Edmonton Notes for 3/16/2009

I didn’t touch a computer all weekend while I was in Calgary, so I missed posting these on Saturday. Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting for the week ending 3/14/2009:

Will Speaker Ken Kowalski come to ChangeCamp?

I’m not sure how much overlap there is between the readers of my blog and the readers of Dave Cournoyer’s blog, but I wanted to highlight a post that Dave made on Wednesday. He wrote a letter to Ken Kowalski, current Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Here’s a small excerpt:

I would urge you to revisit your initial reaction to the use of online communications from the floor of the Assembly. I agree that Members should respect the institution and proud traditions of the Legislature, but it is important to understand the limitless potential that these technologies now play in connecting elected Members to citizens outside the Dome.

I think Dave’s letter is very well-written, not to mention incredibly important. Banning the use of Twitter and other online communications tools from the floor of the Assembly is shortsighted, to say the least. I suspect that Speaker Kowalski, like so many others, is just afraid of social media because he doesn’t understand it.

This is the kind of issue I hope we can address with ChangeCamp Edmonton. We need to help politicians like Speaker Kowalski get over their fear of social media. We need to help educate them about its power. And we need to make it clear that we want social media to play an important part in our democracy.

I look forward to the discussion, should Speaker Kowalski be willing to participate.

Recap: DemoCampEdmonton6

Last night was our sixth DemoCamp here in Edmonton, and I think it was probably our best yet. We had around 140 people in attendance, which isn’t much different than DCE4 but it somehow seemed bigger. Maybe it was all the cameras and video cameras? We had Peter Urban and the Smibs TV team record all the demos – watch for the video there soon. I was also really surprised that so many people had never been to DemoCamp before. We’re definitely reaching new people, and I think that’s great!

We had five demos:

  • I showed the first little bit of ShareEdmonton, and EdmontonTechScene. It wasn’t the best demo in the world, but it wasn’t bad for having just two days 🙂
  • Graham Batty showed us bittablog, an interesting microblogging service that he recently cooked up.
  • Ryan Leland showed his unique take on social networking – you-vs-me. It was a definite crowd pleaser thanks to the humorous topics like Cougar-vs-Bear. You can use the democamp invite code to check it out.
  • Mark Matichuk showed us Clinitrust, a secure messaging platform for medical professionals.
  • Our final demo was Peter Urban and Paul Bellows, who showed us their new joint venture (between Smibs and Yellow Pencil). It’s a tool to help move content from one CMS to another.

The general consensus afterward was that Peter & Paul’s was the demo of the night. Though they did a little too much talking in my opinion, the product is definitely intriguing. It’s not hard to see that there’s a big market for what they are doing. It’ll be a time saver, indeed. Hopefully we’ll get to see more of it soon.

DemoCamp Edmonton 6DemoCamp Edmonton 6

See what I mean about the tripods and cameras? After the demos almost everyone wandered over to RATT (Room At The Top) in the Students’ Union Building. A little too much drinking and karaoke ensued, but it was a fun time!

Twitter featured more prominently this time at DemoCamp. We had TwitterFall up on the big screen before we got started, and that encouraged lots of people to start tweeting. Soon after the demos started, we broke into the top ten trending topics at Twitter Search, and eventually rose as high as #7. Very cool!

Don’t miss Walter & Alain’s great list, 10 things I liked about DemoCamp Edmonton 6. Brittney also has a funny post of fun facts about DemoCamp Edmonton 6. Also, Cam and I did an interview with The Gateway, who wrote about DemoCamp and IDEAfest today.

I can’t wait until DCE7! Thanks to everyone who came out last night. If you’d like to be notified about future DemoCamp and BarCamp events in Edmonton, sign up for the mailing list here.

Blog posts have staying power

Fascinating post over at TechCrunch today by Brian Solis. He talks about the declining authority of blogs and attributes the loss to the “statusphere” – essentially micromedia services like Twitter and FriendFeed. This is the key passage:

Links from blogs are no longer the only measurable game in town. Potentially valuable linkbacks are increasingly shared in micro communities and social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed and they are detouring attention and time away from formal blog responses.

Ignoring the fact that he talks about Technorati a lot (I never use it anymore), I think Brian makes a good point. Even just looking at my own activities, I definitely respond less to other blog posts using my own blog than I used to. Instead, I tweet about them. Actually, I would say Twitter is affecting my social bookmarking activities too! I save things in Delicious far less frequently now, choosing instead to tweet them.

What does this mean for bloggers? Mainly that it’s more difficult to track the discussion about a blog post. Brian mentions a number of services in his post that you can use, but they’re not yet what I would call foolproof. They are getting better though.

This trend toward micro-responses doesn’t make blogs any less important, however. Probably the opposite, actually. I could tweet all day about a topic, but my tweets would be largely lost the next day. Blog posts have staying power. That’s probably why I still get more traffic from Google than from Twitter.

Anyway, give Brian’s post a read.

Twitter 101

On Saturday at IDEAfest, I gave a short presentation on Twitter. I wasn’t sure who would be in the audience, so I decided to do some very introductory slides. Some of the content was based on a post I wrote back in November – suggestions for getting started with Twitter. I’d still recommend looking at that post as it has more detail than the presentation on some points.

Here are the slides for my “Twitter 101” talk:

You can download the presentation in PDF here.

If you have any feedback, let me know! Thanks to everyone who came out to my talk.

Notes for 3/8/2009

Here are my weekly notes:

  • I really dislike DST. This whole time change thing has got me screwed up again.
  • IDEAfest yesterday was great. I’ll be posting my slides soon (just wanted to add some stuff to the end). Chris LaBossiere wrote a great post on social networking, inspired by the event.
  • Skittles ran an interesting marketing experience this past week. They made the homepage of their site a search for “skittles” on Twitter. People quickly took advantage of that, posting all sorts of things, which forced the company to change from Twitter Search to Facebook.
  • Darren wrote about a service called ZinePal – it lets you print your blog. Actually looks kind of neat.
  • Really looking forward to the end of the week – Sharon and I are off to Calgary for the weekend for Dine Out Calgary. We’ll be back Sunday evening to see Bill Maher at the River Cree Casino!

Edmonton Notes for 3/7/2009

Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

Planning ChangeCamp Edmonton

Tonight we held our first planning meeting for ChangeCamp Edmonton. Though it went a lot longer than I expected, it was definitely productive. Lots of great ideas and discussion. ChangeCamp is an event in the spirit of BarCamp or DemoCamp, but focused on government and citizenship. The central focus is to “re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation.”

Here’s how the idea is described at changecamp.ca:

ChangeCamp is an event format, an open community and a set of tools and ideas designed to give citizens and governments the ability to work collaboratively in new ways to make change and to better address real-world challenges in our communities.

We didn’t form any really solid plans tonight about what the Edmonton version of ChangeCamp will look like, but did set some goals and came up with a list of things we need to consider. We’ll meet again in a few weeks to progress things further. In the meantime, check out the wiki for our meeting notes and to get involved.

ChangeCampEdmontonChangeCampEdmonton

Here’s who attended (yes we’re all on Twitter!): @fusedlogic, @Imparo, @ChrisLaBossiere, @JillLaBossiere, @jdarrah, @davecournoyer, @mastermaq, @paulney, @eadnams, @dibegin.

A bunch of us will be at IDEAfest tomorrow at the University of Alberta, so if you drop by ask about ChangeCamp and let us know what you think!

Social Media: What Edmonton Transit (ETS) could learn from TransLink

I think the South Coast BC Transportation Authority, or TransLink, is one of the most web-savvy transit organizations in Canada. Through blog posts, videos, meetups, and more, TransLink is doing a great job of fostering a community of people interested in transit. I think Edmonton Transit (ETS) could learn a lot from them!

The Buzzer blog

The Buzzer is a free publication found on all TransLink vehicles (our equivalent is In Transit) and The Buzzer blog is its companion. The blog is described as a “frank, fun, and ongoing conversation about TransLink and its work.” Every time I read it, I find myself wishing that ETS had something similar! Here’s what I love about the blog:

  • It is updated regularly – almost a post per day!
  • They have comments enabled – and they participate in them!
  • They post about a variety of topics, not just announcements and service updates
  • There are clearly defined Participation Guidelines

Most importantly, the blog is written with a human voice. It’s interesting and easy to read.

What ETS could learn: The easiest, most effective way to get involved is to start a friendly, regularly updated blog. It forms the foundation of TransLink’s social media efforts, and could perform the same role for ETS. This should be priority #1!

TransLinkInfo on YouTube

Video is time-consuming both to produce and to consume, so while it shouldn’t be the primary form of communication there are times when video is handy. TransLink gets this. They primarily post short updates and announcements on their YouTube channel. Videos range from about 30 seconds to 5 minutes. I think it could be a good vehicle for “behind-the-scenes” kinds of stories as well.

What ETS could learn: Pick the right tool for the job. There’s more to the web than just text, so venture into other forms of media too!

TransLink on Twitter

There are a few TransLink accounts on Twitter: @thebuzzer, @KenHardie, @2010Transit, and @TransLink. I think the 2010 account will get more interesting as the Olympics near, and The Buzzer account could probably be used for more than just broadcasting, but they are on Twitter and are evaluating how to use it better (they recently polled the community to see if they wanted Twitter service alerts). It’s pretty cool that Ken Hardie, Director of Communications at TransLink, is an active user.

What ETS could learn: Twitter is growing incredibly quickly and is becoming an increasingly important platform for news and connections. TransLink is guessing (I think correctly) that Twitter will be a key communications tool for the 2010 Olympics, and they’re getting prepared now. ETS would be wise to make use of Twitter on a regular basis, and especially during Edmonton’s major events.

I Love Transit Week & The Buzzer Meetup

TransLink celebrated I Love Transit Week on its blog from February 23rd to 27th. I like their introduction to the event:

Why? Because while there are things we don’t like about transit, I know there are many things that we do like about the system. And there just hasn’t been an official opportunity to celebrate what we like – until now!

That could definitely apply to something similar here in Edmonton. We always hear people complain, but there are lots of things to like as well. TransLink did a good job of keeping the blog updated with I Love Transit Week content.

The other cool thing they did that week, was the meetup. They hosted the gathering at a local cafe, and brought transit-related swag to give away. Face-to-face conversations are always best, so the meetup was a great (and obvious) idea.

What ETS could learn: The annual Community Conference is a formal, one-way conversation – ETS speaking to a select few. Meetups are more informal, and are two-way. They allow the community to put human faces to the organization. Plus they can be a ton of fun!

Final Thoughts

I don’t mean to suggest that TransLink is perfect, because they’re not. And to be fair, ETS acknowledges that it has a lot of work to do in the area of community engagement. Like many other organizations they are new to social media, and are going to have to learn quickly.

Conversations about the state of transit in Edmonton are happening, but ETS isn’t yet participating. The sooner they get involved, the better off they’ll be. Fortunately for ETS, they don’t have to start from scratch. Others like TransLink are already leading the way!

Mountains of data, right at your fingertips

Last week, two announcements caught my eye. The first was from Amazon.com, which announced that there is now more than 1 TB of public data available to developers through its Public Data Sets on AWS project. The second was from the New York Times, which announced its Newswire API, providing access all NYTimes articles as they are published.

This is a big deal. Never before has so much data been so readily available to anyone. The AWS data is particularly interesting. All of a sudden, any developer in the world has cost-effective access to all publicly available DNA sequences (including the entire Human Genome), an entire dump of Wikipedia, US Census data, and much more. Perhaps most importantly, the data is in machine-readable formats. It’s relatively easy for developers to tap into the data sources for cross-referencing, statistical analysis, and who knows what else.

The Newswire API is also really intriguing. It’s part of a growing set of APIs that the New York Times has made available. With the Newswire API, developers can get links and metadata for new articles the minute they are published. What will developers do with this data? Again, who knows. Imagination is the only limitation now that everyone can have immediate access.

Both of these projects remove barriers and will help foster invention, innovation, and discovery. I hope they are part of a larger trend, where simple access to data becomes the norm. Google’s mission might be to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, but it’s projects like these that are making that vision a reality. I can’t wait to see what comes next!