Tag: events

Live Tweeting at the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra (ESO) Sunday Masters

Last year, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra invited a number of local bloggers to live-blog Symphony Under the Sky. I remember reading Adam’s posts from the event, and thought it was a cool initiative; a rather unique way to try to get a different crowd interested in the ESO. When I was invited to do the same this year for Carmina Burana, I readily agreed (I received two free tickets and a CD previewing the 2009/2010 season).

Of course, I decided to live-tweet the event rather than live-blog it – you can see my tweets here. I tried to do a mix of details from the program and observations. Two other bloggers sat next to me, though they weren’t live-blogging: Jim Tustian (a former photographer for the ESO) and The Choir Girl. We were up in the Gallery, which was sold out despite not normally being open for Sunday performances.

The Winspear Centre

Snagged this photo before the show started, ignoring the sign about recording devices!

The first piece was Alexander Borodin’s Prince Igor: Polovtsian Dances. It was immediately recognizable. At just 13 minutes for the performance, I was left wanting more! I’m a sucker for the contrast of Disney-esque sections and the familiar booming sections.

The second piece was Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, consisting of all eight movements: Prologue, Pastoral, Nocturne, Elegy, Dirge, Hymn, Sonnet, Epilogue. I was thankful the performance was just 23 minutes long, because I couldn’t get into it. Before the performance started, conductor William Eddins said that you need a strong tenor, strong horn player, and strong string section to perform Britten’s piece. He joked that getting all three was as likely as the Edmonton Oilers winning the Stanley Cup this year!

The main event was after the intermission – Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Again, this one was instantly recognizable, though with about 65 minutes of music there were definitely long sections I had never heard before. I enjoyed it all, but my favorite part was definitely Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi, O Fortuna which both opened and closed the performance.

As I mentioned, William Eddins was the conductor. He’s currently in his fourth season as Music Director for the ESO. Performers today included Allene Hackleman, French horn, Bonaventura Bottone, tenor, Illana Davidson, soprano, and Hugh Russell, baritone. The Cantilon Chamber Chorus and the Ukrainian Male Chorus of Edmonton provided the rest of the vocals.

The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and Social Media

Before the show and during the intermission, I had the chance to ask Philip Paschke, ESO’s New Media Specialist (he must be one of the only people in the city with a title like that), about their travels into the world of social media. He told me their website needs work, and in the future will hopefully incorporate the ESO Blog, and potentially Twitter, Facebook, and other services. Like so many organizations, they are hearing a lot about Twitter and the other social media tools and are struggling to understand how to best make use of them.

I think the blogger initiative is a good one. There’s another concert being blogged on April 16th, and Philip hopes to get at least one more before the season ends. One of the biggest challenges thus far has been fielding complaints about “the inconsiderate texters” from other concert-goers. It’s definitely a challenge to make the click-clacking of keys seem welcome inside The Winspear Centre (fortunately my BlackBerry was relatively silent).

I’m not sure if my live-tweets were of interest to anyone, but I had fun doing it. If nothing else, tweets and blog posts during a concert just help to remind others that the ESO is still putting on great concerts.

Thanks to Philip for inviting me to participate – I really enjoyed the show, and I look forward to the ESO’s future adventures with social media.

Edmonton Notes for 4/4/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

EdmontonTweetup4 – April 7th

It’s time for another tweetup! Though it has been nearly six months since EdmontonTweetup3, there have been many other events since then, including Twestival. It’s great to see the community using the wiki to organize tweetups of all kinds! Still, it’s nice to have an “official” tweetup every now and then.

Join us a week from now for EdmontonTweetup4:

WHO: Twitterers and the Twitter-curious in Edmonton and area!
WHAT: An event to meet one another in person.
WHERE: Vintage Lounge, 10124 124th Street (map)
WHEN: Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 6:30pm
WHY: Because you’ll have a great time and will meet fascinating people!

Thanks to Brittney (@britl) for helping me get this going. You can follow the @edmontontweetup account for updates.

There are almost 30 people registered on the wiki already! You don’t have to add your name there, but it does help us if we know roughly how many people are attending. You’re welcome to simply drop by though!

If you’re new to Twitter, you might want to read this article I wrote for Connect2Edmonton.

See you there!

Edmonton Notes for 3/28/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Earth Hour 2009 in Edmonton

Edmonton is one of five Canadian cities taking part in Earth Hour 2009, the “lights out phenomenon” led by the World Wildlife Fund. No matter your take on the event (I’m not a supporter), many people in our city will be shutting off their lights and other electronics for an hour on Saturday evening. The official time is from 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM on Saturday, March 28th, 2009.

Here are some Earth Hour events taking place in Edmonton:

Know of any others? Let me know!

It’s a little silly to think that we still need to raise awareness for climate change (in my opinion), but that’s all Earth Hour can hope to accomplish. Last year, Epcor initially said that power consumption increased during Earth Hour but later revised that to say that consumption dropped 1.5%. In other words, it had no real effect. I doubt this year will be any different.

You can learn more about Earth Hour in Canada here or on Facebook, and if you’d like to register online, you can do so here. According to the Edmonton Examiner, just 1400 Edmontonians registered for Earth Hour 2008.

Was Edmonton’s Winter Light 2009 a success?

Edmonton’s first Winter Light festival wrapped up on Saturday evening in Churchill Square with an event called Illuminations, described as a “final celebration of winter spirit”. I was there to take in the sights and sounds, just as I was on January 8th when Winter Light began its ten week celebration of winter. I found Illuminations enjoyable enough. I bought a Winter Light toque and filled my mug with hot chocolate (though it was more like warm chocolate and they were providing disposable cups, a step backward from the opening ceremonies). We wandered around looking at the displays, soaking up a bit of heat at each of the fire pits. We took some photos.

Winter Light: IlluminationsSharon & Mack

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.

I think that sentiment might apply to Winter Light 2009 as a whole. It wasn’t an outright failure, but I’m not sure it was the major success that organizer Pamela Anthony and her team were hoping for. She described the event to The Journal as “an extremely successful research project.” Successful enough for another year?

That remains to be seen. The city spent $750,000 on the festival this year. Total attendance is estimated at between 50,000 and 80,000 people, plus another 150,000 who attended the shared events such as Ice on Whyte (events which would have happened anyway). In comparison, the annual Heritage Festival costs about $500,000 to run and attracts well over 300,000 people. In 2006, the Edmonton International Fringe Festival had expenses of $1,552,797 (pdf – excluding artist ticket revenue) and total site attendance of more than 500,000 people.

Perhaps those comparisons aren’t fair. A warm, sunny day in August is a much easier sell than snow and temperatures well below freezing in February or March. So was Winter Light successful as a winter festival? The jury’s still out on that one too. Here’s what Edmonton Sun columnist Graham Hicks said on Friday:

Google "Harbin Winter Festival Pictures" to see what’s possible. This shouldn’t be so difficult. We have friends. Edmonton is twinned with Harbin and Alberta with Japan’s Hokkaido province, where Sapporo is located.

He felt the inaugural festival failed to “capture the public imagination” and was unable to move beyond the weather. I certainly didn’t hear many people talking about Winter Light in a “must attend” sort of way. And I still think that Illuminate Yaletown made better use of light than Illuminations. Bottom line: there’s definitely room for improvement.

City Council will review a report from the Winter Light organizers later this spring. Final attendance figures will no doubt be important in determining whether or not Winter Light happens again next year, but Mayor Mandel seems keen to support it anyway: “We can’t forget the idea that our job is to make sure that citizens have opportunity…this is a way for people in the wintertime to get out and enjoy our city.”

I still think the concept is a great one, and I agree that there’s lots of potential for winter tourism. My guess is that Winter Light will have to be much improved in 2010 to become a permanent fixture on Edmonton’s festival calendar, however.

What did you think of Winter Light 2009?

Edmonton Notes for 3/21/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Northern Voice 2009: My Post-Mortem Post

I’ve been meaning to write this for nearly a month now! Better late than never, I guess. For the fifth straight February in a row, I was in Vancouver for Northern Voice. While there are some similarities from year-to-year, each edition of Northern Voice is unique. Last year I was a little disappointed, but not enough to keep me away.

This year, I had a much better time.

I’m not sure why exactly, because some of my criticisms from last year are still relevant. The event still wasn’t downtown. The wireless was still spotty. But many of my criticisms were addressed. The website was completely revamped this year. The schedule was much more interesting and varied.

Most important of all, there were a lot of people new to blogging and social media in attendance this year. That surprised me, especially given that the conference sold out so quickly. I think that having so many new people brought some excitement back to the event!

Some other highlights for me:

  • Rob Cottingham’s keynote entitled Teh Funny. He was hilarious and completely entertaining, I loved it!
  • Like last year, lunch was included, and it was great! Very yummy.
  • Finally got to me Rob from Techvibes in person.
  • No surprise here, but Twitter was used heavily during the conference. It was great to be able to follow some of the other sessions I couldn’t get to.
  • Sun and grass. It was nice to get away from the snow for a weekend!

On Monday, the organizers sent out a post-conference survey. Due to the Olympics next year, Northern Voice isn’t going to be held in February. Combined with the desire to address the increasing demand for the event, I think it’s safe to say that NV 2010 is going to look quite a bit different than past years. That’ll be a good thing, in my opinion. It never hurts to change things up once in a while.

See you in 2010!

Edmonton Notes for 3/16/2009

I didn’t touch a computer all weekend while I was in Calgary, so I missed posting these on Saturday. Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting for the week ending 3/14/2009:

Will Speaker Ken Kowalski come to ChangeCamp?

I’m not sure how much overlap there is between the readers of my blog and the readers of Dave Cournoyer’s blog, but I wanted to highlight a post that Dave made on Wednesday. He wrote a letter to Ken Kowalski, current Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Here’s a small excerpt:

I would urge you to revisit your initial reaction to the use of online communications from the floor of the Assembly. I agree that Members should respect the institution and proud traditions of the Legislature, but it is important to understand the limitless potential that these technologies now play in connecting elected Members to citizens outside the Dome.

I think Dave’s letter is very well-written, not to mention incredibly important. Banning the use of Twitter and other online communications tools from the floor of the Assembly is shortsighted, to say the least. I suspect that Speaker Kowalski, like so many others, is just afraid of social media because he doesn’t understand it.

This is the kind of issue I hope we can address with ChangeCamp Edmonton. We need to help politicians like Speaker Kowalski get over their fear of social media. We need to help educate them about its power. And we need to make it clear that we want social media to play an important part in our democracy.

I look forward to the discussion, should Speaker Kowalski be willing to participate.