If you ask me, I have NO clue how my friend Rebecca Bollwitt manages to have so much energy. She is co-organizing WordCamp Whistler (have you gotten your tickets yet? The registration re-opened for a few more tickets. Go, get’em!), and will have two slots at Northern Voice 2009. And she is the local organizer for Twestival Vancouver! She recruited me to help, and I’m more than happy to collaborate. Here is a link to Rebecca’s post asking you to save the date for Twestival, so for more information about the event, why don’t you head over to her blog? It’s for a good cause (contribute to [charity:water])!
For me, 8.15am is REALLY early. I am usually a night owl, but today I have a gazillion things to do, so here are a few tidbits I’ve found on the blogosphere and Twitter for your reading pleasure.
– Via Aron Bjornson, the summary of an interesting report by The Hartman Group that argues that, despite the economic downturn, eco-minded consumers still want to buy green products (e.g. about 60% of consumers will continue to pay a premium price despite the economic conditions). First off, somehow the numbers don’t jive with me. Second, I wonder if this report analyzes conditions of the previous years (2007-2008). Right this very moment, I doubt that environment has such a prevalent relevancy as it did before (simply because people are worried about their livelihoods).
– My friend Rebecca Bollwitt is a history buff and she kickstarts her 2009 History series with a tidbit about Duff Patullo (yes, the name sounds familiar to you because of the Patullo Bridge that connects New Westminster with Surrey). I had a chance to tour the Patullo when Rebecca and I did National Digital Media Day last year, so I do know first hand how horrible the bridge is. But you should read Rebecca’s history post to understand more about who Patullo really was.
And of course, I can’t leave without showing you great photos of the 3rdWhale party at Ceili’s, photos that my friend Tris Hussey took where you will recognize other friends, including Emme Rogers, Lorraine Murphy, April Smith, Dario Meli, Ryan Holmes, Jenn Lowther, and of course Kris Krug (if I missed someone do let me know!). Yes, we *did* make it. It was a pleasure to meet Dr. Boyd Cohen, the mastermind behind 3rd Whale, Ron Williams (formerly from HappyFrog and now 3rdWhale) and I didn’t get to say hi to Emily Jubenvill but that’ll be next time.
Was planning to do it with Cover-It-Live but frankly I don’t have the time to learn the platform and “on the fly” doesn’t really jive with me. So I am definitely going for good ‘ol fashioned WordPress. The comments should be flowing freely if you want to comment.
I’m also available on Twitter (I have TweetDeck open) if you guys want to tweet your questions to the speakers. Will try to capture them on the fly.
UPDATE 5:31pm– I am just saying hi to Karen Quinn Fung, and can se some familiar faces here now. Carol Sill, Dario Meli, Jenn Lowther and Ryan Holmes from Invoke Media, Nancy Zimmerman, and many other friends of mine are here. If I haven’t said hi, let me know! I also can see Caroline from Beauty Night, April Smith and Erika Rathje (whom I didn’t know if she was coming or not)
UPDATE – 5:59pm – Kris starts by thanking the sponsors. WorkSpace, the location sponsor. Communicopia also sponsors the event (thanks Jason!). As we go around teh room introducing ourselves (Twitter name and a quote), and I have to say that a lot of people are NOT on Twitter. I’m kind of shocked.
Boyd Cohen – 3rdWhale
Their launch party is at Ceili’s Pub (Smithe and Granville) – so Boyd is inviting everyone to come along (too bad both ). They are at the intersection of smart phones, green businesses and consumers. Making it easy for people to live a green lifestyle anywhere where they live in the world. Green businesses having a hard time to reach consumers. Consumers not easy for them to find data about green businesses.
3rd Whale solves that problem by finding green businesses – then their iPhone application helps you find those green businesses. They are committing to having 100 cities by the end of the year (around the world). What kind of green business? Anything to live a green life-style. Do whatever you want to do anywhere in the world.
You can rate the business in terms of how green they are, etc. The next version has descriptions of every business and an expanded rating system and a tagging system so you can do more refined searches. They are integrating a coupon model for green businesses if you’re using their mobile app. They also have a user-generated review system.
QUESTION – How do you evaluate the green-ness of the companies you have on there? – R.- They have a mechanism to screen businesses online. Those that are relevant then it goes into the database. They rely on the user to rate it.
QUESTION – Eesmayl asks why 3rd Whale? – Triple bottom line, whale is an endangered animal, they want to be the largest social movement around green businesses.
QUESTION – Do you do anything non-iPhone? – Yes, working on. Android and BlackBerry.
They are doing a pitch for Urbantastic. Most of us believe that non-profits are really important. We are entering into a pretty bad patch. So we’re going to talk about how Urbantastic can help. How does a Non-Profit-Organization (NPO) transform itself? By engaging with the audience. Social media helps with the engagement. How does it look like? They get themselves a website. Then they slowly and surely open themselves up using e-newsletters and then blogging. Then they create a personality asking questions and doing some crowdsourcing. They are the platform for micro-volunteering.
Basically, it’s doing small tasks without any commitment. An example – instead of forwarding his concerns to the organization, he took 10 minutes to create something for the NPO. The best part for the volunteer, he/she doesn’t feel a commitment is necessary but their creativity is tapped on. Promote the organizations who embrace social media and engage in micro-volunteering.
Say you want to tap into a talented lbour pool, who don’t have much money and want to engage in a leaner, smarter organization model. The task may get undone or done very poorly. What needs to happen is to get the people engaged with the small tasks. The jobs get done for free AND professionally. This creates engagement between the NPO and the community of crowdsourcers. Saves money and creates an organization with a larger support base. That’s what Urbantastic helps create!
Q .- What’s the business model? R.- Well, we are not a for profit organization. Our operation is essentially a volunteer labour. Most of the value is with the organizations as they embrace the social media (and then further may be able to create some money out of it).
UPDATE: 6:30pm – We are still in the Q/A process with Urbantastic.
What are some other tasks? – Well, that’s a good question – Sometimes technology – Photoshoping for an organization, or just finding out information (crowdsourcing technique). Through Twitter you can do a lot of research. Is it like the Mechanical Turk? Yeah, but for non-profits.
Q.- Can you create user accounts? – You could create ratings of sorts, an important feature. You have to develop your public profile as a volunteer. Then you can put it on your resume.
Q.- Karen makes a comment – The Time Raiser model, similarities. Well, Time-Raiser is not an every day occurrence. It’s an event-based thing. Bring talented people like the Urbantastic audience. You can auction stuff for volunteer hours.
UPDATE 6.35pm – Now it’s the turn of Steve Anderson from SaveOurNet.ca
What is the net neutrality principle? The operator of the railway had to charge every company to get their car through the road. The Internet from its inception operated on the basis of net neutrality – open Internet = best idea wins. Whether you are a big company or a small company, you operate within a level playing field.
Put simply, net neutrality means non-discriminatory treatment of traffic. That is, outside of limited exceptions such as spam and known viruses, the companies that deliver information over the internet have treated all information the same, delivering each package of information as quickly and efficiently as possible (often referred to as the “best efforts” internet). Under this regime an internet user is free to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider. Network neutrality means that the network provider’s only job is to move data – not to choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.[Save Our Net F.A.Q.]
In Canada, last February 2008, big players began slowing down services. Competition is stifled. If you have a video service (small sized) and want to stream – you can’t compete with Dell because your service is being slowed down. If it continues to go this way in Canada, producers and entrepreneurs will not be able to compete because they’ll need to shell out a lot of money to be able to get into the fastlane of the Internet. We need more competition and choice – make faster, smarter and wealthier for everyone.
– Join the coalition
– Publicize it
– Get involved
Q.- You say that Canada is going the wrong way – are you saying that it’s just that we haven’t bothered or is it the politicians? In the US they are regulated in a different way, Congress has passed regulations. In Canada, recently the CRTC said that it’s ok that net neutrality is not operating. The NDP is supporting net neutrality, according to Steve.
Q.- Is it the responsibility of municipalities? – We need to encourage an open internet. Local political leaders who suggest free and open access.
Supposedly they are running out of business. But, the question remains – is our lobbying less effective than the American lobbying strategies on this topic?
UPDATE – 6:44 pm Now it’s the time for Lorraine who is going to describe the process of engaging with the community and the Fearless City strategy.
Lorraine begins by describing what Twitter is (the microblogging platform). April has been taking video (and so has Jenn Lowther, I think). If you look at Twitter now, many responses (the majority) are “@” replies (which means that Twitter is now about 80% responses). Effectively showing that Twitter has become a platform for conversations.
Twitter is great for news breaks. She proceeds to describe the Toronto explosions and her blog post is the # 1 ranked post on Google. Kris describes the changing face of news (7 minutes vs. 30 mins). Remember the earthquake going on?
Jack Burton Theory of Twitter – Then she proceeds to describe the professional side of Twittering (in her case, her contributions to the FearlessCity account). It has to be very professional. Now Lorraine describes the Phones for Fearless campaign – empowering Downtown East Side residents by video-describing your life. RainCity Studios designed the campaign and went viral. They had 35 blog posts from different people. She put out 400 DMs on Twitter and more than 1500 tweets for the campaign. It’s been quite successful. All she asked is “please just post about this“. Not “give me a phone” or anything. It just went wide. About 4,000 retweets on the Phones for Fearless campaign.
Q.- How long is it likely to stick around (e.g. the business model of Twitter) There are enough robustly created clones. If you learn how to use this platform.
Q.- Are there filtering methods? Yes, by keyword, or using Power Twitters, or TweetDeck to separate groups, or hashtags, or the Summize tool.
Kris makes a great point – you need to know how to separate the noise from the actual data (signal). He also describes the tool Yammer and also describes the greatly successful campaign. A couple of hundred phones.
UPDATE – 6:58pm – Now it’s Joe’s turn. Social Actions is bridging the actions with the users. Joe now describes what NPTechBlogs does. This is a Twitter feed that is automatically created for all the top non-profit tech bloggers. First, finding the bloggers and then second, parsing the messages (aggregates everything that is written on the topic). You can use TwitterFeed for this.
And you can also check Joe’s top tips here (his De.Licio.Us site). He also describes how to use Twollo (an auto-follow tool). You can do this because Twollo analyzes your own tweets and auto-follows. The other tool is SocialToo which is an automatic follower-back. He then does show how Search Twitter (Summize) can be hacked into TweetDeck to find specific data.
Q.- How do you make money? Joe is a consultant! He can develop a suite of tools and let you go ahead with it.
UPDATE – 7.12pm – The main thing about Flickr is that it allows you to upload photos that you can share with the world. You can tag your photos and it’s really very well organized. Monica shares a great quote by Clay Shiry “… although people are doing this out of a personal need to keep track of their photos and so forth, the aggregate…”
The big thing with non-profits – they have these compelling stories. Someone will go to Africa and realize that some things are very powerful and they connect and they share their stories. They don’t have to make up stories, they already have them. For instance – Keep Reaching for a Star in 2009
It doesn’t really function independently. It’s better to integrate it with other tools. It has a lot more impact. So, solidarity. Faces of ONE campaign.
Starbucks Photo Petition Pictures. They support Ethiopian coffee farmers (your photos are submitted with that tag). Monica also describes the Medecins Sans Frontieres photo Flickr stream– unfortunately their Flickr photos do not have Creative-Commons licenses. Better for NPOs to actually license their photos with CC.
Monica is now describing the Bear Your Soul Flickr campaign segment to the larger campaign “Save the Great Bear Forest” (Capulet Communications helping Forest Ethics, Greenpeace Canada). You can check my post here. If you are not associated with any specific campaign, you can create your own one. For example, lots of people created a series of campaigns/groups around the 2009 Presidential Inauguration.
Q.- I’m curious whether there is any sort of a market place component for Flickr – A.- The owner of Flickr has that idea, but not Flickr really probably. That’s not the direction Yahoo! would take it.
Raul – ME – speaks to the concept of establishing relationships with people. I just wanted to make the point that it’s more likely that I will write about your stuff if we are friends.
Lukewarm Touch.
An estranged 3rd cousin of the Midas Touch, the Lukewarm Touch allows its hero to touch any temperature liquid and turn it to room temperature. Perhaps somewhat useful if captured by cannabalistic pygmies.
But even funnier are the justifications for the super power (commentaries)
If you’re a parent that has to deal with reheating formula/breastmilk, this super power would actually be killer.
I’ll admit… if I had a superuseless superpower, I’d certainly appreciate feedback on how to make it actually useful!
Since ANYONE can post ANYTHING online, it now seems as though EVERYONE is an expert in something. Some people are experts at appearing to be experts at something.
Let’s consider what I have done in just one of the sub-fields in which I do research on (wastewater management and policy), just for illustration purposes. I wrote a 135 pages, single-spaced book on wastewater governance and policy in Mexico. I conducted field research for the project for two years. I interviewed over 70 people, my transcripts reached over 4000 pages, and I collected hundreds of documents. To create the theoretical framework of the project, I read over 300 journal articles about water (although, I should say that a vast minority dealt with the social aspects of wastewater management). I have published six peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and given over 15 talks about various aspects of this project (none of them, actually, has been a recycled version, so all talks have been original).
Furthermore, I sit on editorial boards of journals and frequently conduct peer-reviews of books, book chapters and journal articles, all focused on water. Does all my background make me an expert in the social science of wastewater governance? Some scholars would probably argue that yes. However, I never say “I’m an expert in wastewater policy“… all I say is “I specialize in wastewater governance“.
While my academic credentials and production help me feel more confident about being called an expert in environmental issues, I am sometimes reluctant to be called a “social media expert”. I know MANY people who know much more about social media than I do. I am not sure they call themselves experts either. Simply because, as I mentioned before, social media is such a fluid and dynamic issue area that I don’t even think anybody can fully grasp it. Yes, I do blog. Yes, I am very good at social networking. Yes, I have some understanding of the technology and how to put it to good use to create online communities and disseminate knowledge over the Internet. Does that make me a social media expert? Hardly, I believe.
I am interested and excited and passionate about social media. If I find a good project that calls for the implementation of a social media strategy in a sustainability/environmental area, I would say “sure, I’ll help”. But I’m more likely to offer insight and impart my knowledge on the topics that I feel most comfortable talking about. Would I be excited about examining and investigating how social media can be used to enhance local decision-making about how we manage our water? For sure. Would I be able to combine both my expertise in water governance and social media? ABSOLUTELY. Would I call on external help to implement said strategy? FOR SURE.
THAT, I think, is what makes social media so appealing to me. I feel as though I can call upon many of my social media/tech/PR friends and ask for help (obviously, if the project offers payment, the payment is also relayed to them as well!). Being able to speak the social media language AND use my technical expertise in environmental issues is what makes me, I think, rather unique professionally speaking.
That’s why I asked the question – is disclosing that we aren’t experts a good or bad practice? What do you all think?.
I’ll have to admit that, while I am very happy that President Barack Obama has been sworn in today as the 44th President of the United States of America, I wasn’t checking the Inauguration myself. I woke up way too late. But I’ve been checking the Twitter feed and live streams. And The National post’s liveblog.
I know that today, my American friends living in Canada and many of my non-American friends will be talking all day long about this momentous and really exciting occasion, particularly on Twitter. This is, indeed, part of the making of history. And something that I noticed is that The National Post is live-blogging using Cover-It-Live and doing a mashup of Twitter commentary. Three friends of mine whom I met through Twitter are in Washington DC for the inauguration (Nadia Nascimento and Anthony Nicalo who hosted an inaugural reception and Tom Williams, who apparently also talked to The National Post).
It’s fascinating that mainstream media and new media are so intimately intertwined in the coverage of the Obama inauguration. Finally, it seems that there is no more divide. Just as Obama offered words that speak to bridging differences (of religious creed, sexual orientation, and race), co-existing together harmoniously and collaborating, I seriously hope that today marks a new day not only for America but for the world, a day where the source from where the news came from (be it mainstream media and new media) is no longer relevant.
I met Pete Quily (Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Coach) through the Vancouver Bloggers Meetup and Third Tuesday groups, and I am very glad I did, for many reasons. For one, because I’ve always had a long standing interest in ADD and its treatment/management. For two, because I really like Pete and I enjoy his conversation and insights. And for three, because he always manages to share some really good links/sites. This time, the stuff Pete shared has already been profiled by some other colleagues in the social media world and received attention in the mainstream media: his analysis of the recent civic election and the use of social media strategies.
Graph credit: Pete Quily on Flickr.
One really interesting thing for me here is the use of quantitative data as a metric for comparison. While I am a chemical engineer by training, I have tended to undertake more qualitative work (particularly in-depth interviews, textual analysis of documents, discourse analysis, etc.) Nevertheless, when I did my PhD, my advisor and mentor (who is highly quantitative) completely shifted my approach and made me become much more quantitative.
I have used quantitative metrics to study wastewater policy (and I’m quite comfortable doing so) although for most of my studies I’ve complemented the number crunching with in-depth interviews and a very thorough literature review. And Pete’s post makes me again feel confident that using numbers can actually provide us with good insights into the behavior of each candidate on social media platforms.
I am guessing one follow up would be an in-depth interview with both candidates and their understanding of the goals of the social media campaign, coupled with interviews with their campaign managers and those consultants who handled the campaigns and the platforms. Hat tips to Pete for an excellent analysis. I guess it’s now up to me to do the qualitative follow up! 🙂
Everyone knows that I love adventures. If said adventure involves having lunch with a close and dear friend of mine, it’s even more exciting. These days, I have to get as much face time with Nancy Zimmerman as I can as she is soon moving to the North West Territories. Thus, when she said that she’d join me to try Deacon’s Corner (located at the corner of Main and Alexander) I could barely contain my excitement. Nancy is a very close friend of mine and I’m privileged to have tried this place with her.
I am not sure what exactly was here before, but the owners of Deacon’s Corner have done a fantastic job of revitalizing the location. Very clean, spacious and well distributed, Deacon’s Corner is a neighbourhood diner with the food to match its external beauty. I ordered my traditional breakfast items (2 eggs scrambled with a sausage patty and hash browns, $ 5.75) and a soft drink. I normally do this to compare with other breakfast places. Nancy ordered a club salad, which was humongous in my opinion.
The customer service was top notch (and very graceful, even in the face of my absolute clumsiness – I dropped a mustard bottle accidentally, leading to unfortunate consequences). The waitress was really sweet and I even got to exchange a few words with one of the owners (Ryan was it?). I had heard from the Vancouver tech crowd in the Railway area that Deacon’s Corner was good, and now I am able to confirm. I loved it. I’ll definitely be back.
Since they only are open from 7am to 3pm, I guess I’ll have to meet up here for lunch with JT sometime during work week. I’d seriously recommend that you try it out.
This weekend I wanted to do OH SO MUCH WORK and of course, it didn’t happen. But at least, some parts of the weekend were awesome, like catching up with a few friends I haven’t seen in almost a month (including Tanya, who had been in Florida for her half-marathon).
I was feeling restless all night and worried about the fact that I have an event Every.Single.Night.Of.The.Week. But you know what? I’m not going to let that worry me. It’s Monday, I’m alive and well, and I’m heading into the office to give it my all.
How is YOUR Monday? And what are you looking forward this week?
I am pretty sure everyone knows now that I’m the organizer of the Vancouver Bloggers Meetup. You didn’t know? Well, now you do. We are a pretty diverse group, all ages, all kinds of bloggers. We have foodie bloggers, theatre bloggers, podcasters, tekkies, social media and PR people, mommy bloggers (e.g. parenting bloggers), personal bloggers, professional bloggers, political bloggers, journalists, etc.
It was my goal to make the VBM more open so I have asked a few of my fellow bloggers to speak for about 2-3 minutes about the kind of blogging they do. I am extremely fortunate in that VBM and social networking have helped me create solid friendships with the bloggers I know through VBM. And my hope is that you, too, will find our meetings interesting and conducive to fostering new friendships.
We will spend the first few minutes speaking about the general feel for the coming months of VBM and a sample of what our bloggers are currently writing about. My hope is that you’ll spend the rest of the time socializing and networking in a safe, comfortable environment. I’ve chosen The End Cafe on Commercial and Broadway because it is a rather large space. We’ll have to test if it is loud or not.
Looking forward to seeing you all. Please RSVP here!
My friends Duane, Nancy and Yam are moving away (respectively to Chilliwack, BC – Yellowknife NWT and Mexico DF) and it’s kind of a bittersweet situation. On the one hand, it’s obviously amazing that they are undertaking these enterprises. On the other hand, I’ll miss them dearly. To you, my friends, my respect, friendship and a reminder that, wherever you are (and wherever I am) you’ll always be with me.
My friend ML and I hadn’t done brunch in a while so we headed down to Theresa’s on Denman Street. I hadn’t realized this place was so incredibly popular until we got there (admittedly, after 1pm). The service was prompt and friendly, and the prices are substantially cheaper than any other brunch place I’ve been to recently.
I ordered a C (Charlie) – 2 eggs scrambled with white toast and 2 sausages ($ 4.50) and a soft drink ($ 1.00), which was good in portion size and flavor. It’s funny though – the sausages here are better than at other greasyspoon joints I’ve been to.
Our bill combined wasn’t even over $ 10.00 (before tip) so I can definitely attest to the fact that Theresa’s is indeed a very inexpensive brunch place.
Few songs make me feel stronger and empowered than The Knack’s My Sharona. We had a chance to hear it this morning as I was playing with Hamburger Mary’s jukebox. Hope you like it as much as I do.
The past couple of weeks (and in particular, the past couple of days) I’ve been feeling frustrated because I’ve been losing stuff (I am REALLY careful with my belongings, so it really upsets me when I lose something). I also have had somewhat of a forgetful mind, so even if I managed to do some productive stuff or see a few friends, I still don’t feel “on top of my game”.
The straw that broke the camel and has me really upset is the fact that I lost my bus pass/drivers’ license/university card, on the bus, very very accidentally (I was opening my wallet to show my bus pass to the driver and it must have slipped and I didn’t even notice).
These minor things are REALLY minor compared to other people’s MUCH larger problems, and I shouldn’t complain, I am well aware of that. But somehow I feel somewhat cursed (or seriously, I might just need to disconnect from everything for a few days, re-focus, and try to see things from a completely different perspective).
In the mean time, I am going to contact Translink to see if a Good Samaritan picked up my stuff on the bus and gave it to the bus driver. *sigh*
The fine folks of Liberty Wines invited me to participate in their 2009 Taste BC event at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on January 22nd, 2009 from 4:30pm to 7:30pm. This awesome event takes place for the second year in a row. Unfortunately, I’m triple-booked for that evening, but luckily I have enlisted a guest blogger who will be covering the event and will be bringing you a full report of the event (thanks Ed!).
So you might ask yourselves, what is Taste BC? It is a celebration of local food and drinking. There are many positive elements to this event, including the fact that it allows participants to sample a very broad variety of food and wines. Along with fantastic food and drink, the event will feature live music, door prizes and a silent auction for a variety of luxury items, including local experience packages and delicious products made by British Columbia’s own producers.
Tickets are $ 49.99 and can be purchased from any Liberty Wines location. Furthermore, one of the event’s main draws, and something that really warmed my heart was the fact that proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to the BC Children’s Hospital – Oak Tree Clinic. I’d seriously recommend this event, as it seems to be poised to be a yearly tradition that is not only a celebration of food and wine/cheese but also an opportunity to enjoy tasty food and drinks for charity.
As many of you know, a few hours ago, a US Airways plane landed safely on the Hudson River. CNN has live coverage, but even before they started covering it, everyone on Twitter started giving updates. A Summize search was updating between 330-550 tweets every 0.03 seconds. I am NOT kidding.
While some people may think of this as information overflow, I think of this as true crowd-sourced citizen journalism (like the awesome work that NowPublic.com does). Twitter-sourced citizen journalism.
No wonder why so many mainstream media folks are getting on Twitter. And local Vancouver people like Gillian Shaw and Jeff Lee from The Vancouver Sun, and Stephen Hui with The Georgia Straight (just a couple of examples, this listing is by no means exhaustive), are doing excellent work by “getting it” (e.g. understanding social media even if their day job is mainstream media).
Honestly, I am glad I am on Twitter. And I am even more glad that the passengers are safe. To the pilot of the US Airways Flight 1549 – YOU ROCK. You saved more than 150 lives today. And to the crew – you rock too!
[UPDATE – I failed to mention that one of the people who was helping the rescue, Janis Krums (@jkrums on Twitter) sent to TwitPic what is considered the very first photo of the plane floating on the Hudson River. Kudos to him! The true power of social media eh]
Well, considering that my blog has a reputation for the restaurant reviews I do, and that somebody tagged me “Dr. Dine Out”, I figured that many people might be puzzled as to why I hadn’t yet posted anything about Dine Out Vancouver. See… the budget may not allow for many events, but given the broad range of affordable options, I might just have to cave and do at least one or two of them!
Vancouver’s delicious celebration of BC food and wine is back! Enjoy a three-course dinner at over 180 of Vancouver’s hottest restaurants for $18, $28 or $38* per person, complemented by fabulous BC VQA wine pairing suggestions.[Tourism Vancouver]
I’m probably going to do review posts, and stuff, but just on the $ 18 dollar range, a few personal favorites (please note that there are dozens of them, this is just a short list):
– Burgoo
– Ashiana Tandoori
– Chutney Villa
– Urban Thai Bistro
Reservations are recommended. I give big kudos to Tourism Vancouver for narrowing the database search engine by “Vegetarian”. My friends who are vegetarian thank you in advance!
So – do tell – do you plan to do Dine Out Vancouver and where were you thinking of going? I’m thinking of putting together a group with other local power food bloggers (Degan, Roland, Owen, Karen, to mention just a few). Do let me know if you’re interested too.
You can read the details on the Meetup.com website, but long story made short – I’m attempting to establish the meetup for the third Wednesday. I am fully aware that Green Drinks is the same night, and I’ll have to deal with that aspect some time (since, well, I am an environmental specialist so technically, Green Drinks *should* be one of the events I *should* attend).
Under normal circumstances, unless I have a volleyball game or have to go to church, I rarely wake up earlier than 11 am on a Sunday morning. I am NOT a morning person. So, despite having had VERY little sleep the previous night, I knew I couldn’t miss the Breakfast with Jeff Pulver in Vancouver.
Jeff Pulver. Credit: John Biehler (Flickr)
Jeff Pulver is a wonderful individual, with a passion to connect people that I have only very rarely seen in my lifetime. His “Real Time Social Tagging” exercises are a fantastic way to network and establish connections with people. Since being social and creating friendships is almost second-nature to me, I immediately connected with Jeff’s idea. My tag for this breakfast was “Raul – I use social media for fun and to create friendships”
Credit: John Biehler on Flickr.
It is true. Social media is my playground, not my day-to-day job. I am flattered by the people who have asked me to work with them on some social media contracts but as I have explicitly told them, I’m NOT a specialist in social media. My field of research is environmental policy (more explicitly, wastewater governance, urban sustainability and environmental groups mobilization). I teach public policy too, but it looks like in the future, I might get more into the intersection of social media and sustainability (workshops, talks and projects).
Although we missed many people who would have wanted to attend, the energy that transpired in the room (we had brunch at Enigma, a place I hadn’t visited since well, my days of graduate student) was simply phenomenal. I had the opportunity to meet new people, reconnect with my friends, and a personal goal of mine – meet Jeff Pulver in person. I am in awe of his energy, his passion and his sincerity. He is such a great man. Thank you Jeff for making this possible and for giving of yourself in such a caring and positive way.
You can read my tag cloud thanks to my friend John Biehler (who also has already written his own recap) – I am very happy and flattered by all the positive tags I received. You, my dear readers, the people who love me and whom I love, and my wonderful social media/PR/tech friends, complete me.
[Disclaimer – These martinis weren’t made at Delilah’s – I just needed a photo of a martini to go with it 🙂]
There is, admittedly, a certain degree of correlation between hanging out with awesome friends and wonderful places. Or maybe it is that I have great taste in friends. And I think I have the same great taste in restaurants and bars. This is the case with Delilah’s. What a wonderful place to hang out and have a strong martini (or two, or three) with a good friend. In this case, said great friend was Erica Hargreave.
Erica and I had been planning for a while to get together and enjoy a couple of drinks and as we were driving into the downtown core of Vancouver, Erica suggested Delilah’s. Her suggestion was met with my enthusiastic “ABSOLUTELY! I *LOVE* DELILAH’S“. We headed into the West End and were warmly greeted by D.J. (whom, we learned, is the bartender – he just happened to see us coming in and decided to take it upon himself to greet us, take our coats and lead us into the bar area).
Delilah’s has (as some other writers have indicated) a sort of Victorian decor. The lighting is warm, the carpets and furniture are sophisticated, but more than anything, the dining room is inviting and cozy. It does make one feel at home. We sat at the bar and ordered a couple of martinis. Full disclosure – I love sweet martinis. I know – some people would say I’m not drinking real martinis.
I chose a Clockwork Orange (vodka infused with orange with a second or two of Orancio Cinzano) and Erica started with an Impaired (Absolute Pear with pineapple and apple juice). My opinion of the Clockwork Orange in four words = VERY STRONG, VERY GOOD. For my second and third martinis, I chose a Pearl Necklace (a creamy concoction of vanilla vodka, crème de cacao and Godiva liqueur) and Erica decided (since she was driving) to just have a Caramel Apple (vodka with Sour Puss Apple, caramel toffee liqueur & cranberry juice) and then a Shirley Temple (with no alcohol).
I frankly enjoyed the Caramel Apple and the Pearl Necklace much better than the Clockwork Orange. But the best part of the evening, in addition to having a chance to spend time with Erica catching up, was that we got to meet the original owner, Fran. She told us the story of her vision of Delilah’s (a homey, welcoming environment with class and sophistication) and how she is now back to help the owner a few nights every week. It’s awesome to see that that she is back to strengthen what she built initially (because let’s face it, almost everyone recognizes that Delilah’s has some of the best martinis in town).
Both Erica and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Fran, and we definitely will come back to Delilah’s at some point. More importantly, it was a wonderful opportunity to just spend time and talk about stuff. We shut down Delilah’s! We did! I had not shut down a place in a long time. You can imagine how much fun I had chatting with Erica over a few drinks at Delilah’s. As Larry puts it, I always manage to have a wonderful time everywhere I go, but I can’t take full credit for this. I LOVE spending time with my friends, and Erica is someone I am very grateful that the Vancouver tech community has given me the chance to get to know and become good friends.
I’d recommend Delilah’s for a great martini, for sure!
Vancouver, Canada, January 11, 2009.
Credit: Dr. Beth Snow on Flickr.
For immediate release.
Largely recognized for her luxuriant flowing hair, Dr. Beth Snow is celebrating her birthday today. The Vancouver social scene is wondering how she is celebrating on the day of her actual birthday, but no details have been revealed. Hummingbird604 Media has been sent on an investigative mission to find out what the heck Dr. Snow is doing on this particular day but unfortunately, time-constraints will preclude the successful mission completion, as the investigator hired by Hummingbird604 Media takes Sunday nights off. And sometimes, the whole weekend. And let’s face it – today is Sunday.
Dr. Snow is an award-winning science educator, athlete and model. Dr. Snow is also credited with the creation of the “rampant consumerism” tag in WordPress. Experts in the use of the popular content-management system platform believe her use of “rampant consumerism” as a tag for posts is a first for the 9,000,000 blogs accumulated so far in the blogiverse. It is believed that the actual global, world-wide trend of rampant consumerism was started by Dr. Snow but there is no empirical evidence to prove it. But thanks to Dr. Snow, we can now write tales of our purchases and tag them as “rampant consumerism”. Or be narcissistic and tag them “rampant narcissism”. Cool!
Dr. Snow has been credited with helping Professor Raul Pacheco torture his upstairs neighbours by virtue of publishing incredibly funny, timely and fresh blog posts on a regular basis (thus making him laugh so hard that he frequently wakes up the Demon Spawn and his Hellion parents at 2.35 am). Pacheco is incredibly thankful for being given ammunition to torture his upstairs neighbours just as much as they torture him with their noisy behaviour.
Pacheco indicated with a certain sense of awe that he and Dr. Snow have considered co-authoring a journal article at some point, on topics that may range from calculating the probability of the Canucks of winning the Stanley Cup to a multiple regression examination of the various factors that influence restaurant choices amongst vegetarians, non-vegetarians and vegans. Or something else.
Dr. Snow has a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from The University of British Columbia, coincidentally the same university where Pacheco undertook his PhD (in Environmental Studies). Surprisingly, they never met before Northern Voice 2008. However, they both share a phenomenal fashion sense, have a large shoe collection, academic credentials and a love for teaching. And they both need MacBook Pros. STAT.
If you have any leads on where Dr. Snow plans to celebrate her birthday, please contact us at 555-666-5555. We might throw you a bone or give you a gift certificate for $50 for a local, well-recognized car sharing service. One or the other. Or maybe neither. Who knows.
Considering the role that Bush has played in the international environmental arena and the appaling state of affairs with US climate policy, I find it incredibly funny to read this Vancouver Sun story about his establishing the largest marine protected area as an environmental legacy. I’m sorry. His legacy will be having given the US the worst climate policy of the developed world. I am hopeful Obama is serious with his climate policy. I really am.
Inspired by Keira-Anne (whom I have to say, has excellent taste) I was reminded of this song (Zoo Station). Did I tell you I bumped into Bono in Calgary during the holidays? At least, he looked EXACTLY like Bono. He was having brunch at Nellie’s with a couple (both of them, male and female, EXTREMELY good looking). I was like “oh wow – that’s Bono!”
Three songs I love from this particular Zooropa album – Zoo Station, Even Better than the Real Thing and Mysterious Ways. Here, You Tube gives you a live rendition of Zoo Station. Enjoy!
Technically located at the corner of Broadway and Yukon, this sushi eatery could very well be considered only an eatery and not a full-fledged restaurant. But that’s minutiae. I really loved their sushi. I have to say that most of the eateries I’ve been having sushi at, it’s pretty much the same sushi. I mean, I don’t find any substantial variation. From Kishu Island to Kishu Mountain to Toshi’s to Ninkkyu, I can’t see much variation. However, the Sushi Boy is a local favorite of those who live/work around the Broadway and Cambie area.
Do you have any particular sushi restaurant you enjoy?
As many of you may know, my friends Ianiv and Arieanna Schweber are the proud owners of Vancouver Coffee, a website focused on all things caffeine, and particularly, the local coffee scene. I’d been wanting to do a guest review for Vancouver Coffee, and I finally had a chance to do so. Head over to my guest review of The Edge Cafe and let me know what you think!
