Tag: edmonton

Northern Voice 2009: Passionately Local

Of all the sessions at Northern Voice 2009, I was perhaps most looking forward to the one presented by Briana Tomkinson of Tenth to the Fraser titled Passionately local: blogging about your own backyard. As someone who is definitely passionate about my hometown, I was really curious to learn about the experiences of others.

Tenth to the Fraser is a hyperlocal blog focused on New Westminster, a city in the Vancouver area. Briana talked about some of the motivations behind the site, some of the challenges, and some of the rewards.

Here are some notes I took from Briana’s slides:

  • The Greek Chorus of New West
    • Help the ‘audience’ follow the performance
    • Comment on themes
    • React to the drama
    • Provide insight
  • Passion for community
    • A desire to dig in to a place
    • An itch to uncover more
    • A calling to share the results
  • Everyone blogs from a place. The placeblogger blogs about a place.
  • Hyperlocal made interesting
    • Reveal the character of a place
    • Represent diverse perspectives
    • Keep focus narrow
    • Balanced mix of: aggregating local information, publishing original content, relationship-building
  • Finding your nice within the media ecosystem
    • Befriend the local media
    • Extend traditional news coverage
    • Reveal opinions and perspectives that are missed in mainstream coverage
    • Geek out: food, schools, politics, shopping
  • The Rewards
    • Pride of place
    • Local fame
    • Community
    • Knowledge
    • Giving back
  • Be the change you seek in your community

I really liked Briana’s talk, even though the end was a bit rushed as everyone started asking questions and she ran out of time! There were definitely moments when I thought “I know exactly what she means” and others when I thought “that wouldn’t work in Edmonton”.

With a population of nearly 60,000, New Westminster is about 13 times smaller than the City of Edmonton, and almost 20 times smaller than the Edmonton metro area. So while a single, focused blog in New Westminster probably would work very well, I don’t think it would fly in Edmonton. There’s just too much to write about for a single blog. I think, more than ever, that aggregation is the way to go for a city of Edmonton’s size.

There are some similarities, however. Tenth to the Fraser has started the #NewWest hashtag on Twitter, similar to our beloved #yeg. They seem to write a lot about politics, which is perhaps the most popular topic here too. And they have a relatively small, but rapidly growing online community.

I think there are lots of things that hyperlocal bloggers can learn from Tenth to the Fraser. Check it out, and let me know what you think. The first thing you’ll notice is that the site is free of any advertising. Briana and her team do it because they love their city, not because they’re in it for the money. We could use more blogs like Tenth to the Fraser!

Edmonton Notes for 2/21/2009

Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

Edmonton Transit (ETS) officially launches Google Transit trip planning

As you may have heard yesterday, Edmonton Transit (ETS) now officially supports Google Transit for trip planning. What that means is that you can enter an address in Google Maps and get directions using public transit to another address. You can look up trip plans from any device that supports Google Maps, including the BlackBerry and iPhone. This has actually been possible since late October, as I mentioned in a previous post.

Edmonton is the 8th Canadian city to support Google Transit. Councillor Don Iveson demonstrated the service today at City Hall. You can read the press release here, and you can check out the official ETS page here.

ETS Google Transit Press Event

You can see more photos and video from today’s event here.

So what’s new?

First and foremost, the data is up-to-date and accurate (more on this below). You generally don’t have to worry about relying on the data in Google Transit. Secondly, Google Transit now understands ETS landmarks. This means you can type your home address as a starting point and “Millgate Transit Centre” as the destination, and Google will understand what you mean. These are the two primary reasons that ETS didn’t officially launch this back in the fall.

How does it work?

ETS has an agreement with Google to provide them with up-to-date data once a week (this time period can be different for each transit agency). If there’s a change in the accuracy of the data, ETS must provide Google with an update. This means there may be a small window of time during which ETS has more accurate information than Google, but in practice that’ll only happen for emergencies as most changes are planned and announced in advance.

The data is transferred in a format called the Google Transit Feed Specification (GTFS). It’s up to ETS to ensure the GTFS data they provide is valid. Now that the “preview” period is over, Google automatically fetches the most recent data from ETS servers and applies it to Google Maps.

Why is this service important?

The Google Transit service offers a number of benefits. It’s really easy to use – just enter a start and end address and click get directions. I think it’s great for attracting more ridership to ETS as well. Young people are already familiar with Google Maps, and the thousands of individuals walking around with smartphones now have trip planning with them at all times. Visitors to our city are another group that will benefit, as they’re likely already familiar with Google Maps and no longer have to figure out the ETS trip planner.

What’s next?

Marketing will be the biggest thing initially. This service is only useful if people know about it! Edmonton was just listed on the Google Transit site, and information about Google Transit was just added to the ETS site this morning. Presumably introductions to the service will be added to all of the ETS information and promotional materials as well.

Though ETS is working on improvements to its own trip planner (which originally launched back on June 21, 2004), they fully expect usage to decline as people switch to Google Transit. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t provide transit agencies with statistics of any kind, so ETS won’t know exactly how many people are using the new service. Both services will co-exist.

Can we get the data now please?

I hope access to the GTFS data will be made available soon. Now that ETS has sorted out the process for publishing the data for Google, hopefully it’ll be simpler to come up with a process for getting the data to the rest of us too. Many other municipalities already publish their GTFS feeds for public consumption. There are lots of resources available for developers too, such as the GoogleTransitDataFeed open source project. Access to the data is the first step toward building an API for Edmonton Transit (ETS).

In the meantime, trip planning in Edmonton is now faster and easier! Click here to get started.

DemoCampEdmonton6

It’s DemoCamp time again here in Edmonton! In just three short weeks we’ll once again converge at the University of Alberta to see what local tech entrepreneurs are up to. Following the demos we’ll head over to a local pub for Edmonton’s best networking opportunity for tech professionals (we’ll probably be at Hudson’s on Campus this time, instead of The Windsor). You can read about our last DemoCamp here. Here are the details for #6:

Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Time: 6:30pm (and drinks/networking afterward)
Location: E1 013, ETLC, University of Alberta (map)
Cost: Free

The rules for DemoCamp are simple: ten minutes to demo real, working software, followed by a few minutes for questions. No slides allowed. If you’d like to demo, make sure you’ve attended at least one DemoCamp in the past, and add yourself to the signup list.

Please help us spread the word – we’d like to make this the biggest DemoCamp Edmonton yet! Let’s fill the room. Check out the BarCamp Edmonton blog, our Facebook group, the Facebook event, and the wiki page. Be sure to tag your tweets, posts, photos, and other content with democampyeg.

See you in early March!

Edmonton Notes for 2/14/2009

Happy Valentine’s Day! Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

UPDATE: Forgot to mention the Agile Edmonton social, taking place on Tuesday evening at Hudson’s downtown. More information here.

Recap: Edmonton Twestival 2009

Wow, what a fantastic evening! Thanks to everyone who came out tonight, and to everyone who supported Twestival. I think it’s really cool that the Edmonton community was able to participate and help make a difference for those in the world who don’t have access to safe, clean drinking water.

Our hope was to have around 50 people attend this evening, and we came very close – the final tally was 45. Everyone donated $20, which means we raised at least $900 from ticket sales. I know at least another $100 was donated online via tipjoy, so that brings us to $1000 raised for charity: water. Well done everyone!


Photos by momentsindigital (site)

Thanks once again to everyone who donated the door prizes: @sassycakes, @transcendcoffee, @bruceclarke, @NAIT, @thechadj, @Out_Inc, @cmscritic, and @tonyratcliffe. Thanks also to @sharonyeo for doing a ton of work to make tonight happen!

I’ve posted a few photos and a video here, @bruceclarke posted some much better ones here, and @tonyratcliffe posted his photos here. If you know of any others, please let me know! If you’re feeling adventurous, you can read some of tonight’s chatter at Twitter Search.

I can’t wait to hear how Twestival went in other cities – there should be lots of exciting news over the next few days. Keep an eye on @twestival for updates.

Our next Twitter event here in Edmonton will be EdmontonTweetup4. See you there!

UPDATE: We raised at least $1000 but because of the online donations and other ways to help out, our total raised may end up being higher than that. I’ll update again when I know the official numbers.

Talking Tech with Edmonton Transit (ETS)

I was fortunate enough today to chat with Bruce Beecher and Dennis Nowicki from Edmonton Transit (ETS). Bruce is the IT Strategic Advisor for the Transportation department, and Dennis is the Director of Community Relations for ETS. Though we talked about a variety of things, the focus was technology.

I think there was some educating happening on both sides. I learned more about their situation and perspectives, and I hope they soaked up some technical stuff from me. I think it went really well!

What I’d like to share in this post is an overview of what we discussed. There’s nothing confidential here, but some of this information may still be new to you. They’re aware they need to improve on the communication side of things!

ETS has been evaluating potential technologies to deploy to the fleet for quite a while now (I wrote about some at last year’s Community Conference). These technologies include:

  • Automatic Vehicle Locator (AVL) – This is essentially a GPS module that would be installed on each bus.
  • Automated Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) – This is essentially giving riders access to that GPS information. That is, where is my bus right now?
  • Mobile Data Terminals (MDT)
  • Automated Stop Announcement (ASA) – No more peering out into the darkness to see if you’re at the right stop. Also important for accessibility.
  • Automatic Passenger Counter (APC)
  • Automated Fare Booth (Smart Cards)
  • Automatic Vehicle Monitor (AVM) – This would gather information about the engine, fuel consumption, etc. It’s like a black box for the bus.

Those are listed roughly in order of priority, though nothing is set in stone. In fact, the AVM might get bumped to the front of the list simply because it offers the best ROI for ETS. The ability to know what’s wrong with a bus on the fly would have a huge impact on the bottom line. Same goes for being able to determine if a bus is getting poor fuel consumption for some reason. Makes sense to me.

There are a few problems with all of this technology, mostly related to cost:

  • Edmonton has bumpy roads and extremely cold temperatures in the winter. On-board equipment needs to be hardened and reliable. We often can’t use the same stuff that San Francisco uses, for example.
  • Rough estimates place the cost per bus at $15,000. There are currently 903 buses in service.
  • By 2012, the number of buses will be closer to 1300, so it won’t get any cheaper to deploy.

Another issue is maintainability. Ideally, each bus would have one computer with a LAN of some kind that everything else just connects to, so that it’s all integrated. Otherwise you end up with many potentially disparate systems.

What I took away from all of this is essentially that ETS is keen to deploy GPS technologies and to make that information available to riders. The challenge is finding a way to make it happen.

Next we shifted gears and talked about the ETS website, Google Transit and my API idea (though I’m definitely not the only one with the idea…dub5 is another interested group). There are improvements to the ETS Trip Planner in the works, so watch for something during the summer. They’re also looking to improve the main ETS website, now that everyone has had time to digest the edmonton.ca redesign.

Unfortunately I can’t talk as much about Google Transit as I’d like to just yet, but I can tell you that a major announcement is coming in the next week or so. I plan to cover it here, and you’ll no doubt see it in the mainstream media. Bottom line: ETS is fully behind Google Transit, and that’s a good thing for Edmontonians.

As for the API idea? They like it and would like to learn more about it. At this point however, getting access to a dump of the same data that Google gets is probably more likely. It would work like this: you sign some sort of agreement with ETS outlining the terms of use (basically something like “I agree not to misrepresent this information…”, and they send you the GTFS data. From there, you could do whatever you like with it. You could build and release your own API, for instance.

Is that going to happen – are they going to make the data available? No guarantees, but they will definitely consider it. Obviously an API would be better for accessing real-time data, but even a recent snapshot would be a step in the right direction. I think this is very encouraging!

If they do go down the data sharing route, I think we should organize an API building weekend!

The final thing I want to mention is that we talked briefly about RSS. My goal is to get every City of Edmonton department publishing as many RSS feeds as possible! It’s horribly underutilized at the moment. I think Bruce and Dennis definitely understand the benefit of RSS, and I hope to see some ETS feeds published soon!

Thanks to both Bruce and Dennis for a great conversation – I learned a lot, and I look forward to keeping the dialogue going.

Two days until Edmonton Twestival 2009

In less than 48 hours, Edmonton Twestival 2009 will be underway! I’m really looking forward to the event and I hope you are too.

One of the things we wanted to do with Twestival was showcase local organizations on Twitter. Fortunately, quite a few have stepped up to contribute door prizes! Thanks to:

Want a shot at winning one of these fantastic prizes? You must register online! If you’re not comfortable entering your credit card online, register for the free ticket and bring your donation to the event.

I also wanted to thank the Calgary Twestival crew for getting an Alberta Twestival logo created:

Very cool! Here are a couple of other things created for Twestival recently:

  • Donation Water Cloud – Donate and get your name on the cloud! The most generous donors will appear on the official Twestival t-shirt.
  • Official T-Shirt – You can order the shirt until Monday, February 16th. I love the design!
  • Twestival.fm – What’s a festival without music? Donate and tweet your favorite tunes.

I’ll be posting updates on both @mastermaq and @edmontontweetup as we get closer to show time. You can also check out the #twestival hashtag on Twitter Search.

Hope to see you on Thursday evening!

UPDATE: We made the front page of the Edmonton Journal today! You can read the article online here.

Edmonton Notes for 2/7/2009

Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

Pecha Kucha Night: Edmonton #3

Tonight was Edmonton’s third Pecha Kucha night. Around 300 people attended the event at The Matrix Hotel downtown, and like PKN #2, it was completely sold out. There wasn’t even a waiting-list or at-the-door ticket sales this time! There’s clearly a lot of demand for this event, and I don’t think that’s going to change in the future. Make sure you pay attention if you want to have a chance at getting tickets for PKN #4!

For those of you new to the concept – Pecha Kucha was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. Presenters are given 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide, so each presentation is 6 minutes and 40 seconds long. There are no formal Q&A periods, but everyone is encouraged to chat at the breaks. How to pronounce “Pecha Kucha” is a common question here in Edmonton. Is it “pet-cha-koo-cha” or is it “petch-ach-kah”? Edmonton Next Gen decided it was the former and started with an exercise to get everyone to say it aloud:

Mayor Mandel also said a few words (his attendance meant there were dozens of cameras and a couple video crews present), and then it was on with the presentations.

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. There’s nothing wrong with talking about your work/projects, but I think focusing on the ideas/concepts is much more interesting. It would have been nice to see more diversity too – tonight was fairly academic. As Sharon remarked to me, the presentations at PKN #2 were more accessible – you didn’t have to be an architect or industrial designer to “get” it. Also: two of the presenters were from Calgary, apparently. Could they really not get two other Edmonton presenters?

Pecha Kucha Night 3Pecha Kucha Night 3Pecha Kucha Night 3Pecha Kucha Night 3Pecha Kucha Night 3

The first two, Ben King and Tobias Olivia, felt almost like pitches for their respective organizations. Al-Arqam Amer was third, and gave an interesting talk about how architects should do away with floorplans and 2D representations and should instead make use of photorealistic 3D models. Cezary Gajewski then talked about communicating industrial design. The final presentation before the break was by Ron Wickman, who talked about designing with accessibility in mind.

Pecha Kucha Night 3Sharon, Peter, Cam

After the break Amber Rooke from The Works Art & Design Festival gave the oddest presentation I’ve seen to-date. She spoke about the festival, but I don’t think anyone was listening to her. Instead, they were focused on the mostly naked man posing on stage. Everyone in the audience was given a pad of paper and a pencil, and were asked to draw his various poses. Amber concluded by saying “6000 drawings were made in six minutes, imagine what we can do in 13 days.” I think the shock-value worked against her though.

Pecha Kucha Night 3Pecha Kucha Night 3Pecha Kucha Night 3Pecha Kucha Night 3Pecha Kucha Night 3

Romy Young was up next to share his thoughts on photography – again, way too much “I” in his presentation. Milena Radzikowska followed with a presentation about a GIS-related project she’s leading with Mount Royal and Alberta Parks. Robert Lederer showed a bunch of random designs during his six minutes. The second last presenter was Thomas Gaudin, an industrial design student from the U of A. I thought this presentation was one of the best. He talked about Modernism and Postmodernism, and suggested combining them to result in something called Interface Architecture. He also said that South Edmonton Common is a worst case example of design, much to the delight of many in the crowd. The final presenter was Ryan Stark from the City of Edmonton, who talked about EXPO.

Once again there was a DJ, food, and a cash bar. I thought the seating took a step backward this time – we were spoiled by stadium-style seating at the TransAlta Arts Barns at PKN #2. Everyone seemed to be having a good time though, and the quality of the presentations notwithstanding, I think the event went really well. It’s great to see such a large group of passionate Edmontonians come together. I look forward to PKN #4!

You can see more of my photos here, and you can subscribe to the Edmonton Next Gen mailing list here.