18 to 34 Year Olds, Social Media and the Calgary Election

In today’s issue of Metro Calgary I was quoted for an article about Calgary municipal election candidates’ use of social media. The questions asked of me were simple enough: who’s doing it well, etc.

However there was a second interviewee for the same article. Bruce Foster, identified as chair of the department of policy studies at Mount Royal University, indicated he was not convinced in the power of social media during an election. The article quotes:

“While (social media) is important, you’re also targeting the segment of the voting population that traditionally has the lowest (voter) turnout,” said Foster, adding many people who use social media fall into the 18- to 35-year-old age group.

I responded to this statement in the comments section, but I wanted to expand upon it here. (And fix the spelling errors a bit too.)

I realize that Mr. Foster’s comments are probably not the entirety of what he gave – just as mine are not – but I did want to point out two potential inaccuracies in what he is quoted as saying.

First off, it is an all too often sprung trap to say that social media is used exclusively or even in majority by 18-34 year olds because this is factually inaccurate. A simple online search will show you that 18-34 year olds make up about only 25-30% of social media users.

The image above comes from a detailed analysis that Pingdom did of social media user demographics in February 2010.

As part of that study it became clear that it was impossible to generalize as Mr. Foster is attempting to do. The breakdown of age demographics varies wildly depending on the social media service you are discussing. For example, the chart below shows that Bebo (a site that to the best of my knowledge no candidates are an active member of) has a about 62% of it’s users under the age of 35. While on the other end of the spectrum you can see that LinkedIn, an online resume and networking site (which I know several candidates are active users of) has about 22% of its user being under the age of 35.

To give more than one source I would also point readers toward The Heavy Chef Project, whose tagline is “demystifying digital marketing”. They point to recent findings by the Nielsen Company (yes THAT Nielsen) on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn demographics, which align with the numbers above.

It is possible to find numbers which have a higher than average 18-35 year old participation in social media (when compared to the population as a whole demographics) but in almost all of those cases the stats tend to be a year or two or more old. Certainly it is fair to say that 18-34 year olds often are the early adopters, but once a social media has gone mainstream – as Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter have done – it is by definition going to be reflective of the population as a whole.

If we ignore the fact the first half of Mr. Foster’s statement is false, we have to deal with the second assumption Mr. Foster makes in the Metro article, that we, as a society, have done everything in our power to engage 18 to 34 year olds and therefore it isn’t worth our time to bother trying to engage them further. This is obviously not true.

The basic marketing question goes: do we spend our money on the group buying lots of product from us (who we obviously are reaching) or on the group not buying our product (who we obviously are not reaching). If you have one dollar to spend on marketing you have to choose. In the case of elections, we don’t have to.

The younger demographic has proven they are hyper-engaged within their communities – their Facebook and Twitter activity alone providing chief example. Assuming they don’t want to be part of community engagement is the lazy answer.

Instead, we should start by flipping the question on its head by asking how should we be engaging them?

When we see a block of voters trend so differently than the norm, we must ask ourselves are they not voting because they don’t want to? Or are they not voting because we haven’t done a good job of engaging them? I think in this case, it is the latter.

If the amount of information flowing through Facebook is any indication, one multiple choice question every 4 years is hardly the kind of engagement voters of this generation find beneficial. They obviously want more, and can handle more. Tools that don’t offer the kind of ongoing engagement they want aren’t worth their time. They (we?) are a generation that craves results. Cause and effect is what drives much of our day to day lives. People like to see input create output. This is the rationale behind many of the generational shifts we have seen over the last few decades. It is, for example, what points to younger workers willing to be more transient and less loyal to one corporation; it is also what’s partially at play in the decrease of participation in organized religion in North America.

It is very easy to understand how a voter could say “my vote doesn’t matter anyway so why bother voting” when viewed through the lens of expectations. Especially when compared to the exceptions we see in our day-to-day activities.

In short, times have changed and our style of democracy hasn’t. Access to our governmental system remains virtually the same today as it was in 1867 – the first year of Confederation. Input designed for improvement is still relegated to one vote per person every few years. This is despite the fact that we have greatly sped up the ability to transfer information from person to person to organization. In 1867 the only option to send a copy of something important from Vancouver to Ottawa was to send a messenger via horseback. The journey took weeks. Now I can just attach it to an email and you will have it in seconds.

That is a fundamental shift in expectation from the general public. One our system of government has had major trouble keeping up with.

I agree it is easy to ignore root causes and simply say “18 to 34 year olds aren’t engaged so we shouldn’t even try” as Mr. Foster suggests in his comment. But even a slightly deeper look shows us that we are hardly even trying to engage them.

So should candidates do as Mr. Foster suggests and ignore the 18 – 34 demographic? Or do they follow the lead of David Plouffe, Joe Rospars and Chris Hughes (Obama for America) and create value that encourages a voter to engage in the way they want to?

It is not a question of how engaged a group of voters are, but instead a question of the value that group sees. Social media is the perfect tool to gauge this because social media is all about value. If you have it, you are embraced, if you don’t, you are ignored. And that is the what voting is all about too.

As a result, I think social media is the perfect tool to reach a group of potential voters in a way that speaks to them. If that isn’t a great reason to use social media as part of an election toolkit, I don’t know what is.

Metro column: No more excuses for being uninformed

What data should be included in the City of Calgary’s Open Data Pilot Project

The City of Calgary’s Open Data Pilot Project is set to begin this summer. (Despite recent attempts to quell the future of the project at a council committee meeting. More on that in a future post.)

As the project is being mapped out moving toward a launch date, it’s important to note that it will only be as successful as the usefulness of the data included in the catalogue. Poor design or minor mistakes can be overcome and corrected, but a lack of useful data almost certainly will lead to a failure of the pilot project. This more than anything will determine how many developers and academics make the choice to get involved and try to create something out of the information provided in the data catalogue. If there isn’t much data, or the data provided isn’t very useful, the project will crumble.

So in the interest of helping things get off on the right foot, I’ve put together a list of the data I would like to see included in the initial pilot catalogue this summer.

1. Community and Ward Boundaries
Most of the conversations I have had with people about open data revolve around being able to mashup City data, or data they have accumulated themselves, with mapping data of Calgary to be able to show a visual representation of their data set. Specifically what is required is information about areas of the City that programmers may want to segregate their data by. (For example, creating a map where neighbourhoods with the lowest income appear light yellow, those with the highest appear dark yellow.) In order to be able to do almost ANYTHING useful with any data the City might provide, programmers will NEED to have the GIS created data outlining the boundaries of neighbourhoods and wards. Without providing this information I’m confident the entire open data project will be nothing more than an interesting internal exercise for the City. This will be the tell-tale sign how serious they are taking transparency and accountability: if the City publishes the mapping data for neighbourhoods and wards they have given the pilot project a reasonable chance of success, if they don’t, then it’s fair to think they’re not taking it seriously.

The next three data sets I think are required because of the first two Laws of Open Government Data:

1. If it can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist
2. If it isn’t available in open and machine readable format, it can’t engage
3. If a legal framework doesn’t allow it to be repurposed, it doesn’t empower

2. Community Statistics
The City of Calgary produces and posts on it’s website statistics for every community in Calgary. There is a ridiculous amount of interesting and immensely usable data contained in these reports that are updated every few years after a census is completed. However unfortunately you can’t do much with the documents because they are PDFs. You can read each one individually and that’s about it. Right now it is impossible to do comprehensive comparisons because the information is not open and machine readable (and therefore doesn’t engage as much as it could). To make this data available in CSV format would greatly increase its usefulness and potential. The City has made it available to the public for a reason. Making it available as part of an open data catalogue would go a long way to fulfilling that reason.

3. Transit Schedules and Stops
Wow do Calgarians like to complain about Calgary Transit schedules and the Calgary Transit website. For the most part I disagree on the former, but I too find the website’s trip planning functionality cumbersome. You know what though? I say if whiners like me want to complain, then let them try to make something better. There are hundreds of applications online and on smart phones that do what the City is trying to do, but better and cheaper. This might be the conservative side of me coming out, but I say it’s time the City got out of the way and let these small business people show us why they are so good at what they do. If the City were to make transit schedules and stops available I’m confident that within a month we will see current app providers add Calgary to their rosters, thereby giving Calgaraians dozens of new – and more than likely better – ways of planning their Calgary Transit trips. (And yes, if they wanted to, Transit could even eventually partner with ones they liked, shut down their site, and save some major money this way.) They’ve already done this with Google so let’s give the small guys a chance too.

4. Crime Statistics and Locations
Again, all this information is available online for free to the public, but it is behind a proprietary wall. The City of Calgary Police I’m confident spent a lot of money making their “Crimes Web Mapping Application” that they didn’t need to. There are many crime map providers out there that would be happy to do this job for them, if only they made the data available in a machine readable format. The other – and more important reason – this data should be made available in a machine readable format (instead of only via the map application where it can only be read and not used) is so it can be mashed up with other data sets. If someone were to, for example, mash it up with the community statistics or locations of services we might be able to see some patterns emerging and create an even more effective police presence where potential crimes might occur in the future. The police do this currently using anecdotal evidence and personal/personnel experience, but open data allows for all kinds of potential permutations to be created by others that the police may not have the time or money to undertake. We already allow for this kind of work to happen via the most successful public engagement initiative undertaken by police of all time: 911. If they trust us to report the crimes, they should trust us to do something useful with the data too.

5. Fire, Police, Recreation Centre, Community Centre and School Locations
This one is almost a no-brainer. This information is surprisingly hard to find, yet it is so basic. I can only imagine how much more useful it would have been to have this information when we were house hunting a few years ago. (I’d love to see this info and the crime data mashed up with the Canadian Real Estate Association’s MLS.) But I can’t imagine how many other fantastic mapping systems may be created if this data were available in a consistent format. Simply listing the name of the building, it’s street address and it’s longitude/latitude coordinates should be more than enough, and easily put together by anyone at the City in an afternoon.

6. Development Permit Locations and Contact Information
It baffles me that the City publishes crime data in a map but not development permit locations on a map. Any citizen can go down to City Hall and get a copy of the permit for any construction occurring in the City, but this information isn’t published online for some reason. I would have thought it would be a privacy concern of some kind, but that doesn’t make sense either considering the name and phone number of each permit applicant is published on a blue board out front of every location during a two-week window before construction begins. (I think it is also included in the newspaper advertisements during this window too.) This would be great information to have available in a useful format like CSV and KML instead of just a document file at the planning office and on a sandwich board on the street. As a community association president, this would certainly cut down on phone calls at the very least! And would be helpful in keeping track of all development going on in our neighbourhood.

It is important to note that ALL of these suggestions involve ONLY data that is already publicly available, but just in a format that limits the data’s usability and usefulness (such as PDF or proprietary software solutions). The good news about this is there will be many less hoops to jump through in order to get the data included in a pilot. I can think of many other data sets I’d like to see available, but let’s start with the low hanging fruit.

There is one data set that is not currently available to the public that I would like to see included in the initial data catalogue however that is not currently. It’s not really “data” per se, but I think it is something, which should be made available:

7. City of Calgary Contracts
I outline my rationale for this request in this blog post. It probably won’t be in the initial data catalogue, and that’s okay, but the conversation and process required to make this data available in the very near future should begin now. Otherwise it could be years before we see something so simple made available to citizens.

There is one other thing however that must be sorted out before a Pilot Project can go live: the terms of use. I’m sure the City of Calgary’s lawyers have been working overtime on this one, but I would like to suggest the City uses the same terms of use the City of Toronto and City of Edmonton are using. There’s are identical. (Seriously, click those links and read them side-by-side.) Clearly if it is good enough for BOTH of those cities, some major investigation has been done to arrive at that wording. At the very least it should be used as a starting point. We should build on the work of others rather than starting from scratch. I like these terms of reference for many reasons, not the least of which is the following section of the license which alleviates much of the concern I’ve heard from some aldermen:

The City now grants you a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to use, modify, and distribute the datasets in all current and future media and formats for any lawful purpose. You now acknowledge that this licence does not give you a copyright or other proprietary interest in the datasets. If you distribute or provide access to these datasets to any other person, whether in original or modified form, you agree to include a copy of, or this Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for, these Terms of Use and to ensure any such person agrees to, and is bound by, them but without introducing any further restrictions of any kind.

I’m confident if we can get each of these items included in the Pilot Project, the City has done everything in it’s power to ensure it’s success.

If any readers have suggestions for other data you would like to see, you’re welcome to put it in the comments below, but you should probably send it directly to the City. (I’m just an interested citizen with no direct connection to the pilot project.)

Re-thinking public engagement: a Calgary experiment

It’s funny how different aspects of your life serendipitously cross from time to time. Following my presentation at Leadership Calgary earlier this month about the current state and possible future of western democratic government (in LC speak it was titled “how do we build a systemically and systematically adaptive democratic government?”) we find a British Labour Party getting trounced from office primarily because of an expenses scandal, the Canadian parliment mired in public confusion as to why they would not want to let the Auditor General review MP expenses, and closer to home, the City of Calgary’s auditor says the procurement process is so murky and devoid of rules that fraud has almost certainly taken place.

What do all of these have in common? A lack of respect for the role the public plays in democratic government.

I won’t bore you with the details – I’ll save those for another post or for the Cities and Towns in Transition conference on June 4 and 5, which I have been asked to speak about this topic at – but at the end of the day public wisdom and government adaptability must grow together. Each relies on the other to succeed. This is done through transparency (government giving to public) and accountability (public giving to government).

I believe open data plays a big role in the transparency side of the equation, and a useful role in the accountability side, but I’ve recently been struck by the lack of systemic adaptability in our governance systems. In short, why are 15 people making all the decisions for the City of Calgary when we know public wisdom itself contains much more useful decision making information. One multiple choice question every four years hardly seems like the kind of thing our bravest citizens should be asked to give their lives to protect. Shouldn’t there be more? What of the really good ideas that lay outside the institutional input model? The good ideas that model is not designed to – and therefore unable to – reach? Do we just give up on those? Do we just call our current system ‘good enough’?

I’ve recently re-discovered Clay Shirky. I’ve been familiar with his work for several years but I’ve always classified them within the box of mind as applying to ‘technology’. Which is fair given that most of his examples lay in this field (Wikipedia, Flickr, Linux, Meetup, etc). But recently I was afforded the opportunity to apply his theories and teachings to the world of governance systems and I was surprised that what he was talking about almost seamlessly fit this world.

But so what.

I’m just a regular guy. I have no power; no input. And I certainly cannot change the 150-year-old institution of Canadian democracy. So I relished the opportunity to do what I and many others witnessing a travesty that I am unable to change would do: I whined about it.

Fortunately, I recently read the book “Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts” and was reminded of the quote by Ken Low, “despair is not an option”. I could blame others and wallow, or I could look within myself and see what I could change.

I am not the mayor, premier or prime minister, so tackling one of those institutions is ludicrous. But I am the president of another governance system: my community association. Upon quick inspection of that organization I found we – despite having an active membership, being well respected by the community, and being in excellent financial shape – exhibited the same things I wanted to rail against. We had a board of 14 elected officials who were charged with doing all the work of the association. But who cares what we thought most needs doing? We’re just 14 people who happened to have some time or caring to sit on a board. That doesn’t make us any smarter or more capable than any other group of 14 people from the community. It just means we were willing to make the commitment. But how did we make our decisions? Where did our information come from? How did we ensure the really good ideas that lay outside our institutional model were invited in?

The answer is: we didn’t. We did what almost every government does; we made decisions based on the best information available. We went with our gut and our experience; we talked to our neighbours, did the odd bit of research, and made decisions at a boardroom table. All of this put the onus on the 14 people and never once invited the public to be part of the decision making process (aside from that one annual vote or having the ability to complain). We also never invited them to be part of the implementation process either.

I was lucky enough at this point to make a connection to something that happened several months earlier. Following the second CivicCamp I had a discussion with someone had the general tone of which was: ‘Having these kind of un-conference meetings where we talk about things that matter most to the participants is great. I wish there was more of this in other places.’ The ‘open spaces technology’ format discussions used by CivicCamp I found immensely useful because the agenda for the day was never based on someone’s unintentional bias, it was the group bias that set the agenda. And being the sum of our parts almost always proves to be better than that of one person, or a smaller group of people. (Hence my trouble with 14 people at a boardroom table making all the decisions.)

So how could we engage our community to get the best ideas out of them? And do so in a format that is not just a ‘town hall’ style event featuring general discussions, Q & A sessions, and the same 14 people responsible for implementing things at the end of the day anyway?

To do this, the Winston Heights-Mountview Community Association partnered with CivicCamp to create “CivicCamp in a Box”. A sort of ‘kit’ that anyone can use, which asks members of the community to come forward and say what they believe most needs doing in the community. It does not end here however. If we are truly going to invite them into the decision making process, we also have to involve them heavily in the implementation process. After all a small army of people working only on the specific project that interests them the most, affords much more possibility for getting ‘stuff’ done than a group of 14 board members working on things they may only be casually interested in.

Take for instance what I mention in my 2009/10 presidents report on how things often work at a community association: You as an interested community member want to plan a Stampede BBQ (for example) and you come to the board and tell us you want to plan a Stampede BBQ. More often than not, because you are a warm body who is interested, the community association will promptly make you a board director. The problem is now the majority of the work you will do has nothing to do with planning a Stampede BBQ. This has been a major focus of my time on the Winston Heights-Mountview board, lowering the bar of involvement and eliminating these kinds of barriers. You want to plan a Stampede BBQ? We’ll let you do that. Do you want to join a board? It is our responsibility to provide that opportunity too. Government should be about empowering the people, not getting in there way.

And so that is the second half of “CivicCamp in a Box”. Once participants have listed the ideas they have to make the neighbourhood a better place, they will each be given the chance to select one idea that they ‘think most needs doing’ from their perspective and to work on making that idea a reality. We will provide whatever resources we can to help them – starting from lunch and coffee at the event, through to any funds the association might be able to give to their project, to our contacts with neighbours, local businesses and all three levels of government.

I’m confident the ideas coming out of this event being held tomorrow will be better and more robustly thought out than anything our dedicated and whip smart board of 14 people could have done on their own. It will even have the added benefit of creating more engaged residents who will be illustrating their commitment to a better neighbourhood, which of course comes with many unintended side benefits from Block Watches to cleaner streets to more friendly ‘over the fence’ conversations.

I’m excited about this event even though I’m not sure what any of the outcomes might be, but I’m willing to take a risk and see if it will work. Cherie McCauley and Sarah Arthurs – who I’ve been working with on the logistics of creating “CivicCamp in a Box” – and I have floated the concept to other community associations and many are interested in how this might be used in their neighbourhood.

But why stop there? If this process works, why could we not see the Province or the City apply this kind of citizen engagement to, for example, budget deliberations? When an alderman says something is what their constituents want, what process did they go through to ensure it’s not just what they think and that had received little negative criticism? A process like this can eliminate their unintentional bias created by an institutional decision making model. Heck you could go the other way with it too and use it at the local elementary school, senior’s centre or baseball team. The possibilities are endless, really. And I believe by taking our time to do public engagement in a way like this (let’s not kid ourselves, this will slow down the current institutional decision making process) we can see added benefit of increased caring and decreased expenses.

Someone just needs to be willing to try it to see if it works. So, I’m happy to volunteer to take the risk. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Year-End Blog Review

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.

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• Twitter - @djkelly

  • RT @metrocalgary: Writing is on the (Facebook) wall for some Calgary mayoral candidates, says @djkelly http://cot.ag/bYCRVS #yyc #yycvote 20 mins ago
  • @kermitology Nice! I like people pitching their ideas via Twitter. More should do it! http://civiccamp.uservoice.com #yycvote 32 mins ago
  • @JanitoFranito Been using it since Monday. Still getting used to it, but I like it! It gets confusing switching between web & iPhone tho 1 hour ago
  • It's First Thursday and the band at Art Central is awesome. You should head down. 14 hours ago
  • I'm at the Calgary2012 meeting. Not many people here but it's nice to see @Hehr4Mayor is participating. #yycvote 16 hours ago

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