Archive: Posts about Vancouver
January 29th, 2009, 7 Comments »
I liked this cheeky sign at the, uh, coffee prep station at the Vancouver Art Gallery’s cafe:
I’m going to miss the VAG cafe when the gallery moves to its new waterfront location. It’s a lovely, European-style cafe and an oasis of quiet in the downtown core. It always feels a little elicit illicit to be eating and drinking there, like you were having an affair behind the city’s back.
I’ll miss the gallery being at the centre of downtown as well. I’m far less likely to want to visit the Vancouver Museum (I won’t have the delightful experience of becoming a member), which, I gather, is the probable new tenant in the courthouse building. That said, I do think the Vancouver Museum deserves a more central location, and they’re a worthy replacement for the VAG.
7 Comments »
January 28th, 2009, 3 Comments »
Late last week, I got an email from BCIT about a new site that they launched: WhatWouldYouChange.ca. From their About page:
Change starts with one person, one idea. Change happens when one person acts on their idea helping it take root and grow into something greater. What is your idea for change?
That’s what this site is all about.
It’s a place to share your thoughts on what you’d like to change about pretty much anything, and have some fun along the way. Maybe you’d like to change something about the world or perhaps it’s personal change you’re after. Whatever, we’d like to hear about it!
As far as I can figure, it’s kind of a soft-sell recruiting effort, that combines various roll-your-own social media angles on a Drupal platform. You can talk about what you’d change on video, make a kind of photo collage about it or devise short, Tweet-esque messages of change.
I traded emails with Janeen Alliston, one of the project managers on the project. I asked her why they opted for these three particular flavours of social media. Here’s her reply:
The three pronged approach was the result of a user experience document created to guide the project. We thought about what would initially engage our target demo (16-25 years olds) and what would open the door to deeper engagement with other site members as well as BCIT faculty, students and alumni. Our goal was to provide opportunities for people to interact with the site in ways that are comfortable for them. Some are happy to view videos and perhaps share them online, others may be visually inclined but not good with the written word or vice versa.
With a little help on the Drupal and Flash fronts, they conceived, designed and built the whole thing in-house–quite an achievement. I think it’s got a pretty fun aesthetic, and I think I recognize that coffee stain in the upper right-hand corner from a familiar Photoshop brush.
What Would You Change? Everything
Locals may recognize a striking similarity between the concept of WhatWouldYouChange.ca and VanCity’s ChangeEverything.ca (here’s what I wrote about that project back in 2006). I asked Janeen about this:
We became aware of ChangeEverything.ca well into the development of whatwouldyouchange. We are targeting a much younger demographic with a more whimsical take on the notion of change.
I’m not sure what to say about that. I believe that they weren’t aware of ChangeEverything.ca at the outset of the project. But I would have been given serious pause whenever I learned about ChangeEverything.ca, and might have changed the new site’s focus (or at least its brand). The lesson, I guess, is to ask around when you kick off a project like this, and really do a thorough survey to understand what else, in terms of “competition”, is out there.
With my marketer’s hat on, I’m always a bit skeptical when organizations build their own social network. This isn’t quite that, but there are already existing places–YouTube, Facebook, Twitter–where this behaviour is taking place. In our experience, it’s really difficult to drag users out of those spaces and onto your own nascent site. You’re often better off working with your customers where they are, instead of where you want them to be.
But, then, I’m very frequently wrong. And this might be precisely the kind of site that’s attractive to young British Columbians (besides, you know, the fact that they’re asexually reproducing on Facebook). Best of luck to BCIT and the project team.
3 Comments »
January 15th, 2009, 4 Comments »
When we were in New York, we set one afternoon aside for shopping. We meandered through Nolita and Soho, checking out the boutiques. I was dismayed to discover that there was nary a men’s shop in sight. I later checked with my fashion designer aunt, and she told me most of the men’s boutiques were in Chelsea (home, of course, to a large population of gay men).
So I came back from New York with nothing but new socks. I still needed clothes, so I asked local fashion blogger Victoria for some recommendations. She wrote a great post describing nine stores, most of which I’ve never visited. It’ll be very handy the next time I need some cool clothes.
I’d add a couple of stores to Victoria’s list: You and Whose Army (I couldn’t find a site for it–is it still around?) and Moule (not only a men’s store, but they had some nice clothes at very healthy discounts when I visited last weekend).
4 Comments »
January 14th, 2009, 17 Comments »
This year’s Northern Voice conference–the fifth one–pretty much sold out in three days. Tickets for Friday’s unconference lasted longer than Saturday, but certainly not much longer. And the wait list for each day is, by my guess, nearing fifty people. That happened with no marketing at all, besides blog posts and tweets from the organizers.
I have mixed feelings about that result. It’s terrific that the conference is so popular–it’s an affirmation that people really dig the event. But by virtue of that popularity (and despite its $60 price tag), the event has become kind of exclusive. If you’re not on Twitter or jacked in to the local blogosphere, you probably missed the boat on registering.
In years past, we’ve tried, when possible, to encourage noobies to attend the event. Last year (and I gather something similar is happening this year) there was a kind of Social Media 101 series on the Friday specifically for those who are new to this world. However, when the conference sells out so quickly, a bunch of those folks (and a bunch of connected, bloggy people too) can’t come. And that kind of sucks.
What To Do?
I’ve said for the past couple of years that we could double the capacity–from about 350 to 700–and still sell out. That’s never appealed, though, because an event that size would be pretty unwieldy. There would have to be huge or many rooms, more sponsors and considerably more infrastructure.
Organizer James and I were chatting last night, and discussed the possibility of making the event biannual. It happens during the spring reading break out at UBC, and could also easily happen during the fall one. If we did that, the association (Northern Voice went non-profit last year) would probably have to hire an event manager, because the volunteer organizers are all busy people stretched too thin as it is.
But I’m not sure that would actually solve the problem. I think most of the attendees who came to ‘Northern Voice Spring’ would also register for a ‘Northern Voice Fall’.
Or maybe not. Maybe doubling the number of conferences would, say, bring 250 people to each and normalize, at least in the short to medium term, the supply-demand imbalance.
It’s a nice problem to have, but one that becomes more pressing each year. Then again, maybe this social media stuff will die off in the next year or two, and Northern Voice 2012 will only have 59 attendees.
What do you think? Should we worry about too much demand and not enough supply of the moose?
UPDATE: Frequent Northern Voice attendee Mack posted his thoughts on the same topic.
17 Comments »
December 4th, 2008, No Comments »
I’ve been meaning to mention two local sites that I recently discovered:
- VancouverBC.com is a kind of portal site run by the guys who publish Vancouver View magazine (which I used to write for about four years ago). It’s focused, I gather, on locals–most of the other Vancouver portals seem to target tourists. There’s a schwack of blogs on the site, as well as a smorgasbord of event listings and other stuff you’d expect. The Vancouver hyper-local web is a competitive place (compared to sleepy, old-school Victoria), so it’ll be interesting to see how this one fairs.
- The Big Wild is an environmental outreach site run by Mountain Equipment Co-op (disclosure: for whom I’ve done a bit of consulting, though not on this site). It’s an advocacy site, with causes to support, green event listings, news and a way to turn your wilderness adventure into a pledge drive.
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December 1st, 2008, 6 Comments »
Since we’ve come back from Morocco, I haven’t been reading an offline newspaper. The local paper, the Victoria Times Colonist, is pretty mediocre. We sometimes get The Globe and Mail on Saturday, but that’s the extent of things.
While in Vancouver this week, I’ve had the chance to look through a couple of copies of the Vancouver Sun. I was interested to page through the front section of Friday’s paper. I snapped photos of the front page and pages A3 and A4. Look for the little portrait shots of the columnists:
Here’s what I was struck by: in the three (I assume) most-read pages of the paper, there were more column inches given over to editorial commentary than hard news. The same is true, as I look at it, for Saturday’s front page. It features three stories–one news piece and two editorials. I’m hesitant to use the term, but I’m struck by how bloggy the Sun is looking these days.
Is this evidence of the paper’s recognition that it is not, first and foremost, a source of timely news?
I was chatting with a reporter at a regional newspaper the other day, and she commented that her periodical was “circling the drain”. I have little sympathy for newspapers, because their operators were handed every opportunity to lead the web-based new media charge a decade ago. They declined, and they’re suffering the consequences of playing catch-up. There are obviously exceptions–The Guardian springs to mind–but too many papers seem to be clinging to an expiring paradigm.
6 Comments »
October 20th, 2008, 6 Comments »
To his office mates’ potential dismay, Travis recently set off on a search for the best burrito in Vancouver. He wrote four blog posts on the subject.
I’ve been told by more than one Latin American (or, uh, Latin American-Canadian) that Vancouver has a shameful paucity of good Mexican food. I’m ambivalent about food of all ethnicities, but I applaud Travis’s efforts nonetheless. Here’s an excerpt:
Well, like La Casita, they don’t do pork burritos here—which I found all the more irritating because they did pork tacos. Just scoop it into a different tortilla, would you? No, they would not deviate from the menu—though I don’t dock them friendliness points, because they were wonderful throughout the meal.
I should mention that Travis lived in Los Angeles for a while, so he might know more about Mexican food than the average Canadian.
6 Comments »
October 19th, 2008, 9 Comments »
Just a quick note to say that I’m part of the, uh, faculty at the Centre for Digital Media this coming weekend. They’re running a series of workshops called Web Impact: Master Your Domain. Here’s the blurb:
Experts in Advertising, User Experience and Design, Analytics and Social Media will instruct individuals and businesses on the fundamentals of online promotion, marketing and advertising. Participants will learn how to harness the power of Search Engine Optimization, Google Analytics, Facebook, and a variety of Page Ranking and Web Analysis tools to help optimize and drive traffic to their websites.
Oy, with the capitalization. Anyhow, I’m teaching a three-hour social media marketing session on Sunday. It’s a steal at $595 for all the sessions. Send your marketing folks the CDM to, you know, get clueful.
9 Comments »
October 4th, 2008, 2 Comments »
Stephanie made a great looking map showing Vancouver neighbourhoods, in the style of Ork Posters:
If you have a big monitor, you may want to check out the full-size version. I see Yaletown didn’t make the cut, but I expect that was a space consideration. I wonder what she used for her source material?
And it’s educational, too. I had only the vaguest notion that there was a part of town called Killarney. It’s yet another Lower Mainland place name borrowed from Ireland.
She should make novelty place mats. Or something.
2 Comments »
September 23rd, 2008, 1 Comment »
This weekend is the third annual version of the now legendary Vancouver BarCamp. There will be over 300 people this time around, and we’re taking over Granville Island with three different venues. The long term forecast looks okay, but it’s too soon to tell, weather-wise.
I wanted to post a quick run-down of the BarCamp stuff that I’m involved in. Descriptions are lifted from the BarCamp topics list:
- How to Be a Laptop Bedouin or ‘Hobo 2.0′ - Julie and Darren are going to start a conversation about living where your work isn’t, and what tools and techniques you need to live in Africa and work in Yaletown.
- ShortTermOlympicVancouver2010RentalsForBigBucks.com - Todd and Darren want to lead a talk about building a short-term apartment rental site for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. The conversation will cover feasibility of the idea, requirements, business model and so forth. If participants think it’s a good idea, we’ll form an ad hoc group to build the site.
- Don’t forget the post-BarCamp hockey pool at the Backstage Lounge. We’re going to try to occupy their big back room, and there’s dinner to be had if you’re feeling peckish. We’ve got 9 or 10 participants thus far, and we’ve got space for 15. You’re welcome to join even if you’re not coming for BarCamp.
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