albertaatnoon Feb 9 2011

So I decided to do what I did a year ago and instead of selecting my favourite posts of 2010, why not not just let readers “select” the top posts of 2010 by highlighting the most popular posts on this blog during the year, and then give some background as to where the post came from?

Last year I included the top 15 posts. This year I thought I’d shorten up the list on an even… 13. So without further ado, the most popular djkelly.ca Blog posts of 2010:

13. What CivicCamp is doing for the 2010 Calgary Municipal Election
May 18, 2010

In this blog post I revealed CivicCamp’s plans – and it turns out mine – for the 2010 municipal election. I think it was the night before that the “Governance Cabin” met at Eau Claire Market to finalize the plan. I actually posted details on the CivicCamp blog and then wrote this post to give more info into the rationale for the plan and to give my own personal opinion (which I didn’t think was appropriate on the CivicCamp site). Shortly after this I actually stepped away from the Cabin while I considered running for alderman — a rule the members came up with the ensure CivicCamp stayed non-partisan and that eventually affected Paul Hughes, our new mayor Naheed Nenshi, and volunteer extraordinaire Cheri Macaulay, all cabin members who stepped away to work on campaigns instead. After I decided not to run I returned to help execute some of the plans laid out in this post.

12. What data should be included in the City of Calgary’s Open Data Pilot Project
June 15, 2010

I actually meant to write this post months earlier, but I eventually did it in mid-June. My hope was it would help the City determine what data sets people might be looking for. The eventual catalogue release however only included mapping data. So while numbers 1 and 5 were included in public catalogue, we’re still waiting for numbers 2, 3, 4 and 6 to make the mapping data actually useful. Until then, don’t expect the catalogue to be all that heavily used. (Number 7 isn’t really “open data” but my hope is our new mayor may actually try to make it happen. It’s not something administration can do unilaterally.)

11. What most needs doing?
August 3, 2010

It took me a long time to make my decision not to run for alderman. It was hard because so many people had signed up to help run a campaign. In the end I had to ask myself “what most needs doing?” and I outline my answer in this post. At the time I said, “I believe I don’t need to be on council to help improve Calgary in a meaningful way,” and “meaningful public engagement may be something [alderman] want to do, but it rarely is something they have time to do at the level I believe we need.”  My goals were to “raise the level of discourse around the election” and “[have] people who believe in the kind of public engagement I believe in helping create more people who want to, and know how to, become engaged.” I think I help achieve this so successfully in 2010 that the day after the election I remember breaking down in tears because I was so proud of Calgarians and the role I was able to play. (It could have been the lack of sleep however.)

10. How open data came to be in Calgary
March 22, 2010

This post sat unfinished on my work computer desktop for months. When it first passed committee I decided to write up all the steps that were taken to make the open data policy a reality. On the occasion of it finally passing council I finished the post and put it up as documentation of the process – mainly so I wouldn’t forget, but so that others could see how easy (or hard) it is to get a policy from scratch approved.

9. Calgary, meet your new council
October 19, 2010

It was a pleasant surprise to see a post election blog post make it on to this list. Although it was only written the day after the election. While everyone else was focussed on who won and how they did it, I thought I’d take the opportunity to be the first to ponder how this new group might work together. Some of the predictions are coming true already, others might still – or not – time will tell.

8. 18 to 34 Year Olds, Social Media and the Calgary Election
August 17, 2010

This is probably the most frustrating piece I wrote this year. Often I find myself writing things in the hope that once I do, and expose the rationale behind something, the issue will be put to bed and not brought up again. I wrote this piece in response to political pundits (specifically political scientists who had no idea what they were talking about) about the myth of social media being only about young people and thus it wouldn’t have any impact on the election. Balderdash I cried! And even after I wrote it I had to scream the same thing over and over and over. Those poli sci profs sure like their narratives. Even when they have no basis in reality. And even when they’ve been proven wrong by an election. Then all they do is twist things around a little to show how they were right all along. Cheeky buggers. Duane Bratt still owes me that beer he promised on Global Television on election night.

7. Nuit Blanche Calgary update
June 16, 2010

This post might be artificially inflated on this list because it was emailed out to everyone who signed up at http://bit.ly/nuitblanchecalgary indicating they were interested. So it got about 100 extra visitors because of that. The post is a long overdue update on where things are at in the planning for a Nuit Blanche in Calgary. Something I’m long over due to do again… I’m excited at how the plans are shaping up. As I was then too.

6. Fun with Maps: Top 3 Calgary mayoral candidate vote share
October 28, 2010

David Johns deserves all the credit for this post. He made three great maps of how the three leading mayoral candidates did on election day. A post that obviously got lots of interest. Visual is better.

5. Comparing Budget 2010 to Budget 2009
February 9, 2010

In a year of municipal posts it’s nice to see a provincial one make it on to the list — let alone be written! This is a short post where I outline a nice easy way to compare the 2009 and 2010 ministry plans using Acrobat. It’s nice when the Alberta Government makes it this easy.

4. Loving or hating Calgary’s new bridge is not as easy as it sounds
July 29, 2009

In an odd twist this “oldie” was actually written in 2009. As a matter of fact, it was the 11th most popular post on my blog that year. Obviously in an election year as contentious as this one was it should be surprising that a post about a contentious issue would make it on this list, but I am surprised it is so high. I guess there are more people curious about why they are supposed to be so mad about that darn bridge than I thought.

3. If you want me to run for Alderman…
June 25, 2010

This post was probably the only one I’ve ever written that I passed by other people before putting up. It also received about twice as many unique visitors as #4. It’s probably the most important post I’ve ever written as I contemplated running for alderman. And people paid attention too: the post had the longest visit time of any I’ve written on this blog. The premise of the post was simple, I’ll do it if you are willing to help me win. Politics shouldn’t be about ego. I didn’t see why someone would announce they are running and then try to find people to help. That seems entirely backwards to me. In the end almost 100 people signed up to help me run a campaign, but I decided against it. See #11 on this list for why.

2. Calgary Municipal Election: 2010 will be a year of new faces
March 21, 2010

The top two posts on this list got more unique visits than anything else I’ve ever written. They both received about four times as many visitors as #3 on this list. (Which itself had twice as many as #4, so that’s saying something.) I’m not sure why this post got so many visits but it probably has something to do with how early in the year I wrote it. I don’t recommend making predictions seven months in advance, but this time it looks like it paid off and I was right: we did see “more turnover in one go round than many of us can remember,” with six new faces on council.

1. Who’s running for Calgary City Council in 2010?
April 3, 2010

Yes people were curious about who was running for council. From April until July I kept this blog post updated with the names of who had declared they were running for council. (Once CalgaryDemocracy.ca was up and running I decided to retire the post. It had served its purpose.) The post proved so popular that I eventually had to pin it to the main menu of my website. And even after I stopped updating it – and said I was stopping updating it – I still had people sending me tips and trying to get the list updated. If that didn’t prove Calgarians cared about the election I don’t know what would. (Aside from the voter turnout on the day of. Which also proved that.) It is the most popular post in my blog’s history.

As part of Reboot Alberta I will be live tweeting the event. As an added challenge, not only will I be tweeting for my followers and myself, but I will also be tweeting for Metro Calgary and their readers.

Last week I was approached by Metro Calgary Managing Editor Darren Krause (who you can follow on Twitter here) about my willingness to participate in a journalistic experiment for his publication. Coming out of the Manning Centre Conference  on the Alberta’s Future he was looking a way to potentially integrate information about events such as that and Reboot into a format that is interesting to his readers AND allows for ongoing, in the moment, updates from the conference.

There is something very different from writing a post event review. Theoretically this will allow readers to get the feel of what the event was like in the moment. So, the idea he had – the idea we are going to try to implement – is that I will live tweet the event and Metro will publish a selection of my tweets that provide the feel of the event in their Monday edition.

This obviously provides a bit of pause for me. Not only are my tweets going out to my 1,300 followers but they are also going out to Lord knows how many Metro readers. Will this change what I write? Maybe. I guess time will tell. At the very least it provides a more serious attention to Reboot Alberta’s Chatham House rules. These rules, which Reboot operates under, state that anything you hear can be repeated, but it can only be attributed with expressed permission.

So look out what you say around me! Who knows, it may end up in the paper. Just let me know if you want your brilliance attributed.

Finally, a big thanks the Darren Krause and Metro Calgary for trying something new and different. Hopefully this experiment works and is interesting. Either way, credit is due for MSM trying to integrate a new kind of journalism. I’m looking forward to it!

This is perfect marketing synergy! I’d bet it is completely by accident; making some graphic designers and advertising buyers look really smart in the process. But I say go for it! I hope someone from Babies ‘R’ Us contacts the Zoo – or vice versa – to see if they can’t work out a sponsorship deal.

(There’s a bevy of political posts on their way from me in the near future so I thought I’d lull you first by talking about baby giraffes.)

“That’s cool,” I thought. And it escaped my mind for the rest of the day.

On my way home I started thinking about some of the conversations I’ve had with Metro editor Darren Krause over the past year, as I pondered “Why that tweet?”. And slowly I began thinking about Canadian copyright law.

I’m a big proponent of the Open Data movement, but I’ve never really jumped on the ‘net neutrality’ bandwagon or the participated in discussions earlier this year and last about the proposed changes to the Canadian copyright laws. The concept never really ignited a passion in me as other technology issues have. But here I was wondering to myself if someone just stole my work.

It’s important that I note I’m not upset Metro reprinted my tweet. I probably wouldn’t be opposed to them doing it again. (Hopefully something less innocuous.) But hear me out as I chart my own journey into the world of the internet and copyright.

So, the first question I asked myself was: “Did they have a right to re-print my tweet?” I’ve often thought of Twitter as being a way of sharing information – whether it be an important link or something goofy that happened to me – with my ‘followers’. When I thought about Metro re-printing the tweet, I found I had this feeling that a communication between me and my ‘followers’ – a formal, structured relationship that comes with certain understandings – had been violated. Suddenly there are other people paying attention.

But Twitter by nature is a public forum. There is nothing stopping the casual observer from simply going to my Twitter page on a regular basis and reading what I’ve written. In fact, if one were to do this you would see much more content than any official ‘follower’ because of the limitations of Twitter’s @replies introduced a few months back. (A follower will only see an @reply I send to another follower if they themselves are following the other person. It sounds more complicated than it is, but I digress.) So the question begs, “Did Metro really do anything that the average person would not have been able to do by facilitating the stumbling across of my comment?”

I did however post my comment in full knowledge someone might stumble across it online. I also had the knowledge this had a very low likelihood of happening unless the tweet were about something specific that person was searching for. In which case I would probably welcome their attention as completely in context. This is where the idea of ‘permission’ comes in. By posting a tweet I have given my permission for people to read it in any one of these potential situations. But permission was not ‘given’ – expressly or indirectly – to Metro, or Metro readers, to read what I wrote.

This of course leads to the big question: How would someone feel if it wasn’t just a 140 character sentence Metro published? What if it was an entire article used without obtaining the author’s permission first?

Knowing Darren and many others in the print media, this is the kind of thing they would not stand for. It is the single most repugnant and offensive of thoughts to writers and editors. As a group they value their product – their writings – more than you could possibly imagine. What they write is their livelihood and it bears the kinds of protection you would place on your own job. They certainly would not have reprinted, say, a blog post I wrote. It would be sacrilegious. So why is it okay to reprint a tweet?

Do I even own the words I wrote?

I suppose I could turn to the Twitter terms of service to answer the latter question. In the post from Biz Stone, Twitter co-founder, that came with the recent update to the user terms, he says in no uncertain terms, “your tweets belong to you, not to Twitter”. However the terms do say:

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.

By my reading that means Twitter, the company, can do most anything with my content, even though I own the thought behind them. But under what terms do I allow others to view or use my tweets/writings/thoughts? This is not part of Twitter’s terms of service as near as I can find.

Twitter is often described as ‘micro-blogging’, so perhaps I can look to how I might tackle a similar issue if the information being reprinted was coming from there instead of Twitter. On my blog I have no confusion in this area at all. I have added a Creative Commons license that appears on every page of the site. If a reader clicks on it it let’s all readers know that they are welcome to share or adapt my work so long as they attribute the work to me.

So does this mean that by Metro highlighting my tweet as by “@djkelly”? Or that the Calgary Herald could reprint a blog post by saying “by DJ Kelly”? I’m not sure.

I found myself eventually wondering if my tweets and blog posts are more like a comment made at a town hall meeting by a politician being reported in the paper the next day. Certainly the politician did not expressly give permission for his words to be reprinted, but there is an understanding that once it is in the public domain it may be repeated and attributed to him or her. Good, bad or otherwise.

As you can tell, I’m just “thinking out loud” here. I don’t have any answers, just as I’m not complaining about Metro re-printing a tweet. What I’m trying to sort out is how I feel about where we are heading as a society as more and more information becomes more and more easily accessible. Who owns my thoughts? What processes should be followed to ensure what we are doing is ‘right’ or ‘moral’?

These are all important questions that need to be answered. But for now I’m going to just think about how cool it is that Metro is printing tweets. Awesome.

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

PS – I purposefully did not include the text to the tweet in question because it has little bearing on my thoughts around this issue. However if you are insatiably curious like I am, here is a link to the reprinted tweet.

WHEREAS the Plan-It project has produced a visionary document which will establish the "blueprint" for growth and transportation for the next 60 years with an impact on our city that cannot be understated;

AND WHEREAS the assumptions in the Plan-It document suggest a significant change in consumer and commuting behaviors which may or may not occur;

AND WHEREAS the measure outlined in the Plan-It document were seen to be too prescriptive and, in some cases, impossible to achieve;

AND WHEREAS given the challenges of predicting the future, a prudent and cautious approach to the Plan-It strategy should be employed.

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the measures being prescribed in the Plan-It document be removed and be developed in the implementation phase of the project.

AND FURTHER BE IT RESOLVED that a committee of industry stakeholders be struck to determine by consensus, measures that can realistically be achieved together with an implementation strategy and make recommendations to Council through the Standing Policy Committee on Land Use Planning and Transportation by 2009 December 09.

1. I agree with Ald. Connelly, we need to get the targets right. This is an important document that helps set out the future of our city. I don’t think anyone wants to delay it any longer than need be. Let’s get on with the process of ‘doing’ already.
2. After more than a year of public consultation (where hundreds of citizens provided their feedback) and a week of public hearings (where almost 200 people signed up to speak to council in the middle of a work day) what more could anyone possibly have to say? If that is not enough time for them to have had their say, how much time would ever be enough?
3. If the development industry did not feel they were given a voice, shouldn’t every other citizen be in the same boat? Why create a panel represented by only one industry? I believe it was Ald. Farrell who said during the hearings that if a panel absolutely had to be struck – thereby admitting the consultation the City has undertaken for the past year was not good enough and that one group of citizens IS more important than another – then there were several developers on the pro-side (such as the developer of Garrison Woods) and many other intelligent citizens (such as Chris Turner and Neil Keough) with exceeding knowledge of such things, who would have a lot to add to that discussion and should be included on the panel.

Here’s the text of his motion:

WHEREAS the Plan-It project has produced a visionary document which will establish the “blueprint” for growth and transportation for the next 60 years with an impact on our city that cannot be understated;

AND WHEREAS the assumptions in the Plan-It document suggest a significant change in consumer and commuting behaviors which may or may not occur;

AND WHEREAS the measure outlined in the Plan-It document were seen to be too prescriptive and, in some cases, impossible to achieve;

AND WHEREAS given the challenges of predicting the future, a prudent and cautious approach to the Plan-It strategy should be employed.

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the measures being prescribed in the Plan-It document be removed and be developed in the implementation phase of the project.

AND FURTHER BE IT RESOLVED that a committee of industry stakeholders be struck to determine by consensus, measures that can realistically be achieved together with an implementation strategy and make recommendations to Council through the Standing Policy Committee on Land Use Planning and Transportation by 2009 December 09.

I was made aware of Ald Connelly’s motion yesterday in a phone call from Metro Calgary. They asked for my opinion on it. What they basically mentioned to me was Connelly was looking to set up the Developer Panel. You can read my comments in their article but I wanted to go into a little more depth here. (Sound bites only provide so much explanation.)

I had three points to Metro:

1. I agree with Ald. Connelly, we need to get the targets right. This is an important document that helps set out the future of our city. I don’t think anyone wants to delay it any longer than need be. Let’s get on with the process of ‘doing’ already.
2. After more than a year of public consultation (where hundreds of citizens provided their feedback) and a week of public hearings (where almost 200 people signed up to speak to council in the middle of a work day) what more could anyone possibly have to say? If that is not enough time for them to have had their say, how much time would ever be enough?
3. If the development industry did not feel they were given a voice, shouldn’t every other citizen be in the same boat? Why create a panel represented by only one industry? I believe it was Ald. Farrell who said during the hearings that if a panel absolutely had to be struck – thereby admitting the consultation the City has undertaken for the past year was not good enough and that one group of citizens IS more important than another – then there were several developers on the pro-side (such as the developer of Garrison Woods) and many other intelligent citizens (such as Chris Turner and Neil Keough) with exceeding knowledge of such things, who would have a lot to add to that discussion and should be included on the panel.

In short, how many times does council need to do the same thing over and over and over again? Let’s finish the process we’ve already started instead of beginning a new one.

However, what the folks from Metro didn’t tell me was the first part of Connelly’s resolution: that the targets be scraped and be created during the implementation phase. This is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I’ve read in a while, and I can’t help but want to laugh and cry at the same time.

What would be the POINT of creating a visionary document, laying out the future growth of the city of Calgary, that does not have any measures indicating how we would do that?! That would be like going on a diet without changing your eating habits or ever stepping on a scale to see if you’re losing weight. (Strangely enough some would argue this would be similar to the odd council plan that has come before and is part of the reason we are on the current issue-riddled path.)

How does one even set goals while already implementing a project? I can’t imagine having built the fence in my backyard without having a plan first. “Let’s just start building a fence and see where it ends up. Once we’re done we can decide if we should have had a goal before we started.”

On the topics of asinine ideas and doing only what the development industry wants, I’m reminded of a comment made by one of the presenters during the Plan It public hearings that went something like this: The development industry tells us they build only what the people of Calgary want. Studies have shown what we want is un-sustainable and will eventually cause taxes to skyrocket or potentially the City to go broke. There are solutions, but when the developers keep offering us the cause of the problem, we’re going to take it because we want it. It is like offering a child a bowl of ice cream for breakfast. They’ll take the bowl of ice cream every day, unless a responsible adult steps in and helps them make the healthy decision – the right decision for the child’s future.

PS – I don’t think the development industry is evil like many on the pro-side of Plan It. For an alternate point of view, where I defend the development industry’s rightful hesitations, see my Think! Alberta posts.