Brain Album

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. Huge thanks to my co-chair, Mack Male, and the organizing committee: Jeff Samsonow, Owen Brierley, Brittney Le Blanc and Tamara Stecyk, with assistance from Bruce Winter, Sylvia Schneider, Kerry Powell and Chandra Lye.

What follows are my thoughts alone, as the committee hasn’t had a chance to meet yet to discuss the event and our next steps.

Our mission for MediaCamp was to get storytellers and coders together to see how they could help each other do what they do. Did we succeed? Sort of. Because it was programmed instead of being an unconference, we were able to gear the agenda towards teaching tech skills to journos and story skills to devs. The storytellers greatly outnumbered the coders, however.

Part of this may have been timing. Startup Hackathon and Global Game Jam took place the weekend before. I suspect, however, that a lot of the people we were trying to attract just didn’t see what was in it for them. I wonder if it would be easier to go where the techs are instead of trying to lure them over to hang out with the word-mongers.

Startup Edmonton’s recent announcements may provide such an opportunity. I’m intrigued by the courses and workshops that are starting in April. Most are aimed at those who have built something cool and need help to make a business out of it, but some look applicable to working journalists and communicators of all stripes.

Startup Edmonton has also launched Startup Support Communities, an effort to kickstart “local connections and conversations around creative and startup culture here in Edmonton.” And the new space in the Mercer Warehouse aims to be a place to get designers, developers and entrepreneurs together to see what emerges from the collision of their worlds.

I’d like the journalism world to get in on that collision. I don’t know what that looks like yet, or if Startup Edmonton is interested, but I’m keen on anything we can do to infuse the spirit of entrepreneurial thinking into those who spend their days finding stuff out and telling people about it. As Jeff Jarvis suggests, it’s the only practical way to keep journalism happening as the old business models crumble.

Anyway, I’ll keep thinking about that. Stay tuned for more on what MediaCamp plans to do next.

Not that you’d know it if you’ve been waiting for an update, but I have been consuming as much Edmonton new media as usual lately. I just haven’t sat myself down to write about it. Which is a problem, because then it piles up, and the thought of catching up becomes daunting. So here I am, catching up. Consider this one big ICYMI.

— Jen Banks has been writing up a storm on Tech Mommy. She has just the right mix for me: a eulogy for a dead computer on the tech side, a harrowing tale of childbirth on the mommy side.

— I’m way late on this one, but Linda Hoang’s feature story on Edmonton’s Awesome Foundation is definitely worth a read. When she covers something, she covers the heck out of it. The next pitch party is March 29. By the way, Awesome grant recipient Words with Friends holds its fifth event on Feb. 23 at Bohemia.

— Paul Matwychuk and Heather Noel have replaced DVD Afternoon with a new show call Trash, Art and the Movies. Not only have they changed the format in a way that makes it more accessible to the likes of me, but they’ve also brought in Erin Fraser, who has her hand in all kinds of interesting stuff, including Metro Cinema, Graphic Content and Sequential Tart. The first episode was lots of fun, and I’m looking forward to more.

— Speaking of comic books and podcasts, I’m listening for the first time to Podcast! The Comics, which is part of the Comics! The Blog juggernaut fashioned by Brandon Schatz and James Leask. As I have said before, I’m more an admirer of people who like comics than a reader of comics themselves, but it seems to me this is quite an impressive effort.

— In other podcast-related news, Jay n’ J have a new feature called Jay vs J, in which the two movie buffs debate the merits of a film and ask you to vote. Very slick. Lots of fun episodes lately, too, whether it’s the “sliders” or the most recent full episode with Aaron Clifford. (Also, Aaron, who was awesome at MediaCamp, is making me want to try Pinterest. Aarrgh, no time! And yet…)

(Addendum: Unbeknownst to me when I wrote this post, James Leask is the guest on the actual most recent Jay n’ J podcast. Spooky. Plus he likes The Princess Bride, which is my favourite movie, so obviously, this is a must listen, even though I will never ever watch Ghost Rider.) 

— The Unknown Studio is back on track after illness and busyness got in the way of regular podcasting. In the spirit of ICYMI, do listen to the small but mighty Flu Episode to hear Alex Abboud talk about being the Edmonton Journal’s first blogger-in-residence. In my admittedly biased estimation, Alex has been hitting it out of the park, both on his own blog and at The Journal, where he consults, blogs and observes under the aegis of the media lab that I co-ordinate.

OK, way too long, and still too much to say. I should blog more often — then I wouldn’t get so pent up. Comment, tweet or Google+ at me if you like.

(Thanks to Mack Male for the photo, which comes from his Flickr stream under a Creative Commons licence.)

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 we word people never imagined wanting to learn. You get a lesson a week by email.

I don’t think it will turn me into Lisa Williams, and I’m going to have to improve my time management skills to work the lessons into my life, but I’m excited for the opportunity. So is Sheri at This Bird’s Day. So could you be.

Speaking of opportunities to learn new skills, MediaCamp Edmonton is set for Feb. 4 at the World Trade Centre on Jasper Avenue. Tickets will be on sale at yeglive.ca very soon. (Update: Are on sale now!) The idea is to get storytellers and coders together to see how they can help each other.

Among the speakers are SEO/analytics expert Dana DiTomaso, Edmonton Journal publisher John Connolly, developer Aaron Clifford, data journalist Lucas Timmons, designer Tanya Camp, social media strategist Jay Palter, data miner Mack Male, radio/web wunderkind Brittney Le Blanc, Storifyer extraordinaire Tamara Stecyk and Edmonton’s own Dumbledore of code, Owen Brierley. And me. So come!

(Addendum: Todd Babiak of Story Engine will also be joining us, to talk about how developers can get their story out. For more on MediaCamp, see Jeff Samsonow’s post, or listen to his dulcet tones on the latest Unknown Studio podcast.)

MediaCamp is just one of many cool and useful events coming up. To wit:

— Jan. 18: DemoCamp 17: Developers show their stuff at the Telus Centre at the University of Alberta
— Jan. 19: Girl Geek Dinner, Season 2, Episode 5: No speaker this time, just a chance to get together and geek out at Brewsters Oliver Square.
— Jan. 27: Social Media Breakfast: Walter Schwabe of fusedlogic will be speaking at this edition of the monthly event. Ticket details to come, so watch the #smbyeg hashtag for details.
— Jan. 27-29: Startup Hackathon and Global Game Jam: A 54-hour marathon to make apps and games.
— Feb. 2: Pecha Kucha Night 12: A night of short, sharp talks at the Metro Cinema (Garneau Theatre).
— Feb. 8: TEDxEdmonton Salon Series #1: A live speaker event on the theme of “Rethinking Open Source Culture.”
— March 8-10: BlogWest 2012: A conference that aims to get bloggers and brands together, organized by Felicia Dewar.
— May 4-5: iMedia, a social media conference organized by Carol McBee.

And that’s just a bit of what’s going on. Keep an eye on ShareEdmonton’s calendar for more.

Here are a few more things I noticed this month:

— Avenue Edmonton started a petition to get the city to build a monument to SCTV, which was made here in the early 1980s. David Staples and Colby Cosh liked the idea; Mike Otto did not. Much back-and-forthing ensued on Twitter. As many have pointed out, there’s a bit of a generational divide here. If you (like me) grew up with the show, it’s monumental. If you didn’t, chances are you’d rather see the time and energy spent elsewhere.

— While we’re talking about monuments, the prolific Paula Kirman had a nice post earlier this month on the homeless memorial sculpture on 99th Street.

— If you’re looking for a primer on FourSquare, its uses and abuses, Jerry Aulenbach has you covered.

— Lowetide has migrated his widely read Oilers blog to a new site.

— Alex Abboud is in the middle of a thoughtful series of blog posts on Jasper Avenue. Here’s the preamble and here’s a rumination on what’s good about 104th Street. (Mack has a post on 104th, too.)

— In Roundup 26, I admitted my dearth of knowledge when it comes to food blogs. Luckily, Sharon Yeo publishes regular Food Notes as part of her encyclopedic Only Here for the Food.

— In other food news, Jennifer Cockrall-King gave a great talk at The ARTery on Jan. 12 about her new book, Food and the City, which comes out next month.

— She spoke a TripLit, a fun and well-attended literary event put on by three authors: Jocelyn Brown, the new writer-in-residence at the Edmonton Public Library; Lynn Coady, co-founder of Eighteen Bridges magazine; and Marina Endicott, founder along with Coady of the Literary Saloon. I learned a lot that night.

By the way, I’m giving a workshop called Social Media for Writers through MacEwan Writing Works on Feb. 11. I have started compiling a Twitter list of authors who use Twitter effectively. Many are local but there are a few others sprinkled in there. I’d love to hear your suggestions for worthy additions. Comment, tweet or Google+ at me.

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 Edmonton Journal’s first try at aggregating local blogs. And I was writing a sort-of-but-not-quite-weekly roundup that presumed to bring attention to the cream of the crop.

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 moustache, although he did sprout hair for prostate cancer research, along with seemingly half of the Edmonton twitterverse.

— The Charrette, the urban planning and design blog kept by Scott Lilwall, Mike Otto and a cast of perspicacious contributors, just celebrated its first birthday. I can’t overstate how much I admire this blog. It’s such a perceptive conversation about what our city looks like, or should look like, and it’s a sandbox for playing around with new storytelling techniques, such as the Austerity Bot or the masterful live-tweeting and Storifying of city council’s budget hearings. I wish you many more birthdays, fellas.

— A few blog posts emanating from the intersection of parenthood and technology caught my eye. Jen Banks has two: One offers a cautionary tale about hard lessons learned while switching web hosting for Mom Nation; the other is a provocative prediction on Tech Mommy positing that Facebook will go the way of MySpace in five years. Both are worth a read.

On the dad side of things, Francois Bourdeau launched a new blog called überdad with a post on why he wants his kids to learn to code, which in turn prompted Jay Palter to take it further on his home made dad blog. I don’t know if their kids are too old for this book, but maybe it’s a start.

— I love both opera and trains, so I was sorry to miss Mercury Opera’s performance in the Bay LRT station on Nov. 25. Luckily, Mack Male’s blog post offers the next best thing, with a lovely writeup, pictures and video. Speaking of Mack, he’s conducting a survey on the meaning of #yeg that you should fill out when you have a minute.

— While we’re handing out homework, why don’t you head on over to Mashable’s awards page and vote for Edmonton’s own Empire Avenue as best up-and-coming social media service? And have you considered applying for the Edmonton Journal’s blogger-in-residence program? And do you want to enter a contest cooked up by my students at MacEwan? And are you planning to come to MediaCamp?

— One more question: Are you following Colby Cosh on Twitter? Back in our university days, Colby and I were so far apart on the political spectrum, we could barely see each other. Now that he represents Edmonton and Alberta to the rest of Canada via Maclean’s, I still disagree with him a fair bit, but I do find him entertaining and intelligent. As this piece on the Raymond Comets shows, he writes like a dream.

— I got behind on my podcast listening, but thanks to having to clean up my house for Christmas and company, I’m all caught up. The Unknown Studio’s live interview with Joe Wos of the Toonseum, recorded at the Pure Speculation festival, is delightful listening. If you can’t get enough of The Muppets, among other movie matters, tune in to both Jay n’ J and DVD Afternoon (in which Paul Matwychuk takes a swing at The Rainbow Connection. I still like him, despite that.)

As well, Jay n’ J squeezed in a slider episode with Trent Wilkie on Metro Shorts, a series of short films at the Metro Cinema presented by Trent’s Mostly Water Theatre. He also has a cameo in A Close Shave that really did make me laugh out loud.

Well, we seem to have come full circle, so that will do for now. You’ll find more media stuff in Mastermaq’s Media Monday. Comments are welcome here, on Twitter and on Google+.

(That’s a screen capture from A Close Shave up top. Nice shooting, Sally Poulsen.)

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 designers sailed straight over my head. No matter. It’s useful to me to know what I don’t know; Step 2 is to get around to knowing it.

The conference gave me a chance to announce The Journal’s call for applications to be the paper’s first blogger-in-residence. It’s a little experiment that Barb Wilkinson and I are trying in the media lab. Deadline is Dec. 19, so check out what we’re looking for and fill out the form if you’ve got what it takes.

Slides and video of the WordCamp presentations are to be posted in the fullness of time. In the meantime, check out Tamara Stecyk’s summaries of Day 1 and Day 2 on Storify. Also, I would dearly love to steal Taylor Reese’s notebook — that shot up top is of his notes from Jeff Archibald’s talk on typography. I love people who think the way that looks.

I’m on Tumblr because it’s easy, but my New Year’s resolution will be to move my main blog to the WordPress site that Sally Poulsen built for me. WordCamp was a good baby step in the right direction.

My favourite session was Dana DiTomaso’s talk on search engine optimization for WordPress. She delivered tons of practical tips and links to resources in a mile-a-minute but highly entertaining talk. I’m looking forward to hearing her again at the Social Media Breakfast on Nov. 25.

Another takeaway came from Mack Male’s talk on lessons from the Edmonton blogosphere. He highlighted a number of excellent blogs, and distilled their success down to four qualities: passionate, interesting, engaging and consistent. Judging from the reaction I’ve been getting (thank you, commenters and retweeters!), I’m doing OK on the first three, but I know I’m falling down on consistency. Working on it.

And now, rounding up:

— “I’m No Superman: The Comic Book Collection of Gilbert Bouchard” opened at the University of Alberta’s Bruce Peel Special Collections Library on Nov. 18. Not only did Andy Grabia do an amazing job curating the collection, but he also curated the night’s tweets and snapshots on Storify. You can see the show for free, but do yourself a favour and buy the catalogue: only $5 for a beautiful tribute to a man who cared a great deal about the arts in Edmonton. (Addendum: The catalogue, which is not available online, includes Andy’s perceptive essay on Gilbert and the story his collection tells, in addition to many wonderful images from the comics. It’s a keepsake.)

— Another Girl Geek Dinner happened this past week. I missed it, but I followed along on Twitter as Ruth Kelly, president of Venture Publishing, addressed the gang at D’Lish. Tamara storified this one, too. (Have I mentioned how much I love Storify? Yeah. It’s pretty awesome. Great for bringing meaning to the stream and keeping it around. Also an increasingly powerful tool for serious journalism.)

— Dave Cournoyer is performing a great service keeping on top of who’s been nominated where and for whom as we head into a provincial election in the spring.

— I finally got a chance to listen to the Unknown Studio’s latest podcast, featuring Jay Bardyla of Happy Harbor Comics. Recommended listening, not only for comic-book fans but for anyone interested in candid, well-informed, earned-the-hard-way advice on running a small business.

— Bardyla was also one of the organizers of Pure Speculation, the geek festival that happened on the weekend and sounded like a very fun time. I missed both PureSpec and Refinery, the big party at the Art Gallery of Alberta featuring Fish Griwkowsky’s “Explorers of the North and the Monsters Who Killed Them,” which also looked like a blast. Had I gone to either, I might have seen my old friend Jason Kapalka, a fellow Gateway alum who is the reason I almost never see my iPad, as everyone else in my house steals it to play Plants vs Zombies.

OK, ça suffit. Catch up on more Edmonton goings-on in Mack’s weekly Edmonton notes, and find out about other media happenings in his Media Monday. Tell me what I missed or messed up in the comments, on Twitter or on Google+.

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 Cournoyer noticed Staples had blocked him, and assumed his question was the cause. As a mini-furore ensued, Staples said he had actually blocked Cournoyer “long before,” and explained why he blocks people. This added fuel to the fire.

I don’t want to suggest this was a big deal; it’s a tiny, inside-baseball blip on a much bigger story. But these are both Daves I know, so I’m interested. And I think it offers an opportunity to explore how legacy media and new media interact, and to look at what community engagement — which is a big part of what I’m doing now — really means.

My own policy is to block no one but spammers. This is a relatively easy policy for me to have. Hardly anyone attacks me or even criticizes me, and those who do are easy to ignore if I feel they are trolls rather than genuine critics. I stopped being a reporter before social media came along, even before stories were published online with comments. So I don’t really know what it’s like to be slammed repeatedly in public. Maybe someday. Maybe today.

Based on my observations, people tend to react in two ways. One is to become so thick-skinned that such criticism does not bother them, or at least never appears to bother them. The other is to become increasingly thin-skinned, to the point that they no longer differentiate between intelligent dissent and trollish invective. That’s completely understandable, and were I in Staples’s shoes, I might react that way.

But blocking is a bad idea. Here’s why:

1. Twitter is for listening. Journalists have never had a better tool for tuning in to the conversation about their work. Deliberately tuning out part of that conversation diminishes the value of the tool.

2. Noblesse oblige. Journalists get paid to do journalism every day. The price of that privilege (and that’s how I see it — to me, it’s the best job in the world) is to absorb some flak. That’s probably not what most journos thought they signed up for, but the web didn’t even exist when most of us signed up. I would argue it’s part of the deal now.

3. Blocking is bad PR, which mainstream media can’t afford. I’m not sure it’s ever a good idea to tell your audience you don’t care what it thinks, but it’s particularly ill-advised when your industry’s economic underpinnings are crumbling away. Every reader is precious. It’s not good business to aggressively ignore anyone.

I think highly of Cournoyer, but he probably could have phrased some of his tweets in a less snarky way, if his intention was not simply to poke Staples with a sharp stick. In a 140-character medium that allows for little nuance, it’s better to be nice. That said, Cournoyer appears to have extended an olive branch; I don’t know if Staples will take it, but I wish he would.

OK, that’s enough lecturing from me. Roundup time:

— I liked Kiri Wysynski’s post arguing for trick-or-treating in the neighbourhood instead of the mall. We intend to do the same (although half the people in my house are sick right now, so we’ll see). As you can see from Linda Hoang’s latest feature story, my neighbourhood is a great place for Halloweening.

— Tom Sedens turned insomnia into a funny post on the discomforts of sharing a bed, complete with illustrations.

— Because I took a week off here, I didn’t get a chance to acknowledge the fifth anniversary of Sharon Yeo’s Only Here for the Food. It’s a beautiful blog, a great chronicle of Edmonton’s food scene, and an excellent example of the value of following your passion. Congratulations, Sharon!

— The Halloween edition of the Unknown Studio podcast is definitely worth a listen, even if you don’t get to it until after Oct. 31. It features Stephanie Sparks, who writes about vampires.

— I had a great time giving a workshop on citizen journalism for Get Publishing on Oct. 29. Here are some pictures taken by Marilyn Jones of mediamag.ca. I’ll also be speaking at ICE: The Tech Conference on Nov. 2 with Owen Brierley of Guru Digital Arts College. Our talk is called “Fail often and fail fast.” It looks like I’ll be talking at the Advertising Club of Edmonton’s Cultivate event on Nov. 3, and at WordCamp Edmonton on Nov. 19, too.

That’s enough out of me. The comments are open, or you can find me on Twitter or Google+.

(Instead of blocking, why not buy that nice T-shirt you see at the top of this post? It comes from Flickr courtesy Carly Franklin, and is licensed under Creative Commons.)

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 Twitter reaction. Word clouds have had a bit of a bad rap lately, but to me, the clouds in this post and the post setting up Friday’s events do a pretty good job of letting us see what was said.
 
As Mack notes, Mike Otto of The Charrette also did a nifty little bit of data journalism on opinions expressed about the arena proposal in calls to 311, the city’s information line. (Speaking of The Charrette, Otto’s partner-in-awesome Scott Lilwall recently launched a semi-regular feature called Ask the Charrette, an invitation to ask them anything about urban planning. In this city, at this time, there are a lot of questions that need answering, so have at it.)

For a more elegiac take on the debate, see Zoe Todd’s post on how the arena narrative clashes with her own feelings about the story of this city. The post itself was already a worthy read. Then Journal sports columnist John MacKinnon made a rather rude comment, to which Zoe responded thoughtfully and with class. The ensuing back-and-forth is revealing and also worth your time.

This is a neverending story. If I’m missing something good on the arena issue, let me know in the comments. Now, what else?

— Besides being another great get-together and a chance to show off my dino-loving daughter, this month’s Girl Geek Dinner introduced us to an inspiring young University of Alberta paleontologist named Victoria Arbour. If you like dinosaurs, I encourage you to read Victoria’s blog. You can also follow the U of A’s Dino Lab on Facebook. The next Girl Geek Dinner will be held Nov. 17 at D’Lish Urban Kitchen and Wine Bar.

— YegNews has officially shut down after four months of operation. I was skeptical about its editorial and business model from the get-go, and its challenges were all the more difficult to surmount when Scott McKeen departed in July. But I also applaud anyone who tries anything new and hard. Alain Saffel deserves credit for that. Failure is a gift, as long as we learn from it.

— Jay Runham of the Jay n’ J movies podcast was kind enough to take me out to see Page One: Inside the New York Times, which I had been dying to see. We recorded a “slider” episode of Jay n’ J (sans J, aka Jordan Blackburn, who was out of town). The movie’s brief appearance in Edmonton is over now, but have a listen to see if you’d like to rent it or see it on Netflix. It was such a delight to meet Jay in real life. Next up, I believe, is a full episode on Footloose, featuring woman-about-town Brittney Le Blanc.

— The Conservative leadership vote and Premier Alison Redford’s cabinet-making have provided plenty of fodder for Dave Cournoyer on daveberta.ca. With Redford in charge, a provincial election won’t happen until spring, but nominations are well underway. Here’s Dave’s running list of who’s running.

— Efforts to organize MediaCamp Edmonton 2 are in full flight now. We’ve changed the date to Feb. 4 (instead of Jan. 28) so as not to conflict with the next Startup Weekend and Global Game Jam. MediaCamp aims to bring storytellers and developers together to see how we can help each other do what we do. Watch the website for details in the coming weeks. We’re using the hashtag #yegmediacamp on Twitter to seek input and share links. If you’re interested in coming, please fill out this survey so we can try to make it all you want it to be. If you’re interested in sponsoring or volunteering, email me at karen@unlandmedia.com.

There’s always so much more to say, and yet, that feels like enough. Feel free to add more in the comments, on Twitter or on Google+. More media news can be found on Mack’s Media Monday.

(Speaking on Mack, that’s his photo up top, taken in May 2010 at an open house on the Edmonton Arena District.)

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 Arts College on Oct. 6. The purpose was to get digital folk, publishers and filmmakers together to talk about the future of publishing. It was put together by Lyn Cadence, a Calgary publicist and the publisher of the newly formed Frontenac House Media, and was hosted by Owen Brierley, who runs Guru and sits on the board of Digital Alberta (and is at the centre of the photo you see above).

Here’s what I learned.

There’s no shortage of books in the world. There is a shortage of time to spend reading them. So publishers have to go after those people who love their books so much that they will drop other things to spend their precious time with them. They need to provide those books in every format those fans like. And they need to provide other opportunities to engage with those creations (and make money from them), whether it’s through film, graphic novels, games, conferences, speeches, newsletters, forums, podcasts, social media or whatever else comes next.

Big guys like Seth Godin already do this. But there’s nothing stopping little guys from doing it, too — in fact, it’s probably even more important for little guys, who have few resources and a smaller market to start with.

All of what I just said applies to journalism, too. Broadsheet newspapers were built on having something for everyone, and their websites tend to be the same. But that’s not the way of the future. Inch-deep, mile-wide coverage won’t cut it, especially as the culture of recommendation takes over from Google-gaming as the way to get your stories in front of the people who want them. Specializing in doing a few things very well, deeply and vertically, has more hope. It’s also way more fun.

I had lots of great conversations — thank you, Ron Manke, Karen Gartner, Faye Boer, Gary Whyte, Tamara Stecyk and Kieran Flynn — but the most inspiring chat was with Merle and Jerome Martin of Spotted Cow Press.

Spotted Cow is very small, and judging from its titles, it doesn’t put out a lot of bestsellers. But three things impressed me about the Martins:

1. They love what they do.
2. They don’t waste time seeking grants; they bootstrap everything.
3. They aren’t afraid of trying something new. They sell e-books. They offer free downloads. Jerome has a blog and is on Twitter. They are doing on a small scale what everyone needs to be doing, and they’re hungry to learn more.

So I’m adding the Martins to my heroes list. Thanks to Lyn and Owen for a delightful time. If you were there and want to share what you learned, please comment on this post.

And now, rounding up:

— Meshwest Edmonton on Oct. 4 was another opportunity for future-of-media ideas to burble. I really enjoyed hearing Ali Asaria, founder of well.ca. He is unabashedly focused on Canada, not because it’s the patriotic thing to do but because it’s the right niche for his business. Customer service is at the core. He also had interesting things to say about cultivating a creative workplace. So much of what he said has applications to the media business. For more recapping, see Justin Jackson’s excellent post. The next Meshwest is in Vancouver on Dec. 5.

— Meshwest also brought social media superstar and GigaOm writer Mathew Ingram here. He shared some nice Edmonton pictures on Instagram. Every little bit helps, when it comes to promoting our fine city.

— Tickets are on sale now for the FIERCE awards, Mom Magazine’s night to honour “women who make a difference in the lives of others, whether it’s within their own household or on a global level.” By the looks of the nomination list, it will be quite the night, orchestrated by Tamara Plant, one of the fiercest women I know.

— There’s a whole blog post (or 20) to be done on the good works going on in Edmonton’s social media circles. Here are a few that have crossed the transom: User Created Content is raising money for the Stollery Children’s Hospital by playing video games for 24 hours; The Going Blue 4 U campaign aims to raise money and awareness to fight mental illness; John Winslow and others are raising diapers for the Terra Centre; and the list goes on. Check out KikkiPlanet’s #yegenda for more.

— It has been both heartwarming and heartbreaking to watch the Twitter community’s embrace of Jason Konoza after the death of his beloved wife, Wendy. Jason’s response has been remarkable. You can donate to the Wendy Konoza Memorial Award in Education at the University of Alberta. Rene and Kari Mayer set up a site to gather help for Jason and his kids.

— The next Girl Geek Dinner is on Oct. 13. I’m bringing my daughter with me to hear Victoria Arbour talk about dinosaurs. This is an all-ages affair, with an amazing speaker and yummy food at Chianti’s. And it’s about DINOSAURS. Plus it’s on Dana DiTomaso’s birthday. How can you not go?

— Finally, the one and only Sally Poulsen has made me a website! I cannot begin to tell you what a pleasant and educational experience it was to work with Sally — I highly recommend her. Shout out as well to Janice Belyea of Crayon Creative, whose business-card design became my logo. Thank you, ladies!

You can always find more media talk on Mack Male’s Media Monday. Feel free to respond to my ramblings here, on Twitter or on Google+.

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 is the perfect illustration. There is so much going on here. Both the Edmonton International Film Festival and Western Canada Fashion Week generated buzz, but there were lots of smaller events as well that brought enthusiastic, creative people together. For example:

— DemoCamp Edmonton: The 15th edition brought about 200 people to the Telus Centre at the University of Alberta on Sept. 29 to see developers/makers/wizards demonstrate cool stuff. I loved being in a room surrounded by people who like to solve problems instead of just complaining about them. Mack Male has a comprehensive summary of the evening. It was also a great night to hear about other events that Startup Edmonton and others have in the works; read to the bottom of Mack’s post for the list.

— Social Media Breakfast: Social media enthusiasts (and a few who aren’t there yet but want to learn more) packed d’Lish Urban Kitchen and Wine Bar to hear MLA Doug Griffiths on Sept. 30. It seemed like a very big crowd, which may have been because Griffiths had just finished sixth in the Progressive Conservative leadership campaign and people wanted to hear from him. (He was impressive.) I get the sense, however, that this monthly event has started to generate its own momentum under the effervescent influence of Steven Hodges and the here-to-help spirit of people like Jacqueline Fraser. This one was live-streamed by fusedlogicTV, which is a good way to bring even more people in.

— And, coming back full circle, Sept. 30 also saw the launch of KikkiPlanet.com. Kathleen Smith’s new online magazine aims to be a showcase for the best of Edmonton, focusing on the young movers and shakers who love their city and work hard to make it even better. Her inaugural examples are Brittney Le Blanc and Seth Glick. KikkiPlanet was going to be a blog, but Smith decided to turn the focus away from herself and onto the world around her, which is what I would call a journalistic approach, and one that I naturally approve of. I didn’t make it to the launch, but I’ll be watching with interest.

So that’s just two days in the life of #yeg. October is already shaping up to be busy. I’ll be going to Meshwest Edmonton on Oct. 4, Digital Storytelling at Guru Digital Arts College on Oct. 6, Girl Geek Dinner on Oct. 13 and, I hope, the big Guru party, The Subsequent Fall, on Oct. 20. For an anti-social person like me, that’s a lot of sociability.

It’s hard to keep track of everything, but ShareEdmonton is a good start. Feel free to plug your own events in the comments.

A few more notes:

— The gaming guys at User Created Content are now doing a bi-weekly videocast call New Game +. Here’s Episode 1 and Episode 2.

— There’s a new podcast in town: Shutter Time with Sid and Mac, a discussion of photography by Sidney Blake and Mac Sokulski. You can subscribe in iTunes and follow the show on Twitter.

— Finally, I don’t usually talk much about mainstream media, but I’m proud of my former colleagues at the Edmonton Journal, which has been nominated for six Canadian Online Publishing Awards. Ryan Jackson and Lucas Timmons had a lot to do with the work that was nominated, and as their one-time boss, I can vouch for their amazingness. But really, this is a recognition of the whole newsroom’s digital efforts.

OK, that’s plenty. Comment, tweet or Google+ at me if you like. I blew my Friday deadline by a lot this week — will try to do better next time. But as you can see above, it’s hard to get spare time in this town.

(Photo of What the Truck?! 2, another illustration of how there’s never nothing going on in Edmonton, is from Brittney Le Blanc’s Flickr channel.)

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 well to Mack Male when the site launched in February.
 
West Edmonton Local has changed since then, and will keep changing, which is a good reflection of the state of journalism itself. When the semester ended last spring, West Edmonton Local was kept going by Mathew White and Trevor Robb. Trevor then got a job at the Edmonton Examiner, leaving Mathew to hold down the fort, which he did ably through the summer. Meanwhile, Archie has returned to the Edmonton Journal full-time, where he is now the assignment editor.
 
Now Mathew is about to move on to a job in Osoyoos. So, starting Sept. 26, West Edmonton Local will be in the hands of students in their second year of the journalism diploma program at MacEwan. I teach senior reporting to these students, and Lucas and I teach them news production, so between those two classes, we are creating a newsroom.

It’s a slow-motion newsroom, as we want to make sure we learn along the way. It’s hard to resist making sacrifices to the news production gods (listen to Jay Rosen’s conversation with Mitch Joel on that subject if you want to know what I’m on about). Our story cycle, from story pitch to publication, takes about 12 days. In a normal newsroom, it takes about 12 hours.

So it’s not a breaking news site. It has had breaking news and event coverage through the summer, under Mathew’s direction. But now, West Edmonton Local’s content will be more like what you might find in a weekly, but taking advantage as much as possible of the other opportunities afforded by online news: links, interactivity, multimedia.

This is all a learning experience for me, too. My only online journalism experience was at The Journal, where we dealt with a custom-built content management system and a much different editorial setup. West Edmonton Local is run on WordPress and requires some knowledge of HTML and CSS, which I’m learning alongside the students. Talk about being thrown in the deep end. But that’s sometimes the best way to learn.

Monday is our first day taking over West Edmonton Local, so have a look and tell us what we could do better. You can comment directly on the stories or email me at unlandk(at)macewan.ca. You can also interact with our community engagement editors on Twitter and on Facebook. If you’ve got any good west-end story ideas, send them our way!

That’s enough log-rolling. Rounding up a few more things I noticed this week:

— Kikki Planet, an online magazine dedicated to celebrating young, community-focused movers and shakers in Edmonton, launches on Sept. 30. Get your tickets here for the launch party at the Daffodil Gallery. And follow Kikki on Twitter for updates.

— Dave Cournoyer’s daveberta.ca has been on fire of late, what with the Liberal leadership vote, the first round of the Conservative leadership vote and the coming Round 2, plus some entertaining intrigue around the Liberals’ interest in the Alberta Party’s Michael Walters. If you like geeking out on politics — and I do — there’s plenty of great stuff to chew on.

— The Edmonton International Film Festival’s 24/One Filmmaking Challenge is on now and will conclude Sept. 25 at 11 a.m. That means 40 soon-to-be sleep-deprived teams are working on making a movie in one day, which sounds crazy to me. Watch the fun on the #24One hashtag on Twitter. Also, go see a movie — the festival is on until Oct. 1.

— It’s Western Canada Fashion Week, too. You’ll find coverage at City and Dale and Adventures in Fashion, among other places, as well as on Twitter at #wcfw.

That’s all I’ve got time and space for today. Comment, tweet or Google+ at me if I’ve missed anything. There always more media news on Mack’s Media Monday.

(The picture above comes from West Edmonton Local’s Flickr stream.)