Alberta Business Marketing

As 2009 comes to a close I wanted to take a look back. It was a good year for me personally and I think this blog shows some of the highlights that come to my mind when I reminisce about the last year of the decade. I could simply select my favourite posts, but I decided why not not just let the readers “select” by highlighting the most popular posts on this blog for 2009.

So without further ado, the most popular djkelly.ca Blog posts of 2009:

14. What kind of bridge will $25 million get us?
May 22, 2009

This was my first blog post about the soon to be built Calatrava bridge. I decdided I would take a look at the design limitations given to Calatrava and try to predict what the bridge might look like. While, I was right about it not being white with soaring cables, I wasn’t even close to the guessing the Chinese finger trap design, which is much more ornate than I was expecting.

13. Conversing with Alberta politicians on Twitter
June 4, 2009

A useful post that should probably be updated given how many more Alberta politicians have joined since June!

12. New Ward Boundaries Demystified
February 21, 2009

A simple post created by laying the old ward boundary map with the new map that was being proposed by the chief electoral officer. (Showing off my Photoshop skills.)  It turned out to be a post that proved it was sorely needed.

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

This is probably one of my favourite posts of the year, as I went through what I observed to be each of the areas of complaint about the proposed Calatrava bridge and outlined which were fair game and which were not. It was my attempt at adding clarity to an issue extremely misunderstood by Calgarians. While it landed at number 11 on the most popular posts, I don’t think I was overly successful because people still complain about the price with little understanding of “why”. If you’re one of those folks, it might be worth a re-read.

10. Calgary City Council saves face by embarrassing themselves: ward boundaries solved!
July 14, 2009

The last blog post on the old blog template! It holds a special place for me for that reason, but most people probably just appreciated it for what it talked about – as outlined in the post title. This is the most proud I was of our council this year. They painted themselves into a terrible corner, but admitted their mistake and righted their wrong. I wish they would have done this more times during 2009.

9. Vanessa Porteous, ATP Artistic Director Designate
January 14, 2009

I am shocked an arts related post ranked so high on this list! (And it’s not even the highest one!) Is it because of the lack of local entertainment reporting resources? I think it might be, because non-Hollywood entertainment news tends to take a couple days to make it into the papers. Maybe I should take up Metro Calgary on their offer to blog about Calgary arts for them… It could prove to be a very successful blog that maybe long overdue.

8. Doug Elniski: how to do it right
June 24, 2009

This post – along with number 5, which I wrote a day earlier – simply outlined where things went wrong in MLA Doug Elniski’s mini-Twitter scandal. This particular post provided follow-up and greater context to comments I made in several media interviews on the subject. (You can say SO much more on a blog than in a media interview!)

7. University of Calgary cutting 200 jobs
July 14, 2009

Out of all the posts in this list I think this is the closet to “regretting” one as I come. Unlike all the other posts (save the honourable mention) this post was “breaking” news instead of my usual commentary on the news. I didn’t mean for it to be however! Here’s what happened: the UofC sent an email to all staff saying they were cutting 200 jobs. I heard about this and asked the individual if it was okay I mentioned it on Twitter. They said yes, because it was sent to all staff and thus obviously public info now. The problem was, UofC never sent a press release. So when I posted it on Twitter I was inundated with media requests for more information. The result was I had another source send me the text of the email and I posted it on this blog. That night the television and radio news lead with the story and it was front page news in the papers the next morning. I’m not sure if the lesson here is about the power of Twitter, or to always keep your communications department in the loop when making major announcements. Maybe both.

6. Progress and respect
November 30, 2009

In the aftermath of the first Reboot Alberta conference I summarize my thoughts on the participants themselves.

5. Doug Elniski: now just another walled off politician?
June 23, 2009

(See number 8 first.) This is the blog post that started it all. I’m not sure why no one else was talking about Doug Elniski’s comments in context of his use of social media. It still baffles me that people think social media is some sort of special entity instead of what it actually is: just another way to talk to people. It’s nothing special, but is highly effective. This post was also was popular enough to result in me being invited to talk about his comments on CBC Calgary’s The Calgary Eyeopener, CBC Edmonton’s Edmonton AM and for a feature article in the National Post.

4. The #AskEd Accountablity Window ends tomorrow
December 3, 2009

Just like number 5 this was me talking about Alberta politicians and their failures with social media tools – although this time Mastermaq got the press coverage a week later

3. How to fix Ed’s communications problems
December 14, 2009

After number 4 I felt like I had to address the Premier’s communications problems appropriately. It’s bizarre how he’s lost the media and the public so thoroughly by a simple failure to communicate. He’s our premier and I want to see him, and thus us, succeed. This is my attempt to throw the premier a bone. We’ll see if he and his team take my advice or if they continue to fumble their way through 2010.

2. Look out Alberta, you’re about to get “rebooted”: First Impressions
November 28, 2009

I honestly think the Reboot Alberta movement – along with the Wildrose Alliance’s rise – is the single most important thing to happen in Alberta politics since the creation of the Progressive Conservative party. This post outlines my initial thoughts after the first day of the conference. The fact so many people read it gives me hope that Reboot Alberta is on the right track in their discussions. You can expect more thoughts from me on this movement in the very near future.

1. Jeffrey Spalding, CEO of the Glenbow and cultural rockstar, unexpectedly steps down
January 9, 2009

Yes, an arts story made it to number one on the list! And for such a short blog post?! The people spoke.

Honourable Mention: “Open Government” coming to Calgary?
July 21, 2009

Usually you expect to see an honourable mention at the bottom of the list, but I think this one deserves to be at the top of the list. July 21 had more people visit my website that any other day in it’s history. By a LONG SHOT – almost twice as many as any other day. There was only one post written around that period of time, and it was written on that very day. I think what happened was the main URL of this site was circulated and shared rather than the actual URL of this paticular post. Therefore I don’t have accurate numbers on exactly how many people visited this particular story, but the numbers are just so overwhelming I had to include it.

I wrote this post during the morning hours in a business centre of a hotel in Portland, Oregon. I had been given permission from Ald. Pincott and Ald. Ceci to announce the open data notice of motion the day before it became public when the council agenda was released. People from all over North American immediately sat up and took notice and did so by reading this post. Amazing. Look for a lot more on outcome of this notice of motion in early 2010.

Tags: arts, Brian Pincott, Calgary, calgary city council, CBC, communications, Doug Elniski, Ed Stelmach, Edmonton, Edmonton AM, Jeffrey Spalding, Joe Ceci, Mack Male, National Post, open data, open government, Politics, Reboot Alberta, Santiago Calatrava, technology, The Eyeopener, Twitter, University of Calgary, Vanessa Porteous, wards, Wildrose Alliance
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As I reflect on my weekend at Reboot Alberta, I’m reminded of my initial impressions and how I still hold them to be true. The diversity in the room (gender, age, political leanings) sticks with me. I don’t think I’ve ever been to another political event like this one. And that leads me to my final impression of the day itself:

I was surprised by how respectful everyone was.

There was no shouting or outward appearances of anger what-so-ever. As a matter of fact, people were downright nice. In the group discussions that I participated in not one person dominated any conversation, no one cut others off, no one interrupted. Not once. Maybe I’m jaded, but I was downright shocked by this fact. I participate in many different boards and group discussions on a regular basis and I have never seen a group so genuinely respectful of the opinions and contributions of others.

Perhaps what most shocked me is that this was a quickly established state of being for the participants. In my experience, you usually have to arrive at this point of kindness by some form of organized ‘punishment’ – if you will – in response to someone’s poor behaviour – be it intentional behaviour or not. I’m sure we’ve all been there: one person talks too much so someone says “let’s hear from someone else” etc. Not so in this group. It was respectful right from the very first moment.

And everyone was encouraged to contribute too. Round tables to start every conversation appeared to happen simply naturally; therefore everyone has participated before the conversation had even really started! Everyone who had something to say was given the opportunity.

Now you might be thinking this is just me trying to paint a pretty picture. But it’s not. I had to constantly remind myself this is a group of highly political people. Almost all of them A-type personalities too. These are the kinds of people you normally would picture yelling at one another during Question Period, or passive aggressively trying to further their cause by undercutting the other guy during a conversation or in a comment section. None of this happened though.

I certainly was expecting some bashing of the current political process. I mean, after all, we were all in the room to begin with because we felt some form of dissatisfaction with the current political realities (or climate or whatever word you want to use) in Alberta. I expected I would be all too early dismissing individuals as ‘not worth the trouble’ after they blurted out another near-sighted, one dimensional, unhelpful comment about “the conservative bastards” or “those fucking lefties”. But nada. Nothing. And keep in mind there were die-hard members of pretty much every political party in the room. This is not the kind of behaviour you’d expect when they get into a heated debate. There wasn’t even any name calling, unintentional slander or jokes gone wrong. Sure, there was the odd comment about how each party interacted with various communities, but again, even when the conversation turned to discuss a negative, everyone was unbelievably respectful.

I still haven’t decided what to make of this ‘respectful’ state of being I witnessed. It’s not what I’m used to seeing in political discussions. But I have a feeling it might just be a fundamental part of what being “progressive” is all about.

Tags: Politics, Reboot Alberta, respect
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You could tell before we even got to Red Deer there were a lot of expectations about Reboot Alberta. You could read it in blog posts and in twitter conversations and in blog post comment sections. There was a buzz.

Why? Because this is the kind of conversation that does not happen very often.

A lot of the buzz was about “the left-wing conference” or creating a new party or things of that nature.

So for me, the first order of the day was to throw all of those expectations out the window.

This turned out to be a relatively easy thing to do. My first impression was that of the amazing diversity in the room. There was almost an equal split of young and old(er). I actually found this surprising because of my other public development experience with the younger-skewing CivicCamp and ChangeCamp.  In an almost ironic turn, during a conversation I had with one of those older participants, he confided in me he was surprised there were so many young people. (The exact opposite of my impression!) He, being a political stalwart, expressed how he’s never had a political discussion with so many young people at the same time. He stuck me as shocked there are so many young people in the province who care about politics. And quite frankly: the direction Alberta is heading.

And yes, it’s important to note there are more women (again both young and older) than I thought there might be too. As well as visible minorities. (Apparently I thought it was only going to young white males. I was wrong.)

The other thing that helped shatter my expectations was the diversity of political leanings in the room. It was stated at the beginning of the day that there are active members of every single political party in the province in the room. There are former cabinet ministers and MLAs, former candidates, campaign managers and die-hard supporters. This added a layer to the discussions that was invaluable. Instead of it being a conference about policies, it immediately became a conference about engagement.

This is why I found the afternoon sessions so profoundly useful.

During the morning a lot of ideas were discussed. In a typical un-conference-seemingly-random manner. But during the afternoon it was “action’s” turn as the format switched to just four discussion groups: the four ways to effect change.

The four ways identified and discussed were:

• From within the current political system and current parties
• From within the current political system through a new party
• From outside the current political system through an organized movement
• From outside the current political system through individual actions

Seeing these four “ways forward” – as I’ve come to call them – was a revelation for me. That’s it, just four ways you can effect change. How simple can it get?!

Much of the discussion during these groups focussed on what each of these areas could accomplish in the name of change. I know the new party vs. from within current parties either-or generated a lot discussion in particular. But it was during the discussion result presentations that it dawned on me: what would happen if we took all four of these ways forward AT THE SAME TIME?

Any one of these ways forward could effect change. However taking all four paths at the same time could all but guarantee the desired change.

Certainly all four groups were heavily attended, so my guess is, you may very well see all four of these ways forward actually undertaken.

And if that’s the case, look out Alberta, you’re about to seriously get “rebooted”. The whole game is about to change.

Tags: Politics, Reboot Alberta
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