Tag: edmonton

CTV Edmonton launches Inner Tube blog

On Friday afternoon, just hours before the start of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, CTV Edmonton launched a new blog called Inner Tube. I’m not sure if the timing was just a coincidence or if CTV Edmonton purposefully wanted to “soft launch” the blog, but either way, this “online experiment of sorts” is something that’s worth paying attention to.

First, the key points:

  • Inner Tube is a group blog. Entries will be written by a variety of people at CTV Edmonton, including Carrie Doll and Josh Classen.
  • This is an Edmonton project, not something that came from Toronto.
  • Posts are edited for clarity, comments are moderated.
  • From the about blurb: “You’ll read stories about the inner workings of the news process, how we develop our stories, or just casual observations about what makes north central Alberta so special.”

I called Stewart Shaw, web guru at CTV Edmonton, to learn more about the site that he has been working to launch for the last six months or so. My first question was why it took so long! Stewart very democratically explained that many people just aren’t as comfortable with technology as the rest of us, and that convincing all of the necessary people took time (as it would have in any typical corporate environment). He was pleased with how things progressed.

Stewart told me that CTV Edmonton sees this as an extension of what they’ve been doing for more than 50 years. The station has always felt that it was part of the community, and the blog is just a modern way of ensuring that remains true. And while the CTV Edmonton account on Twitter has been quite successful, and most stories on the news website offer the ability to leave comments, neither offers the same kind of connection that the blog can (though Carrie Doll, Josh Classen, and other personalities regularly interact with other Twitter users). Stewart said that the Save Local TV open house last year opened some eyes – it was the first time in a long time that CTV Edmonton had invited the public to the station, and they were overwhelmed by the response. The idea with Inner Tube is to open up a little, to provide a glimpse behind the curtain from the people that make CTV Edmonton tick.

Local media blogs are not new, of course. The Edmonton Journal, iNews880, and Edmonton Sun have had blogs on their websites for a long time, with varying levels of success. The difference is that CTV Edmonton has created a group blog that everyone will contribute to, rather than individual blogs for each employee or personality. The idea is that it’ll be a little easier to keep fresh, and also to build a following with. I think the jury’s still out on which approach is more successful, but I like that CTV Edmonton is experimenting with something different.

Inner Tube is off to a good start, with roughly half a dozen posts already up on the blog. It’ll be interesting to see how it evolves – I hope it opens the door to even more online activity from the local media. Congrats to Stewart and everyone else at CTV Edmonton for launching Inner Tube, and good luck!

Edmonton Notes for 2/13/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Valentine’s Day in Edmonton: Deal or No Deal?

Sharon and I decided to collaborate on this post. Enjoy!

Sharon:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a holiday where consuming chocolate is the national norm, and for an occasion that is marked with an indulgent feast. And though I realize that Valentine’s Day has been escalating in its commercial nature over the past two decades (and one that that Mack and I embraced wholeheartedly last year), a gander at one too many pre-fixe restaurant menus sent me over the edge this time around.

Of course, restaurants shouldn’t be blamed for feeding a consumer-driven hunger for extravagance, excess, and unbridled expense on February 14. No doubt, some meals, and the ultimate experience of spending time with your sweetheart could be worth every penny. Also, some restaurants do offer embellishments – providing a rose to the lady, employing a musician to set the ambiance, offering a treat at meal’s end – but could it really be worth the heightened price tag? How much more are patrons charged on Valentine’s Day, compared with any other day? With Mack’s penchant for statistics and graphs, we set to find out.

Mack:

Coming up with the data was harder than we thought! Finding the set price of the Valentine’s Day menu was easy, but finding something to compare it to was not. We decided to generate a comparable figure using the closest dishes we could find on the regular menu. Definitely not scientific, but fairly representative.

We started by finding as many restaurants with Valentine’s Day menus as we could, and then narrowed it down to those which also had regular menus online. We ended up with 12 restaurants:

The average Valentine’s Day menu price was $71.08 per person, with prices ranging from $35 per person at The Dish to $160 per person at Red Ox Inn. The average regular menu price was surprisingly similar at $69.65 per person. On average, Valentine’s Day menus featured 4 courses.

So what’s the best deal? By far, Madison’s Grill. Their 6 course Valentine’s Day menu is just $85 per person – the regular menu would cost roughly $116 per person. Of course, we’re not sure about portion sizes, but based on our recent Farmers’ Market Dinner experience, we expect they will not be small. The worst deal? Hardware Grill – you pay $31 more for the Valentine’s Day menu than you would on a regular day.

I wouldn’t cite any of this data in an academic paper, and the numbers don’t take into account ambiance, food quality, freedom of choice and service, but it was fun to generate just the same. I was surprised to discover that the Valentine’s Day menus aren’t that much more expensive after all!

Sharon:

So numbers aside, after scrutinizing more than a dozen pre-fixe menus, I can tell you that considering the menu options only, both Mack and I agree that Hardware Grill wins, hands down. We were salivating as we read through each course (butternut squash-mascarpone tortelloni with truffle butter cream sauce and fresh chanterelles? Porcini crusted sea bass, lobster-truffled potato crêpes, white corn-arugula & gulf prawns? Where do we sign up?).

While I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend any one restaurant (personal choice being that last intangible), based on our experience, Madison’s Grill and The Dish would top our list. If you’re looking for innovative, creative food that celebrates local producers, there would be no better choice than Blair Lebsack’s dining room in the Union Bank Inn. However, if you desire something more casual and comforting, The Dish is a great choice with its consistent kitchen and friendly service.

Mack:

You could, of course, avoid restaurants altogether and cook that special someone a tasty meal at home! Because as Sharon pointed out, Valentine’s Day is about spending time with your sweetheart, not spending lots of money. If you do go the restaurant route, keep in mind that there are more to choose from than the dozen we mentioned here.

We hope you enjoyed this light-hearted look at “Black Sunday” (a la Eater) in Edmonton, and we wish you a very happy Valentine’s Day!

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!

Edmonton Notes for 2/6/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Pecha Kucha Night: Edmonton #6

Edmonton’s sixth Pecha Kucha Night took place tonight at McDougall United Church downtown, a really fantastic venue. It was pretty full, but I’m not sure what the final attendance numbers were. Pecha Kucha is always a great place to meet new people, and tonight was no exception. Many people in the audience had never been to a Pecha Kucha Night before, which was great to see!

True to its name, there was lots of chatter about PKN6 tonight, in person and online. At one point this evening, the hashtag #pkn6 was trending in Canada, but not for the reason you might expect.

In order of appearance, tonight’s presenters included:

  1. Mari Sasano, Winter Light
  2. Merna Schmidt, Outreach Coordinator of A Child’s Hope
  3. Rikia Saddy, Strategist
  4. David Demian, President of JCI Edmonton
  5. Jessica Roder, Urban Planner
  6. Ken Chapman, Cambridge Strategies and Reboot Alberta
  7. Chris Ford, Program Director for Action for Healthy Communities
  8. Matthew Capowski, Activist
  9. Liz Lepper, YESS volunteer
  10. Chris Moore, CIO, City of Edmonton 

Before I go any further, let me just point out a few facts:

  • It takes guts to stand up in front of a couple hundred people to talk for 6 minutes and 40 seconds, I get that.
  • Christmas and the New Year are probably not the most opportune times to find presenters, as everyone is busy with work and life.
  • You’ll never please everyone, because each person has a different set of expectations.

With that out of the way, I can honestly say that PKN6 was probably the worst of the Pecha Kucha events we’ve had here in Edmonton. I’m saddened by this, primarily because the main issue was not something new or unforeseen. Here’s what I wrote about PKN3:

Tonight’s event didn’t have a theme, but I think perhaps it should have. In comparison with the previous two Pecha Kucha Nights, I found the presentations this evening rather weak. There was far too much self-promotion going on.

PKN4 was better, except for the presentation by Edmonton Next Gen themselves:

Finally, some of the Next Gen members gave an overview of the organization. I’m not sure it was the most appropriate presentation, but it was probably good for those in the audience who were new to Next Gen.

At PKN5, self-promotion surfaced once again:

I thought all the presenters did a pretty good job tonight. I wasn’t as interested in Dawn’s or Jeffrey’s, but others in the crowd seemed to be. My least favorite was probably Nadine’s though. Yes most of the talks are self-promotional in nature, but hers really seemed like a commercial for the United Way (and their campaign is on now).

But tonight, at PKN6, self promotion was taken to a whole new level. With the exception of Rikia’s odd Canadian immigration history lesson and Jessica’s interesting discussion of evolution, all the talks were self-promotional. Ken’s is perhaps unfairly labeled as such; although it wasn’t overt, it was ultimately about Reboot Alberta. It was also probably the best talk of the evening, thanks in large part to how great and engaging a speaker Ken is.

An evening with less self promotion isn’t just my idea of a good event, either. Many people were chit-chatting on Twitter about it. Here are a few select tweets:

  • paulzy: I think I’m leaving #pkn6 less inspired than when I came in. Rally caps?
  • sarahdotb: The energy level in this room is nonexistant #pkn6
  • bingofuel: Too many of these presentations are like, "hey, check out my organization!" #pkn6
  • KendallBarber: Appreciate people’s enthusiam for own happenings, but too much promotion #pkn6 – there’s better things to say.
  • ALeNeve: A little disappointed with the shameless self promotional aspect at #pkn6 #yeg hope the 2nd half ISA bit more inspiring

And, here’s what the official Pecha Kucha: What is it? page says:

Good PechaKucha presentation are the ones that uncover the unexpected, unexpected talent, unexpected ideas. Some PechaKuchas tell great stories about a project or a trip. Some are incredibly personal, some are incredibly funny, but all are very different making each PechaKucha Night like ‘a box of chocolates’.

Enough about self promotion, let’s talk about the theme. I’m not sure why they bothered with one tonight:

PECHA KUCHA NIGHT 6 explores our City’s best and worst kept secrets, furtive futures, ancient enigmas, cosmic quandaries, unsolved mysteries and how-to-guides for pressing problems.

Only Liz from YESS attempted to highlight a best kept secret in our city. Maybe the theme was kept secret from all the presenters? The theme of PKN4 worked amazingly well, and I think future Pecha Kucha Nights should also have a theme. Something must have happened for that event (ICLEI?) that didn’t happen this time, however.

Another thing that obviously didn’t happen tonight – screening of presenters. Maybe there weren’t enough submissions, or maybe they all did a good job of convincing the selection committee, but something clearly went wrong. There were two main issues, in my opinion: the order of the presentations, and the quality.

Mari’s presentation was funny at times, even if it was a giant commercial for Winter Light. But it was immediately followed by Merna’s depressing presentation about less fortunate children. It’s an important subject, absolutely, but the difference was extremely jarring. It happened again in the second half. Ken’s presentation was energetic, and really got the crowd into things (finally). That was followed up by a bizarrely bad presentation and then an extremely abstract talk on thought. There was absolutely no rhythm to the evening.

As for the quality of the presentations – Chris Ford’s was probably the worst I have ever seen at Pecha Kucha. Totally disconnected images, long awkward pauses, extremely overt marketing of the organization and its upcoming event, a clear lack of preparation…it was brutal. I’m sure Chris is a great guy, and his organization does good things, but his presentation just completely missed the mark. Compared with previous events, I thought the presenters tonight were clearly nervous, at times quiet, and mostly unenergetic (the notable exceptions being Chris Moore and Ken).

Pecha Kucha Night Edmonton 6Pecha Kucha Night Edmonton 6

At the end of the evening, Cary asked me to come up to the front to be the “celebrity” who drew tickets for the prize giveaways. I joked afterward that he asked me to do that so I’d stop Twittering about the event! My tweets and this post are my initial thoughts on the event, and I’ll absolutely give it more thought so that I can provide more concrete, constructive feedback to Next Gen.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from checking out the next Pecha Kucha Night either! I attend a lot of events, so perhaps my expectations aren’t average. And despite all of the negative things I mentioned above, PKN is still an awesome way to meet new people and to reconnect with old friends. As the saying goes, don’t knock it ‘til you try it!

Finally, please fill out the survey for PKN6. It won’t take very long, and it’s a great way to provide Next Gen with some feedback they can use when planning PKN7. Let’s hope they take note of some of the things that were highlighted tonight!

You can see a few more photos here.

UPDATE: When I originally posted, I had the order slightly incorrect – fixed now.

UPDATE 2: I should mention that there was an after-party at Red Star, which sounds like it was fairly well attended and lots of fun!

#bill44 on Twitter by Edmontonians & Calgarians

A little while ago, Paula told me she was interested in reconstructing the Twitter stream that happened last year around Bill 44 (PDF and if you want a summary, Ken has a great one). She tried using Twitter Search but quickly found that it only goes back so far, so she asked if I could help. With a few caveats, I said I could.

The first caveat is that the tweets I have are only from people in Edmonton and Calgary (with their profiles set to one of those at the time). I’m sure other Albertans were taking part too. The second is that it’s pretty hard to find all the back-and-forth tweets for the various conversations, so the ones I pulled out all contain the #bill44 hashtag.

I looked at the data for May and June of 2009. Here’s what it looks like:

I was initially surprised by the double peaks, but Paula helped make sense of it:

The first peak is the night debate went until 3:38 AM and the amendments were defeated. The second spike is the night (and early morning) of the final vote. Debate started the evening of the 1st, and ended at about 3:20 AM on the 2nd. The Twitter chatter continued like mad on the 2nd and 3rd, as people bemoaned the result.

Here are the top ten most active #bill44 users during those two months: KenChapman46, Sirthinks, taudette, DebraWard, robertmcbean, AllieW, ChrisLaBossiere, davecournoyer, Paulatics, bingofuel.

After removing #bill44, #ableg, and RT, this is what the word cloud of the tweets looks like:

And here, in chronological order, is all 2406 tweets:

I have archived that spreadsheet here or you can get the full version here. That means you can download the data set and do your own analysis, if you like!

I agree with Paula and all of the others who have said this: Bill 44 was a landmark moment in Alberta’s social media & political history. I’m glad we were able to preserve a part of it.

As a minor aside, I think this a great example of what could come out of MediaCamp.

Recap: MediaCamp Edmonton Initial Meeting

Tonight we held an initial planning meeting at Credo Coffee for an event called MediaCamp. I have wanted to hold a local event to bring mainstream (or old) media together with social (or new) media for some time, and last week Karen Unland provided the necessary spark when she tweeted about a hacker event that took place recently in London, UK. A bunch of us very quickly settled on a hashtag – #yegmediacamp – and we got the ball rolling on Google Wave.

MediaCamp Edmonton PlanningMediaCamp Edmonton Planning

The meeting tonight was appropriately informal, and gave everyone an opportunity to meet one another and share ideas. We went around the circle with introductions and initial thoughts, and then discussed what MediaCamp might look like. Karen probably has better notes than I do, but here are some of the things I wrote down:

  • Should it be a small event or a large one? The consensus seemed to be “go big”.
  • Would an event focus on business models? Technology? Something else?
  • BarCamp is pretty unstructured, TransitCamp had a bit more structure but used the same kind of model. What’s the right approach for MediaCamp? The consensus seemed to be that we have some structure.
  • Lightning Thoughts was something that everyone thought was a good idea – quick, five minute demos.
  • Multiple streams or not? We want to break down silos and encourage input from everyone.
  • Will they come? How do we remove barriers to entry? How can we ensure a good mix of mainstream media folks and social media folks?
  • As with most of these events, connections are perhaps the greatest outcome.
  • Potential dates: April 10, May 8
  • It was decided we’d loosely follow the ChangeCamp structure, striking subcommittees to focus on sponsorship/budget, volunteers, day-of, etc. The first step – create a Google Group to get everyone connected.

I agree with Bruce that labels seem to be a necessary evil, so I’ll use them here. The common thread seemed to be, “let’s work together”. What can old media learn from new media, and just as importantly, what can new media learn from old media?

I was quite impressed with the turnout, especially since it was just a planning meeting. Here’s who made it out tonight: Karen, Cam, Asia, Alain, Dave, Rachelle, Kelly, Jeff, Eugene, Brittney, Diane, Jas, Curtis, Reg, Bruce, Marty, Kerry, and myself. I know there were many more who wanted to come but couldn’t make it work!

Please follow along on Twitter, and join the Google Group. I think there’s a lot of excitement around MediaCamp, and I’m eager to see what comes of it!

Lightning Thoughts at ENTS

Last night ENTS hosted an event called Lightning Thoughts, an opportunity to share and discuss something inspiring or even just interesting. Each presenter got 5 minutes, followed by a few minutes for questions, though those rules weren’t strictly enforced (it was a pretty casual atmosphere). About 15 people showed up, which is a decent turnout for the first event (ENTS hopes to do it again next month).

Lightning Thoughts at ENTSLightning Thoughts at ENTS

There was a really wide variety of things shown, but here are a few:

  • Ben showed us Swoopo, which is an interesting “entertainment shopping” service. It’s kind of like an auction service, except that you buy bids. It’s a bit shady, really.
  • Eric shared Netvibes, Dropbox, and Delicious. He uses the services, along with Google Apps, to run his portable office. My usage of Delicious has dropped lately thanks to the new “Note in Reader” feature at Google Reader, but I use Dropbox all the time, it’s great.
  • Keith brought his Amazon Kindle 2 and passed it around. I was really blown away by it actually, seeing it in person really makes a difference.
  • Devin showed us Prezi, an awesome Flash-based presentation tool. I’ve seen Devin use it before, but I still haven’t tried it for myself. I must!

Finally, I really enjoyed this inspiring video that Grant shared:

Kudos to Eugene for getting the event off the ground – looking forward to the next one!

Update on ShareEdmonton

I’m still working on improving ShareEdmonton, slowly but surely, and I wanted to provide a brief update on my progress. Over the last couple of weeks, my primary focus has been on improving the event calendar. Making it faster, more complete, and easier to browse. There’s still a lot of work to do, but here are some of the recent improvements:

  • There’s now a Featured Upcoming Events page where I can highlight specific events.
  • Related events have been improved. For example, if you look at the page for this Saturday’s Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market, you’ll see other upcoming dates as well.
  • That feature highlights something else – events on ShareEdmonton are as granular as possible. Instead of just having one event for The Citadel’s upcoming run of Sweeney Todd that starts on February 6 and ends on February 28, each individual show time gets its own page. That’s important in helping to answer the question, what’s happening in Edmonton at a given time and place? There are only a few exceptions to this, such as International Week.

I’m going to continue to make it easier to find and browse events, especially by tag, like valentine’s day or family day. I have made good progress on making the calendar more complete too. Currently, there are more than 200 unique events in ShareEdmonton for February, with more than 600 different instances (a unique event would be “Sweeny Todd”, and each showtime would be a different instance). There are probably hundreds more that I don’t yet have in the calendar. It’s a tricky problem, but I’m working on it!

Another thing I’ve been working on is improving Places in ShareEdmonton, which includes adding more places! Most recently, I started adding places that have been made available as part of the City’s open data catalogue, such as Police Stations. That’s a handy page to see all the police station locations in Edmonton. I’ve got some more neat stuff coming with this, so stay tuned.

If you have feedback, let me know!