Tag: edmonton

Edmonton Public Library "Adventure" Ads

Post ImageIf you live in Edmonton, and listen to the radio occasionally, you may have heard the new ads for the Edmonton Public Library. If you haven’t, fear not, because I am going to summarize them anyway:

There are two young guys trying to skateboard, when one says to the other “I am not cut out for this.” The two are then faced with a problem – what to do? One guy suggests the adventure of a lifetime with dragons and all sorts of other things. The other guy thinks hes crazy. Then the first guy says all of it is possible at the public library. And the two go on their merry way, to slay dragons in their imaginations no doubt.

Now when I heard the commercial, I couldn’t help but laugh. No one I know gets all excited about taking an “adventure” to the public library. I get what they are saying, but I can’t see it working with young people. Maybe I’m just “too cool” but I think their marketing team took the wrong approach with the latest ads.

The goal is clearly to try and bring young people into the library. Instead of some hokey ad about an adventure, why not highlight the aspects of the library that appeal to young people? Things like public computers, excellent study and workspaces, a Second Cup built right in (for the downtown location at least), power outlets for your laptop, and wireless Internet (do they have this?). Okay so I can’t think of as many characteristics that would appeal to young people as I thought, but I am sure they are there. Thing is, I haven’t been to the library in so long, I don’t know what they are.

Do you agree with me? What else about the library would you highlight?

Read: EPL

University of Alberta unveils Enterprise Square

Post ImageJust over a year ago, I posted that the University of Alberta had officially purchased the Hudson’s Bay building in downtown Edmonton. At the time, officials said the first tenants would be able to move in within 12 to 18 months. It appears things are more or less on track:

At a downtown ceremony Thursday, the University of Alberta unveiled the new name for its downtown building with a flourish.

A large sign was lowered from the second level of Commerce Place above the rotunda, bearing the name “Enterprise Square.”

The name was chosen to reflect a bunch of things, including academic enterprise working alongside the private, and the enterprising spirit of Edmonton.

Renovations at the historic site continue, and are expected to be complete in the summer of 2007 with tenants moving in shortly thereafter. Once finished, roughly 430,000 square feet of space will have been renovated and made available in just 24 months. The project is definitely impressive.

On October 11th, TEC Edmonton (which will be the building’s largest tenant) is hosting an information session at their current location on the university campus. I am registered and planning to attend. For more information or to register for the event, click here.

Read: ExpressNews

Revealing The Hidden Terror: Snakes on a Plane!

Post ImageIf you haven’t had the pleasure of talking to me in person for a while, you might not know just how excited I am for the upcoming movie Snakes on a Plane, which opens Friday (though I have tickets for the Thursday screening). I mean there’s snakes, a plane, fear-stricken passengers, and one extremely badass FBI agent, better know as Samuel L. Jackson. Just check out the summary:

On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who’s a witness in protective custody, lets loose a crate full of deadly snakes.

And with much cussing and violence, I fully expect Samuel L. Jackson to save the day. You just can’t go wrong with a title like Snakes on a Plane!

Another interesting aspect of the movie is the huge community of fans who have created “fan media” for the movie – fake trailers, posters, websites, fake scripts, etc. There’s really an amazing amount of stuff available. You can find links to some of it as well as some good background on the movie and the community at Wikipedia.

Which brings me to the point of this post – to show you fan media created by myself and Andrew! We went to the Edmonton International Airport yesterday, to interview people about the hidden terror; the terror the media doesn’t want you to know about. Snakes on a Plane. What we found was shocking – no one was aware of this growing terror! Among those we talked to were a security screener and a baggage person, and it was clear from our conversations that there is no plan in place to fight the snakes. The ban on liquids is good, but what we really need is a ban on snakes!

Watch the video at YouTube!

The video turned out to be a little longer than I had hoped it would at seventeen minutes, but I wasn’t sure what else to cut. It has its funny moments, especially in the latter half, so if you have some time to spare, check it out! We find out if people are afraid of snakes, if they trust Samuel L. Jackson, and if they are planning to see the movie. It was fun to make!

Read: YouTube

Edmonton's Capital EX

Post ImageLast night Sharon and I went to Capital EX (formerly Klondike Days, or simply K Days). The ten day festival ends tomorrow, and with rain in the forecast, I would expect attendance numbers for the last two days to be quite low. The rain stayed away yesterday though!

There’s a bunch of new rides this year, and many of my favorites are now gone (like the Drop of Fear and the Zipper). We only went on the ferris wheel, which we tried to time just right, so we’d see the fireworks at the same time. Apparently it was “too windy” though, so the fireworks were cancelled! I wasn’t impressed. We did get the ferris wheel ride for free pretty much though – as we were in line to buy tickets, this guy came up and offered us his card which had 11 credits left on it (we needed twelve, hence the pretty much free) as he had just received a wrist band from someone.

New to the EX this year is Ed Fest, a big concert series with some popular musical acts like Nelly Furtado, and Sam Roberts (who closed the show last night). You can hear the music from almost anywhere, so there’s no need to buy tickets really! The stage is pretty poorly placed though, because it is so loud, it drowns out the nearby Epcor stage which has magicians and other acts. It was really annoying, though the magician we watched made the best of it.

Another thing the organizers did this year was separate the little kid rides into a completely separate section. Very smart move, as it made it much easier to walk through the midway and to the normal rides. Inside the Sportex there was a display from the Art Gallery, which looked kind of neat in the pictures promoting it, but turned out to be really unimpressive in person (it was a river made of jars). There was also the usual stuff like the military displays, and the thousands of people hawking all sorts of crap.

And what trip would be complete without mini-donuts! I absolutely love those things, and they sure were tasty yesterday. I wish there was a mini-donut street vendor near the office – I’d probably be his or her best customer!

Read: Capital EX

Sonic 102.9 FM acquired by Rogers

Post ImageAny Sonic-heads out there? Big news regarding one of Edmonton’s newest radio stations! It appears that Sonic 102.9 FM has been acquired by Rogers Communications. Details from Broadcaster Magazine via Tod Maffin:

Rogers Communications, long seeking a radio presence in Edmonton and northern Alberta, has found its channel, with a $39.8-million acquisition of OK Radio’s Sonic Radio 102.9 FM and World Radio 101.7 (CKER FM).

The deal also includes two stations and a transmitter in Fort McMurray, a station in Grande Prairie and transmitters there and in Peace River and Tumbler Ridge, B.C.

The deal will be heard by the CRTC on September 11th, though it is expected to be approved. This has got to be some kind of record! I mean Sonic only launched in 2005, and now it has been sold. I guess their former owner, OK Radio, was founded a long time ago though, back in 1973.

Hopefully the new owners don’t change too much…

Read: Broadcaster Magazine

UPDATE: You can find Sonic 102.9 on the web at http://www.sonic1029.com.

Wilson wins 2006 Grand Prix of Edmonton

Post ImageI am so glad I got to go to the race today – it was awesome! I only wish my Dad had been able to come (we always watch the F1 races early Sunday morning together, though virtually, as he lives in the north). Despite the heat, there was a packed crowd for the race today, and it was extremely entertaining. Bourdais led the first half of the race, but Wilson proved much quicker and eventually took the checkered flag, becoming the only driver besides Bourdais and Allmendinger to win a race this season (here’s the full story).

I have to say that watching a race in person is a much different experience than watching on television. Edmonton is probably unique too, in that you can see pretty much the entire track from your seat in the grandstands. In any case, I like that you see every car go by every lap, whereas on TV you are at the mercy of the producer and camera people. It makes it much easier to see visually who is gaining on whom, who is falling behind, and who is trying too hard. Sure the television has the times and stuff, but actually seeing it is pretty cool.

The race began with the parade of drivers, each in a Ford pickup. Some of the Edmonton Eskimos also took part, with their very yellow truck bringing up the rear. There were parachuters, CF-18s, Mayor Mandel, Premier Klein, and various other dignitaries to get things underway. Oilers head coach Craig MacTavish was the grand marshall, saying the famous words with a twist – “Katherine and gentlemen, start your engines!” (as Katherine Legge is the only woman driver in the series). It was neat to see MacT and Kelly Buchburger walking down the concourse with a couple other guys – everyone would walk past, and then stop and look at the foursome, wondering if they had really just seen MacT! He’s an Edmonton celebrity to be sure.

I’ve added a few more pictures to my photoset from today. I also have about ten minutes of video, just various clips that I recorded throughout the day, so I’ll post that at some point as well. You know, so you can hear the scream of the engines for yourself!

Anyway, great race, and I hope I can go again next year!

35 Degree Racing in Edmonton

Post ImageI really wanted to go to the inaugural Grand Prix of Edmonton last year, but never got around to getting tickets. This year though, I was lucky enough to get Silver tickets for today and tomorrow. Turns out that one of my very fashionable friends got tickets from work, yet found she didn’t like watching cars go in circles, so she was nice enough to give her pass to me. Needless to say, I was pretty happy.

I arrived at the track this morning around 10, just in time to catch the morning Champ Car practice. I stayed until after the afternoon qualifying, which ended at 3. I’m amazed I lasted that long – the weather in Edmonton today was an incredible 35 degrees celsius, which as I’m sure you’re aware, is much hotter when you’re on asphalt.

It was totally worth it though! I’ve always been a big racing fan, with my favorite being Formula 1 (and there was a lot of Schumacher and Alonso gear to be seen today which was neat). I used to watch Champ Car all the time too, back when it was called CART. I still remember Jacques Villeneuve racing for the Players team in CART before switching to F1 and winning a world championship. And I remember Paul Tracy, who was one of the youngest drivers in the field. He’s now the oldest, and clearly the fan favorite here in Edmonton. He starts the race second tomorrow, despite a little accident this afternoon. Sebastien Bourdais has the pole.

Watching in person is much different than watching on television. The sounds are obviously much louder, and you can hear certain things much more clearly, such as gear shifts or brakes locking up. And while it’s easier to keep track of what’s going on when watching TV, there are some things you just can’t see properly unless you’re in person. Things like the way the cars bounce around (well if you ignore on car cameras at least), or the way the downforce keeps them on track as they go through a corner at 100 mph. Everytime the cars go through turns 13 and 14, it looks like they are going to lose control, and except for one time today, none of them did. It’s incredible.

I’ve created a new photoset with a bunch of pictures I took today, and I’ll add to it tomorrow. A couple interesting ones are this forklift carrying packages of ice to keep drinks cool no doubt, and this jet engine mounted to the back of a pickup that blows debris from the track. Maybe I’ll bring my video camera tomorrow!

Read: Edmonton GP

Congrats Violet and Vincent!

Post ImageYesterday afternoon my friends Violet and Vincent were married in a lovely ceremony, which was followed by a banquet last night. Violet looked absolutely gorgeous in her dress, and Vince didn’t look too bad himself! The weather was great yesterday, and I think everyone had a good time.

I’m only 22 years old, but events like this sort of make you feel older, you know? For instance, in between the ceremony and the banquet, a bunch of us went to Moxie’s downtown. When I went up to the bar with our waitress to pay, she asked if we were celebrating a grad or something. I replied, “nope, a wedding.” Now maybe she meant a post-secondary graduation, but I got the feeling she was talking about high school, which is especially odd since it was the afternoon, and it was July. Regardless, I realized that big events for my friends are now weddings and children, not graduations or simple gatherings.

I took lots of pictures yesterday, which you can see here. Unfortunately the ones from the actual ceremony are not great, because the official film/photo crew were hogging all the best places, and at one point, even asked the guests to refrain from taking pictures, which most of us promptly ignored.

If you’re reading this V&V, I hope the move to Calgary goes smoothly, and have a wonderful time on your honeymoon! And Jane et al, thanks for the superb organization, I know the newlyweds appreciated it, as did guests like myself.

Read: Photos

Edmonton Oilers Tribute

Post ImageToday during the lunch hour was the Oilers Community Appreciation event downtown at city hall. There were thousands of people packed into Churchill Square to catch a glimpse of the Oilers. After losing out in the Stanley Cup Finals, I can totally understand why the Oilers would want a low key event, with only a select few present:

Attending the rally will be Oilers Captain Jason Smith, Assistant Captain’s Ryan Smyth and Ethan Moreau, Georges Laraque, and hometown hero Fernando Pisani. Also present will be Oilers General Manager Kevin Lowe, President & CEO Patrick LaForge, and Chairman Cal Nichols.

The event kicked off with Paul Lorieau singing the national anthem (and yes, he sang the whole thing). Various dignitaries and Oilers organization bigwigs made speeches, after which the palyers answered some questions from Sportsnet’s Gene Principe. During his speech, Kevin Lowe said the team considers losing the Stanley Cup a failure, to which he received a quiet boo that quickly turned into a “we’re number one” chant. He’s right though, they set out to do something and didn’t quite accomplish it. That said, I’m really glad the Oilers organization took the time come out and allow the fans one more hurrah.

I took about 70 pictures at the event, most of which turned out okay. It was one of the rare opportunities I’ve had to use my zoom lens! Anyway, I’ve added the photos to my Edmonton Oilers Playoffs 2006 photo set. This one is my favorite.

Read: Edmonton Oilers

Setting the record straight on the .NET Wizards

Post ImageIt has been quite a while since I’ve said anything about the .NET Wizards, but I think it’s time. As some of you are undoubtedly aware, there is a new user group in town – the Edmonton .NET User Group (or EDMUG.NET). They’ve had a couple of meetings so far, and have two scheduled for the end of June, so they’re off to a good start. Now, before I get into what I want to say, let’s get a few things out of the way:

  • This is a really long post, so be prepared.
  • I love Edmonton, I love .NET, and I love meeting new people, both online and off.
  • I have become extremely busy with Paramagnus over the last couple of years, as has Dickson. We’re having a blast building our little software company though, so we don’t regret being busy at all.
  • There are a lot of great .NET developers in Edmonton, and they deserve a great developer community.
  • We always tried our best with the .NET Wizards to treat people with respect, cater to their varying levels of knowledge, and make the Edmonton developer community a great one.

My intent with this post is to set the record straight on the .NET Wizards. To clarify some things that I feel are getting confused, and to have on public record my thoughts and opinions on what has happened, what is happening, and what is going to happen in the future. To do this, I’m going to tell you a story.

Some History

The Edmonton .NET Wizards User Group began life back in the fall of 2003. Dickson and I were really heavily into .NET at the time (and still are) and we wanted a way to connect with other .NET developers in Edmonton. Additionally, we had just come back a couple months earlier from TechEd 2003 in Barcelona, Spain where we represented Canada in Microsoft’s first ever Imagine Cup programming competition, so we were especially excited about creating the user group. We registered the domain name in September and a non-profit organization in November, and got started planning events and stuff.

One of the first problems we encountered was a location for our events. As we were both students at the University of Alberta, we decided to host our meetings there as we could get a room for free. We still had to pay for use of the projector and computer though, and we did so out of our own pockets. Over the next year or so, we setup a user group booth at MSDN events to try and attract developers, and held many events on topics such as “J2EE and .NET Interoperability”, “Building Mobile Applications with the .NET CF and SQL CE”, “Web Services Security”, and “Whidbey and SQL Server 2005.”

Our events in 2004 and most of 2005 always seemed to have less than amazing attendance, though we did manage to have some great events with speakers like John Bristowe and Dan Sellers, and we gave away lots of books and other prizes to Edmonton developers. I think we probably gave away more stuff than other user groups did, because I also happened to be the Academic contact for Microsoft at the UofA, so I ended up receiving double the swag. We tried food a few times, but couldn’t seem to get an amazing turnout.

As a result, we had a “planning meeting” in the summer of 2005, to try and get some input from people on where they thought the user group should go. We held less of our own events in the first six months of 2005 than we did in 2004, and basically organized things around the MSDN tour events. Which did people prefer? After a while, we finally got a good discussion going, and it turned out that most people wanted smaller events, with presenters from the group. In September 2005 we got started. We put up a wiki as our website so that everyone could edit it, and we had a series of smaller events on things like Windows Vista, Visual Studio 2005, Generics, and Game Engine Design. We also started a certification group, though it didn’t last long.

EDMUG.NET is born

Which more or less brings us to March of this year. Our last event was March 14th, where John Bristowe returned to Edmonton to talk about WinFX. Shortly thereafter, the business plan competitions Dickson and I were in took over our lives, and we never planned an event for April. Then, on April 9th, we received an email from Donald Belcham, basically informing us that EDMUG.NET was starting. His email kind of surprised us, as we had been informed a few weeks earlier by MSDN that some people in Edmonton wanted something different. We decided to meet with Donald over coffee, and we felt pretty good after the meeting. Here is a summary of the outcome:

  • EDMUG.NET held no ill will towards us, they just wanted to try something different.
  • They decided to hold their events on Thursdays as ours were usually held on Tuesdays.
  • We discussed the future of the .NET Wizards, including one option which would make us a sub-group of EDMUG.NET, focusing on “the cutting edge” stuff.
  • We agreed that we didn’t necessarily want to compete.
  • We also chatted about our experience in creating and running a group, and the things Donald and his team had experienced to date.
  • Dickson and I explained to Donald that we felt it was time for someone else to take over and offer a different perspective on things anyway.
  • We wished each other luck.

Dickson and I decided to take a break, and let EDMUG.NET get underway, so nothing much happened until the first EDMUG.NET event on April 27th, which I was able to attend part of. It had great attendance, and was a pretty successful first event. I said hi to Donald and team, but didn’t get a chance to really chat with them.

Their second event was held on May 25th. Unfortunately neither Dickson nor myself could attend, but it seems they encountered some negative feedback – something all user groups will receive at some point.

Here is where things get interesting.

Get to the point Mack

I’m glad to see Donald handled the negative feedback very well, dropping the “fuck’s” like they are going out of style. Anyway, I don’t know his relationship with Mike at Sideline.ca who had the complaints, so I won’t comment any further besides my sarcastic remark just now. It is from their back and forth as well as some comments made offline, that I noticed some things that I need to comment on.

  1. Donald calls “the old user group’s content inadequate“. It has also been said that we tended to focus on things you couldn’t take back to work and use right away.
  2. Mike thinks the .NET community needs rekindling, and said that the previous group did not take action on feedback.
  3. Both Mike and Donald agreed to “hold EdmUG to a much higher standard than what the DotNetWizards had,” which apparently means a “stronger and more knowledgeable community.”
  4. When EDMUG.NET first launched, Mike thought it was “sure to kick the hell out of the previous excuse we had for a .Net user group here in town.” Donald says he was disappointed with our “inability to capture and drive the local .NET developer community.”
  5. I get the general feeling that the work Dickson and I did has gone largely unappreciated.

I’ve been known to have a short fuse at times, but in general, I’d like to think I’m a fairly easy going guy. That said, there are some things that just piss me off, and the list above is one of them. Here are my thoughts on each point:

  1. I think the idea that our content was inadequate is totally wrong. Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, we had some great speakers with great topics here in Edmonton with the .NET Wizards, as I mentioned above. And while our topics at the end of 2005 and first part of this year were definitely “cutting edge”, the same simply cannot be said of our previous events. Look again at the list of topics I mentioned earlier, many of them are things you could use right away. I also couldn’t help but notice that one of the two upcoming EDMUG.NET events is about “Atlas”, a beta product, otherwise known as “cutting edge” or something you probably can’t use at work the next day.
  2. Mike is right, the .NET community here in Edmonton needs to be rekindled. He’s dead wrong though, that we never took action based on feedback. The very reason we had small user group events in the last year was directly from feedback! The wiki we replaced our old site with was a direct result of feedback. If anything, we couldn’t get enough feedback. In my experience, people are generally happy to say everything is fine and go start their own group than give any constructive feedback when it’s needed.
  3. I never go into anything without setting my standards extremely high. For this reason, I sometimes come off as arrogant, when really it’s just that I always try to be confident that I can reach for top and make it there. With a reply like Donald gave him, I don’t know why Mike thinks that EDMUG.NET’s standards are so much higher than ours. Dickson and I always wanted our user group to be the best. That said, I don’t think a “more knowledgeable” community has anything to do with high standards. Setting your standards high for a user group is trying to please everyone, which as we all know, simply isn’t possible.
  4. Depending on your metric, we may have failed to “drive the developer community” forward. On the other hand, we created a place that Donald and his team could get together to plan and create EDMUG.NET, did we not? We held events and had some great speakers, did we not? We managed to connect some developers from Edmonton, which is much better than what existed before we came along.
  5. Sure Donald said in our coffee meeting that he appreciated what we did, but never once has this been said publicly by the EDMUG.NET team. People like Mike are quick to bash us, but don’t seem to appreciate that we attempted to create something good in Edmonton for .NET developers. I don’t need a pat on the back, because I’m happy with what Dickson and I have accomplished with the .NET Wizards, but I really hate unfair and unbalanced commentary. A simple “they did some good things for a while” might have been appropriate.

So what now?

I think EDMUG.NET will probably be pretty successful. They’ve got some very well-connected developers on board, and they seem much happier to spread the word about EDMUG.NET to their colleagues than they did about us. Donald recently started a series of posts talking about his experience starting EDMUG.NET, so check them out if you’re interested. I wish them nothing but the best of luck moving forward, as I think Edmonton deserves a great user group.

Dickson and I have discussed the future of the .NET Wizards a few times, and right now we’re happy to focus on Paramagnus and attend the EDMUG.NET events when we can. At some point in the future we might revisit the issue and decide to hold some events on really bleeding-edge stuff, things we can do some interesting demos with, just as an alternative to EDMUG.NET’s events. Or, we may revisit things and decide that we’re happy with the .NET Wizards no longer existing. Don’t expect anything until at least the fall though.

I think the only way to measure the success of a user group is to look at the community it creates, online, offline, it doesn’t really matter where. Attendance is not the right metric, because there are hundreds of reasons why people attend or don’t attend events. Content is not king, because you can get content pretty much anywhere these days with books, websites, blogs, and more. You might think speakers are a good measure of success, but they are tied very closely to content, and at the end of the day, it might be easier to get in touch with a local developer than an extremely busy speaker across the continent. It’s the community that matters.

It’s also extremely hard to measure the success of a user group based on community, which is why the attendance metric is always used. There are other things that matter though besides the size of the community. Are people being connected? Did you learn something about a fellow user group member that you didn’t know before? How “vibrant” is the community? Are people attracted to the community? Do people want to get involved? Do people want to improve the community? There are lots of things to look at.

Were we successful with the .NET Wizards? I think we were. I certainly have no regrets about anything, and I believe we created a great community here in Edmonton. EDMUG.NET have now taken it upon themselves to take it to the next level, and as a member of the .NET developer community here in Edmonton, I hope they find success.