Tag: city of edmonton

The Way We Green Workshops

The Way We Green WorkshopA few weeks ago I was invited to check out a workshop for stakeholders of The Way We Green, part of the public consultation process for the project. It took place on a Thursday evening in a conference room on the top floor of the Holiday Inn Express downtown (great view). I arrived roughly halfway through the session, and found two tables of about ten people deep in discussion.

The workshop I attended was the last of four in the second phase. In the four workshops of phase one, which took place during the first week of June, participants identified what sustainability means for Edmonton and what key environmental challenges we face. In the second phase, participants discussed the policy options for eight broad categories: energy, water supply, food, ambient air, biodiversity, water quality, extreme weather, and waste management.

The table I sat with was just finishing up a discussion on energy when I arrived. Each participant had a sheet of paper with three or four sections to drive the conversation. There was also a moderator and a designated note-taker. Very shortly after I sat down, the group started talking about food. Everyone around the table had the opportunity to talk about why they thought protecting Edmonton’s local food system is important. They also completed the exercises on the sheet, which asked for a proposed goal, for their thoughts on what the City of Edmonton has done thus far, for a recommendation that the City of Edmonton should do more, less, or retain the status quo, and to identify any barriers to achieving the goal. Everyone in the group agreed that we need to do more to protect and strengthen Edmonton’s local food system (which I agree with), and highlighted public awareness as a major barrier (which I disagree with).

The Way We Green Workshop

I’m really interested in how the City’s public consultations work (and how they might be changing), so it was a great opportunity to see one aspect first hand. Even with all of the technology available to us, there remains a place for face-to-face discussions. I felt there could have been more discussion between participants at the workshop I attended, however, instead of just answering the questions provided. Another thing I noticed was that while there was diversity in the ages of the participants, there wasn’t much ethnic diversity. It’s important that immigrants and newcomers have a say in the strategic direction we take as a city (something that City staff acknowledged is a challenge when I mentioned it after the workshop).

More workshops are being scheduled for September, including some that will be open to the public. Forums and other information sessions are also scheduled to take place, after which the draft plan will be written and presented to City Council (sometime before February 2011). You can learn more about the project timeline here. You might also want to read the EcoVision Annual Report, which was published last month.

You can read my recap of last month’s expert panel here. Don’t forget you have until August 20th to complete the online survey. Stay tuned to TheWayWeGreen.ca for updates!

City of Edmonton launches Apps4Edmonton Competition

On Wednesday the City of Edmonton officially launched its Apps4Edmonton competition, which challenges residents to submit ideas for apps and developers to actually build them. There is more than $50,000 in prizes available, and everyone has a chance to win an Apple iPad. Here’s what the competition is all about:

Every Edmontonian can be an active participant in reshaping our city. Together with community partners the City of Edmonton is proud to launch Apps4Edmonton – a contest which encourages residents to develop applications that will benefit Edmontonians.

Using data sets from the Edmonton Open Data Catalogue, we’re challenging you to develop an app for either a smart phone, mobile device, or PC web browser. Mash up a map, create a visualization, or analyze data in a new way, the choice is yours.

To support the competition, the City has also released an update to the Data Catalogue. There are now 25 datasets available, including Ward boundaries and a list of City facilities. Even more datasets should be available soon, and if there’s something specific you’d like to have, request it from opendata@edmonton.ca.

If you have an idea for an app, submit it here. It can be anything, so be creative! Even if your idea isn’t possible or a developer doesn’t want to take it on, it might serve as inspiration for other apps, so don’t be shy. If you’re building or have already built an app, submit it here. You have until August 27 to do so. The FAQ has some good info, and be sure to familiarize yourself with the rules too.

Applications will be judged on four criteria: Accessibility, Usability, Creativity, and the number of community votes received (voting runs online from August 27 to September 10). In addition to three overall prizes (Gold, Silver, Bronze) there are six categories:

  • The Way We Live
  • The Way We Grow
  • The Way We Green
  • The Way We Move
  • The Way We Plan
  • The Way We Prosper

I’m very happy to see that IT has aligned itself with Transforming Edmonton for this competition! I am hopeful that Apps4Edmonton can help introduce more Edmontonians to those important documents that help guide us toward becoming a more innovative, inclusive, and creative city.

To learn more about Apps4Edmonton, visit the contest site. There should be lots of chatter about the competition at Startup Weekend too, and tonight at the Emerging Business Leaders’ Patio Party.

I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with!

Talking Open at Technocon 2010

I’ve spent the last two days at Technocon 2010, a technology conference jointly hosted by the City of Edmonton and the University of Alberta for their respective IT employees (about 450 of which have attended). With six keynotes and more than fifty breakout sessions on a range of topics (everything from “Fulfillment and Freedom” to “BlackBerry Enterprise Server”) there has been a little something for everyone.

I’m closing the show this afternoon with a keynote on the topic of “open”, which is one of the three themes for the conference (the other two are “world class” and “transformation”). Keeping in mind that I stand between the audience and home-time, I’m going to keep things light and brief. Here are my slides:

The key thought I want to share is that open government is fundamentally about the relationship between government and citizens and less about technology. And related to that, we should avoid the temptation to jump on the open government bandwagon just because it’s the hot new thing, and focus instead on making sure we improve that relationship. Both sides have a role to play, and I hope to bring some of the citizen perspective to the audience. And of course, one of my key messages is that we can work together.

You can watch it live here. Thanks to Technocon for having me!

What’s next for Edmonton Stories?

The last time I wrote about Edmonton Stories, I questioned the value of the initiative. Here’s what I wrote back in September:

I think Edmonton Stories is a great concept, and I’m glad to see that Edmontonians are contributing stories. The project was created to help market the city elsewhere though, and I don’t think it is accomplishing that yet.

I didn’t see any connection between the fantastic collection of stories that Edmontonians had contributed to the site and the marketing of Edmonton to others. Based on the reaction to that post, I don’t think I was alone in wondering what the next step was for Edmonton Stories.

Last week I sat down with Mary Pat Barry, Communications Branch Manager at the City of Edmonton, to try to get an answer to that question. We talked for about an hour in her office at City Hall, looking at the website itself, statistics, a case study, and marketing materials. The fact that I had been critical of the project in the past didn’t seem to bother Mary Pat. Not because she didn’t care, but because she was so excited to convince me of the value of Edmonton Stories. She could see the bigger picture, and she wanted me to see it too.

First, here are the latest statistics (May 14, 2009 to January 31, 2010):

  • 272 stories posted
    • 176 user generated
    • 55 containing video
    • 5 containing audio
    • 6 non-English language stories
  • 515 comments posted (100 stories have comments)
  • Users in 3,929 cities from 162 countries have visited the site
  • Total Visits: 203,685
  • Total Unique Visitors: 162,313
  • Total Page Views: 542,488
  • Time on Site: 00:01:42
  • 59.3% of visitors came from outside Edmonton

The statistics have also been broken down into two phases: the contesting phase (May 14 to September 15) and the post-contesting phase (September 16 to January 31). The number of visits and page views have both declined from the first phase to the second, but after talking to Mary Pat, I’m not sure that matters much.

At its core, Edmonton Stories is all about labor and visitor attraction. It exists because the old or standard ways of attracting skilled labor or visitors to Edmonton either are not very effective, or are very expensive. It exists because the best people to share why Edmonton is a great city are Edmontonians themselves. With that in mind, I think it’s useful to think of Edmonton Stories as a two-stage project:

  1. Gather stories from Edmontonians
  2. Attract labor and visitors using those stories

Mary Pat said she was “awed” with regards to the first stage. That so many Edmontonians took the time to write and share their stories is not something to take lightly. The collection of stories is a great asset.

The second stage is the answer to what’s next. Instead of just explaining it to me, Mary Pat showed me a recruitment partnership case study with the Edmonton Police Service (EPS).

In the fall of 2009 EPS was set to launch a recruiting initiative in select locations in the United States (Seattle, Cleveland and New York City). Confident that the EPS Recruiting Unit could effectively extol the attractiveness of the police service and the work it demands, EPS turned to the City of Edmonton for advice on how they might promote Edmonton as a potential home for recruits and their families.

The City of Edmonton’s solution? Edmonton Stories. The idea was to use the content on EdmontonStories.ca, the personal, tangible experiences of real people, in a targeted way to help EPS recruit new members. I remember reading about the recruitment efforts, but the news articles never mentioned that Edmonton Stories was involved. Here’s what Edmonton Stories did to help:

  • Built a dedicated page featuring stories written by Edmonton police officers: http://www.edmontonstories.ca/eps
  • Created a guide for on-site recruits describing how best to use the dedicated page
  • Produced branded “conversation cards” to hand out at hiring fairs
  • Promoted the dedicated EPS page on Twitter, Facebook, and Google AdWords.

The experiment was a great success. Edmonton Stories had 6.7 times more visitors from Cleveland after the recruitment fair, and 8.1 times more visitors from New York City (the first city, Seattle, was sort of used to figure things out). According to candidate surveys, 74% had not considered Edmonton as a place to live before the recruitment fair, while after, 76% reported they would likely or very likely relocate to Edmonton, and 84% planned on submitting an application to EPS within the next six months. Most importantly, EPS received an “unprecedented” number of detailed applications from potential recruits met at the recruitment fairs. The total number is 6, but for an application process that can take 18 months, that’s seen as very successful.

It’s difficult, of course, to separate the effect Edmonton Stories had on the campaign from the rest of the EPS recruitment efforts, but those involved feel Edmonton Stories had a significant impact.

The City of Edmonton can now take what was developed for the EPS and apply it to other industries. They can provide specific industry stories, the recruiters guide, conversation cards, and much more to recruiters to help attract talent to Edmonton. The stories that Edmontonians have shared are finally being put to use.

I asked Mary Pat if the focus on helping recruiters would take away from maintaining the website itself. While she conceded that less effort has been put into attracting new stories, she said that the website certainly remains a focus. She highlighted two things – translations and a redesign. The team is working on 19 languages for 36 stories, with 10 languages available at launch. The translations take time, because Edmonton Stories works to get approval from each of the authors before posting. The redesign, live as of today, brings a fresh look, a news section, new ways of discovering stories, and tighter integration with social media services.

I think that asking whether or not Edmonton Stories is delivering a return on investment is still a fair question. However, it’s clear to me now that there’s direction and a way for the site to deliver on its core objective of attracting labor and visitors to Edmonton. I think the EPS case study is exciting, and demonstrates that Edmonton Stories can provide value.

What would make you attend the Open Data event on March 6?

As you might have seen on Twitter, the City of Edmonton is planning another open data event for Saturday, March 6, 2010 at City Hall. If you haven’t already, block that day off in your calendar! It’ll be a great opportunity to connect with others who are interested in open data and open government, as well as a chance to provide feedback to the City on its data catalogue and plans for the future.

And who knows, if we’re lucky, there might even be some new data to play with! For more information on the data catalogue, which launched last month, click here.

The details for the event will go up on the website soon I’m sure, but first we need to have a better idea of what everyone wants to get out of the event. Here are some ideas:

  • An unconference, followed by a hack night. Maybe a keynote to kick things off, then time for unconference-style discussions about open data and open government. The hack night could take a variety of forms, and the discussions could be wide-ranging.
  • Discussing how to frame open data in terms of citizen benefit might a potential topic. Why would my parents or grandparents be interested in open data?
  • One idea for the hack night is to get some developers together to try to improve the tooling around OGDI. This might be writing custom formatters (CSV, plist, etc) or perhaps something else. All of this would be contributed to the community.
  • Another idea is to hold a competition – what can you build in just one evening?!
  • Or a twist on that, a competition where teams produce mockups & ideas, not necessarily a working app.
  • Or the hack night could be as simple as a walk-through of how to use the open data catalogue, etc. Or maybe it’s a longer “hack day”.

What do you think? What would make you attend the open data event on March 6? Either leave a comment below, or email opendata@edmonton.ca with your suggestions.

It would be great to have representatives from a variety of organizations too, not just the City and developers. If you’re at all interested in open data or open government, please join us. Hope to see you there!

The Story Behind the Transforming Edmonton Blog

Today the City of Edmonton is launching its first official blog, called Transforming Edmonton. In some respects, it might be fair to say that a City of Edmonton blog was inevitable. After all, the City has a growing social media presence and is using its experience to experiment further. The reality is that the existence of the Transforming Edmonton blog was anything but a matter of time!

Though many City employees are involved, Raffaella Loro has been the driving force behind the new blog since March of this year. In fact, she has been working to get the City blogging since at least 2006. As an early NextGen volunteer, Raffaella suggested the group start a blog to engage with volunteers. The City seemed ready to support the project, but the idea just didn’t pan out at the time. While she was disappointed, Raffaella didn’t give up. When the opportunity arose early this year during her tenure in the environment department at the City, she pitched the idea of starting a blog again. This time, the idea was met with enthusiasm.

The original goal was to start the blog in time for the ICLEI Conference in June, but that was a busy time for everyone involved, followed by the summer, and it just didn’t materialize. Raffaella used the delay to refine the concept, and realized that an environmental focus was too limited. I like the way she described it to me:

Just as individuals have a perspective when writing their blogs, the City has a perspective too. The Vision and Strategic Plan represent the City’s perspective, and that will come through on the blog.

The Transforming Edmonton blog will consist of human interest stories and other content that illustrate the City’s progress on realizing the Vision and delivering on the Strategic Plan. Or put another way, the blog will “share stories about how the City is working on transforming itself.” This is reflected in the blog’s sections: Economic Diversity, Environment, Financial Sustainability, Livability, Transportation, and Urban Form.

It’s important to note that the blog is a pilot at this point. It’s an experiment. Raffaella won’t be the only author – she has been busy over the last month recruiting other City employees to contribute content. A large number are on board already, but that support will have to continue to grow for the blog to be successful. The initial goal is to have two new posts about each category per month. Comments are encouraged, though they will be moderated in accordance with the blog’s Comment & Trackback Policy. Where appropriate, posts will link to non-City of Edmonton websites.

In our conversation, Raffaella suggested that the blog is about encouraging a cultural shift in the way the City of Edmonton operates. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but so far I think the project is on track. It makes use of the City of Edmonton’s existing social media profiles, rather than creating new ones. Transparency is a key focus of the blog, demonstrated by the fact that it will serve both external and internal audiences (there is no separate internal-only blog). And though it is quite different from some of the City’s other online initiatives, the Transforming Edmonton blog was relatively inexpensive to create – essentially just staff time.

Raffaella had lots of praise for the many individuals at the City of Edmonton who have played a role in getting the Transforming Edmonton blog up and running, in particular Jason Darrah and the other members of the Social Media Advisory Committee. She said “it’s the right time for the City to be doing this” and I completely agree. Kudos to Raffaella for persevering and making the blog a reality. It might take a while, but I think the blog is going to have an incredibly positive impact on the City and its residents.

Check out the Hello World post and welcome Transforming Edmonton to the blogosphere!

The City of Edmonton’s Social Media Advisory Committee

In the grand scheme of things, the City of Edmonton could be considered an early adopter of social media tools. They’ve been on Twitter since February 5, 2009 and have established a presence on Facebook, YouTube, and other sites. While most organizations are still unsure about how to get started with social media, the City of Edmonton is slowly but surely gaining expertise.

Recently I learned that the City established a Social Media Advisory Committee (SMAC) in the spring of this year. I asked Jason Darrah, Communications Business Partner at the City of Edmonton, to tell me more about it. He started by explaining how the committee came to be. I’m paraphrasing here:

In the early days, the City was a fairly simple system. The roads people worried about roads, and the sewer people looked after the sewer system. These were silos, but it worked fine. When a new way of dealing with the world appeared, each silo handled the changes on its own. So at some point in the City’s history, Transportation handled all media related to Transportation, and Waste Management handled all media related to Waste Management. Eventually, it became clear that economies of scale and a unified voice could be achieved by creating the Communications department. More importantly, the Communications department could use its experience to help each of the silos be more effective than they could be individually.

The SMAC followed a similar trajectory. The difference is that today, the City is a complex system. We still have silos, but a change in one area quite often has an impact in another. I think that’s the reason that the SMAC was created so quickly. Jason and his colleagues in Communications recognized some of the advantages:

  • The committee can act as a resource for each of the silos. So when a department wants to get started, they know where to go to learn.
  • They can also provide operational support, actually doing some of the social media work.
  • It’s a way of managing risk, by establishing a competency.
  • The committee is a way of distributing knowledge. They gather information about all of the different social media projects taking place, and can offer advice based on experience.

That last point is particularly important. The SMAC is an advisory committee. Unlike many City committees, whose members are designated by senior managers, the SMAC is comprised of 26 individuals with social media experience (as you can imagine, many of them are young). It has grown fairly organically by attracting people who are using the tools. At their first meeting in May, the SMAC members simply talked about what they knew and had experience with (and they have since recognized a few gaps, Legal for instance).

The key for SMAC is to avoid becoming the social media police. If a department or group wants to do something with social media, they might have a representative on the SMAC, or they would reach out to one. They’d make a pitch to the committee not for approval, but for knowledge. The SMAC might share information about similar projects, or it might make recommendations for tools to use, but it doesn’t say no. The other characteristic that’s interesting is the pull model – SMAC waits for people or groups to come to it, rather than proactively preaching. Obviously some projects will happen without SMAC’s knowledge, but that’s okay.

I really love the SMAC approach. I talk with a number of local organizations about using social media, and I often wonder why they want to learn from me. Obviously I think I have something to offer, and I usually do it for free, but I have always felt that most organizations have untapped knowledge and experience within. By getting all of the individuals with social media experience together, the City has recognized that and has created a fantastic resource for all other employees. I’m particularly intrigued by the fact that although SMAC was started by Communications, it exists outside of it. Kudos to Jason and his colleagues for embracing the notion than social media is something different.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the Social Media Advisory Committee will play an integral role in helping the City of Edmonton use social media effectively, and I believe it’s a model that other organizations should look at adopting also.

Somewhat related…

While social media is different than other communications tools, some of the same rules still apply. The City of Edmonton (and SMAC) is currently drafting a set of Social Media Guidelines, to help employees use the tools effectively. Note this is not a policy, because there are three policies already in place that cover employee conduct with social media tools and everything else: the Employee Code of Conduct, the Media Relations Policy, and the Conduct and Acceptable use of Telecommunication Technology policy. The other advantage to having guidelines rather than a policy is that guidelines are easier to update, which is important when you’re dealing with something that changes as quickly as social media.