Tag: events

Ice on Whyte 2010

Yesterday was the final day of Ice on Whyte 2010, Edmonton’s ice carving festival (now part of Winter Light). Sharon and I had been planning to stop by ever since the festival started ten days ago, but for whatever reason we never made it out. We made up for it yesterday though, visiting twice – once during the day and once at night!

Here are some day & night shots of Ice on Whyte 2010:

Ice on Whyte 2010Ice on Whyte 2010

Ice on Whyte 2010Ice on Whyte 2010

Ice on Whyte 2010Ice on Whyte 2010

Ice on Whyte 2010Ice on Whyte 2010

Ice on Whyte 2010Ice on Whyte 2010

Ice on Whyte 2010Ice on Whyte 2010

Ice on Whyte 2010Ice on Whyte 2010

Ice on Whyte 2010Ice on Whyte 2010

You can read Sharon’s post here,  read about the ice carving competition winners here, and you can see the rest of my photos here. Check out the Winter Light site for more upcoming events!

Edmonton Notes for 1/23/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Finally, Edmonton has its own mug at Starbucks!

Edmonton Starbucks Mug

Edmonton Notes for 1/16/2010

What a week! Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

I’ll leave you today with a common sight around the City right now. I hope the ice sculptures at Ice on Whyte are ok!

Melting in Edmonton

Art Gallery of Alberta sneak peek for Edmonton’s social media community

As I’ve mentioned here a few times before, I’m very excited for the new Art Gallery of Alberta, opening to the public on January 31 (on ShareEdmonton). The AGA has done a really solid job of keeping everything a secret so far for the big reveal, but at the same time they want to stir up interest in the community. I had the opportunity to suggest a sneak peek of the new building for Edmonton’s social media community, and was thrilled when Sarah Hoyles, the AGA’s Media Relations & Communications Coordinator, said it was going to happen!

Here are the details:

The Art Gallery of Alberta will host a private tour for local bloggers later this month. The by-invitation-only event will be led by AGA Executive Director, Gilles Hebert, who will provide Edmonton’s social media community with a sneak peek of Alberta’s newest gallery, opening on January 31, 2010.

If you’re an active blogger or Twitter or other social media user in Edmonton, you should be receiving an invitation soon! The invite will contain all of the other relevant details.

For more information on the new building, check out Randall Stout on the new Art Gallery of Alberta. For updates about the AGA, follow yourAGA on Twitter!

See you there!

Olympic Torch Relay in Edmonton

I have never seen Churchill Square as packed full of people as it was tonight for the Olympic Torch Relay celebration! Olympian Doreen Ryan ran the final leg of the relay, and lit the “celebration cauldron” shortly after 7pm. You could just feel the energy moving through the crowd, despite the relative cold!

Olympic Torch in Edmonton

Getting setup in Churchill Square

Olympic Torch in Edmonton

City Hall was nicely colored for the festivities

Olympic Torch in Edmonton

The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra performed the Olympic music by John Williams

Olympic Torch in Edmonton

The Square starting to fill up

Olympic Torch in Edmonton

Lots of entertainment

The most energetic of the performances

Olympic Torch in Edmonton

Clear path for Doreen Ryan

Olympic Torch in Edmonton

Churchill Square full of people

Olympic Torch in Edmonton

The Olympic Torch appears!

The final leg of the Edmonton relay

Olympic Torch in Edmonton

Celebration Cauldron and dignitaries

The Journal has a nice recap of the event here. You can see the rest of my photos here. For more excellent photos from the event, check out Bruce Clarke’s blog. This was potentially the most photographed moment in Edmonton’s history though, so I’m sure there are thousands more photos that will appear soon!

Go Canada Go!

Torch Relay Reporter Chris Wheeler comes to Edmonton

Today I had the pleasure of hosting Chris Wheeler, a video journalist capturing the Olympic Flame as it makes its way throughout the country. I was asked by EEDC a few weeks ago if I’d be interested in the opportunity, and I said absolutely. I love Edmonton and I love meeting new people, so it was good fit for me! EEDC regularly hosts travel media from around the world, something that most Edmontonians probably don’t know, but which absolutely makes sense to do.

DISCLOSURE: I got paid for my time today, but I am not getting paid for this blog post.

Chris is the iCoke Torch Relay Reporter, a project of Coca-Cola, the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC), and Tourism BC. This is the seventh time that Coca-Cola has sponsored the Olympic Torch Relay! So far the videos have been getting lots of views and Chris says that as he works his way west, the excitement is definitely building.

I started today by meeting Chris at the airport. He was in Saskatoon until very early this morning, and I quickly learned that the last 75 or so days of his life have consisted of “wake up, shoot footage all day, then edit/upload/sleep/travel”. It’s a grueling schedule, but one that Chris is passionate about!

Welcome to Edmonton

We first made our way to the new Art Gallery of Alberta, where we got a very brief tour amongst all the construction that is still going on. Chris interviewed AGA Board Chair Allan Scott, and I think was really amazed at how long he has been working to make the new AGA a reality for Edmonton. I’m very excited for the new AGA building, which officially opens on January 31, and I can’t wait to see it all finished!

Torch Reporter in Edmonton!

Next we walked to Blue Plate Diner for a quick lunch – tasty as always! It was really interesting to hear from Chris about the places he’s been on the trip, and some of the challenges he has faced along the way. One of the biggest, of course, is bandwidth. Chris shoots all his videos in high-definition, so even after editing and finalizing a video the files are still quite large, and hotels typically don’t have the fastest Internet. It’s pretty amazing that Chris has managed to continue posting new videos every few days!

Lunch at Blue Plate Diner

Our next stop was West Edmonton Mall, and more specifically, Sea Lions’ Rock. We didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out that Chris was able to get up close and personal with Pablo, the largest of the sea lions. Chris got to hug Pablo, and even got a big kiss! We also stayed for the scheduled show, something I haven’t seen in quite a while. It’s very entertaining, and is definitely something to check out at least once! Right after we left, Rick Mercer and Danielle Smith showed up for a shoot. Both Chris and I are RMR fans, but resisted the temptation to interrupt them.

Torch Reporter in Edmonton!

Torch Reporter in Edmonton!

Chris is in Edmonton all day tomorrow as well, filming the Torch Relay and related festivities (on ShareEdmonton). After that he’ll be on his way to other locations in Alberta and eventually, back to Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Best of luck with the remainder of your trip Chris!

Thanks again to EEDC for the opportunity. You can see the rest of my photos from today here. Keep an eye on Chris’ YouTube channel for the Edmonton video, which should be up in a few days.

Edmonton Notes for 1/9/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Winter Light 2010Winter Light 2010

Recap: Mispon Winter Light Gala 2010

Winter Light 2010 kicked off this evening with the Mispon Gala, “a whimsical event that launches Edmonton’s winter festival season.” Winter Light started last year and is meant to showcase Edmonton as a beautiful and interesting winter city. The gala took place at City Hall and included light installations, music and dance performances, and free food! The word “mispon” means “it’s snowing” in Cree, and while there were no snowflakes falling tonight, there was an odd sort of ice fog hanging over downtown. At –19 C (and wind chill of about –26 C) the temperature tonight was actually warmer than it was for the start of Winter Light last year.

Winter Light 2010Winter Light 2010

Unfortunately, the temperature was about the only thing that went up this year! The entire event seemed smaller than in 2009. I arrived at City Hall just before 5pm and found Churchill Square and the skating ring and steps out front completely deserted, save for the three Winter Light people manning the fire stations and a couple others. There was a skate performance right at 4:30pm that I missed, sadly, but I still expected to find some people outside – it is a winter festival after all! I suppose they had trouble with attendance last year too though, so maybe it was wise to focus just on City Hall this year.

Indoor activities included music by Johnny Quazar and the Swingbots, and dance performances by Kristine Nutting’s Warm Up Burlesque. The music was quite good, the dance wasn’t for me 🙂 They did have a neat balloon drop at the end of it though! Food was once again provided by NAIT and included bannock with saskatoon marmalade, baked beans with sourdough crostini, and glazed meatballs. There was also hot chocolate and iced tea. Very tasty! Unfortunately there weren’t very many people in attendance to enjoy it all.

Winter Light 2010Winter Light 2010

John Mahon, Councillor Tony Caterina, Pamela Anthony, Christy Morin, Shirley Low, and Ritchie Velthuis were all on hand tonight to bring greetings and a heads up on the upcoming Winter Light events. The next one is Deep Freeze (on ShareEdmonton), which takes place Saturday and Sunday on Alberta Avenue.

Pamela, who is the director of Winter Light, also thanked the sponsors. Apparently the $1.5 million spent this year and last wasn’t enough – Citytv, Pattison, and Canadian Tire are among the event’s sponsors. Winter Light might stretch over 10 weeks, but it’s really just 11 events, the biggest 3 of which would happen with or without Winter Light. Given that so much was established last year (like the website, tents, giveaways, etc) I find myself questioning again whether the money is being spent wisely or not.

Winter Light 2010

As with last year’s opening ceremonies, tonight was just marketing for the rest of Winter Light. There were some positive things, such as the very cool snowshoe lanterns by Dylan Toymaker, but I came away mostly unimpressed. I hope that the rest of Winter Light 2010 will blow me away! You can see my photos from this evening at Flickr, and some video at YouTube.

UPDATE: Here are Sharon’s thoughts on the event.

Edmonton Notes for 1/2/2010

Welcome to 2010! Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Edmonton Tech in 2009

What another fantastic year for tech in Edmonton! I think 2009 had an excellent mix of events, product launches, company successes, and much more. Below I have tried to recap as much of it as possible. I did my first recap post like this last year – you can read it here.

STIRR in EdmontonCrazedCodersFree beer! London PrideDemoCampEdmonton9Start Me UpENTS Grand OpeningLeveraging Technical Expertise Locally

Events

Again we had a great year for DemoCamp, with five events (five, six, seven, eight, nine). The year started off with STIRR, a networking event for tech founders, funders, and others. In early March, the Alberta Entrepreneurs Bootcamp took place at the University of Alberta. Our second BarCamp event was held in June. In July, Edmonton’s first UXCamp took place. The annual Edmonton Code Camp took place in September. Though it wasn’t exactly a tech event, open data played a large role at ChangeCamp which took place in October. That same weekend, Flash in the Can (FITC) brought Flash developers together. November started with the annual ICE Conference, featuring a new startup focused event called Start Me Up. A couple of weeks later, the Leveraging Technical Expertise Locally open house took place – the pilot will get underway in Q1 2010. Also in November the City hosted an Open Data Workshop, another big step on the path toward open data in Edmonton. The month finished off with the iPhone Dev Camp. The year finished off with the first Startup Drinks, put on by Digital Alberta and Startup Edmonton. Watch for much more from them in 2010.

There were many active tech groups in Edmonton this year. The Social Web Meetup continued going strong. The Edmonton Flash User Group held a number of monthly events, in addition to FITC. Agile Edmonton had a great second year, with regularly monthly events. Other active groups included the Edmonton .NET User Group, the Edmonton Microsoft User Group, the Edmonton Web Design Meetup, and TechWing Wednesday.

With 2009 being the breakout year for Twitter, it’s no surprise that the service featured prominently in Edmonton’s tech scene this year. The first Photography Tweetup took place in April, and the group met a few more times later in the year. Also in April was EdmontonTweetup4, and in June we held EdmontonTweetup5. We held two Twestival events this year, in February and September. In November, the community once again got together to wrap gifts for Santas Anonymous. The last major tweetup of the year, the Holiday Tweetup, took place in December. There were many other smaller tweetups throughout the year. I’ll have more on Twitter in Edmonton in 2009 next week.

News

It’s hard to keep track of all of the news that happens in a year, but here are some of 2009’s most interesting Edmonton tech stories:

And here’s the collection of Edmonton Startup Index posts at Techvibes:

2010

I’m really excited for 2010. I think we’ll see accelerating growth and change in the tech community, based upon the strong foundation laid during the last two years. Here are a few things to watch for:

All the best in the new year!

Have another event, story, or link that should be included above? Let me know in the comments or via email. Thanks!