Tag: edmonton

Edmonton Notes for 5/15/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Demolition of the old Mayfair hotel started this week. It’ll make way for the Mayfair Village:

Mayfair VillageMayfair Village

Today marked the start of the City Market Downtown for 2010! More than 13,000 people had walked through by 12:30pm. You can see more photos here.

City Market Downtown

City Market Downtown

City Market Downtown

UPDATE: Completely forgot to mention this: the provincial government has publicly endorsed Edmonton’s bid to host EXPO 2017.

U of A Chancellor Linda Hughes on Community Engagement & Public Policy

Last night Sharon and I attended a talk with University of Alberta Chancellor Linda Hughes, part of the Edmonton Speaker Series created by the Edmonton Community Foundation, E4C, and the Edmonton Social Planning Council. Linda was the first female editor-in-chief of a Southam newspaper and was also its first female publisher (of the Edmonton Journal) so I was really interested in hearing her thoughts on community engagement given her experience in the media industry.

Linda started the evening by introducing A Joyful Noise Choir, a choir “for people who believe they cannot sing.” They performed three or four songs for us – it was a welcome surprise and a great way to start off!

A Joyful Noise Choir

After returning to the stage, Linda explained why she thought it would be a good idea to start with the choir. She said it was the perfect metaphor for what community is all about – individually, the choir members didn’t feel they could sing, they didn’t have a voice, but collectively, they sang beautifully. I couldn’t help but think of the wisdom of the crowd as she said this – the best crowds are those with great diversity, just like the choir (men, women, old, young, etc).

Linda spent most of her time talking about the importance of education, bombarding the audience with the same statistics that U of A President Dr. Indira Samarasekera shared during the EEDC Annual Luncheon last month. She started, however, by relating how disconnected from public policy she had to be while working at the Edmonton Journal. Unable to publicly support an issue, or make a donation to a party, or otherwise seem unbiased, Linda felt ill-prepared when she took on the role of Chair of the Mayor’s Committee to End Homelessness here in Edmonton. Obviously, she got the hang of it pretty quickly! She said that what she learned was that it’s not just about “being political” but rather about getting informed and pursing an issue you’re passionate about.

A little aside…as I’ve written here before, I have difficulty accepting the notion that journalists are unbiased. They’re human, and they have opinions and a bias – it’s natural. Why can’t we just accept that and move forward? It’s really only an issue if you read just a single opinion. If you think critically and seek out a number of viewpoints and opinions, like you should be doing, then you’re not going to be misinformed.

Linda transitioned from the “you need to be informed” train of thought into discussing the importance of education. She shared some of the experiences she’s had during her time as Chancellor at the U of A, as well as some of the great research that has come out of the university and had a positive impact on the community here and abroad. My favorite example was Acticoat, a bandage that uses silver to speed up healing and reduce the frequency with which bandages must be changed. Acticoat is the world’s first commercial medical application of nanotechnology, and it was created at the University of Alberta. Very cool.

Linda closed by imploring everyone in the audience to help make education the top public policy issue. She explained that education is the key to solving all of the other issues that we’re passionate about.

Though I was hoping for a little more on the media perspective, I enjoyed Linda’s talk! Next up in the series is Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, who will be speaking in September.

In Search of the Northern Lights by way of Edmonton

As I mentioned back in January, I’ve been doing a little work for EEDC, hosting travel media when they come to visit Edmonton. Usually it’s just a casual lunch, which I really enjoy – I get to learn a little about where they’re from and they get to ask me anything about Edmonton! The only thing I don’t like about the experience is that I don’t always get to see the result of their trip (because the article or video or audio clip is generally created for audiences somewhere else in the world). Fortunately, that’s not always the case!

A couple of months ago I had lunch with a group of four travel journalists from the UK. Twitter came up as we were chatting, and I learned that one of them, Sarah Foden, was on Twitter! A couple of weeks ago she sent me a tweet to say that the video she created for her trip was online. Here it is (click the image below, I can’t seem to embed the video):

sarahfoden

Her video is called “In Search of the Northern Lights” and Edmonton was just one stop along the way. She wrote:

Fortunately, as I discovered, the great thing about visiting both northern Alberta and the city of Edmonton is that these places are about so much more than the Northern Lights.

It turns out that Sarah’s video is now one of the top videos on Sky.com (the company she works for). Congrats Sarah!

As someone who loves to promote Edmonton, it’s great for me to get another perspective on how our city is being portrayed abroad. Can’t wait to do it again!

Thoughts on Connections 2010

On three Thursday evenings in April the City of Edmonton hosted an event called Connections 2010, designed to connect residents with City staff to learn about programs, services, and projects. Organized by the Office of Great Neighbourhoods, Connections 2010 brought more than 40 City departments and programs together under one roof.

The first was held on the southside on April 15 at Taylor University College. The second was held on April 22 for westside residents at the Mayfield Inn & Suites. The third and final event was held on April 29 at the Alberta Aviation Museum, and that’s the one I finally made it out to.

Connections 2010Connections 2010

Upon arriving I was greeted and given a quick rundown of what to expect: booths spread throughout the venue, and a stage in the back corner that would have different presentations every half hour. I missed the first on Capital City Clean-up, but arrived just in time to hear Councillor Batty speak about EXPO 2017. There were about a dozen people who listened to the brief pitch.

Next I walked around the museum, stopping at a number of the booths to chat with the City staff who were present. There were some really great displays – my favorites were the one explaining where your tax dollars go, and the Safe Communities one that featured a speed gun and display to see how fast you were walking. I also had a great chat with a young lady from the Waste Management branch.

Connections 2010Connections 2010

Eventually I made my way to the garbage can that a number of people were painting. It was destined for the African Centre, part of a program to beautify trash receptacles at community centres around the city. I’m really not an artist, but I was convinced to help paint a small part of it:

Connections 2010

It was kind of fun actually!

In total I probably spent about an hour and a half at the event. I thought it was a decent event, but there’s lots of room for improvement. Here are my thoughts:

  • Attendance was pretty disappointing. Maybe 100 About 210 people attended the evening I was there, and I’m told that was the busiest night of the three.
  • The silver lining to the low attendance was that City staff from various departments had the opportunity to learn about one another.
  • I found out from Treena Schmidt, one of the event organizers, that the booths were laid out according to the Transforming Edmonton themes – the way we move, the way we grow, etc. I thought that was pretty smart! It’s great to see more City events/programs thinking in the context of the bigger picture.
  • I’m not sure the venue choices were particularly good. I would rather have seen one closer to downtown, maybe at the MacEwan campus or in Enterprise Square. Another idea would be to host one of the nights at a high traffic location, like a shopping mall or something.

I also asked Treena if her team had consulted with any other similar events, and she said was very honest and said no. I mentioned Everyone for Edmonton, which I immediately thought of as I walked through Connections. I think the thoughts I wrote about how to improve that event are all relevant for Connections as well, in particular the need for a “hook”. Why not showcase local artistic talent at the event? Local performances can be a great draw. You can get information on all of the City’s programs and services online. I think there needs to be something else to attract people.

There’s probably also something to be said for improved promotion. I think the Great Neighbourhoods team organized this year’s series of events pretty quickly, so hopefully they’ll have more lead time next year. I think there’s a solid base they can build upon, and I look forward to an improved Connections series next year!

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

Edmonton Notes for 5/8/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Police are cracking down on cyclists who use the sidewalks, with a focus on Whyte Avenue. Is this really the best they could do for signs?

No cycling on sidewalk

Recap: Edmonton Arena District Open House

Yesterday Edmontonians had the opportunity to visit the Art Gallery of Alberta to learn more about the proposed Edmonton Arena District (EAD). At least that was the intent of the open house – I’m not sure how many people actually came away with a better idea of what the proposed downtown arena is all about or how it’ll become a reality. Representatives from the Katz Group, Stantec Consulting, Bunt & Associates, and Anschutz Entertainment Group were on hand to answer questions, and there was a number of images and other bits of information on display.

Edmonton Arena District Open House

Clearly the downtown arena is a topic that many Edmontonians find interesting. When I visited the open house at around 11:15am, it was already at capacity (200 people at at time). By 5:00pm, the total number of visitors was close to 2000. In all, around 2650 people stopped by. It’s great that EAD is working to involve the public in its plans, and I’m very happy that so many people took the time to learn more.

Edmonton Arena District

For those of you who have been following this issue, there wasn’t anything new presented. None of the big questions were answered: proposed funding models, or details on cost. I did ask some questions about parking (I want less not more), and got almost a word-for-word response from the FAQ page. The only additional bit of information that was provided to me was that there would be “seven LRT platforms within a few blocks of the area.” I’m really not sure where that number comes from.

Edmonton Arena District Open HouseEdmonton Arena District Open House

A quick scan of the #yegarena hashtag on Twitter yesterday suggested a good mix of negative and positive tweets. I decided to run all 110 tweets through OpenAmplify, a semantic web service I’ve been experimenting with. It can identify topics, people, and other items and can determine the attitude expressed toward each one (the polarity). Here’s what I found (polarities below zero are negative, zero is neutral, and polarities above zero are positive).

#yegarena (so all the tweets, effectively)

  • Mean polarity: 0.53
  • Min polarity: –0.6
  • Max polarity: 1

winter garden

  • Mean polarity: 0
  • Min polarity: –0.15
  • Max polarity: 0

So tweets were slightly more positive than negative on the arena, and slightly negative on the winter garden. OpenAmplify also assigned a polarity of –1 to Katz and 1 to Zack Stortini (who made an appearance). This is highly unscientific, of course, but I still think it’s interesting. FWIW, this is very similar to the result found by Tweet Sentiments.

You can see the rest of my photos from the open house here.

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!

Recap: DemoCampEdmonton11

Tonight was Edmonton’s eleventh DemoCamp, and despite the crazy weather that hit the city today, we had another very good turnout! Once again the audience seemed pretty evenly split between people new to DemoCamp and people who had come in the past. It’s great that we’re continually attracting new people, but it also makes me wonder where all the previous attendees have gone!

DemoCamp Edmonton 11

We had six demos this evening:

  • First up was Trent Oster from Beamdog, a digital game distribution service. They’re kind of like Steam, except that they’ve focused on simplifying the end-to-end experience of finding a game you like, downloading and installing it, and playing it. They were featured at Launch Party back in March.
  • Our second demo was Micah Slavens who showed us appboy, a directory and recommendation service for mobile applications. The site looks fantastic, with a great aesthetic, and works with Android, BlackBerry, Palm, and Apple apps. You can find apps, leave comments & reviews, and submit ideas for new apps.
  • Third tonight was Kyle Fox and Jon Smelquist from FotoJournal, hosted blogs for photographers. They are kind of like WordPress, but geared specifically to photographers with little or no setup required. It’s easy for photographers to setup an online portfolio. They were also featured at Launch Party.
  • Our forth demo was Graham Batty who showed us imgBrew, an online photo processing service. The service lets you transform images, say cropping or adjusting the color, using simple URL requests. The service is meant for a service like FotoJournal, which might want to offer the functionality without worrying about the implementation.
  • Fifth tonight was Arpad Barabas, from Calgary-based Mobizou. They’re tackling the really interesting market of mobile ads, coupons, and surveys. There are two sides to the service: for merchants, they offer the ability to quickly create ads & coupons, backed by analytics; for consumers, there’s Bizoubucks, which is a kind of loyalty program based around the mobile coupons.
  • Our final demo of the evening was Tom Ohle and Rober Kallir from Empire Avenue, an online influence stock exchange and advertising platform. I think quite a few people in the audience were familiar with the site, but they did show a couple new things as well, such as the ability to find your Facebook friends on EA. They were featured at Launch Party and will be presenting at MediaCamp too.

The bar is continually being raised in Edmonton, as all the demos were very well done with quite a bit of polish. I like Graham’s because it was a bit more of a prototype than the rest. The demo of the night has to go to appboy, however. Everyone I talked to after the event said that was their favorite, both because it’s a good idea and because the execution seems really great. I think FotoJournal also got quite a bit of love on Twitter during the demo, and has already had some success in attracting users. Keep an eye on all the startups that demoed tonight!

Here are a few upcoming events that we announced:

As always, stay tuned to Startup Edmonton and GameCamp Edmonton for updates on their events. I also do my best to aggregate upcoming tech events at ShareEdmonton.

Thanks to everyone who came out tonight. See you at DemoCampEdmonton12!

MediaCamp Edmonton & Hacks and Flacks Night

Today marks three months since our initial planning meeting for MediaCamp Edmonton, an event taking place this Saturday at the Shaw Conference Centre (on ShareEdmonton). There are more than 130 people registered already, from a broad range of organizations and disciplines. We’re going to have some great discussions on the future of media!

The day will start off with a panel discussion, moderated by MediaCamp Edmonton instigator and EdmontonJournal.com Editor Karen Unland. Our panelists are:

The panel loosely represents the various audiences we think will be at MediaCamp – mainstream media, social media, public relations, and technology. I think it’s going to be a great way to get everyone warmed up for some great discussions throughout the day!

After the panel, we’ll give everyone an opportunity to pitch topics and then we’ll build the grid for the day (MediaCamp is an unconference). Some of the topics we’ll likely cover include:

  • What’s a mash-up and how do I do one to tell a local story?
  • What can journalists do with open data, and how?
  • How is social media being used effectively by mainstream media?
  • Which journalism best practices need to be fostered in social media?

As with all unconferences though, you get out what you put in. If you’re passionate about a particular topic or idea or question, pitch it!

Right after lunch we’re going to do something called Lightning Talks, which are quick, five-minute presentations on a tool, idea, or trend. It’ll be a great way to find out about some interesting things that you can follow-up on later. If you’d like to lead a lightning talk at MediaCamp, let me know.

I’d like to thank all of the people who have helped to organize MediaCamp Edmonton, as well as our sponsors: EEDC & the Shaw Conference Centre, Guru Digital Arts College, ShareEdmonton, Athabasca University TEKRI, CTV, and Grovenor School. We’re looking for additional sponsors – if you’re interested, please let me know ASAP.

The City of Edmonton has organized a media mixer called Hacks & Flacks Night for Friday at Metropolitan Billiards downtown (on ShareEdmonton). It’ll be a great opportunity to meet some of the people that will be at MediaCamp the next day. If you’re interested, register here.

Stay tuned to the MediaCamp Edmonton website for updates (and streaming video of the panel) as well as #yegmediacamp on Twitter. Hope to see you at the event!

Edmonton Notes for 5/1/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes: