Tag: edmonton

.NET Developers: Questionmark is hiring!

questionmark logo The company I work for, Questionmark, is looking to hire three developers to join our Canadian team here in Edmonton. The positions are Software Developer, Lead Software Developer, and Senior Software Developer. Here’s a bit of background on the company:

Questionmark is a company with recognised global presence in e-learning and assessment automation with software covering all aspects of this field, from authoring to delivery and reporting. Our software is used by over 3 million people in 15 different countries throughout the world. Questionmark is a fast-growing company, with a dedicated, passionate, and global workforce. We have offices in London, UK, Norwalk, CT and Tubize, Belgium. We care about the satisfaction of our employees and we reward them for meeting or exceeding expectations. The company promotes a relaxed, fun and highly productive approach to work.

I enjoy working for Questionmark! We’re an agile shop using Scrum and other things you’d expect such as unit testing and continuous integration. Another plus is that we’re not stuck in the past – we’re using .NET 3.5, ASP.NET AJAX, and lots of other new and interesting technologies. You can find more information in the job descriptions:

Job Description for Software Developer
Job Description for Lead Software Developer
Job Description for Senior Software Developer

If you’re interested in any of the positions or would like more information, either send me an email or email Kaitlyn Lardin.

Edmonton Notes for 9/27/2008

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed an increasing amount of Edmonton-focused content. I didn’t wake up one morning and say “self, you need to post more about Edmonton” – it just sort of happened. I’ve always said that I blog for myself first, so I just write about whatever I am interested in. Lately, that seems to be my hometown. I’m still passionate about technology and entrepreneurship and my other favorite topics – I’m just adding some local flavor into the mix!

I’ve been tweeting about Edmonton more too. The Edmonton Twitter community continues to grow and I make an effort to follow all the newcomers. If you’re having trouble grokking Twitter, I’d suggest following people who live near you – you’ll get more out of it that way. Here in Edmonton, many of us make use of the #yeg hashtag. For example, I use it to post links to interesting articles or news related to the city.

The great thing about Twitter is that it’s “almost live”. You can use it to have a conversation. The problem with that is that it doesn’t make for a very good archive. I post lots of things that I find interesting each week, but unless you’re paying attention, it’s very easy to miss them.

To solve that problem and to help me keep track of things, I’ve decided to start doing a regular “Edmonton Notes” post every Saturday. I hope you find it useful!

UPDATE: Sunday, September 28th is Free Admission Day at City of Edmonton attractions and recreation centres. Make sure to bring something for the food bank!

Green and Gold Day

ualberta 100 years Today marks the 100th anniversary of the first day of classes at the University of Alberta. To celebrate, September 23rd, 2008 has been declared “Green and Gold Day” by the City of Edmonton and the U of A. And last Thursday and Friday the City turned on the waterfall on the High Level Bridge, lit in green and gold. You can see some photos I took of the waterfall here, and a video too.

Unfortunately, my first day of classes at the University of Alberta predates my blog (and Twitter), so I don’t have a record of it. Nor do I really remember what my first day was like back in the fall of 2001. I remember briefly attending Orientation and leaving early to hang out with friends. I spent a lot of time in the basement of CAB (Central Academic Building) and at the PowerPlant (the campus bar) in my first two years. I didn’t get very involved with any clubs or groups or anything though I did always vote in the Students’ Union elections. If I could do it again, I think might have gotten more involved. For example, I did have one article published in The Gateway, and I wish I had submitted more (surely you noticed I like to write! heh).

As for academics – I don’t miss any of that. The thrill of attending university-level classes wore off very quickly! I was an average student, and I was eager to simply graduate and move on. That’s probably why it seems like it has been a lot longer than just over a year since I finally graduated.

Still, I feel very lucky to have been a part of the University of Alberta’s first 100 years. I always say that I have no interest in going back to school, but as the saying goes, never say never!

To learn more about the University of Alberta’s Centenary celebrations, visit the website at http://www.100years.ualberta.ca.

Hockey season returns: on the ice and in the blogs

nhl logo With variations depending on where you look, a few main categories tend to dominate the 130 million or so blogs available on the web. There are plenty of news and political blogs such as the Daily Kos, especially with the upcoming U.S. election. Some of the most highly-trafficked blogs focus on entertainment, such as TMZ. There are also lots of technology and business blogs, such as TechCrunch. And of course, there are millions of personal blogs written by people just like you. The Alberta blogosphere (blogs written by Albertans, taken collectively) has its fair share of blogs in each of these categories, as well as another popular category – hockey blogs.

Not only do Albertans love to watch hockey, they apparently love to write about it too! There are dozens of blogs about hockey in our province. At least 20 of them focus on the Calgary Flames, the Edmonton Oilers, or both. Perhaps the most well known of all of these blogs is The Battle of Alberta. Written by Calgarian Matt Fenwick and Edmontonian Andy Grabia (with various contributors from time to time) the blog covers all things related to the Flames and Oilers, and frequently hosts passionate discussions in the comments section. The Battle of Alberta was created in September 2005 and averages 1500 page views per day.

Edmonton writer and National Post contributor Colby Cosh doesn’t write solely about hockey, but he does post quite often about the Oilers on his blog. Other popular blogs devoted to the Oilers include Covered in Oil, Lowetide, Hot Oil, and Irreverent Oiler Fans. Don’t worry if you get hooked reading these blogs – many of them frequently post in the off-season, and there are plenty of other Oiler blogs you can check out. In fact, there are so many blogs that write about the Oilers that they have given themselves a name – the Oilogosphere.

There are quite a few blogs for Flames fans also. Some of the more popular ones include Five Hole Fanatics, Completely Hammered, Hit The Post, Inside the Flames, and Igniting the Flame.

The great thing about these blogs is that they’re written by passionate fans. These bloggers generally aren’t interested in making money, and as a result tend to post things that you wouldn’t necessarily find in your local newspaper. For instance, The Battle of Alberta has done an excellent job of pointing out the rhetoric coming from all parties involved in the potential new hockey arena in Edmonton. Also unlike newspapers, Alberta’s hockey blogs are free of any restrictions on format or content. You’ll find team analysis, game recaps, statistics, news and rumors about trades and signings, discussion of articles in the mainstream media, and much more.

And from time to time you’ll even find some humor amongst the blog posts. The members of the Oilogosphere like to use their own terms to refer to players, plays, and other things such as the Colin Campbell Wheel of Justice – which refers to “the method by which the length of NHL suspensions is determined.” You can find an up-to-date glossary on The Battle of Alberta – they update it each season.

I’m quite excited for the return of hockey, and I’m sure Alberta’s hockey bloggers are too!

The Oilers begin their preseason tonight at home to the Canucks. You can find the game notes and a live stream here. The Flames get underway tomorrow night at home to the Panthers.

Touring the Edmonton Transit D.L. MacDonald LRT Garage

Edmonton Transit held an open house today at its D.L. MacDonald facility, known as the LRT garage, as part of Transit Centennial Week celebrations. Sharon and I decided to check it out, and arrived at Clareview just in time for the second last tour. I’ve always been curious to see where the LRT cars are housed and maintained, so I thought the open house and tour was pretty darn cool.

We were led throughout the facility, and got to see where the LRT cars are stored, where their various parts are worked on, where they are painted, etc. The D.L. MacDonald garage is an absolutely massive building, and apparently they are under construction to expand it further. It’s really quite impressive to see.

ETS D.L. MacDonald LRT GarageMack on the new LRV

The highlight of the tour was definitely getting to check out the new SD160 Light Rail Vehicles. ETS will be receiving 37 of them at a rate of two per month, finishing in December 2009. Each car costs approximately $4 million CDN. As the new cars come in from Siemens in Sacramento, the old ones are shipped out for retrofitting. The cost for retrofits is estimated to be another $25 million in total.

At first glance there doesn’t appear to be much difference between the old cars and the new ones, but I’m sure there are extensive differences to the underlying systems (better electronics, for instance). A few of the noticeable changes include: cameras instead of mirrors, digital signs throughout, windows that do not open (which means they must have A/C), more comfortable seats, and slightly different mechanisms on the doors. They also seem a little larger.

The first of the new LRVs will go into service late this year. You can see many more photos of the new cars and the rest of the D.L. MacDonald garage here.

Edmonton is home to the future of Future Shop

future shop Edmonton is getting another Future Shop location, just in time for Christmas. The new store will be quite different than our existing five, however, and not just because it is LEED certified. Located in South Edmonton Common just minutes away from Best Buy (which owns Future Shop), the new store will fill its gigantic 53,000 square foot space with musical instruments, exercise equipment, and other goods not normally found at Future Shop. From the Edmonton Journal:

“This is the future of Future Shop,” said Chris Sallans, general manager of a store so revolutionary, he calls it a “laboratory.” If the concepts work, it will serve as a template for the Burnaby, B.C.-based chain’s stores around the country.

Essentially they want to sell things that are “logical extensions” of products that they already carry. Makes sense to me. Future Shop already sells microwaves, refrigerators, and other home appliances, so why not treadmills and other exercise equipment? Doesn’t seem like much of a stretch. I guess the innovation is in having the much larger capacity.

The music angle is quite interesting though:

Electronic music instruments and equipment may also seem to be an unlikely choice, but Sallans said it’s a wide-open market.

“Musical instruments are an $800-million industry and no other major retailer touches it.”

The store will have a wall of more than 100 guitars. There will be three soundproof rooms for music lessons and drum demos ,and a stage for open-mike nights.

That could be pretty cool, I think. Who knows, maybe Future Shop will even become a bit of a third place (or maybe not, considering you’ll basically need to drive to get there…good old South Edmonton Common).

According to the article, Sallan describes Future Shop as the place for early adopters whereas Best Buy is the place for self-service shoppers. I’m not sure where he got that idea, but I seem to recall the lines at Best Buy being much longer than at Future Shop for high profile product launches (like the Xbox 360).

The new store is looking for 230 employees, and will be holding a job fair this weekend at the Delta Hotel Edmonton South. It should open in early December.

Recap: DemoCampEdmonton3

It’s hard to believe that nearly four months have passed since our last DemoCamp here in Edmonton! Of course, we did have BarCamp back in July, but our last official DemoCamp was in May. It was about time for another one! Tonight’s event went very well, with an audience made up of both familiar and new faces.

DemoCampEdmonton3 featured six demos:

  1. Adam & Andy from dub5
  2. Aaron from SpatialQ
  3. Michael & Brendan from Edmonton Free Library
  4. Darren from Playerrs
  5. Kerri from Tynt
  6. The U of A’s Autonomous Robot Vehicle Project

I think every demo was slightly under the 10 minute mark, which meant more time for questions. Tonight was a night of firsts! Kerri was our first female presenter ever, and ARVP provided us with our first hardware demo. Very cool stuff.

DemoCampEdmonton3

For those of you who couldn’t make it: Dub5 is a calendar/scheduling application that hopes to play well with existing applications and services. It features an SMS interface, which made for a neat demo. SpatialQ is a solution for geospatial search, a way to associate data sets with geographical information. The Edmonton Free Library project is a community site for sharing books, music, and videos. Playerrs is a sports analysis and research site which makes it easy to track your favorite teams. Tynt is a browser plugin that lets you annotate and share the web. And finally, the Autonomous Robot Vehicle Project is a research project at the U of A (with a fairly self-explanatory name).

I’d have to say that my “demo of the night” goes to dub5. The ARVP demo was really neat, especially to see the robot in action, but dub5 was both entertaining and impressive. I definitely think they have challenges ahead, but they seem like a smart group with a good idea and lots of passion.

We had over 80 people attend tonight, and roughly 30 of those people made it out to The Windsor Pub afterward – an awesome turnout, thanks to everyone who came! Also, thanks to Reg and the Zigtag team for getting that all arranged. I think the venue (ETLC) worked really well tonight – everyone could see and hear the demos with ease. Another positive tonight was that we had free wifi, provided by the Free WiFi project. Despite some initial connection issues, I managed to get our WiMAX router working properly! We had fairly consistent usage through the evening.

You can see my photos of tonight’s event here. If you’d like to be notified about future DemoCamp and BarCamp events in Edmonton, sign up for the mailing list here.

See you at DemoCampEdmonton4!

More on co-working

coworking A couple weeks ago I posted about WorkSpace in Vancouver, and suggested it would be good to have something similar in Edmonton. Clearly I’m not the only one, as there were quite a few comments on both that post and Twitter. Cam posted a link to Edmonton’s Beans and Boardrooms, which while not quite the same concept, looks interesting.

Last week Sharon sent me this Globe and Mail article on Citizen Space in San Francisco:

Sebastien Provencher takes the bus into San Francisco for another day at the office. At the third-floor loft of Citizen Space, he sits at a desk, fires up his laptop and gets to work.

This type of service, known as co-working, lets travellers like Provencher rent a desk in a communal setting. Once mainly the province of tech-oriented freelancers, co-working centres are attracting a broader spectrum of consultants and small-business people in search of space to work – and network – on the road.

Citizen Space and WorkSpace sound very similar. The most interesting part of the article is found near the end:

Today, there are co-working sites across the country that welcome out-of-town visitors, including others in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Thunder Bay; others in Calgary, Guelph, Ont., and Halifax are in various stages of development.

And not surprisingly, given their appeal to jet setters, co-working sites are establishing global connections. The Hub, which is scheduled to open this fall in Halifax, will be linked to 13 sites worldwide including space in London, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv and Sao Paulo. Members of one site will get privileges at the other spaces.

You can check out The Hub Halifax here (and their excellent links page here). Being connected to other sites around the world would be good for travellers, but I think WorkSpace and The Hub probably have very different clientele for the most part.

Apparently WorkSpace and Citizen Space are trying to form a similar network. I think that makes sense. As more and more similar spaces crop up, those connections will become really valuable.

I’m curious to know what’s going on Calgary – anyone have any information?

Who knows if or when something will get going here in Edmonton, but at least we know there are existing resources and people to tap into for help.

ETS Centennial Week: September 12-20, 2008

edmonton transit Today marks the start of Transit Centennial Week here in Edmonton, celebrating 100 years of public transit in our city. The official proclamation occurred today from 11am until noon at City Hall. All week you’ll be able to find displays, special events, free tours, and more.

The festivities get underway this evening at 7pm in Churchill Square. Local band Shout Out Out Out Out will be on hand along with The Whitsundays and the Trevor Tchir Band.

On September 14th you can see Le Fuzz, Ayla Brook, Manraygun, Ben Sures, and Robin Hunter and Six Foot Bullies, a musical event fit for the entire family. On September 19th at both 8pm and 9:30pm, Rapid Fire Theatre will be performing “Kiss My Bus”, a live play on a bus! They also performed this show earlier this summer at the Fringe festival. The big finale on September 20th will be Movies on the Square presented by ETS.

All week in Churchill Square you’ll be able to find information displays and the Big Tent right in front of City Hall which contains transit artifacts and memorabilia, film footage, and other multimedia displays.

For more information and complete event listings, including free tours and garage open houses, check out the Transit Centennial Week website.

If you’ve never been on the High Level Streetcar before, I’d definitely recommend it. There are free tours from 11am until 4pm on the 13th, 14th, and 20th. I think the D.L. MacDonald garage open house would be pretty neat too (the LRT garage…open house is noon to 4pm on the 20th).

Pecha Kucha Night: Edmonton #2

Tonight was Edmonton’s second Pecha Kucha night, the first was held back in May (you can learn more about Pecha Kucha here). Aside from the name, I’d say there was very little in common between the two events. Pecha Kucha 2 received a lot of press, largely as a result of the success of the first one, and that clearly had an impact on the audience. The show was sold out tonight (at 300) and unless you RSVP’d ahead of time, it was difficult to get in (a few did, however). The audience also skewed older tonight – I felt much younger than most of the people in the crowd, which was different than the first Pecha Kucha.

The presentations this time around were much better than at the first Pecha Kucha. Even though the first and last presenters this evening were clearly nervous, every presentation held my interest and more than a few of them incorporated elements of humor. Overall, it was much more entertaining than the first one. I really liked Christian Nelson’s Reclaiming Deadmonton, and the gamer/geek in me loved Matt Bouchard’s exploration of gaming console controllers, past and present. My least favorite was probably Rob Andruchow’s presentation on What is design?, as it felt out of place and was probably a topic too large for a mere 20 slides. He still managed to hold my interest though. I think keeping the number of presentations to just ten this time was a good idea.

Pecha Kucha 2

My biggest complaint about the event was the lack of wifi. You’d think that Next Gen would have wifi at their own events, considering it is one of their top priorities. I think they may have tried tonight, as I briefly found an open network, but it didn’t work and quickly disappeared. Very disappointing.

There was free food this time, and the venue was much improved. The first event was in the lobby of the Winspear Centre which sounds cool, but was actually quite impractical. Tonight’s event was in the Westbury Theatre at the TransAlta Arts Barns, which meant stadium-style seating! Everyone fit comfortably, and everyone could see the presentations. Good call on making that change!

Next Gen is planning two more Pecha Kucha nights before May, with the next one likely taking place in January. Overall I’d say that Pecha Kucha 2 was an improvement over Pecha Kucha 1, largely on the strength of the presentations and venue, so I look forward to continued improvements for the next ones. Subscribe to the Edmonton Next Gen mailing list to be notified right away about the next one!

You can see my photos from the event here, and also check out the Next Gen pool here.