio Network this summer talking about social media. They’ve been quite successful with it already, amassing more than 7500 fans on Facebook and more than 1500 followers on Twitter (and more importantly they have fairly high levels of engagement). While I was there, they invited me to check out the fall fundraising campaign, an offer I finally took them up on this morning!

CKUA started in 1927 at the University of Alberta, and has undergone a number of changes since that time. It has existed in its current form since 1994 when Access sold the network to the non-profit CKUA Radio Foundation. Though it went silent for a month in 1997, the network has been going strong ever since. The history is evident throughout their downtown studios, with lots of black and white photos on the walls.

Though many of the callers were from Alberta (CKUA has 17 transmitters in the province) there are a significant number of donors from around the world. CKUA started streaming its broadcast online on February 29, 1996, the first radio station in Canada to do so. There’s an updated list of cities from which donors have made pledges here in PDF.

While I was there, Allison Brock and David Ward were on-air. They’re one of the popular announcer teams of the campaign, an Allison in particular is known for her ability to really drive donations (as much as $25,000 in a single hour). Just before I left, Allison announced Double Your Dollars (DYD), a really popular hour during which any new donations are matched by an existing pool of DYD funds. As soon as she said it on the radio, every phone lit up!

Most of the volunteers answering the phones have been volunteering for years. They’re dedicated and efficient! Every time a new donor calls, everyone around the table rings a bell to celebrate. It certainly adds to the energy in the pledge room!

The current campaign started on October 14 and finishes tomorrow at midnight. The goal is $625,000, and so far CKUA has raised just over $410,000 (you can see the updated amount on their website). You can donate online, or you can call 1-800-494-2582.

Thanks to CKUA for letting me go behind-the-scenes this morning! You can see the rest of my photos here.

Edmonton Election 2010: Election Result Statistics

By now I’m sure you’ve seen the unofficial election results (official results should be released tomorrow). I thought it would be interesting to look at those numbers in more detail, and with a little bit of context.

There were 14 data updates throughout the night. The first voting stations reported in at 8:31 PM, and the final one reported at 11:35 PM. Here’s what the updates looked like:

Time is along the bottom, the vertical axis represents the number of ballots cast, and the size of the balloon represents the size of the update (the data labels are the number of votes after the update). You can see that there was one very large update, at 9:48 PM.

Here’s what Stephen Mandel’s win looked like throughout the night – the difference in votes between him and nearest competitor David Dorward:

When all was said and done, Mandel had won re-election by 49,533 votes.

A total of 196,661 ballots were cast. Here are the number of votes per ward:

You can see that Ward 8 had the most votes. Because the wards changed this year from six to twelve, it doesn’t make sense to try to compare them to 2007. We can compare the winning candidates however. To get elected in 2007, a candidate on average had 12724 votes. To get elected in 2010, a candidate on average had just 8640 votes.

Here is the difference between first and second place for each ward:

You can see that the two closest races were in Ward 2 and Ward 3. Those two wards were among the busiest in terms of the number of candidates, along with Ward 6 and Ward 11. The biggest wins were in Ward 5, Ward 9, and Ward 10, all of which had strong incumbents and few competitors.

Here are the number of votes per Catholic School Ward:

And finally, here are the number of votes per Public School Ward, compared with 2007:

There were two acclamations this year, versus just one in 2007. In every other ward, the number of votes in 2010 was higher than in 2007. This isn’t surprising, given the increased interest in schools due to the closures.

Just 1217 ballots did not indicate a choice for mayor (compared to 2491 in 2007), where as 4456 ballots did not indicate a choice for councillor. A total of 44,121 ballots did not indicate a choice for school trustee (keep in mind there were two acclamations, but still).

I’ll leave you with this:

UPDATE: Official election results are now available.

Edmonton Election 2010: Candidates capture the moment on Twitter

Twitter is a great way to capture the moment, so I wondered, what did the candidates tweet after the results came in? Here are post-election tweets from the victorious candidates, followed by the tweets from everyone else (if an account isn’t listed below, it’s because either they haven’t yet updated, or the account has already been deleted).

Enjoy!

Thank you Edmonton!Stephen Mandel
Oct 19 via Facebook

So proud of the citizens of Edmonton! Onward and upward!! #yegvoteKim Krushell
Oct 18 via Facebook

Thank you Ward 3 !Dave Loken
Oct 18 via Twitter for BlackBerry®

I’d like to thank the voters of Ward 5 for their vote of confidence in me. Also, thank you to all the kind wishes 😀 #yegKaren Leibovici
Oct 18 via TweetDeck

Thank you everyone for your support. All but one poll is in and it looks like I’m heading back to Council in Ward 8 #yegvote #yegcc #yegBen Henderson
Oct 18 via web

Touched by #yegvote results in the first batch of results.Don Iveson
Oct 18 via TweetDeck

We did it! Thanks to everybody. It’s an amazing feeling and I’m ready to get to work for folks. I’m honored. #yegvoteKerry Diotte
Oct 18 via Twitter for iPhone

I’ve received a kind call from Ward C candidate Tony Henshall. My thanks to the #yeg Twitter community for all your help. #yegvote #epsbChristopher Spencer
Oct 18 via web

I just removed the word "candidate" from my twitter bio. Thanks #WardG! #epsb #yeg #yegvoteSarah Hoffman
Oct 19 via web

Thanks to all the residents/supporters of Ward I. Best wishes to @PublicTrustTina. Ready for the leadership role as Trustee Cleary on EPSB!Leslie Cleary
Oct 19 via web

Everyone has gone home, kids are all in bed, house is quiet and I am still way too excited to sleep! THANK YOU supporters ! #yegvote #epsbCheryl Johner
Oct 19 via TweetDeck

A brave new world emerging within Edm. Public tonight. I say hurrah. Democracy delivers. #yegvote #yeg #epsbDave Colburn
Oct 18 via web

Welcome Trustee-Elects Johner, Spencer, Mackenzie, Hoffman, Janz & Cleary, Congrats to Trustees Shipka & Colburn. Let’s get to work! #epsbCatherine Ripley
Oct 18 via web

Thank you Edmonton for your support. It has been a great honour to have my name stand for Mayor of Edmonton. #yegvoteDavid Dorward
Oct 18 via web

Hat’s off to @mandelformayor. My sincerest congratulations. #yegvoteDaryl Bonar
Oct 18 via Osfoora for iPhone

Taking tomorrow off to spend with my family. Thanks for the support #yeg I will be back #yegvoteDaniel Dromarsky
Oct 18 via ÜberTwitter

New day, New goals, "Defending Democracy" http://www.andrewlineker.webs.comAndrew Lineker
Oct 18 via web

Thank you everyone for your support!Brian Kapitza
Oct 18 via web

@serfx Thank you very much for the kind words and the campaign for 2013 starts tomorrow – today I will rest.Andrew Knack
Oct 19 via TweetDeck

Thank you to all who supported me! We ran an honest upfront campaign and I am proud! #yeg #yegvoteCris Basualdo
Oct 19 via ÜberTwitter

Thanks for all your kind words everyone. Running for council was a privilege. Stay engaged, folks. Be well. #yegvote #yegScott McKeen
Oct 18 via Twitter for iPhone

a little disappointed in tonight’s results, but the road to 2013 starts Wednesday (Tuesday is nap time…) #yegvoteBrendan Van Alstine
Oct 19 via web

Took all my signs down Putting less up means taking less down Good luck 2 the others w/cleaning up your 1,000’s of pieces of litter #voteroxiemaloneRoxie Malone
Oct 19 via web

Thank you everyone for listening, even if you elected someone else. Rami #yeg #yegvoteRami Bader
Oct 18 via web

Its been a good fight. Hats off to @KerryDiotte for winning Ward 11. Thanks to all my volunteers. #yeg #yegvoteShane Bergdahl
Oct 18 via web

I want to thank all the volunteers and the voters. We ran a clean campaign and in 28 days, we fought hard had some fun & made new friends.Chuck McKenna
Oct 19 via web

Thanks to all those in #yeg 4 their support and encouragement. The beginning of a new era for #epsb & the (cont) http://tl.gd/6i9ujiDarryl Lagerquist
Oct 19 via web

Beaten, but not defeated. I’ll be back so watch every steps and mind your mistake Mr Consoller for I will keep an eye on you the next 3 yrsCalvin Lim
Oct 19 via web

Oh so close! 1% difference. Recount! #epsb #yegvote #abed #yegTina Jardine
Oct 19 via Twitter for BlackBerry®

Of course, candidates weren’t the only ones capturing the moment on election night! More on that in a future post!

Let us move forward, together

There were no major upsets last night. Mayor Mandel was re-elected to his third term. Every incumbent councillor was re-elected, including Kim Krushell in the close Ward 2 race.

Envision Edmonton made a lot of noise about 100,000 people wanting to have their say on the airport, yet they apparently didn’t care enough to show up at the voting stations.

By all accounts, yesterday was a victory for Edmontonians ready to move forward, beyond the airport and on to bigger and better things. Yet if you read today’s Edmonton Journal, that’s not the impression you’d get at all.

The Day After: Calgary Herald vs. Edmonton Journal

Here are the headlines/key phrases today on the front of the Calgary Herald:

It’s Nenshi
New mayor paints town purple with decisive win
Political newcomer vows change on the way for city
Best voter turnout in years ushers in new faces to council chamber
What’s next for council?
Big changes at City Hall
Calgarians flood polls

Here are the headlines/key phrases today on the front of the Edmonton Journal:

‘Finally, we will move forward’: Mandel
Envision Edmonton vows to continue fight to save City Centre Airport

Turn the page, and on A3 you see in big bold letters, side-by-side:

I’m definitely not the first to point out the differences between the Herald and the Journal – this kind of thing happens far too often. And before you comment and say that the Journal is just trying to be balanced, let me say to that: I don’t buy it.

Is there really a division?

There’s no question that the airport has been a divisive issue in Edmonton in the past. But yesterday is not today, and today is not tomorrow. In his article on the airport issue dividing the city, David Staples wrote:

“A council bent on shutting the historic downtown airport won re-election, but the bitterness over issue will continue to fracture Edmonton.”

I humbly suggest that the only “fracture” left is the artificial one that David and his colleagues seem more than happy to perpetuate.

Let’s follow the logic here. Thousands of Edmontonians re-elect a city council that decided it was in the city’s best interests to close the City Centre Airport. Envision Edmonton’s Ed Schlemko says the issue “has divided the city”. As a result, we’re going to continue to be fractured?

This afternoon, the Herald’s website was full of stories about Nenshi. And the Journal? They’ve got a story about new ward 11 councillor Kerry Diotte pushing for an airport plebiscite. It’s not just the Journal either – CBC, the Edmonton Sun, and iNews880 also have similar stories.

Let’s move on

Edmontonians want to move forward – they voted for a council that decided to close the airport. Mandel wants to move forward, as he made very clear in his victory speech last night. Even David Dorward seems to want to move forward.

Envision Edmonton is heading to the courts, refusing to accept defeat. They and what few supporters they have left don’t want to move forward. Kerry Diotte has decided he doesn’t want to move forward either.

The City Centre Airport will close. And then the lands will be redeveloped. We need to focus our energies on making sure that redevelopment is positive for Edmonton.

Let us move forward, together.

Edmonton Election 2010: Unofficial Results

It took a while for the data to start flowing but that only added to the excitement of the evening! A total of 196,661 ballots were cast by Edmontonians in this election, giving us a voter turnout of just over 34%. Here is your new City Council (unofficial until finalized on Friday by Edmonton Elections):

Stephen Mandel (Mayor)
Linda Sloan (Ward 1)
Kim Krushell (Ward 2)
Dave Loken (Ward 3)
Ed Gibbons (Ward 4)
Karen Leibovici (Ward 5)
Jane Batty (Ward 6)
Tony Caterina (Ward 7)
Ben Henderson (Ward 8 )
Bryan Anderson (Ward 9)
Don Iveson (Ward 10)
Kerry Diotte (Ward 11)
Amarjeet Sohi (Ward 12)

Here are your new Public School Trustees:

Cheryl Johner (Ward A)
Ken Shipka (Ward B)
Christopher Spencer (Ward C)
Dave Colburn (Ward D)
Heather Mackenzie (Ward E)
Michael Janz (Ward F)
Sarah Hoffman (Ward G)
Catherine Ripley (Ward H)
Leslie Cleary (Ward I)

Here are your new Catholic School Trustees:

Becky Kallal (Ward 71)
Larry Kowalczyk (Ward 72)
Cindy Olsen (Ward 73)
Debbie Engel (Ward 74)
John Acheson (Ward 75)
Marilyn Bergstra (Ward 76)
Laura Thibert (Ward 77)

You can see full election results at ShareEdmonton.

The closest race tonight was in Ward 2, where Krushell defeated Don Koziak by just 539 votes. Aside from that however, I think tonight’s result is a clear vote of confidence in the direction City Council had been moving under Mandel’s leadership.

Congratulations to all the candidates who ran in this election!

Edmonton Election 2010: It’s election day!

There’s just a couple of hours left to vote today, so if you haven’t already done so, go vote! You can find out where your voting station is here. I voted this morning and spent the day with Dave visiting campaign offices and getting a feel for the election. So far, turnout is looking decent.

As of 4pm today, a total of 77,947 Edmontonians had voted. If you add the 17,658 who voted in advance voting, the total is 95,605, which is nearly 26,000 higher than the 69,638 for the same period in 2007.

If you’re looking for a place to see the results tonight, check out the ShareEdmonton election results dashboard!

There weren’t any lines to deal with when I voted at 10:30 this morning. I ran into a couple of Mandel supporters on the way back:

My next stop was City Hall, to get an update on the morning voter turnout from Edmonton’s Returning Officer Alayne Sinclair:

Dave and I then began our tour of election campaign offices, starting with Mayor Stephen Mandel’s:

The mayor himself was pretty happy with the effort put in by his team!

Our next visit was David Dorward’s office, where we had a great chat with David MacLean. Most of the team was out getting people to the voting stations, but the office was getting setup for a party.

From there we travelled to Daryl Bonar’s office, but there was no one there. They were out getting people to vote, as they should have been!

We headed back north of the river for our next stops, starting with Scott McKeen’s campaign office:

A short trip away was Tony Caterina’s campaign office. We caught him just as he was leaving!

We stopped at Don Koziak’s campaign office, but there wasn’t anyone there. Our last stop, on the way back to City Hall, was at James Johnson’s campaign office:

You can see the rest of my photos here.

Of all the campaign offices we visited today, I’d say that Mandel’s felt most like what I was expecting. There were lots of people there, phones were ringing, people were running around – there was energy!

Results

We should start to see results coming in around 8:15pm tonight. Stay tuned to #yegvote on Twitter and check out the election results dashboard at ShareEdmonton. You can quickly see the overall results, and if you click on a ward, you can get more detail about just that race.

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