Tag: edmonton

Homeward Trust in 2008

Homeward Trust hosted a reception last night to celebrate its new location on the 6th floor at 10242 105th Street, and to share its 2008 Annual Report. The past year has been described as “a landmark year”, the first under the banner of “Homeward Trust” (it used to be known as the Edmonton Housing Trust Fund). They’ve done some great work, and I think 2009 is shaping up to be an even better year for the organization!

The new office space is fantastic. It’s designed in such a way that you can walk around the entire floor in a giant square. They’ve broken the space up into sections, each with a specific focus. Numerous drink and food tables were setup throughout the office for the reception, and everyone was encouraged to explore. The office has some great views of downtown Edmonton!

View from the new Homeward Trust officesHomeward Trust Reception

The program started at 5:30pm with some entertainment, followed by a few speeches and award presentations. Mayor Stephen Mandel and MLA for Edmonton-Ellerslie Naresh Bhardwaj both gave remarks. Among the other VIPs in attendance were Councillor Ben Henderson, MLA for Edmonton-Calder Doug Elniski, MLA for Edmonton-Centre Laurie Blakeman, and City Manager Al Mauer.

Homeward Trust Reception

The annual report for 2008 isn’t online yet, but I suspect it’ll be posted soon. Here are some highlights:

  • In 2008, 133 Edmonton families were homeless. 25% more Edmonton children were without a home than in 2006.
  • 59% of Edmonton’s homeless suffer from mental illness.
  • 3079 people were identified as homeless in 2008, an increase of 18% from 2006. More than 200 volunteers and 180 agencies worked on the count.
  • More than 1500 people attended Homeless Connect in October.
  • Homeward Trust allocated nearly $20 million for capital and support services in 2008.

Additionally, five Homeward Trust funded projects opened in 2008:

  1. Habitat for Humanity Norwood ($520,000)
  2. Our House Addictions Recovery Centre ($2,800,000)
  3. John Howard Society The Loft ($580,500)
  4. Catholic Social Services Rotary Centre ($1,526,548)
  5. Women Building Futures Training Centre Reno ($903,000)

I thought Jon Hall, Chair of Homeward Trust Edmonton, said it best: “What our annual report can’t show is the difference we’ve made in people’s lives.”

Kudos to Susan McGee, Executive Director of Homeward Trust Edmonton, and her team for a great event and a fantastic year! You can see the rest of my photos here. For information on volunteering with Homeward Trust, click here.

Peter Newman in Edmonton discussing Resilient Cities

Author Peter Newman, in town this week for ICLEI World Congress 2009, gave a free talk tonight at the Shaw Conference Centre on some of the central ideas of the book he recently co-authored, Resilient Cities: Responding to the Crash, Climate Change, and Peak Oil. Presented by Edmonton on the Edge, the talk was hopeful in tone – a nice way to end ICLEI.

Here’s the handbill description:

A new approach to urban development needs to be forged that can, at the same time, enable cities to respond to the deep challenge of decarbonising cities and can use the transition to accelerate the development of what the UN calls the Global Green New Deal. Some hopeful directions will be outlined based on cities from around the world, including cities from down under.

Peter Newman in Edmonton

Peter is from Perth, Australia and he started by saying that Perth and Edmonton are similar in a number of ways (population, land distribution, etc). He next touched on Peak Oil (which Peter says happened in 2008) and the global recession. Peter positioned the Crash as an opportunity (his approach reminded me a lot of Ray Kurzweil). Peter showed a slide with five major economic downturns from the last 300 years or so, and pointed out the technological advances that were made after each. The rate of advance became faster over time, so that today we have exponential progress (this is essentially Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns).

My favorite part of the talk took the bulk of the remaining time – examples, complete with pictures, of cities around the world that have become Smart and Sustainable (together, the two characteristics of cities of the future, according to Peter). A couple of examples:

  • Phoenix, one of the worst cities in the world in terms of transportation by transit, recently replaced two lanes of traffic running through the centre of the city with light rail transit. Peter said if Phoenix can do it, anyone can!
  • Perth has completed significant rail developments in the last 15 years, with some lines going as far as 80km away from the core. During that time, ridership increased from 7 million passengers/year to 90 million/year. Amazing.

Peter introduced a number of acronyms during his talk:

  • IT: Information Technology
  • ET: Environmental Technology
  • TOD: Transit Oriented Development
  • POD: Pedestrian Oriented Development
  • GOD: Green Oriented Development

Naturally, IT and ET go together and TOD, POD, and GOD go together. You can’t have one without the others!

Peter Newman in Edmonton

Peter made reference to the concept of “place based cities” a few times, but unfortunately didn’t elaborate. The general idea is that you can make the local economy more viable by creating a stronger sense of place. Something about it really resonates with me.

The talk was followed by a reception, featuring music by Melissa Majeau. A number of other organizations helped Edmonton on the Edge make tonight’s talk possible, including the City-Region Studies Centre, University of Alberta Faculty of Extension, Edmonton Design Committee, ISL Engineering and Land Services, The City of Edmonton, and M.A.D.E. in Edmonton. Great event!

Pecha Kucha Night: Edmonton #4

Bigger, better, longer – tonight was Edmonton’s fourth Pecha Kucha Night (if you’re new to Pecha Kucha, read this). Held at the site of the ICLEI World Congress 2009, the Shaw Conference Centre, tonight’s event featured twelve presentations related to the theme of “inspiring sustainability”. More than 600 people attended, making PKN4 the largest yet in Edmonton. I’d say it was a major success!

In my review of PKN3, I mentioned that a theme might have made the event better. Tonight proved that a theme can indeed have a significant impact. I thought the presentations flowed much better and were more accessible, largely because they were part of a cohesive overarching topic. I hope Next Gen applies tonight’s lesson to future PKN events also.

Cary & StephaniePecha Kucha Edmonton 4

Tonight’s presenters were (in order of appearance):

  1. Jordan Schroder, Futurist
  2. Myron Belej, Urban Planner
  3. Simon Wunderli, Architectural Technologist
  4. Zoe Todd & Keegan McEvoy, Bicycle Commuters
  5. Natalia Pakin, Interior Design Technologist
  6. Liz Lepper, Edmonton Timeraiser
  7. Trevor Anderson, Artistic Director, That’s Edmonton For You!
  8. Pamela Wight, Conservation Planner
  9. Sherrilyn Jahrig, Light-Efficient Communities Consultant
  10. Lori Billey & Paige Weir, Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, AB Chapter
  11. Stephani Carter, LEED Accredited Professional
  12. Next Gen

The presentations were all really strong tonight, with only a few weak moments in my opinion. Kudos to Jordan for going first in front of the packed audience. I really liked Myron’s presentation on murals. He said “murals enhance our social sustainability”. Simon’s presentation about a super-efficient house in Switzerland was something different and intriguing. Fans of cycling would have loved Zoe & Keegan’s ode to the bike. They said that to make Edmonton great, “active transportation must be prioritized.” Natalia had some good points about marketing and overusing the word “sustainable”. Finishing off the first set of presentations, Liz introduced the audience to Edmonton Timeraiser, a silent art auction where you bid time instead of money (volunteers should check out CivicFootprint). The first such event will take place on October 17th at the TransAlta Arts Barns.

Jordan SchroderMyron BelejSimon WunderliZoe Todd & Keegan McEvoyNatalia PakinLiz Lepper

Trevor AndersonPamela WightSherrilyn JahrigLori Billey & Paige WeirStephani CarterNext Gen

First up after the break was Trevor Anderson, artistic director for That’s Edmonton For You! I loved his approach – he asked the audience to say “that’s Edmonton for you” whenever the slide changed. Trevor said “make art for your neighbours” and that you value an artist’s work the same way you value a lawyer’s, “cash money”. Pamela’s presentation introduced me to EALT. Sherrilyn started off a bit slow, but ended up sharing some great points about light pollution. Paige & Lori delivered my least favorite of the presentations, attempting to focus on paper waste. Stephani was bold and went with a spoken rap for her presentation on inspiring change. 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.

I think there was some concern going into the event about the scale, but everyone seemed to be having a great time – maybe size doesn’t matter! One interesting thing during the intermission was the “ideas on twine” wall. Attendees were encouraged to write their suggestions for future PKNs on a card and attach it to the twine. Creative way to solicit feedback! They gave away a bunch of door prizes too, including the grand prize – a bicycle courtesy of redbike, highlevel diner, and the sugarbowl.

Pecha Kucha Edmonton 4Pecha Kucha Edmonton 4

It was great to see lots of familiar and new faces tonight! The next Pecha Kucha Night in Edmonton will take place on October 2nd at the Myer Horowitz Theatre at the University of Alberta. Don’t forget, we say it “peh-cha-koo-cha” here in Edmonton! You can see the rest of my photos here, and you can subscribe to the excellent Edmonton Next Gen newsletter here.

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – May 2009

Welcome to the fifth State of the Edmonton Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton. You can see last month’s stats here. Apologies for posting this so far into June, but my travelling over the last few weeks made it difficult to do. Better late than never!

The source of the data this month remains the same – Twitter Search. If a user has his or her location set to Edmonton, St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Leduc, Nisku, Stony Plain, Fort Saskatchewan, Beaumont, Spruce Grove, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered an Edmontonian. If a tweet is “about Edmonton” it contains either the word Edmonton, the #yeg hashtag, or both.

For May 2009:

# of local users: 4513 (an increase of just 24 users over April, see analysis below)

To clarify, that means there were 4513 users who posted at least one tweet in May 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Edmontonian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Edmonton users without their location set.

# of tweets by local users: 197713
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 10709 (5.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 72789 (36.8%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 34315 (17.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 8833 (4.5%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 7804 (3.9%)

Once again, the number of tweets containing #yeg actually includes all local hashtags, such as #yegtransit or #yegfood (though most often they are used together anyway).

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the number of local users created per day in May, using the best available data from Twitter (it seems to be really unreliable, I will probably drop this stat next month):

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates (remember that web includes all unidentified API calls too):

Some other interesting stats for the month:

  • The ten most active local users (most tweets first): akomuzikera, wickedmickey, DebraWard, Etown_Jenn, TrinaMLee, fcedmonton, AndyGroenink, paulagroenink, Sirthinks, SheilaEthier.
  • Just over 52% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  • Local users posted roughly 4.4 tweets per minute in May, compared with 4.3 per minute in April.
  • The day with the most local tweets posted was May 26th at 8190, a new record for Edmonton. On average, 6378 local tweets were posted each day (compared with 6134 in April).
  • Of the 72789 replies posted by local users this month, 26670 or 37% were to other local users.
  • A total of 837 local users posted 50 times or more this month. In comparison, 812 local users posted just once this month.

Here are the ten most replied to local users for May: britl, akomuzikera, foomanizer, Sirthinks, ZoomJer, bingofuel, angelzilla, mzflip82, frostedbetty, JodieGiese.

Analysis

It looks as though Twitter growth in Edmonton has come to a halt – the number of users who posted something this month only increased by 24 over last month! Clearly more than 24 local users signed up for Twitter last month, however. I think what’s actually happening is that a sizeable number of local users have abandoned Twitter.

There were 1387 users who posted at least one tweet in May that did not post a tweet in April (so presumably they are new). Likewise, there were 1306 users who posted at least one tweet in April that did not post a tweet in May (so presumably they abandoned the service). The difference is larger than 24 because I have better information about the April stats than I did a month ago, but for simplicity, I compare above to the number from last month’s post.

In total, I have identified nearly 7000 local users since January – the number above, 4513, is how many of them are currently active.

I’ll be posting the May stats for Calgary in the next couple days. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: You can see the Calgary stats for May here.

That’s Edmonton For You!

What a great weekend here in Edmonton! Lots of sun, temperatures above 25 degrees, and plenty of things to do. Perhaps the main event on Saturday was the Edmonton Pride Parade, which was a smashing success according to everyone I talked to. Dave has a good post about it here, and Paula has dozens of photos here. Also on Saturday was the City Centre Market followed by Al Fresco on 104th, which Sharon wrote about here. Summer in Edmonton has finally arrived!

Yesterday’s big event was That’s Edmonton For You!, a free concert from noon until 3pm featuring leading members of Edmonton’s indie rock scene at Louise McKinney Riverfront Park. The event was commissioned by the City of Edmonton for the ICLEI World Congress. Conceived of and produced by Trevor Anderson, the event featured Edmonton’s poet laureate Roland Pemberton (Cadence Weapon) and 13 other musicians. Each created new songs about sustainable community, drawing from personal experiences.

I arrived at around 12:30pm, just as the crowd was starting to grow. I took a few photos and checked out the information booths that lined the edges of park area. Edmonton Next Gen was on hand to promote Pecha Kucha 4, Vegans & Vegetarians of Alberta had a busy table, Epcor had a portable water tap, and The EATery at The ARTery was offering food and beverages. Before long I made my way back to the Shaw Conference Centre however, to escape the sun and heat! The one drawback to the venue is the complete lack of shade.

I did make one more trip out to the concert, but unfortunately missed most of the last hour (I was inside for the ICLEI opening). Councillor Don Iveson stayed until the end and said the final song, which featured audience participation in the form of key jingling and bicycle bells, was truly amazing. The crowd that gathered was quite impressive!

That's Edmonton For You!That's Edmonton For You!

If you couldn’t make it down yesterday you missed a great event, but don’t worry – you can download the full album of songs from the website! Very cool, and not something I expected.

Considering the concert was created specifically for ICLEI, I’m not sure it’ll happen again, but I hope it does! It’s a great showcase for local musicians, and a great opportunity for Edmontonians to experience an afternoon of music.

You can see the rest of my photos here, and don’t miss this collection of excellent shots by Chris.

ICLEI World Congress Edmonton 2009: Opening Day

The ICLEI World Congress 2009 started here in Edmonton today. The conference is taking place at the Shaw Conference Centre through Thursday. Over 600 delegates from around the world will be discussing a range of topics related to sustainability and municipalities.

Shaw Conference CentreICLEI World Congress Edmonton 2009

A series of opening keynotes this afternoon set the tone for the event. Mayor Stephen Mandel, ICLEI President Stephen Cadman, Minister of Municipal Affairs Ray Danyluk, Chairperson of the World Mayors Council on Climate Change Bärbel Dieckmann, and Leader of The Economics of Ecosytems & Biodiversity (TEEB) Pavan Sukhdev all shared remarks this afternoon.

I thought the most passionate speaker was David Cadman, recently elected to his third term on the ICLEI Executive, and his second consecutive term as President. He discussed a range of issues, but focused on the need to transform the way we live. In particular, he stressed that water is going to become a larger and larger problem.

Epcor Water Station

Also during the opening plenary was a video to “pass the torch” from Cape Town, which hosted the congress in 2006, to Edmonton. This wouldn’t be noteworthy except for the fact that the video included B-roll footage of Calgary, not Edmonton! The Calgary Tower was clearly visible in a couple of the shots. I’m sure most in the audience didn’t notice, however.

Organizational and Program Implementation reports followed the opening speeches. Here are a few nuggets:

  • About 54% of ICLEI members are from North America, but 39% of the populations represented by ICLEI live in Asia. Europe is more balanced.
  • ICLEI’s USA office is moving from Oakland to Washington, DC. One wonders why it wasn’t there in the first place.
  • There are 27 ICLEI members in Canada. Our country’s office was created in 2003, has 3.5 staff, 5-10 projects per year, and a budget of roughly $300,000 USD.
  • Global budgets for ICLEI are expected to increase 22% this year compared to last. Revenue sources include membership, fees for service, host contributions, and by far the largest segment, grants.
  • Municipalities around the world are targeting a 30% reduction in emissions by 2020, and an 80% reduction by 2050.
  • ICLEI by the numbers in 2009: 223 staff, 1078 members, 102 projects, and a budget of $16.8 million USD.

I learned a lot about ICLEI today, and I absolutely see the need for such an organization. An increasing portion of the world’s population lives in cities, yet cities are often absent from landmark discussions related to climate change and sustainability. ICLEI gives municipalities a voice and a mechanism for pressuring their provincial and national governments to do more. Membership in the United States has increased dramatically in recent years, something ICLEI attributes to the Bush administration which largely ignored municipalities.

ICLEI World Congress Edmonton 2009ICLEI World Congress Edmonton 2009

Following this afternoon’s session was an opening night reception in Hall D. Councillor Don Iveson hosted the event which featured entertainment from Kita No Taiko and others. I had the opportunity to chat with a number of people, including Roy Blumenthal, a visual facilitator who was drawing caricatures of all the speakers on his Tablet PC. Such beautiful work!

A few other notes about the Edmonton event:

  • All attendees can ride Edmonton Transit for free simply by showing their conference badge.
  • Recycling facilities will be available at all locations visited by participants.
  • There are around 100 delegates who don’t speak English. There were headphones on hand today providing translations in English, French, Spanish, and Korean.
  • The City of Edmonton has turned on Wireless Edmonton service throughout the Shaw Conference Centre, providing attendees with free wi-fi.
  • There are guided walks of the river valley for attendees starting each morning at 7am.

I won’t be attending all of the sessions this week, but I’ll tweet and blog what I can. Dave Cournoyer also wrote about today, and will be covering ICLEI all week. Search Twitter for #ICLEI for updates. You can see the rest of my photos here. For a list of events taking place during and after ICLEI, click here.

Recap: BarCampEdmonton2

Yesterday was the first really beautiful day of the summer here in Edmonton, with temperatures near 30 degrees and sun all day long. It was also the day we held BarCampEdmonton2, at the World Trade Centre downtown. The weather probably had an impact on the attendance, because we had less people than anticipated (around 80). Despite that however, I’d say the event was still a big success! It was another demonstration of the fantastic tech community we have in Edmonton.

Reg setting up the scheduleBarCampEdmonton2

We had three tracks each with 20 minute timeslots for sessions followed by 10 minute breaks. In true unconference-style, we started by having everyone who wanted to lead a discussion or deliver a presentation put their topic and name on a sticky note. Reg then arranged them all on the schedule.

I ended up with two timeslots. First thing in the morning, where I talked for a bit about Foundations for an Open Edmonton and led an interesting discussion about open cities, and second at 2pm, where I talked about Edmonton Transit’s recent Data for Developers announcement. Some of the other sessions included: The Perfect User Experience by Peter, New Interfaces in Visual Search Refinement by Reg, How To Not Raise VC $ by Shaun, VOIP+SIP: A Primer by Slepp, Chocolate Monkey Heads by Chris, and Licensing Tech from Universities by Brant. Of course, lunch time and the many breaks throughout the day provided lots of opportunities for ad hoc discussion, and that’s really what BarCamp is all about!

Perhaps the session I was most looking forward to was the one by Rob Davy and his colleagues from ENTS, the Edmonton New Technology Society. They’re working to create a “collaborative and social technology workspace” here in the city, akin to hackerspaces and collaborative workspaces in other cities. I wrote about Workspace in Vancouver last fall, and wondered why Edmonton didn’t have something similar. Now we will! I’m really excited about it. You can visit ENTS tonight from 6-7pm at 10575 114th Street for an open house.

Pizza time!BarCampEdmonton2

Maybe we’ll do the next BarCamp in the winter, when it’s cold outside and everyone will want to come inside! Before that however, is a new event called UX Camp, taking place on July 18th from 9am to 5pm at MacEwan.

Thanks again to sponsors TEC Edmonton, iNovia Capital, and Smibs, and to everyone who came out to BarCamp yesterday! You can see the rest of my photos here.

Edmonton Notes for 6/13/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Foundations for an Open Edmonton

Today at BarCamp, I led a discussion around building an open Edmonton. Inspired by the great things happening in Vancouver, I wanted to stimulate the discussion here. I started with two fundamentals:

  1. The City of Edmonton must have the desire to be an open city.
  2. The primary audience is the Creative Class of Edmonton, the secondary audience is all citizens.

Next, I shared what I feel are the five basic foundations of an open city:

  1. Free – both financially and philosophically
  2. Permissive Licensing – things like Creative Commons, should be public domain
  3. Open Standards – formats that anyone can read and write
  4. Plentiful Data – make as much data available as possible
  5. Timely Access – eliminate delays and give everyone equal access

After my five slides (a photo for each of the above) we got into a great discussion about the idea. Here are some of the questions that came up:

  • Are citizens ready for so much data?
  • Why would City Council not want to be an open city?
  • What is the current state of progress on the idea in Edmonton?
  • How does privacy & security factor in?
  • What are some great examples of other cities doing this?

All things that we need to explore further. I’m not sure what the next step is, but eventually, I think it would be great to make a presentation on becoming an open city to Council.

In the meantime, Edmonton has already made some data available – a Google Transit data feed – and some other examples include London’s mySociety. Also, be sure to read Vancouver’s Open City Motion.

Your Guide to ICLEI World Congress Edmonton 2009

Edmonton is hosting the ICLEI World Congress 2009 from Sunday, June 14th through Thursday, June 18th. More than 500 mayors, councillors, and other delegates from more than 800 cities around the world will visit our city to discuss environmental sustainability. The conference takes place every three years, and provides opportunities for peer exchanges, knowledge sharing, on-site visits, and more.

For the City of Edmonton, this event is a chance to show off just how “green” we are to the rest of the world. There have been a number of related announcements over the last few weeks from the City:

I’d expect more announcements from the event. Each day of the conference has a theme:

More than 20 speakers have been announced, including Mayor Stephen Mandel, Alberta’s Minister of Municipal Affairs Ray Danyluk, Deputy Mayor of Vancouver and ICLEI President David Cadman, and the founder of ICLEI, Jeb Brugmann.

I’ll be blogging and tweeting some of the more Edmonton-focused sessions next week, and will be attending a number of the events that have been planned to coincide with the conference. Here are some of the things you can check out:

Lights Down Stars Up – photography exhibit
On display at City Hall until Thursday, June 18th, FREE

Gone Green – art exhibit
On display at City Hall until Wednesday, July 1st, FREE

That’s Edmonton For You – live music and entertainment
Sunday, June 14th from noon to 3:00pm at Louise McKinney Riverfront Park, FREE

Pecha Kucha Night – Edmonton Volume #4 – ideas inspiring sustainability
Tuesday, June 16th from 6:30pm to 10:30pm at the Shaw Conference Centre, $9

2009 Emerald Awards Ceremony – recognizing Albertan environmental initiatives
Tuesday, June 16th at the Citadel Theatre, $?

Resilient Cities: Responding to the Crash, Climate Change, and Peak Oil
Thursday, June 18th from 7:00pm at the Shaw Conference Centre, FREE

Bikeology Festival Day – velo-love in Edmonton
Saturday, June 20th from noon until 5:00pm at Beaver Hills House Park, FREE

Reuse Fair – bring your unwanted household items (pdf)
Saturday, June 20th from 10:00am to 3:00pm at King Edward Park Community League, FREE

The Works Art & Design Festival 2009 – sustainability is a theme this year
Friday, June 26th to Wednesday, July 8th at Sir Winston Churchill Square, FREE

Also, June is Bike Month in Edmonton.

To learn more about ICLEI and the World Congress happening in Edmonton, check out the following links: