February 2012
1 post
9 tags
Edmonton New Media Roundup 28
It’s about time I got around to writing about MediaCamp, which brought more than 80 people to the World Trade Centre on Feb. 4 to explore the intersection of journalism and technology. I’m still thinking about that intersection, and the other roads that feed into it. For a recap of what we did and learned, check out the amazing on-the-fly summaries put together by the MediaCamp newsroom....
January 2012
1 post
6 tags
Edmonton New Media Roundup 27
It seems an awful lot of people are interested in learning how to do new things this year, and a lot of them are journalists and/or bloggers, judging from my Twitter stream. For example, tens of thousands of people — including me! — have signed up for Code Year 2012, which is Code Academy’s super-enticing way to make it fun and easy to learn the basics of JavaScript and other stuff that...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 26
As I reflect on 2011 in Edmonton’s new media space, a figure haunts me: 3,400.
That’s how how many blogs Mack Male counted in this city, for a talk he gave at WordCamp in November.
Man, I thought. Here I figured I was reasonably on top of the Edmonton blogosphere. I had read so many posts in 2011, thanks to the recommendation machine that is Twitter. I had selected dozens for the...
December 2011
2 posts
14 tags
Edmonton New Media Roundup 25
I’ve been doing this, that and the other thing, so this time around I’m heading straight into cool stuff I’ve come across in the past little while: — It was nice to see the edmontonian’s YouTube channel come to life again with A Close Shave, a trailer for Marty Chan’s latest children’s book. I have it on good authority that that thing above Miles Cruz’s lip is not Jeff Samsonow’s real Movember...
November 2011
2 posts
7 tags
Edmonton New Media Roundup 24
I was fortunate to be asked to speak at WordCamp Edmonton, which meant I got to soak up a whole bunch of great stuff from this terrific conference on all things WordPress. As I admitted in my presentation (which won’t make a lot of sense out of context, but the links are worth looking at), I am a WordPress n00b of the highest order, so a lot of the talks from the developers and...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 23
The past little while has been heavily IRL for me — I spent a lot of time at events, talking to people in real life, as opposed to reading or listening to their stuff online. But every one of those opportunities had its seeds in connections made on Twitter, so there’s the new media angle (or what will have to suffice as one). — EdCamp Edmonton, an unconference organized by teachers...
October 2011
5 posts
6 tags
Edmonton New Media Roundup 22
To block or not to block? That is the question I’ve been thinking about this week, because of a tiff on Twitter between David Staples and Dave Cournoyer during the coverage of city council’s decision on the downtown arena. As near as I can tell, here’s what happened. Cournoyer asked Staples for a source on some figures he had cited. Staples responded dismissively, then...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 21
The story of the week was the downtown arena project. I wish I had been free on Friday to Storify the reaction to city council’s decision to buy the land amid news of the negotiations between the city and the Katz Group with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in New York. The volume of tweets on #yegarena and #yegcc was overwhelming, as Mack Male shows in this post summarizing the day and the...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 20
This week, I’ve been thinking about the future of publishing and the power of going deep.
The idea that the future of media depends on serving niches rather than being all things to all people is not new, but it becomes more meaningful when you meet people who are living that concept in real life. I met some such people at Digital Storytelling in Alberta, a “speed-dating” event at Guru Digital...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 19
The theme of this week’s roundup is inspired by something Kathleen Smith (aka @KikkiPlanet) said on the most recent episode of the Unknown Studio. The discussion turned to people who leave Edmonton for Vancouver or Toronto because they think there’s nothing going on here. “They’re complaining about a city that doesn’t exist anymore,” she said. I think she’s exactly right, and this past week...
September 2011
4 posts
10 tags
Edmonton New Media Roundup 18
West Edmonton Local is about to be reincarnated again, so this seems like a good time to explain and explore this gift to MacEwan journalism students, created last school year by Archie McLean and Lucas Timmons. I call it a gift because journalism is learned by doing. To have a real-life news website to work on, with a real community to serve, is a tremendous opportunity, as Archie explained...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 17
I know I already talked about Pecha Kucha Night 11, but preparing for that night took up so much space in my brain that I scarcely had room for anything else, and there’s still more worth rounding up. For an excellent recap of the evening, see Mack Male’s post. The Edmonton Journal, which livestreamed the event, has some of the speeches up on its video page, including mine. And there are tons...
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My Pecha Kucha talk: What journalism needs now →
Here is the video of the talk I delivered at Pecha Kucha Night 11 at Myer Horowitz Theatre at the University of Alberta on Sept. 14, 2011. It was so much fun. Thank you to Edmonton’s Next Gen for the opportunity, and thank you to all of the generous and encouraging people who laughed at my jokes and said nice things on Twitter.
It was a delightful, eclectic evening. You can see more...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 16
I’m going to blame the tardiness of this week’s roundup on my grief over the retirement of the edmontonian. It may not be an entirely accurate excuse — I was busy getting ready to teach and finishing off a super-cool project I’ll tell you about one of these days — but it is completely true that I am choked to lose one of my favourite blogs. Many others share my sadness. Jeff...
August 2011
6 posts
11 tags
Edmonton New Media Roundup 15
It’s back-to-school season in our house. The kids return to class on Thursday, Trustee Spencer’s meetings have resumed, and I am preparing to teach (!) reporting and news production in the journalism diploma program at Grant MacEwan University. So I’m in an education frame of mind for this week’s roundup. In many ways, the Internet has disrupted education as much as it has disrupted...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 14
I took some Edmonton podcasts with me on a trip to southern Alberta last week, so this week’s roundup focuses on some of fine shows produced right here at home. To wit: — DVD Afternoon is an erudite but highly accessible weekly conversation about movies between Paul Matwychuk and Heather Noel. I don’t watch a lot of movies, but I like hearing smart people talk about them, and DVD...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 12
The new media buzz-generator of the week — aside from blissed-out tweets from the Folk Fest — was everybodyinthiscityisarmed.com, a website launched by Mack Male (with help from Sally Poulsen, Jeff Samsonow and Adam Rozenhart — all of whom are friends of mine, for full disclosure’s sake). The site, prompted by the coverage of the surprising number of homicides in...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 11
Edmonton is rich ground for comics culture, and it feels like there’s a lot going on these days: — Take Andrew Foley, for example. He co-wrote Cowboys & Aliens, which has been made into a big, big movie. I first came across him on Twitter and started following him because I thought he was clever. He is. So’s his blog. His next book, Done to Death, is coming out in September. Here’s a...
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Asphalt Default - My Longshot story →
Here’s the little front-of-book piece I did for Longshot Magazine, the 48-hour miracle of publishing that started from scratch on Friday and published Sunday. I haven’t read the whole magazine yet, but what I’ve seen is terrific, especially considering the quick turnaround. The whole electronic version is here. To buy the paper version, click here.
This time around, Longshot was...
July 2011
6 posts
3 tags
Longshot!: Your Longshot Contributors, Issue Two →
longshotmag:
Forty-eight hours ago we gave you guys an assignment, twenty-four hours ago you turned in your stories, and today we made a magazine. Despite the fact that we’ve only spent a collective 6 days streamlining this process, it seems to get easier every time. That’s thanks in large part to the amazing…
Thrilled to have made it!
9 tags
Edmonton New Media Roundup 10
“Have you read Zoe Todd’s latest?” I have asked this question several times in the past month, in various discussions about urban planning, architecture and the general effort to make Edmonton look and be better. Her blog, Urbane Adventurer, has become a must-read for me, and if you are interested in such things, you should put it on your list as well. My first encounter with Zoe was hearing...
The Trimalchio Project: Gatsby's Song →
trimalchioproject:
I will reach, I will strive, She is why I’m alive, Though I wish I could tell What she wants me to be. I’ll put on any mask, I’ll perform any task, To make her sweet laughter Belong just to me. I don’t know my own story, I’ve changed it so often, I scarcely remember What’s true and…
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 9
It’s one thing to write something and publish it online. Even I can do that. Sharing news and information in the form of video is way harder, and I am in awe of people who try. I’d like to bring your attention to three local efforts to do TV on the Internet, and do a little compare-and-contrast on what they offer. — Tha Format is the product of a community project to shine a...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 8
I remember sitting in a news meeting at the Edmonton Journal when the subject of Mack Male came up. This was a few years ago, before I had met him. The editor pitching the story mentioned that Mack was 25. “Mack Male is not 25,” I said with certainty. Completely unfounded certainty, as it turned out. I just couldn’t believe that someone who had accomplished so much online...
4 tags
Edmonton New Media Roundup 7
Whenever I feel like having happy thoughts about the future of journalism, I think about Linda Hoang. She’s an excellent Edmonton example of what Jay Rosen calls “smart young newsies” — digital natives who are passionate about journalism and aren’t afraid to try new ways of doing it. Global Edmonton was smart enough to snap her up after she distinguished herself at MacEwan, at NAIT and in...
June 2011
10 posts
5 tags
Edmonton New Media Roundup 6
The past week saw the debut of YegNews.com, billed as “Edmonton’s Online Newspaper.” The launch of a new source of journalism is always good news, and I love that the focus is local. I see quite a few comments, tweets and likes, too, which indicates it is being well-received. I hold YegNews’s founders, Scott McKeen and Alain Saffel, in high esteem. So I hope they will take this unsolicited...
5 tags
Happy birthday, #Yeg Girl Geeks!
“I’m not so much a girl geek as scientifically minded, but OK.” That’s what my nine-year-old daughter said when I asked her to pose for a picture wishing the Edmonton Girl Geek Dinner a happy first birthday. So, yeah, she’s a geek. But I mean that in the nicest, proudest way. I love that she made a Venn diagram comparing herself with Kari Byron from MythBusters. I love that she wants to be a...
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Storify: Tribute to Robert Kroetsch, 1927-2011
Robert Kroetsch wrote about the Alberta I knew. I had never encountered such a writer until a Western Canadian literature course at the University of Alberta introduced him to me. I have loved him ever since. Once the news of his death broke, it was clear that he had touched many in the same way. I decided to collect and preserve some of that outpouring with this Storify collection.
As I say at...
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“She is a singular dilithium chamber powering the Starship New Media in the city...”
– Uttered by Adam Rozenhart about me on Episode 51 of The Unknown Studio. I need to create something blurbable so that this can be my blurb. Also, Scott C. Bourgeois called me “the core of the Voltron that the league is currently forming.” All this for a wee bit of advice. Such nice fellas.
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 5
The biggest new media event of the past week was Pecha Kucha Night, the 10th in a series of stimulating conversation-starters put on by Edmonton’s NextGen committee. If you missed it or want to relive it, the Edmonton Journal has archived video of its livestream, and presenter Mack Male has a comprehensive summary and commentary, as well as a word cloud of what was said on Twitter on the #pknx...
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 4
Much of the new media buzz this week emanated from TEDxEdmonton, a day of inspirational talks at the Citadel on June 11. I didn’t go, but I’m looking forward to watching the video. The live-stream is archived here, but the sound is kind of sketchy. Twitter was of course alive with TED talk throughout the day on Saturday. I gather from the Twitter stream that there will be a TEDxEdmonton...
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Storify: meshwest
I learned a lot at meshwest in Calgary on June 8, and I decided to try to capture some of that with Storify. If you were there and want to relive it, or couldn’t make it and don’t want to sift through the hashtag, here you go.
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 3
It was good news for wonks when Dave Cournoyer came home from Australia and leapt back into blogging on the suddenly interesting Alberta political scene. Last week alone saw five posts, including a look at the Conservative leadership contenders, the matter of who to blame for teacher layoffs, and the Alberta Liberals’ recent changes. Dave is an exemplar of the “transparency is the new...
May 2011
10 posts
4 tags
Edmonton New Media Roundup 2
This week I’ve been thinking about a media myth that needs to die. It goes something like this: ”It’s all fine and well for bloggers to do whatever they do, but who is going to sit through city council meetings? Journalists, that’s who.” This reveals a useless and destructive dualism that keeps journalism from adapting as quickly as it must. It may also be incurable...
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“If you wait for a better time to create, better than this very moment, if you...”
– Coaching the Artist Within by Eric Maisel (2005).
I’m not usually keen on self-help books, but this one is speaking to me.
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Edmonton New Media Roundup 1
As an admirer of Edmonton’s new media scene, I thought there might be room for a weekly roundup of what’s going on out there. This notion coalesced after a meeting with The League of Extraordinary Media. It is inspired by the fine daily aggregation done by the edmontonian and the weekly summary put together by Mack Male. What I intend to bring is my own perspective and a strict focus...
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“Don’t feel guilty if you spend the first 90 minutes of your day drinking coffee...”
– Nate Silver’s terrific advice for young journalists in the digital age (via austinkleon)
This speech is full of great advice.
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Storify: Slave Lake fire
The fire that threatened and then destroyed much of Slave Lake took over my Twitter stream on Sunday night. Storify seemed like a good tool to curate the best of the pictures and videos being shared, so I gave it a try.
Here’s the link.
For more on the story, check out the Edmonton Journal, the Globe and Mail, CTV, CBC and the Canadian Press.
4 tags
This is the speech I gave to the Edmonton Journal...
Moving on
In honour of 10 years of service, the Edmonton Journal gave me a ring. “Married to The Journal,” I would say when people asked me about it.
It’s not really a good idea to marry your job. Especially when you’re also married to a person. Lots of thinking has brought me to that realization, and so I’m about to do what may be the second most crazy I’ve done here (the craziest being the time I drove...
1 tag
April 2011
10 posts
1 tag
Guideposts
shandro:
I came across this document recently. The first part is called “What Do We Stand For?”, and it claims to have been from a 1966 speech from former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed. The last page is even more interesting. It claims to be from a 1968 speech he gave to the Jaycees and is titled, “Ten Targets For Leadership”.
I provide this in a purely nonpartisan way. I think anyone,...