Tag: events

Edmonton Notes for 4/25/2011

Hope you had an excellent long weekend! We sure had the weather in Edmonton to make the most of it. Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:


Photo by blokcout

LRT Train Tracks x 2
Photo by Mark Iocchelli

Recap: 2011 EEDC Annual Luncheon

I was once again fortunate to attend EEDC’s Annual Luncheon, which took place yesterday at the Shaw Conference Centre. After 16 years, the luncheon has become a popular fixture downtown, and it showed yesterday with an absolutely packed Hall D. EEDC uses the event to highlight the work it is doing to help make Edmonton one of the world’s top five mid-sized cities by 2030, and also to honor local businesses making a difference with the EEDC Awards of Excellence. I enjoyed last year’s luncheon, but aside from the length, I thought this year’s was better. The production quality was much improved, with some great looking graphics and videos displayed on the giant screens. EEDC’s own Brent Beatty did an excellent job as the event’s emcee.

This year I was asked by EEDC if I would spend some time with Andrea Wahbe, a journalist visiting from Toronto to learn more about Edmonton’s tech scene. I readily agreed, and enjoyed sharing my take on Edmonton with her. Our conversation naturally touched on more than just technology, so hopefully I was able to provide some useful context. Andrea was only here a short time but she seemed to enjoy downtown, and got to make stops at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Transcend Jasper, and the Edmonton Research Park before heading home.

2011 EEDC Annual Luncheon2011 EEDC Annual Luncheon

The winners of the 2011 EEDC Awards of Excellence are:

From the press release:

“We have some of the best organizations in the country right here in Greater Edmonton that represent and reflect our corporate priority areas: leadership, innovation and recognition. It is an honour to acknowledge and recognize Stantec, Cleankeys and Master Flo Valve for the significant contribution to our community. They engage the community and act as a catalyst for change, while fostering innovation and increasing Edmonton’s visibility on a global level.”

The special mention award went to Hot To Huddle this year, for their work on the Grey Cup 2010 festival. EEDC Board Member Chris LaBossiere handed out the awards.

Ron Gilbertson, EEDC’s President and CEO, and Henry Yip, EEDC Board Chair, were both on hand to give remarks. Henry focused on recognizing the hard work that everyone at EEDC has done, and introduced the board. Ron spent his time discussing the economic situation here in Edmonton, though a little less formally than he did last year. The impending labour shortage was the hot topic, and Ron noted that our unemployment rate is about 5.8%, which is down from 7.3% just a year ago. “The days of Edmonton being a low-cost labour centre are gone,” he said.

One of the interesting things that EEDC did this year was text voting. Everyone in attendance was encouraged to answer three questions about Edmonton’s competitiveness via text message (they used Poll Everywhere). Unfortunately the event was running behind schedule so they only quickly flashed the results up on screen.

2011 EEDC Annual Luncheon

2011 EEDC Annual Luncheon2011 EEDC Annual Luncheon

Most people felt that Edmonton is “wandering” when it comes to competitiveness, we have strengths in some areas but not others, and we lack clear focus. The most critical issue affecting Edmonton’s future competitiveness was “labour supply”, with “investment in innovation” and “transportation and infrastructure” close behind. And finally, the vast majority of respondents said they have a plan to enhance competitiveness at their own companies.

The keynote speaker this year was Deborah L. Wince-Smith, President of the Council on Competitiveness (among other things). She spent her time talking about the revolution we’re experiencing in innovation. She cited things like Google, Facebook, and the iPad, but also talked about nanotechnology and high performance computing. I liked her catchphrase for the latter – “to outcompete you have to outcompute”. Though Deborah focused mainly on the United States, she did try to apply her comments to Edmonton a few times. She defined innovation as “I to the 5th power”: ideas, imagination, impact, individuals, and investment. I have to say that I felt mixed about Deborah’s keynote. Some of the things she said really resonated, while others (like her multiple comments about Facebook toppling dictatorial regimes) definitely did not. I liked the way she closed however, stating that “Edmonton is an energy hotspot, but the rest is up to you.”

Thanks to EEDC for inviting me to the annual luncheon. You can read the January update on Edmonton’s Economy in PDF here, and be sure to follow @EEDC on Twitter for updates.

Edmonton Notes for 4/17/2011

You can keep up-to-date with local news and more during the week at Edmonton Etcetera. Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that you can vote for the Best of Edmonton 2011, SEE Magazine’s annual survey of local favorites. This blog is nominated in the best local blog category!

Last snow?
Nelson Webb captured this week’s return to snow quite well. Messy.

The Alberta Legislature, framed by the High Level Bridge
Great shot by SkepticRod.

Recap: DemoCamp Edmonton 14

Tonight was Edmonton’s fourteenth DemoCamp, held at the Telus Centre on the University of Alberta campus. We’re still going strong, with another excellent turnout tonight to see what local developers have been up to. And of course, the after party at Original Joes Varsity was absolutely packed. The general consensus tonight seemed to be that all of the demos were good, though a few definitely stood out.

DemoCamp Edmonton 14DemoCamp Edmonton 14

We had five demos:

  • The first demo was from David Ackerman, who showed us a Mac app he has been working on for writers. You can think of the app as a word processor on steroids. The idea is that as you type, relevant photos, Wikipedia articles, and other information appear alongside your text. In the demo, David typed “Developers, Developers, Developers!” and up popped an image of Steve Ballmer. It had the ability to adjust the amount of “stuff” that was surfaced as well.
  • Our second demo of the evening was iRecipeBook.net. Darcy Sabatino showed us the app he has been working on that lets you store and categorize your recipes via a simple, easy-to-use web interface. He noted that the interface looks great on an iPad, so it’s ready for you to use in the kitchen. Darcy had a bunch of ideas for future improvements too, such as sharing recipes with other users.
  • Ryan Ramage was up next to show us Ecko-It, a liferecording platform and audio wiki with the tagline “keep what you hear”. I think it is probably safe to say that Ecko-It was the most talked about demo of the evening. Ryan got off to a bit of a slow start, with lots of explanation, but the stuff he demoed was pretty impressive. Basically you use a Liferecorder, which is a little audio recording device, to capture an audio stream of your life. At the end of the day, you’d sync that audio with the Ecko-It software for tagging and categorization. Let’s say you tagged something “DemoCamp” – you could then with a single click see all of the other audio tagged DemoCamp. I can definitely see potential in the app, but personally I think there would be too much effort required for management of the audio. All of the software, including the hardware firmware, is open source.
  • Liang Shi, Tait Lawton, and Kevin Loney were up next, to show us Sizmio. Born at Startup Weekend back in February, Sizmio allows you to listen to the sounds of the world. Basically it’s an audio layer that sits on top of Google Maps or Google Earth. As you navigate around the map, you can hear different sounds. If you have an iPhone, you can record and upload sounds from your phone while you’re on the go. Very cool stuff, though most people seemed to think it could use some focus – perhaps audio tours or something like that.
  • Our final demo of the evening was also the first ever Windows Phone 7 demo at DemoCamp! Pieter Parker, Jeremey Burns, and Stephen Baden demoed their Windows Phone 7 game called Super Punch. They were one of 100 teams to compete in a 48-hour programming competition called the Great Canadian Appathon, and they won! They took their $25,000 in winnings and have since started a game studio called Bit Shift Games. As for the game, Super Punch looks like a lot of fun. The idea is to punch Dr. Competent as far as you can, with all kinds of power ups and environmental interactions to keep it interesting. I was pretty impressed with the game, especially considering they built it in just two days! As for when it’ll be available – the team said to stay tuned.

Sometimes a video helps to make sense of something. Here’s a quick video of Sizmio:

And here’s a quick video of Super Punch:

Though Ecko-It was the demo that most people seemed to talk about, my favorite was probably Super Punch. I could definitely see myself playing the game! I really love the concept behind Sizmio, and was pleasantly surprised by the progress the team has made since Startup Weekend. I think they could really have something. There’s a lot of intriguing technology behind Ecko-It, so it’ll be interesting to see where that product goes.

DemoCamp Edmonton 14DemoCamp Edmonton 14

We had a few announcements this evening:

  • Save the date for Startup Factory, a new conference and speaker series that focuses on the nuts and bolts of product and customer development for startups. It is scheduled to take place on Friday, June 10, with more information to follow.
  • TEC Edmonton’s annual VenturePrize Awards Luncheon is coming up on April 27th. You can get your tickets here. Vibe DX, lightPower, and CAD Crowd are the finalists that will compete for the top prize.
  • C100, the group behind 4 Days in the Valley, has another event coming up on July 13 called AccelerateAB. The idea is to connect Alberta entrepreneurs with speakers and other mentors. This year’s edition takes place in Calgary, but they are planning to bus a bunch of Edmontonians down for the event. Stay tuned for more information.
  • Be sure to sign up for the Startup Edmonton mailing list to learn more about these events and many others!

Thanks to everyone who came out tonight. See you at DemoCamp Edmonton 15!

You can see the rest of my photos from the evening here.

Recap: CityCamp Edmonton

Canada’s first CityCamp was held here in Edmonton on Saturday at the Robbins Health Learning Centre downtown. Roughly 50 people attended the unconference focused on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations. We had a nice mix of municipal employees, developers, journalists, and citizens.

We started the day off with this timeline of Edmonton’s open data journey (click for a larger version):

A brief history of open data in Edmonton

It was a joint effort to create this. Jess put it together with input from myself and Ashley, and Raffaella created a Prezi for us. I was struck by two things when reflecting on the timeline:

  1. This journey really didn’t start that long ago. I guess two years in the technology world is a long time, but it’s pretty quick in the world of municipal governments.
  2. I was instantly reminded of London’s tube map when I looked at the timeline, which is fitting as so much of our open data journey in Edmonton has been based around transit. It was the GTFS feed that ETS made available to developers that really kicked things off back in 2009.

With that foundation in place, we invited everyone to pitch their topics for the day. There was a nice range of topics suggested, everything from “Modeling the Value of Open Gov” to “Increasing Awareness of Apps Among Edmontonians”.

CityCamp Edmonton

Raffaella and Ashley acted as our gridmasters, and arranged the topics into the day’s agenda. We broke into groups and the discussions began!

CityCamp Edmonton

The sessions I participated in looked at the media’s role in open government, the importance of archiving and digital preservation, and the benefits of open data in small municipalities. I really enjoyed the discussions and I think everyone got something out of them, even if it was just inspiration or motivation to go away and do something!

CityCamp EdmontonCityCamp Edmonton

In the session on small municipalities, I thought Devin made a really great point. He said that open data adoption today is kind of like website adoption was 15 years ago or so. At the time, having a website was a new concept, and municipalities approached it much like they are approaching open data now – with uncertainty, hesitation, and even resistance. Today every municipality has a website. How did we get over those initial roadblocks? Devin suggested that tooling has a lot to do with it, which echoed some of the discussion we had in the media session earlier in the day. Tools like FrontPage really opened up the floodgates and made it easy for people to create a website. We have since moved on to better things, of course, but it was an important enabler early on. Perhaps we need the open-data-equivalent of FrontPage for open data to really take off as well. In the media session we identified tools as one of the things holding up wider adoption of open data by journalists.

A session I didn’t participate in but which looked like a lot of fun was the modeling open government one. Jess was determined to have at least one session that wasn’t sitting around in a circle talking, and he succeeded!

CityCamp Edmonton

The space we were in was great, with lots of natural light (which I think is really important), though it was somewhat difficult to find in the morning. Everything worked out though!

CityCamp EdmontonCityCamp Edmonton

Though we did have a discussion about actions arising from the day’s sessions, I think drilling down on collective actions is always difficult at events like CityCamp. For me, the day was an opportunity to connect with other people thinking about the same issues and topics. That said, here are a few things you can do to take action right now:

  • Look at the open data catalogue, and start using the data. Share the things you’re doing with it!
  • As you come up with ideas that require data sets that aren’t currently available, add them to the UserVoice. I will take an action to clean that site up a bit!
  • Notes from the day will be going up on Civic Commons, so that’s a great place to capture and share your thoughts on open government in Edmonton.

Thanks to everyone who participated on Saturday! You can see my photos from the day here, and Jess’ photos here.

2011 Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts

The 24th annual Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts took place tonight at the Winspear Centre. Sharon and I attended for the fourth year in a row, and were happy to learn that this year our tickets would be supporting the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival’s Comedy Cares Program and the iHuman Youth Society. The evening always brings out an eclectic mix of Edmontonians, and features a broad range of local artists.

Mayor Mandel’s message in the event program thanked local businesses for their support of the arts:

I also offer a special thank you to the many Edmonton businesses and community organizations for their continued and unwavering support of the arts. Their generosity and encouragement have made a lasting difference to our artists, making it possible for them to achieve enormous success.

He echoed those thoughts during his time on stage, but also used the opportunity to call upon new businesses to step up in support of the arts. He noted that we see the same, few organizations year after year, and while they are absolutely appreciated, it would be nice to see some new faces join them. As he wrapped up, Mayor Mandel joked that he was done preaching for the evening, but I thought his comments were appropriate.

Mayor's Celebration of the Arts 2011
The Be Arthurs performed an interesting mix of songs as guests arrived, including Lady Gaga and the Ghostbusters theme!

The full list of tonight’s nominees is available at the PACE website. Here are the winners:

Mayor’s Award for Sustained Support of the Arts
Lexus of Edmonton, nominated by Alberta Ballet

Mayor’s Award for Innovative Support of the Arts by a Business
ATB Financial, nominated by Alberta Music Industry Association

John Poole Award for Promotion of the Arts
Avenue Magazine, nominated by Edmonton Opera

City of Edmonton Book Prize
Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium by Myrna Kostash, University of Alberta Press

ATCO Gas Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement
Charles Thomas Peacocke, nominated by Catalyst Theatre

Stantec Youth Award
Cynthia Hicks, nominated by Philippine Barangay Performing Arts Society

Northlands Award for an Emerging Artist
Arlen Konopaki, nominated by Tessi Flood

The Sutton Place Hotel People’s Choice Award
Ulrike Rossier, nominated by Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts

Molson Coors Award for Excellence in Artistic Direction
Sandro Dominelli, nominated by Nathalie Tait

TELUS Courage to Innovate Award
Geri Actors & Friends, nominated by Edmonton Seniors Coordinating Council

Mayor's Celebration of the Arts 2011Mayor's Celebration of the Arts 2011

Tonight’s performances included:

I quite enjoyed the Good Women Dance Collective, it was an interesting way to open the show. Roland Pemberton’s poem was new, for an upcoming public art project. He won the crowd over making reference to Keillor Road and the infamous baseball bat on Alberta Avenue. Kat Danser was great, as always, and the Strathcona High School’s theatre program students did a wonderful job with St. Aggies ‘84. Dave Babcock was an excellent selection to close the show, as his upbeat tunes made it possible for the return of the big closing dance! A few people got up on stage to shake it, but unfortunately it wasn’t as big as years past.

Congratulations to all of tonight’s nominees and winners!

Mayor's Celebration of the Arts 2011

Save the date for next year’s event, the 25th anniversary, set to take place on April 2, 2012.

You can see more photos from the evening here. You can read my previous recaps here: 2008, 2009, 2010.

Recap: Designing Downtown – Between Two Cities

Tonight Sharon and I attended a panel discussion at the Art Gallery of Alberta organized by M.A.D.E. in Edmonton called Designing Downtown: Between Two Cities. It was an interesting evening for the event to take place, because across the street at City Hall our City Council was discussing the proposed downtown arena project (they voted to move ahead with negotiations) and also because today was Vancouver’s 125th birthday. Ryan Jespersen was our host for the evening, and Todd Babiak was the moderator for the discussion. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time for that discussion to take place – the panelists used most of the time for their “introductions” (as is often the case).

Gene Dub, founder and principal at Dub Architects Ltd., kicked things off with a little show and tell. He talked about some of the projects he has worked on since establishing his firm in 1975, and highlighted four things that he has tried to focus on with his downtown development efforts: housing, heritage, infill, and commentary. Some of the interesting projects he showed pictures of included the City Market Affordable Housing, the Alberta Hotel, the McKay Avenue School Restoration, and City Hall.

Gene talked about the Seventh Street Lofts project as well, noting that it is a unique mix of a 1950s building, a 1929 brick building (the John Deere warehouse), and a new infill building in the middle. It turns out that when he purchased the northernmost building (1950s) he tried but failed to purchase the small parking lot right on 104 Avenue as well, which I have embedded above. Tonight he told the audience that he has since purchased that lot, and has plans to build an office tower there. He showed a rendering of a beautiful glass building!

107 Street Annex
107 Street Annex, courtesy of Dub Architects

Next up was Mathew Soules, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and the director of Matthew Soules Architecture in Vancouver. As much as I loved listening to Matthew’s very cerebral talk about Vancouver, it was his section of the evening that caused us to go completely off schedule. He had some really interesting things to say about Vancouverism, and I thought he did a great job of breaking it down and explaining it. The fact that the model can be broken down into building blocks is fascinating. One of the more interesting things he said about coming back to Edmonton was that it was refreshing compared to Vancouver. That is, the environment there is so “total” – completely planned, manicured, etc. – that it tends to lack the grittiness and messy vitality that Edmonton has.

Designing DowntownDesigning Downtown

Our third speaker was Shafraaz Kaba, an architect and planner at Manasc Issac Architects Ltd. right here in Edmonton. He spent some time talking about the firm’s interest in reskinning or “reimagining” existing buildings, a discussion which inevitably led to some more negativity directed toward the Associated Engineering building! He also talked about the Capital Modern Tour that Sharon and I went on back in 2008 (Shafraaz was our tour guide on that excursion) and made mention of the importance of preserving buildings such as the CN Tower. Shafraaz also had some of the most memorable statements of the evening, saying for example that “Edmonton has all kinds of plans, we’re good at making plans – what we’re not good at is implementation.” He also posed the very thought-provoking question, “why in the world do we have air conditioning in Edmonton?” Surely there must be a better way to heat and cool our buildings by making better use of our natural climate!

Our fourth and final speaker was Trevor Boddy, a graduate of the University of Alberta who is now a Vancouver-based architecture critic/curator urbanist. He has written books and articles, and is currently working on the TownShift: Suburb Into City ideas competition. He touched on Vancouverism as well, but showed it from a different perspective than Matthew. He also made some memorable statements, most notably: “Edmonton only gets one more chance to get downtown right.” I really liked some of the examples he showed (such as powering a water feature using the heat generated from a server farm located underneath) but I also thought he made some of the best points. He said you can’t fix downtown without also addressing some of the issues in the suburbs, that the arena project is a 1970s way of solving the problem, and that one of the most painful things Edmonton needs to overcome is the way our metropolitan governance model works (I really agree with the last point).

Designing DowntownDesigning Downtown

By the time we got through all of that, there wasn’t much time for questions, and to be honest my mind had started to drift toward the arena issue at City Council! One of the obvious questions that was asked was how the lack of an architecture school has harmed Edmonton, to which Trevor had a great response. He said that you get the school after you have the architecture, not the other way around, and pointed to organizations such as M.A.D.E. and Edmonton on the Edge as the foundation for what could eventually become an architecture school.

The key takeaway seemed to be that getting the discussion happening, with events such as tonight’s panel or the upcoming PKN X, is the key toward cracking the downtown nut. Thanks to all of the organizers for making the event happen! You can see a few more photos here.

UPDATE (4/18/2011): I added the 107 Street Annex rendering, courtesy of Dub Architects. It is labeled “Lot 162, Block 6, Plan B2”.

Edmonton Notes for 4/3/2011

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

I started shaking my head as soon as I read the first few words of this article:

A new six-lane freeway being planned for southwest Edmonton could someday zip motorists from Anthony Henday Drive to the city boundary at 100 km/h.

That freeway would not be completed for another 40 to 50 years. Why plan for this now? It’s absurd. I can’t believe we’re spending resources on that when we could be building the LRT and removing the need for the freeway altogether.

GalaGuru 2011
I had fun at GalaGuru on Friday night! Check out Guru Digital Arts College here.

Invisible Art Galley
One of the features at the event: Invisible Art Gallery!

Love the Toque!
Love the toque!

Upcoming Edmonton events you should know about!

Here are a few upcoming local events that you should know about. Check out ShareEdmonton for even more upcoming events!

Startup Drinks + nextMEDIA
Wednesday, March 30 at 6pm
Original Joe’s Varsity
Website | ShareEdmonton

The Edmonton Champions Project Launch
Thursday, March 31 at 7pm
The Citadel
Website | ShareEdmonton

3rd Annual GalaGuru
Friday, April 1 at 7pm
Art Gallery of Alberta
Website | ShareEdmonton

Designing Downtown: Between 2 Cities
Wednesday, April 6 at 7pm
Art Gallery of Alberta
PDF | ShareEdmonton

Red Tape Diaries – Memoirs of a Bureaucrat!
Thursday, April 7 at 6pm
Devlin’s Cocktail Lounge
Website | ShareEdmonton

CityCamp Edmonton
Saturday, April 9 at 9am
Robbins Health Learning Centre
Website | ShareEdmonton

Alley of Light/Reclaiming Lost Spaces Open House
Sunday, April 10 at 2pm
Enterprise Square Atrium
Website | ShareEdmonton

2011 Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts
Monday, April 11 at 7pm
Winspear Centre
Website | Tickets | ShareEdmonton

DemoCamp Edmonton 14
Wednesday, April 13 at 6:30pm
Telus Centre 150
Website | ShareEdmonton

2011 EEDC Annual Luncheon
Monday, April 18 at 11am
Shaw Conference Centre
Website | ShareEdmonton

Eat Alberta
Saturday, April 30 at 9am
Enterprise Square
Website | ShareEdmonton

What other events are coming up that you think people should know about? Let me know!

Edmonton Notes for 3/20/2011

I’m writing this using the excellent free wi-fi at the Edmonton International Airport. So glad we have this now. Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Trees on 105 Street
This is what 105 Street looks like north of 107 Avenue now that the City removed a number of trees to make way for the North LRT extension.

Mural
There’s a beautiful mural on 107 Avenue, except that it is hidden most of the winter by snow!

Giant Puddle
This is the biggest puddle (aka mini-lake) I have seen, located at 104 Street and 103 Avenue downtown. You?