Tag: news

How Friday’s AMBER Alert unfolded on Twitter

On Friday afternoon, RCMP issued an AMBER Alert for 12-year-old Jacob Telford. Thankfully, he was found “in good condition” after just a few hours. For a while that evening, it seemed like every tweet in Edmonton was related to the incident. At one point during the evening, @tkoriordan said “So I’ve been away from Twitter all day. Somebody want to fill me in on what I missed?” to which @Kiri_W replied “About a billion amber alert retweets.” Curiosity got the better of me, so I looked at the data to see how the AMBER Alert unfolded on Twitter.

Here are the first four tweets that appeared:

Just heard about amber alert, young boy from #shpk, check out alert and key an eye out
Oct 29 at 2:11 PM via ÜberTwitter

1st time I have hear the emerg broadcast have a real emerg. Its ano amber alert for a little boy missing from Sherwood Park
Oct 29 at 2:11 PM via Twitter for BlackBerry®

Amber Alert in #YEG child abducted in #sherwoodpark. #Edmonton #AMBERALERT!
Oct 29 at 2:15 PM via Echofon

AMBER ALERT: 12-year-old Jacob Telford taken from Sherwood Park last night – White 2002 Ford Taurus – BC Plate: V2P4J3
Oct 29 at 2:17 PM via Seesmic Desktop

Actually, Rob McAnally had one up before the main CTV Edmonton account did, but it seems that tweet has since been deleted. CTV posted the first link to a new story at 2:29 PM (that link has since been clicked over 1000 times).

From Matthew’s first tweet at 2:11:17 PM until 7:23:43 PM when Jeremy Lye’s tweet appeared declaring that the AMBER Alert had been cancelled (the first to do so), a total of 958 tweets were posted (mentioning either the AMBER Alert or Jacob Telford). That works out to just over 3 tweets per minute (in the first hour, it was nearly 7 tweets per minute). By 5 PM the next day, the total number of related tweets had grown slightly to 1126.

Of those, 983 were retweets. Here’s what the retweets looked like:

They weren’t quite the first to tweet the start or end of the AMBER Alert (they were about six minutes behind both times), but CTV Edmonton was definitely the most visible account to do so, and that is reflected in the number of retweets they received.

In total, 710 different Twitter users tweeted (or retweeted) about the incident. Just less than half were located in the Edmonton area, while some were as far away as Brazil, Russia, and Kuwait (based on the location in their profiles). I suppose there’s always a chance that their retweets could have helped (maybe they have followers in Canada) but I still have to wonder why someone who is so far away would tweet about something like this. Is it because it’s easy to click the retweet button? Is it because we all like to feel as though we’re helping? I’m not sure.

If you add up the number of followers those 710 users have, you get a potential reach of more than 288,000 users. That’s not accounting for overlap though, so the actual number is probably quite a bit less. And not all of those users will have been online to see the tweets. Still, there’s no question that the AMBER Alert was seen far and wide on Friday.

Here’s what I found interesting about all of this:

  • 85% of all the tweets posted about the incident appeared before we knew the boy was safe
  • 60% of all the tweets posted about the incident were simply retweets of CTV Edmonton’s tweets
  • It took less than 20 minutes for the first news story link to appear
  • After 24 hours, almost no one was tweeting about it anymore

You can learn more about the AMBER Alert Program here.

Edmonton Notes for 10/31/2010

Happy Halloween! Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Ed Stelmach meets with mayors of Edmonton & Calgary
Mayor Mandel and new Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi met with Premier Ed Stelmach on Thursday.

This blog has posters!
Local fashion blog The Edmonton Vestiary has posters!

Edmonton Notes for 10/24/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Edmonton

The Edmonton Journal has teamed up with Transcend Coffee for the i ❤ #yeg contest!

Edmonton

It was a wet, cold day in Edmonton today. Better than snow though!

UPDATE (9 hours later): Guess I spoke too soon on the snow! And really, it isn’t so bad!

First Snow

Edmonton Notes for 10/17/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Edmonton’s fifth Homeless Connect took place today the Shaw Conference Centre. The most popular service among guests, dentistry, was back this time. More volunteers showed up this morning than there were jobs for, which is great news considering the line-up for guests to enter was solid right through 1pm. Congrats to the Homeward Trust organizers and all the volunteers for making this important event happen again!

Homeless Connect Edmonton 5

Homeless Connect Edmonton 5

Edmonton Notes for 10/9/2010

Here are my weekly notes:

City Market Final DayCity Market Final Day

City Market Final Day
Today was the final day for the City Market on 104 Street, at least for this season. The market will be back at Olde Time Fair on the Square, as well as for a few winter dates in Churchill Square.

Edmonton
It’s definitely fall in Edmonton.

Edmonton Notes for 10/2/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Edmonton Heritage Council
The first ever Edmonton Heritage Council symposium was held this weekend at the Sutton Place Hotel.

Edmonton Notes for 9/25/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

City Market
The new 4th Street Promenade brand was officially unveiled at the City Market today.

Edmonton Corn Maze
It was a great day today for the Edmonton Corn Maze!

Double props to the Edmonton Journal

As you probably know, I don’t shy away from criticizing the Edmonton Journal (or other local media). Though I don’t always succeed, I do try to be constructive, because I think there’s incredible opportunity facing The Journal. Two such opportunities: data-driven journalism, and real-time reporting.

Props to Brent Wittmeier & Lucas Timmons

Neither Brent nor Lucas have been with The Journal for very long, and maybe that’s why they were able to succeed with the unclaimed balances story. Brent was voluntold to write about the Bank of Canada’s unclaimed balances, which he did by teaming up with data journalist Lucas to create a searchable online database for Edmonton. They put together a three-part story, but it didn’t stop there:

We also got quite the response. Dozens of phone calls and emails poured in, and I began working on a follow-up story. And then two. And now, three. Some of these other stories are even better than the original… There should be an extensive piece either later this week or next weekend.

Start with some data, and more often than not a story will emerge. Brent noted: “In truth, they ended up being far more interesting stories than I thought.”

Props to Paula Simons & David Staples

I’m glad to see that Paula and David (with some help from other colleagues such as Todd Babiak) have started a new blog focused on local affairs, called The Edmonton Commons. They used it very effectively on nomination day to share stories about the candidates and the official start of the election. They’ve also got the #yegvote hashtag embedded on the page. Though they have cross-posted some columns, I’m hopeful that their use of the blog as way to forego the print deadline will expand.

Here is Paula’s first post, and here is David’s first post. I like what David had to say:

The sharpening of ideas, the accumulation of good information and the discarding of bad information is at the core of strong decision making. It’s what we hope to do here at this forum. In the past, there were more barriers in regards to entering into the great conversation of civil society, even for a newspaper writer…the conversation was largely one-way. The Internet gives us a new tool that enables that conversation to flourish.

Time will tell how successful the two are with the blog (will they still be writing as often in three months as they do now) but I think they’re off to a great start.

Edmonton Notes for 9/18/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

DECL on Community League Day
Sharon and I joined the Downtown Edmonton Community League today. Consider joining your community league!

DECL on Community League Day
DECL celebrated Community League Day with Corn Fest. Free corn!

Envision Edmonton’s petition insufficient, City Centre Airport phased closure will continue

Yesterday the declaration of the City Clerk was released, stating that the petition put forward by Envision Edmonton was not sufficient, for two reasons:

  • There were no more than 73,657 valid signatures.
  • The petition was not brought within 60 days of Council’s decision to close the airport.

According to the Municipal Government Act (MGA) that means that City Council was not required to take any notice of the petition. They debated the issue in their final meeting before the election, and voted 10-3 against including a question on the ballot. The vote breakdown was exactly the same as it was in July 2009, when Council voted in favor of a phased closure of the City Centre Airport. Here are some of the quotes from the meeting:

  • “The decision to not put a question on the ballot is the right one for Edmonton.” – Mayor Mandel
  • “For some unknown reason it took 11 months to get a petition.” – Mayor Mandel
  • “This needs to end.” – Mayor Mandel
  • “This motion is the same year late as the petition. This needed to happen last year.” – Councillor Iveson
  • “I am not prepared to support something that could lead to 42 years of inefficient operation.” – Councillor Anderson
  • “Somebody has to have the guts to say enough is enough.” – Councillor Henderson
  • “I am prepared to stand up and say I did eight months of research on this issue.” – Councillor Krushell
  • “Is this the only big decision we’ve made in the last three years?” – Councillor Sohi

In both the meeting and a media briefing, we learned more about the petition verification process.

  • Roughly 80 staff worked for more than 3700 hours to verify the petition. About 60 of those staff were hired specifically for the verification process.
  • One of the first things the City had to do was photocopy every page of the petition. The copies and the originals are now stored in a vault, where they will remain for at least 5 years.
  • It turns out Envision Edmonton did not contact the City Clerk about its petition. If it had done so, it might have learned about the 60 day requirement.
  • Had the petition been valid and sufficient, the outcome of the question would have been binding for ten years. If Council had decided to put a question on the ballot anyway, its outcome would not have been binding.
  • The total cost for the verification is estimated at between $125,000 and $150,000.
  • Banister Research was hired to help complete the verification, which they did via telephone.
  • The petition signatories (addresses) were compared against both the Edmonton Elections database (current as of 2009) and SLIM (Spatial Land Inventory Management).
  • Since the July 2009 decision, the City has incurred costs of $12 million, while ERAA has incurred costs of more than $23 million.

Links

Lots of people have written about this already. Here are some relevant links:

Resources

PDF Municipal Government Act (2.4 MB)

PDF Declaration of the City Clerk (689 KB)

PDF Report on the Petition (55 KB)

Final Thoughts

I don’t for a second think the battle over the City Centre Airport is finished. I’m sure we’ll see additional challenges and fights in the weeks and months ahead. Edmonton Airports seems to think so as well, launching Share The Facts today. I am confident that City Council made the right decision yesterday however, and I think they’ll be rewarded for it on October 18.

Closing the City Centre Airport is the right decision for Edmonton’s future. Yesterday was simply another step along the way to making that future a reality.