Tag: events

artsScene Edmonton Launch Party

Tonight I attended the artsScene Edmonton Launch Party at Planet Ze Design Center in Old Strathcona. I was quite excited when I heard back in April that the initiative was coming to Edmonton, because I think it’s a great idea. From the press release:

artsScene is a new initiative that brings together young business and creative professionals (ages 18-40) to grow the arts, culture and creative industries in our community. artsScene is an initiative of Business for the Arts, a national non-profit organization dedicated to promoting business leadership in the arts, facilitating funding relationships and connecting business volunteers to the arts. artsScene has been established in Toronto, Halifax and Montreal, and now Edmonton and Calgary.

Tonight’s event was a party, one of five different types of events that artScene will be hosting. Others include BoardLink (speed networking), Roundtables (breakfast sessions), Behind the Scenes (engage with artists), and a Creative Summit (two-day conference). The next event will be a BoardLink in June, followed by a summer party in August.

artsScene EdmontonartsScene EdmontonartsScene EdmontonSharon & MackMichael & KenCadence Weapon

Featured artists this evening included Denise Lefebvre, Patrick Higgins, and Shelby Wallace. Other special guests were Edmonton’s newest poet laureate Roland Pemberton (aka Cadence Weapon), and DJ Marc it Fresh (Marcus Coldeway). CBC Radio3 was also in attendance. Organizers said over 100 tickets were sold ahead of time, and there was strong interest at the door. I’d say there was easily 125 people there by the time I left. It was a good mix of people too! SmibsTV was recording some interviews, so keep an eye on their site for video.

I think artsScene events could quickly become “must attend” events for creative professionals in Edmonton. Check out the website, and stay connected – artsScene Edmonton is on Twitter, Facebook, and has a mailing list. You can see my photos from this evening here.

TransitCamp Edmonton – Saturday, May 30th

Edmonton’s first TransitCamp is less than two days away! We’ll be getting underway at about noon on Saturday at the World Trade Centre downtown. You can find all the details on our website. I’m excited for the event and I hope you are too!

We’ve got some more details to share now. You’ll have a couple opportunities to check out the ETS Platinum bus during the event, and we’ve confirmed some guest presenters. Toronto City Councillor Adam Giambrone will be joining us via Skype to talk about Transit City. TransLink’s Online Communications Advisor Jhenifer Pabillano will also join us via Skype to discuss the popular Buzzer blog, and TransLink’s other social media and community engagement initiatives.

Here’s the tentative schedule:

TIME ROOM 1 ROOM 2
12:00pm Welcome & Intro
Mack Male & Councillor Don Iveson
12:05pm Edmonton Transit IT
Chris Moore, Chief Information Officer, CoE
12:30pm 100-Year LRT Vision
Rhonda Toohey, General Supervisor
Strategic Planning Section, Transportation Planning, CoE		 Open
1:00pm Transit City
Adam Giambrone, Chair of the Toronto Transit Commission
via Skype		 Open
1:30pm Data for Developers
Mack Male		 Open
2:00pm ETS Platinum Tour Open
2:30pm ETS Platinum Tour Open
3:00pm Jhenifer Pabillano, Online Communications Advisor, Translink
via Skype		 Open
3:30pm Open Open
4:00pm Wrap Up
After-Party Rose & Crown Pub (10235 101st Street)

As you can see, we’ve got a location for the official after-party! We’ll be meeting at the Rose & Crown (10235 101st Street) to continue the day’s discussions over drinks and food. Feel free to join us even if you’re unable to attend TransitCamp during the day. It should be fun!

See you on Saturday!

Edmonton Notes for 5/16/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Recap: DemoCampEdmonton7

Another successful DemoCamp is in the books! Tonight was our seventh here in Edmonton. I didn’t actually count the attendance this time, but I’d say it was a bit less than DCE6. Still a strong turnout and some great demos. Tonight we did something new as well – a “hack” demo. The idea is to show one really rough project at each event. Reg and Sean started things off with TwitClipper, a bookmarklet service to tweet highlighted text via Twitter’s OAuth API. Impressively, it was built on the 3-hour drive down to Calgary for their last DemoCamp!

We had five demos tonight:

  • Chris Olsen showed us LeagueSmart, a recreational sports league management application. It’s unique in that it attempts to get team admins and players involved in addition to the league organizers.
  • James Matsuba showed us IdleTime, a service that aims to help you make money with your spare time. It’s like Monster.com for part-time and one-off jobs. You can both search for and post jobs.
  • Shawn Abbott showed us one of his portfolio companies, Tynt. They have demoed before, but now have a new direction and app called Tracer. It lets you see what people are copying and pasting from your site.
  • Andre Prefontaine showed us MapKat, a map-based service that lets you create a diary and slideshow of your trips and adventures.
  • Sean Healy and Joel Jackson showed us SnackPanda, or tried to. They had a bunch of technical issues, but essentially it’s an online ordering system for restaurants that do delivery.

The general feeling I got from talking to people afterward was that all the demos were fairly impressive. The favorite seemed to be Tynt, probably because of their slick “copy/paste heat map” which shows you the sections of text on your website that were copied the most. I thought IdleTime looked great too, a very polished UI.

Tweet of the night definitely goes to Graham Batty, who said:

Why does everyone always want to show us their signup page? They’re all the same. #democampyeg

So true. Perhaps we’ll have to incorporate that into the unofficial DemoCamp rules!

Two event announcements tonight: TransitCampEdmonton, taking place on May 30th, and BarCampEdmonton2, taking place on June 13th. Stay tuned for details on both of those!

Thanks to everyone who came out tonight. See you at the next event!

UPDATE: Rob Davy posted some videos of the evening here. Thanks Rob!

Winter Light 2009 by the numbers

At tomorrow’s City Council meeting, John Mahon, Executive Director of the Edmonton Arts Council, will share the Final Report on Winter Light Festival 2009. This year’s festival is being described as successful, so the Community Services Committee will recommend:

  1. That one time funding of $450,000 from 2009 Council Contingency, to fund the Winter Light Festival 2010, be approved.
  2. That Administration, in consultation with Edmonton Arts Council, prepare a base funding budget submission of $750,000 for continuation of a winter festival.

Let’s take a look at some numbers from the final report (in Word format):

  • Beginning on January 8 and ending on March 21, 2009, Winter Light produced 9 events, supported 3 existing winter festival events, 1 City winter event, and produced 15 community workshops.
  • Roughly 12,000 people attended the 9 events produced by Winter Light.
  • Over 62,000 people attended all Winter Light related events.
  • The estimated impact on the local economy was $1.7 million.
  • A total of 55 local producers, marketers, artists and recreation workers were directly employed by Winter Light.
  • To continue with the model used this year, it will cost the city $750,000 in 2010 and $675,000 in 2011.
  • Private sector fundraising will attempt to raise at least 10% of the total budget to be used in 2011.
  • An audience survey showed 50% of respondents were between the ages of 30 and 45, roughly 15% were between 18 and 30, and 32% were aged 45 to 60.
  • Over 94% of respondents said “yes” to the question “Do you think Winter Light was a good investment for the city?”
  • The winterlight.ca website received 3 million visits in 3 months.
  • There were more than 800 print, radio, television, and website articles mentioning Winter Light.
  • Over 1500 people subscribed to the Winter Light mailing list.

And some numbers related to expenses:

  • Deep Freeze Festival received $27,000 from Winter Light.
  • Ice on Whyte received $15,000 from Winter Light.
  • Silver Skate received $37,000 from Winter Light.
  • Total revenue for Winter Light 2009 was $808,500 (all but $28,500 of which came from the City).
  • Total expenses were $807,672.
  • A total of $119,031 was spent on a marketing campaign which included outdoor advertising (billboards and buses), print advertising, radio advertising, and electronic advertising.

The report also includes a goals & aspirations assessment. Here’s a wordle of the report (with Edmonton, Winter, and Light removed):

Back in March I wondered if Winter Light 2009 was a success. I concluded that while the concept is sound, there’s lots of room for improvement when it comes to the execution. Final attendance numbers were much lower than originally estimated, which I think supports that argument.

The challenge for Winter Light 2010 (if approved) will be to increase attendance and impact without increasing expense. Hopefully a strong foundation was established this year for accomplishing that.

2009 Festival Volunteer Fair – May 13th

As summer approaches, the number of festivals taking place in the Edmonton area will start to increase! We’ve got some really great ones, including Capital EX, the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival (25th anniversary this year) and the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival. You can find a full list at FestivalCity.ca.

All of these festivals require great volunteers, of course. That’s why Volunteer Edmonton is hosting another Festival Volunteer Fair on Wednesday:

This "one-stop festival volunteer shopping" experience is your chance to learn more about Edmonton’s diverse festivals all in one place and sign up to become a volunteer for one OR more festivals!

The event takes place on Wednesday, May 13th from 3pm to 8pm at the TransAlta Arts Barns (map). It’s completely free to attend, and you can take a look at the list of participating festivals here (warning: pdf). Last year around 20 festivals participated; this year, that number has grown to 32. Also new this year – increased marketing. I’ve seen posters and numerous online mentions of the fair, so I hope there’s a great turnout!

From the press release:

The estimated total number of volunteers required by all festivals is about 8,000 people. Statistics show that about 48 per cent of Edmontonians currently volunteer for a variety of worthwhile causes.

Let’s keep that percentage growing – tell a friend about the Festival Volunteer Fair!

Edmonton Notes for 5/9/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Questionmark Open House in Edmonton!

It might be hard to tell, but Twittering isn’t actually my day job! As some of you know, I’m a software developer for a company called Questionmark. Though the company is based in London, UK, we have a growing team here in Edmonton. We recently moved into a new office downtown, and we’d like to invite you to come check it out and get to know us a little better:

Date: Friday, May 15, 2009
Time: 4:00pm
Location: #806, 10080 Jasper Avenue (map)
Cost: Free

Feel free to stop by anytime after 4pm! We’ll have food, wine, beer, etc. If you’re planning to come, please RSVP by emailing me at mack.male@questionmark.com.

Also taking place that evening is the #twilightYEG Guest Bartender Friday, in support of the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation. It’s happening at Lux, which is right across the street from us, so join us for a drink at the office and then head over to Lux to support a worthy cause!

If you’re a local software developer, definitely stop by and say hello – we’re hiring!

Job Description for Software Developer & Open House Invite

Hope to see you on the 15th!

DemoCampEdmonton7

Are you ready for another DemoCamp? Our next event here in Edmonton is coming up fast, on May 13th! Join us at the University of Alberta to see what local tech entrepreneurs are up to. As usual, we’ll head over to RATT after the demos for Edmonton’s best networking opportunity for tech professionals. If you’re new to DemoCamp, check out my recap of our last event. Here are the details for #7:

Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Time: 6:30pm (and drinks/networking afterward)
Location: E1 017, 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.

This time we’ve got a fantastic new sign up page for both attendees and anyone interested in demoing at this event or in the future. No more wiki craziness – just enter your name and click Register!

Help us spread the word – check out the BarCamp Edmonton blog and our Facebook group. Be sure to tag your tweets, posts, photos, and other content with democampyeg.

Hope to see you there!

Edmonton Notes for 5/2/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes: