Tag: travel

Hockey Hall of Fame

Post ImageAs I mentioned previously, Dickson and I went to the Hockey Hall of Fame yesterday while we were in Toronto. It was pretty cool to be Edmonton Oiler fans from Edmonton the day after we secured our spot in the Western Conference finals at the hall of fame for the great sport of hockey! I ended up posting 56 pictures of my trip, which you can check out at Flickr.

So like I said, I somehow thought the place would be bigger, area-wise. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still pretty big, just not the size I envisioned. There is a section for the IIHF and international hockey, the main trophy room, a section for NHL dynastys, a Legends section (with people like Gretzky), a local hockey section, a broadcast section, a historic merchandise section, a Montreal Canadians section, and a “shooting game” section. There’s also a couple of theatres, and a fairly large gift shop. I think I most enjoyed the dynasty section and the legends section, lots of really interesting stuff.

We got to the hall of fame around 11 AM, and there wasn’t that many people there. By the time we left, a large group of students had arrived and were creating quite a ruckus. The website says the average visit length is three hours, but were only there a little longer than an hour. I guess if you read everything and took in one of the shows in the theatres, you could be there quite a while.

I quite enjoyed my visit to the Hockey Hall of Fame, and I’d suggest that any hockey fan who gets the chance should check out it.

Toronto Trip Day 2

Well the conference wrapped up today, and aside from that, we didn’t do too much. We wandered around this evening trying to find a Wendy’s (for the recently returned Bacon Mushroom Melt) but came up empty. We settled for McDonalds instead (no shortage of those), where Dickson finally learned that the McDeals are gone (have been for weeks now!). We also watched more TV than we should have.

Tomorrow we’re going to visit the Hockey Hall of Fame, and in the evening, Ashish is joining us for the broadway production of The Lord of The Rings. Unfortunately, the show is the same time as the Oiler game, so I will be following along on my cell phone. If it’s really close near the end, I’m planning to ditch the show to find a TV. I am quite confident the Oilers will take the series tomorrow night however. If you’re in Edmonton, get some pictures of the parade (starts at noon) for me!

I’m still pretty tired, so I think I’ll sleep in a little tomorrow. Certainly not getting up at 7 again (5 in Edmonton) if I don’t have to! Hopefully the weather is nice here tomorrow, I hear it’s going to be lovely in Edmonton! Though I suppose it could be worse, I could be in Inuvik where they got a little bit of every season today (yep, it snowed!).

Toronto Trip Day 1

It’s amazing how fast we switched on to Eastern time – I am exhausted right about now, and it’s only 10:40 or so! Anyway, today was our first full day in Toronto, and it went fairly well. After the conference sessions ended we came back to hotel to relax for a bit, then met Ashish for dinner. The weather wasn’t particularly nice today, windy and cloudy earlier, and raining tonight.

As for Mesh, it has been great so far, though not what I was expecting. I guess I had in my head that a Web 2.0 conference would be very techy, with application demos and the like, when in reality Mesh has turned out to be the opposite. I get the sense there are far more business or otherwise non-tech people in the audience. The two streams today were Media and Society, with tomorrow focusing on Business and Marketing/PR. I think I am looking forward to tomorrow’s sessions more than todays.

On to day two!

Off to Mesh in Toronto

Post ImageDickson and I are off for Mesh in Toronto in a few hours. The conference is Canada’s first ever dedicated to Web 2.0, so I am really looking forward to it. As per usual, conference related posts will have the picture shown to the right, allowing you to skip right over them if you want! We should arrive in Toronto just before the start of the Oiler game tonight, so hopefully we won’t miss too much of it.

The conference runs Monday and Tuesday. We’re going to see The Lord of The Rings Broadway show on Wednesday, but aside from that, we’ve kept our schedules open. If you want to get together in TO, give me call (780.619.3864). If you need to get a hold of me for non-urgent things, email will work best.

Next post will likely be from Toronto!

In Toronto

We drove down to Toronto today after leaving Ottawa around 10 AM. We didn’t realize there was an extra drop charge on the car rental, but it still worked out to about the same or slightly cheaper than a flight. It didn’t take too long to get to the city, and the drive was actually pretty nice, but it took longer to find the place we were going! Thank goodness for MapPoint. We had a meeting with a colocation facility (Frontline) which went very well (they were nice enough to meet with us on Saturday). After the meeting, we called our good friend Ashish Patel!

Ashish was nice enough to take us on a tour of the IBM Toronto Software Lab where he works. I took a few pictures, but told him I wouldn’t post them (no need to find out if they have a blogging policy the hard way!). The place is pretty neat and is a world class IBM facility where WebSphere, Rational, Tivoli, Lotus and other software products are created (including the compiler for the upcoming PS3). It was very cool to see where Ashish works, and he has our Podbot picture proudly displayed at his desk!

After the tour we took Ashish for dinner (he chose Boston Pizza which was fine by me) and then we just hung out at his place for a while. Was kind of nice to relax for a couple of days here. We drove to the airport tonight and got a room at the Sheraton so that we don’t have to get up so early to leave tomorrow.

We considered extending our trip and going to New York, but decided maybe next time! We’ll be back in Edmonton tomorrow at 2:30 PM.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention, it rained almost all day, both in Ottawa when we left and in Toronto! Sure beats the snow though 😉

In Calgary Once Again

Seems we end up in Calgary for almost every trip we take (except for Northern Voice). Fortunately there is free wireless Internet here, so I am not complaining. Well, at least it makes the travelling a little better. This is our insane flight schedule:

  • 9:00 PM – Depart Edmonton
  • 9:45 PM – Arrive Calgary
  • 12:32 AM – Depart Calgary
  • 6:17 AM – Arrive Toronto
  • 8:30 AM – Depart Toronto
  • 9:30 AM – Arrive Ottawa

Currently we’re scheduled to come back on the 24th, but we’re going to try to change that to the 26th. Preferrably, the 26th departing from Toronto, as we’re planning to drive from Ottawa to Toronto on the 25th for business and to meet up with some people. I’m hoping we can get the flights worked out anyway!

We’re in Tim Horton’s at the moment, as it was the only food establishment open (unsurprisingly). Seems those 24 hour McDonalds express locations would be perfect for an airport!

More on the trip later…

Northern Voice 2006 Finished!

Post ImageThe conference ended almost six hours ago now, but we just got back from dinner. We went to Moxies with Robert Scoble, Maryam, Rob Greenlee, Eric Rice, Alex Williams, and a bunch of other really cool people. Dinners are always interesting, because things are a little more casual than at the conference, so you get a better chance to chat. Eric told us all about Second Life, so I am going to have to check that out. Robert commented that everyone is playing either World of Warcraft or Second Life!

I think the conference itself went very well. It had the same feel as last year’s, which is much less tech oriented and more social-impact oriented. Still lots of great people, with great ideas and some very interesting presentations, which is what makes Northern Voice great. There was a similar mix of males and females as last year, though I get the feeling that there were far more Americans this year.

I wasn’t surprised to see so many Apple laptops in the crowd (there usually are at tech events) but I was surprised to see so many people using Microsoft Word for taking notes. That just demonstrates to me that not enough people know about OneNote. And of course, there were still lots of pen and paper people.

I’m not sure I learned anything really new at the conference, but I definitely gathered a good list of things to think about and consider, and that’s probably more important anyway. I’m already looking forward to next year’s! If you’d like to check out my pictures from the conference, I’ve created a photoset at Flickr.

Thanks to Darren, Boris, Roland and all the other organizers and volunteers for a great conference!

Notes on how your blog can change the world!

Post ImageWe’re into the last session of the day now, this one on the five ways your blog can change the world. Here are some notes:

  • Sounds like we’ve gone from four presenters down to one due to some family issues that have come up. I didn’t catch his name though.
  • Yes! He asked what kind of change we want to see in the world, so I stuck up my hand and proclaimed my well-worn mantra, wireless everywhere! Seems as though people agree.
  • There are lots of ways you can take part in some effort to change the world, using things like badges (graphics) or common tags.
  • Seems if you really want something spread quickly, get it on Boing Boing! That’s not the point of the example he is currently sharing, but it is remarkable how that blog can spread information.
  • This is kind of funny, he’s got one of the other presenters on the cell phone with the device held up to the microphone! This is because she didn’t have a microphone to use Skype. Sounds like a telephone interview or something you might see on CNN, kinda neat, and yet pretty low tech!

Lot’s of examples of different projects, like that We Are Sorry campaign after Bush was re-elected, etc. I haven’t been paying that much attention, so I am sure I missed a few things here and there – be sure to check out some other posts on the aggregation servies. I think the links mentioned will be posted on Northern Voice too.

Notes from the Geek Out panel

Post ImageHere are some notes from the Geek Out session administered by Robert Scoble, Will Pate and Kevin Marks:

  • Sounds like they have some topics to discuss at first, followed by some good questions at the end.
  • Kevin is talking about microformats, specifically tagging. We’re also getting a demo of the Blog Finder and Explore features on Technorati. Microformats can be used for tags, events, names, addresses, etc.
  • Kevin just entered “canada” into the Explore feature, and every post on the page was from my blog. Something cool about seeing your blog appear on the big screen in a presentation 🙂
  • Scoble is talking now, about sharing information through del.icio.us and using other Firefox extensions.
  • We’re going around the room sharing favorite Firefox extensions, some of which include: Session Saver, Fangs, PDF Download, Download Status, Signatures, Fasterfox, Web Developer, Firebug, etc.
  • Will Pate is talking now about his blog, and how he uses Drupal for customization. Specifically he is focusing on the aggregation of content capabilities.
  • Kevin just showed an awesome animated graph of the long tail of posts in response to a question about the A list and how to break in. Basically if you get a single inbound link, you’re above average!
  • Scoble reiterates that he’s interested in mapping, and thinks that within a year someone will have “put this room up on a map”. He’s talking about taking the basic mapping capabilities and making them extremely relevant and useful.
  • Will wants better tools for “normal” people, things like posting from within Microsoft Word, etc. He also says user interface is very important!
  • Scoble is interested in the photo sites like Riya and Bubbleshare.
  • Someone asked about Web 2.0 and all of the new products we’re seeing, and both Scoble and Will seem to think we won’t really see a slowdown of new ideas, even though the big three pick up companies along the way.
  • Scoble says the new advertising based business model will allow a lot of new companies to grow. Sounds a lot like the idea behind Live.com if you ask me!

Notes on Everything Casting

Post ImageBack from lunch (we went to Quizno’s in a nearby mall) and I am in Eric Rice’s session titled Everything Casting. Here are some notes:

  • “everything”casting: doing whatever you want, for whatever reason, in whatever medium.
  • your thing, your product, your “it”, your epsilon
  • Four primary elements or categories: content/concept/purpose, medium/materials, audience/behavior, sustain/making money.
  • Content: personal/intimate, art, informational, performance/rock star. You need to have at least one, sometimes you can do all four!
  • Medium: text, audio, video, photos. For all the religious opinions on the medium, it doesn’t matter. Some are better than others, depending on the context, sometimes you can mix them together!
  • Audience: passive, active passive, participatory, active participatory. You can be in any of these moods, and it depends on where you are, the type of medium available, etc.
  • Sustain: zero, fame, barter, cash. It’s perfectly okay to not make money, and in fact, it’s usually hard to make money from things you love doing – think of sports, or playing video games, etc.

More good discussion! Eric will be posting the audio of this session, as well as the slides. Everything is licensed under Creative Commons, so you’re encouraged to use it!