Quick Update

I’ve been so busy this week I haven’t posted much. So I am going to be lazy (or efficient!) instead. Here are a few recent things that I found interesting enough to share:

  • Happy Birthday Sharon 🙂 For your birthday, I’m going to create you a blog and make you start writing it! Haha!
  • Pronger wants out of Edmonton? Say it ain’t so. Pronger was definitely the MVP this season for the Oilers, and was totally shafted by not being considered for the Norris. The report cites “personal reasons” and throws the idea of a Pronger for Luongo trade out there. I’ll be following this one closely.
  • I don’t think government (except maybe the UN) should have any regulation over the Internet, but I also think we need net neutrality. This very well done cartoon (via Larry Borsato) argues against net neutrality. The argument in the cartoon is fundamentally flawed however, as it assumes that unless VOIP or movies have their own pipes that quality will suffer, and there will be “traffic jams”. If you believe that, you obviously don’t know much about the Internet and its history. I’ll probably write more on this later.
  • Hey teachers, if you think cheating is bad here in Canada, check out what happens in China.
  • My parents have been in town for the last couple days – they leave tomorrow. It has been good to see them!

More later!

Who pays – you or your credit card?

Post ImageI was reading some older posts at Signal vs. Noise, the 37signals blog about all sorts of things, and I came across a post on number portability and the idea that credit cards should be the same:

Maybe one day your card number will be portable like your phone number. Theres no reason for it to change unless fraud has been committed. If you need the number changed then you can change it, but otherwise it remains the same no matter the issuer or card type.

The reasoning behind this is that there are so many recurring monthly services now that changing your credit card number (which happens if you change account types, or in some cases, when your card is renewed, etc) causes huge problems with missed payments and the need to update information manually.

I see three problems with this. The first is that lots of people have multiple cards. This is more of a problem with credit cards than it is with cell phone numbers (where the majority of users have only one). I don’t think MasterCard and Visa, for example, would like the idea of combining your two cards into one number. So you’ve still got to worry about which card to use, when each one expires, etc. The second problem is fraud. Somehow I see more problems related to fraud occurring if you have the same number all the time. Maybe I’m wrong here, but that’s the gut feeling.

The larger problem is long term – when you pay for something, are you paying, or is your credit card? You are obviously. The solution to the problems described in the SVN post is not the ability to keep one credit card number, it’s the ability to not worry about how you’re paying, just that you are paying. As a business, I don’t care if you’re paying cash, Visa, or debit card. All I care about is that you’ve paid, either right now, or on a recurring basis. If transactions were as simple as “Mack has paid Paramagnus for this” then a lot of these problems would go away. Did Mack use his old credit card or a new one? Maybe cash? Who cares, he’s paid! The scenario today is explained very well in the SVN post:

Our customers swear their cards are in good standing, but it turns out that they just switched cards and didnt realize their card number changed. Even though they have the money, and their credit is pristine, the number they had in the system is no longer a valid number and the transaction is declined.

The ability to keep a credit card number consistent might solve this in the short term, but the larger problem still exists. At some point, I hope we can move from validating a piece of plastic, to validating a person’s actual credit and financial standing.

Read: Signal vs. Noise

Edmonton Oilers Tribute

Post ImageToday during the lunch hour was the Oilers Community Appreciation event downtown at city hall. There were thousands of people packed into Churchill Square to catch a glimpse of the Oilers. After losing out in the Stanley Cup Finals, I can totally understand why the Oilers would want a low key event, with only a select few present:

Attending the rally will be Oilers Captain Jason Smith, Assistant Captain’s Ryan Smyth and Ethan Moreau, Georges Laraque, and hometown hero Fernando Pisani. Also present will be Oilers General Manager Kevin Lowe, President & CEO Patrick LaForge, and Chairman Cal Nichols.

The event kicked off with Paul Lorieau singing the national anthem (and yes, he sang the whole thing). Various dignitaries and Oilers organization bigwigs made speeches, after which the palyers answered some questions from Sportsnet’s Gene Principe. During his speech, Kevin Lowe said the team considers losing the Stanley Cup a failure, to which he received a quiet boo that quickly turned into a “we’re number one” chant. He’s right though, they set out to do something and didn’t quite accomplish it. That said, I’m really glad the Oilers organization took the time come out and allow the fans one more hurrah.

I took about 70 pictures at the event, most of which turned out okay. It was one of the rare opportunities I’ve had to use my zoom lens! Anyway, I’ve added the photos to my Edmonton Oilers Playoffs 2006 photo set. This one is my favorite.

Read: Edmonton Oilers

Commercial Free CBC?

Post ImageVia iloveradio.org, I came across a post on the Canadian Journalist blog which explains that a recent senate report on Canadian media is recommending an ad-free CBC:

A Senate report on Canadian media recommends that CBC-TV become a commercial-free broadcaster. The report also recommends measures to prevent private media conglomerates from dominating newspaper, radio and television audiences in a single market.

The CBC proposal would mean the federal government would have to boost the corporation’s almost $1-billion annual budget to make up for the loss of advertising revenue.

First of all, have these people not heard of the Internet? There’s your solution to one media conglomerate dominating a single market. And then more importantly – more money for the CBC?! I don’t think so.

The post also mentions that the senate committee spent more than three years travelling the country, hearing from witnesses. I find it hard to believe these people gave them the idea that CBC needs more money. Maybe more money to produce something worth watching, but certainly not to have more of the crap we currently find on CBC. Seriously, there’s sports, crappy CBC shows, and decent BBC shows.

Here’s my recommendation: keep the radio and Internet properties, and get rid of CBC television. I’ve been thinking about this for a while actually, especially since CBC lost the contract for curling (there, even a cbc.ca link!). Here is my reasoning:

  • I don’t think a publicly-funded organization should be allowed to compete with private companies for contracts such as curling or the NHL broadcast rights.
  • I don’t agree with a publicly-funded organization running a for-profit entity, like Country Canada.
  • There is no compelling reason for CBC Television to exist. CTV, Global, City, and the other stations are all quite capable, and often cover news and events far better than CBC does anyway.
  • We could probably do far more with the budget currently spent on CBC.
  • We could get rid of Don Cherry and those other idiots, and Ron MacLean could move to TSN!

Okay that last one isn’t really a serious reason, but it would be awesome! The only time I ever watch CBC is for the hockey, and I don’t think I’m alone.

My only other suggestion would be to make CBC Television an entirely, 100%, Canadian-content channel that is not allowed to bid on sporting broadcast rights, play Hollywood movies, etc. No budget increases either. Then we could relax the requirement that Canadian broadcasters make sure at least 30% of their content is Canadian-created, and we might actually have some competition for American networks.

However, with our media becoming increasingly global, I wonder if we need television stations like CBC. I’m of the opinion that private enterprise will do a far better job of providing local and national content in the long run anyway.

Read: Canadian Journalist

Microsoft Robotics Studio

Post ImageIf you’ve been reading my blog for the last year or so, you probably know that I quite like robotics. Actually, it was almost exactly a year ago (June 24th) that the Podbot was launched. Basically the Podbot was a podcasting robot – we could control it wirelessly with a laptop, and it had an onboard microphone and webcam. Very cool stuff, but unfortuntely, now out of commission. Andrew, Ashish, Dickson and I all had a blast with the project, though it was quite a bit of work.

Looks like the next robot we build might be a little easier! Earlier today at the RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition 2006, Microsoft introduced a community technology preview of Robotics Studio:

“Microsoft sees great potential in robotics, and we are excited to deliver our first CTP of Robotics Studio, making it easier to create robotic applications across a wide variety of hardware, users and scenarios”, said Tandy Trower, general manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group at Microsoft. “We’ve reached out to a broad range of leading robotics companies and academics early on in the development process and are thrilled with the positive response from the community.”

Microsoft also featured a bunch of third party demos at the event. This is pretty exciting stuff for a hobbyist like myself! I’m going to install the CTP and check it out. You find out more on the project at MSDN, and at the official team blog.

Read: Microsoft PressPass

Hurricanes win the cup

Man I didn’t get any of my predictions right tonight, except for Bob Cole being an idiot still. Even Don Cherry was wearing something sort of normal! Chris Pronger only played just over 26 minutes, and there isn’t much rejoicing in the streets (though there are a few people still, cheering the Oilers).

Pisani scored, but it obviously wasn’t the game winner. Hemsky did a whole lot of nothing, just like most of the team. Staios had a particularly trying game. Our top line didn’t show up tonight, they were each -2, and only had 3 of our 23 shots. Markkanen kept it close for us – he played well again.

The officials actually called a decent game. They made two mistakes as far as I am concerned. The first was the missed call against Carolina right before they gave us a penalty (which the Hurricanes scored their second goal on). The second was Smyth’s penalty to negate our two man advantage.

Full credit to the Hurricanes, they played a great game. They certainly brought more to the table tonite than the Oilers did. Thanks Oilers for a great run, it was fun while it lasted. I certainly enjoyed watching hockey in June! And as proud as I am that they made it game seven of the finals, I’m even more disappointed they lost because they made it to game seven of the finals. Let’s hope they sign all of the important free agents (bye Dvorak!) and have a great start to next year.

Go Oilers Go!

My Game 7 Prediction

Despite the best efforts of the referees, the Oilers are gonna take the cup tonight. Hemsky will have another key goal, and Pisani will score the winner. Carolina will not be able to match the physical play and intensity of Edmonton. It won’t be a blowout like Game 6, but it won’t be close either.

Of course, I can also predict the obvious stuff – Bob Cole will prove he’s still an idiot, Chris Pronger will play over 30 minutes, Don Cherry will wear something horrendous, and there will be much rejoicing in the streets of Edmonton.

Go Oilers Go!

Oh, and please, please, please, do not put Weight in the lineup Carolina! No sense in injuring Doug so bad that he’s out for good. He wouldn’t be able to make a difference tonight anyway.

Notes for 6/18/2006

Here are my weekly notes:

  • Today was Father’s Day, so Happy Father’s Day to my Dad, and to all Dads out there!
  • I don’t know for sure, but I think my recent .NET Wizards post is the longest I have ever written on this blog. I’ll try to be more succinct in the future 😉
  • Anyone hear Oakenfold’s new track “Faster Kill Pussycat”? It features Brittany Murphy – yes that Brittany Murphy. It’s a pretty good song actually!
  • There have been a lot of “looking back on Bill” posts since Gates made the big announcement. I particularly like this one.
  • I noticed today that Gnomedex has managed to get Senator John Edwards to keynote this year’s edition of the conference. Unfortunately I won’t be going this time, but I’ll be eagerly watching online for posts/pictures/podcasts to trickle out.
  • Game 7 is tomorrow night. According to Epcor (our city’s water/power utility) water usage in Edmonton increases by millions of litres in between periods, and drops to abnormally low levels when the puck is in play. GO OILERS GO!!

Nacho Libre Swag

Post ImageOne of the cool things about having a bigger audience for my blog than just friends and family is that occasionally I get some free stuff sent my way. For example, I have received a bunch of Nacho Libre (IMDB, RT) marketing swag over the last couple weeks, so I thought I’d share it with you. The movie which stars Jack Black opened on Friday night, by the way.

Seems the good folks at Paramount are banking on the movie’s soundbites to drive traffic. I got a DVD with the trailer, and a CD that contained sound clips from the film. I also received a sort of “introductory” letter, which is big on using phrases from the movie. Here’s an excerpt:

This is your ticket to get your “stretchy pants,” so “join us in our quarters this night for some toast,” and “be the gatekeeper of your own destiny and enjoy your glory day in the hot sun.”

Here are some of the other things I received:

I think my favorite item is the bobblehead – it’s pretty cool actually! There’s a few more pictures in my Nacho Libre Swag photo set.

The funny thing about the swag is that it didn’t compel me to see the movie (at least I haven’t gone yet). From the moment I saw the first preview a few months ago, I had pretty much tagged the movie as worthy of a DVD rental but maybe not a theatre visit. I guess first impressions really do matter!

Read: Nacho Libre

Setting the record straight on the .NET Wizards

Post ImageIt has been quite a while since I’ve said anything about the .NET Wizards, but I think it’s time. As some of you are undoubtedly aware, there is a new user group in town – the Edmonton .NET User Group (or EDMUG.NET). They’ve had a couple of meetings so far, and have two scheduled for the end of June, so they’re off to a good start. Now, before I get into what I want to say, let’s get a few things out of the way:

  • This is a really long post, so be prepared.
  • I love Edmonton, I love .NET, and I love meeting new people, both online and off.
  • I have become extremely busy with Paramagnus over the last couple of years, as has Dickson. We’re having a blast building our little software company though, so we don’t regret being busy at all.
  • There are a lot of great .NET developers in Edmonton, and they deserve a great developer community.
  • We always tried our best with the .NET Wizards to treat people with respect, cater to their varying levels of knowledge, and make the Edmonton developer community a great one.

My intent with this post is to set the record straight on the .NET Wizards. To clarify some things that I feel are getting confused, and to have on public record my thoughts and opinions on what has happened, what is happening, and what is going to happen in the future. To do this, I’m going to tell you a story.

Some History

The Edmonton .NET Wizards User Group began life back in the fall of 2003. Dickson and I were really heavily into .NET at the time (and still are) and we wanted a way to connect with other .NET developers in Edmonton. Additionally, we had just come back a couple months earlier from TechEd 2003 in Barcelona, Spain where we represented Canada in Microsoft’s first ever Imagine Cup programming competition, so we were especially excited about creating the user group. We registered the domain name in September and a non-profit organization in November, and got started planning events and stuff.

One of the first problems we encountered was a location for our events. As we were both students at the University of Alberta, we decided to host our meetings there as we could get a room for free. We still had to pay for use of the projector and computer though, and we did so out of our own pockets. Over the next year or so, we setup a user group booth at MSDN events to try and attract developers, and held many events on topics such as “J2EE and .NET Interoperability”, “Building Mobile Applications with the .NET CF and SQL CE”, “Web Services Security”, and “Whidbey and SQL Server 2005.”

Our events in 2004 and most of 2005 always seemed to have less than amazing attendance, though we did manage to have some great events with speakers like John Bristowe and Dan Sellers, and we gave away lots of books and other prizes to Edmonton developers. I think we probably gave away more stuff than other user groups did, because I also happened to be the Academic contact for Microsoft at the UofA, so I ended up receiving double the swag. We tried food a few times, but couldn’t seem to get an amazing turnout.

As a result, we had a “planning meeting” in the summer of 2005, to try and get some input from people on where they thought the user group should go. We held less of our own events in the first six months of 2005 than we did in 2004, and basically organized things around the MSDN tour events. Which did people prefer? After a while, we finally got a good discussion going, and it turned out that most people wanted smaller events, with presenters from the group. In September 2005 we got started. We put up a wiki as our website so that everyone could edit it, and we had a series of smaller events on things like Windows Vista, Visual Studio 2005, Generics, and Game Engine Design. We also started a certification group, though it didn’t last long.

EDMUG.NET is born

Which more or less brings us to March of this year. Our last event was March 14th, where John Bristowe returned to Edmonton to talk about WinFX. Shortly thereafter, the business plan competitions Dickson and I were in took over our lives, and we never planned an event for April. Then, on April 9th, we received an email from Donald Belcham, basically informing us that EDMUG.NET was starting. His email kind of surprised us, as we had been informed a few weeks earlier by MSDN that some people in Edmonton wanted something different. We decided to meet with Donald over coffee, and we felt pretty good after the meeting. Here is a summary of the outcome:

  • EDMUG.NET held no ill will towards us, they just wanted to try something different.
  • They decided to hold their events on Thursdays as ours were usually held on Tuesdays.
  • We discussed the future of the .NET Wizards, including one option which would make us a sub-group of EDMUG.NET, focusing on “the cutting edge” stuff.
  • We agreed that we didn’t necessarily want to compete.
  • We also chatted about our experience in creating and running a group, and the things Donald and his team had experienced to date.
  • Dickson and I explained to Donald that we felt it was time for someone else to take over and offer a different perspective on things anyway.
  • We wished each other luck.

Dickson and I decided to take a break, and let EDMUG.NET get underway, so nothing much happened until the first EDMUG.NET event on April 27th, which I was able to attend part of. It had great attendance, and was a pretty successful first event. I said hi to Donald and team, but didn’t get a chance to really chat with them.

Their second event was held on May 25th. Unfortunately neither Dickson nor myself could attend, but it seems they encountered some negative feedback – something all user groups will receive at some point.

Here is where things get interesting.

Get to the point Mack

I’m glad to see Donald handled the negative feedback very well, dropping the “fuck’s” like they are going out of style. Anyway, I don’t know his relationship with Mike at Sideline.ca who had the complaints, so I won’t comment any further besides my sarcastic remark just now. It is from their back and forth as well as some comments made offline, that I noticed some things that I need to comment on.

  1. Donald calls “the old user group’s content inadequate“. It has also been said that we tended to focus on things you couldn’t take back to work and use right away.
  2. Mike thinks the .NET community needs rekindling, and said that the previous group did not take action on feedback.
  3. Both Mike and Donald agreed to “hold EdmUG to a much higher standard than what the DotNetWizards had,” which apparently means a “stronger and more knowledgeable community.”
  4. When EDMUG.NET first launched, Mike thought it was “sure to kick the hell out of the previous excuse we had for a .Net user group here in town.” Donald says he was disappointed with our “inability to capture and drive the local .NET developer community.”
  5. I get the general feeling that the work Dickson and I did has gone largely unappreciated.

I’ve been known to have a short fuse at times, but in general, I’d like to think I’m a fairly easy going guy. That said, there are some things that just piss me off, and the list above is one of them. Here are my thoughts on each point:

  1. I think the idea that our content was inadequate is totally wrong. Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, we had some great speakers with great topics here in Edmonton with the .NET Wizards, as I mentioned above. And while our topics at the end of 2005 and first part of this year were definitely “cutting edge”, the same simply cannot be said of our previous events. Look again at the list of topics I mentioned earlier, many of them are things you could use right away. I also couldn’t help but notice that one of the two upcoming EDMUG.NET events is about “Atlas”, a beta product, otherwise known as “cutting edge” or something you probably can’t use at work the next day.
  2. Mike is right, the .NET community here in Edmonton needs to be rekindled. He’s dead wrong though, that we never took action based on feedback. The very reason we had small user group events in the last year was directly from feedback! The wiki we replaced our old site with was a direct result of feedback. If anything, we couldn’t get enough feedback. In my experience, people are generally happy to say everything is fine and go start their own group than give any constructive feedback when it’s needed.
  3. I never go into anything without setting my standards extremely high. For this reason, I sometimes come off as arrogant, when really it’s just that I always try to be confident that I can reach for top and make it there. With a reply like Donald gave him, I don’t know why Mike thinks that EDMUG.NET’s standards are so much higher than ours. Dickson and I always wanted our user group to be the best. That said, I don’t think a “more knowledgeable” community has anything to do with high standards. Setting your standards high for a user group is trying to please everyone, which as we all know, simply isn’t possible.
  4. Depending on your metric, we may have failed to “drive the developer community” forward. On the other hand, we created a place that Donald and his team could get together to plan and create EDMUG.NET, did we not? We held events and had some great speakers, did we not? We managed to connect some developers from Edmonton, which is much better than what existed before we came along.
  5. Sure Donald said in our coffee meeting that he appreciated what we did, but never once has this been said publicly by the EDMUG.NET team. People like Mike are quick to bash us, but don’t seem to appreciate that we attempted to create something good in Edmonton for .NET developers. I don’t need a pat on the back, because I’m happy with what Dickson and I have accomplished with the .NET Wizards, but I really hate unfair and unbalanced commentary. A simple “they did some good things for a while” might have been appropriate.

So what now?

I think EDMUG.NET will probably be pretty successful. They’ve got some very well-connected developers on board, and they seem much happier to spread the word about EDMUG.NET to their colleagues than they did about us. Donald recently started a series of posts talking about his experience starting EDMUG.NET, so check them out if you’re interested. I wish them nothing but the best of luck moving forward, as I think Edmonton deserves a great user group.

Dickson and I have discussed the future of the .NET Wizards a few times, and right now we’re happy to focus on Paramagnus and attend the EDMUG.NET events when we can. At some point in the future we might revisit the issue and decide to hold some events on really bleeding-edge stuff, things we can do some interesting demos with, just as an alternative to EDMUG.NET’s events. Or, we may revisit things and decide that we’re happy with the .NET Wizards no longer existing. Don’t expect anything until at least the fall though.

I think the only way to measure the success of a user group is to look at the community it creates, online, offline, it doesn’t really matter where. Attendance is not the right metric, because there are hundreds of reasons why people attend or don’t attend events. Content is not king, because you can get content pretty much anywhere these days with books, websites, blogs, and more. You might think speakers are a good measure of success, but they are tied very closely to content, and at the end of the day, it might be easier to get in touch with a local developer than an extremely busy speaker across the continent. It’s the community that matters.

It’s also extremely hard to measure the success of a user group based on community, which is why the attendance metric is always used. There are other things that matter though besides the size of the community. Are people being connected? Did you learn something about a fellow user group member that you didn’t know before? How “vibrant” is the community? Are people attracted to the community? Do people want to get involved? Do people want to improve the community? There are lots of things to look at.

Were we successful with the .NET Wizards? I think we were. I certainly have no regrets about anything, and I believe we created a great community here in Edmonton. EDMUG.NET have now taken it upon themselves to take it to the next level, and as a member of the .NET developer community here in Edmonton, I hope they find success.