Happy Birthday, Rebecca Bollwitt :)

Last year (2008) I started to get more involved with the Vancouver tech/social media/PR/blogging community, in no small part due to my participation in the Bloggers Meetup (of which I am now the organizer). At the beginning of the year (and much longer than I anticipated, since I had been reading her blog for a long while by then, and we had both done Blogathon 2007), I met Rebecca Bollwitt (aka Miss604)

Lots of meetups, liveblogs, social events and lunches/time spent on a one-on-one basis, Rebecca and I have become good friends, and I am very grateful for her friendship and mentorship. As we said last year, I’ve been her blogging padawan for a while now, and I’ve learned a hell of a lot from her.

Rebecca is generous, sweet and a wonderful person, and in so many ways, her success is definitely a sign of the fact that positive things happen to positive people. She’s worked really hard to establish herself in the social media world and the hard work has paid off, in my opinion. Rebecca launched her company (sixty4media) with her husband John in 2008 and has done extremely well.

Happy birthday, Rebecca! May 2009 bring you lots of success, happiness, health and love.

The echo chamber in water research (social sciences)

One of the benefits that I’ve gained from engaging with the social media community at large (I can no longer say I only engage with social media in Vancouver, as I have Twitter followers from all over the world) is that the terminology from one field (and the ideas) cross-pollinate other fields. That is the case with my research on water. The concept of echo chamber that has been coined in mainstream media and new media is very much applicable to social science research on water.

I can’t tell you how often I have read the same discussions over, and over, and over again. Water is scarce, we should learn how to manage the common pool resource, we need to design more robust institutions for water management, integrated watershed management is the way to go, etc. All of these are phrases that have become commonplace in the literature on water governance. I have gotten to a point where I feel as though there is an echo chamber in the social science literature on water research. I want the discussion to move forward!

Sadly, one of my areas of specialization (wastewater governance and policy) has been paid very little attention by social scientists. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy that I have carved some sort of a niche in this field (I do know some other researchers do study the topic to some extent, but this is a recent phenomenon). But it would be so much nicer if we advanced the water research agenda much further than it is right now. I have written about the topic both in the academic literature and here on my blog, and I have insisted and encouraged people to think about the hydrological cycle in a holistic way. If we stop having this “culture of flushing” that allows us to forget about the water we just polluted as soon as we see it flush away, if we begin to think forward with new analytical tools, then we can move the conversation forward too!

Yes, I am frustrated. I am particularly frustrated because despite the fact that 2008 was the International Year of Sanitation, very little progress has been made. I would hope that in the near future, we learn more about how to advance the water research agenda. And yes, the phrase I wrote before still applies – before we learn how to govern water we need to learn how to govern ourselves.

The Top 10 Productivity Tips: A Summary

This recap should give you a quick overview of what strategies I implemented to increase my productivity. As we start the 2009, I figured you might find it useful.

1 – One item, one process

2 – Don’t go to bed without having a “next day” plan.

3 – Don’t check email before doing something productive!

4 – Use your technology wisely!

5 – Delegate, subcontract or get an assistant

6 – If you can’t reach a goal, look for an intermediate goal

7 –Take a break at least once a week

8 – Listen to your Circadian cycles and follow them.

9 – Surround yourself and interact with people who challenge your views

10 – Book time for creative activities

As indicated previously, feel free to share your own tips!

The Golden Globe 2009 nominations are in!

I was going to tweet about this but I thought it’s better to do it in a blog post format. Plus, I really have more than one thing to say. Bullet point form, though.

– Apparently, many of my friends hated “Rachel Getting Married” but critics seem to have loved Anne Hathaway enough to give her a nomination.
– Absolutely happy about James Franco getting a nod for Best Actor in a Comedy.
– Not surprised about Meryl Streep nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role both in Comedy and Drama. Hope she wins. After Julie Christie’s loss to Marion Cotillard for the Oscar 2008, I was disappointed. I hope Streep wins this year.
– Kristin Scott Thomas (who is English) wins a nod for “I Loved You So Long” (a film entirely in French). I love it when an Anglo-Saxon speaks fluently enough to star in a movie in an entirely different language.
– Neil Patrick Harris is nominated too!

Drop me your comments about the Golden Globes in the comments section 🙂

Tip # 10 – Book time for creative activities

This was actually one top who was always on top of my list (if not the top of them all) – booking time for creative activities. On any regular day, this would be my schedule:

7:00 Wake up, get some coffee.
7:00-7:30 Read a journal article or book chapter (get my juices going)
7:30-9:00 Write (whatever I was writing at the time – book chapter, journal article, etc.)
9:00-10:00 Breakfast with my Mom (she had been up since much earlier as she teaches at the university from 7-8:30am almost every day)
10:00-11:00 Get ready and get a ride to my office.
11:00-12:00 Answer emails – deal with admin work
12:00-3:30 Work all around
3:30-5:30 Late lunch/nap
5:30-9:00 Work (sometimes I’d get some creative time here)
9:00-11:00 Family time

I always made sure to have at least 2 hours (from 7-9am) of creative time. Currently, I am trying really hard to come back to this schedule and make sure to have always blocks of “I’m not tweeting/blogging/chatting on GTalk/just writing!”

And with this, the series comes to a close. A further post will summarize all 10 productivity tips. Feel free to share yours in the comments section!

In the face of adversity

Photo Credit: SplodgusMaximus

This 2009 (and almost I’d be tempted to say the late part of 2008) have been particularly challenging for a number of my friends. Job-related woes, personal problems, health issues, etc. I feel somewhat helpless for not being able to help them, but I want to use this post to let you know that I’m thinking of you all, and that:

Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light. [Helen Keller, as quoted here]

I have faith that things will get better. In the mean time, hugs and love to you all.

WordCamp Whistler – early bird registration ends Friday!

For all of you die-hard WordPress fans who haven’t gotten your tickets yet, early bird registration ends this coming Friday! Register on EventBrite now!

Upcoming event – Stop Homelessness Public Forum (Vancouver)

On Wednesday January 14th, 2009, at the Vancouver Japanese Language School Auditorium (located at 487 Alexander St.), a public forum on homelessness will take place, from 9am to 12pm. You can read the flyer here (PDF document). While I will definitely attend (simply because of the flexibility in my schedule and also because it is an important topic for me), I find it incredibly stupid to organize a public forum during working hours in the middle of the week.

I don’t know the organizers but I do know some of the speakers, and given my interest in homelessness policy I will definitely be there. I might even liveblog it. My hope is that presenters will connect the dots and speak to the topic I raised here on my blog about intergovernmental relations and the roles of the Federal, provincial and municipal governments in

The electronics, tech and gaming cluster in Vancouver

One of the topics I will never get tired of reading about or studying is the geographical agglomeration of industries (also called industrial district or cluster). While I was writing my PhD dissertation, I had to write about clusters ALL THE TIME. The funny thing is – I never even thought about writing about Vancouver’s own industrial clusters. Now that I am more than ever immersed in the tech community, I thought I should write about Vancouver’s very own clusters.

The trigger for this post came from a recent article in Business in Vancouver about the electronic games cluster in Vancouver. In the article, the author mentioned that not even the gaming industry was invulnerable to recession.

“Some bright spots remain in the video game industry, but year-end job cuts at Electronic Arts and more recently at smaller video game development shops are revealing that the video game industry may not be recession proof.”[Business in Vancouver]

My interest in cooperation started long ago, however, when I did my Masters. My thesis was a game-theoretic model of cooperation between small biotech firms and large pharmaceuticals. Since then (almost 10 years ago) I’ve been fascinated by cooperation and geographical agglomeration.

The concept of clusters (or industrial districts) is predicated on the benefits (mostly intangible) from having numerous firms co-located within short geographical distance. Agglomeration yields “localization economies” and it is argued that it also leads to knowledge spillovers (thus cities where there are many of the same industry enjoy a shared pool of well-trained human capital).

I actually do think that there is a high-tech cluster in Vancouver (particularly in Gastown and less so perhaps in Yaletown). Dr. Tom Hutton (with the Centre for Human Settlements at UBC) has conducted much research about this cluster, and you can read some of his results in his most recent book on The New Economy of the Inner City, or a paper he published in 2006 called “Spatiality, built form, and creative industry development in the inner city” in the journal Environment and Planning.

I am planning to write some journal articles out of my PhD thesis which will touch upon the literature on industrial districts, but with all the work I’ve got accumulated with the wastewater project and the environmental mobilizations project, I am just asking myself when will I be able to write that many papers! *sigh* Perhaps I’ll just have to write more blog posts about the topic and then summarize them in a more academic format!

For an overview of a project undertaken by CPROST a few years back on clusters in Vancouver, click here.

Interview Me – 5 Questions

I saw that Dr. Beth Snow did the whole 5 questions meme that I’ve also seen on Keira’s and Airdrie’s blog. Being self-absorbed as I am, I asked her to interview me this time. Beth and I are good friends, so I knew she’d ask questions that would be very specific to me, and she most certainly did. So, here are my answers!

1.  When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

You might be shocked (or not) but I seriously wanted to be a doctor. A medical doctor, that is. Now, I am a different type of doctor, but I have just as much respect for MDs as I do for PhDs. You’ll see… my grandfather on my father’s side, two of my uncles (one on my Mom’s side, one on my Dad’s) were all MDs. I grew up with this sense that I was destined to help people and cure their illnesses and mitigate their suffering. Add to this the fact that my grandmother on my mother’s side was a nurse, and I’ve got a hell of a lot of health care practitioners in the family.

Funny how things go, as I grew up, I modified my interests. My brothers are all engineers, and I thought that it would be non-sensical not to go the engineering route. First, I thought of biomedical engineering. But, at the time when I was about to start my undergraduate, I didn’t get the sense that biomedical engineering had evolved strongly enough in Mexico (and at the time, I wasn’t planning on moving from there).

So I went with the career I thought was the toughest one at the time, the most complete and the most exciting: chemical engineering. Masters and PhD degrees later, I still identify myself as a chemical engineer, although my business and social science training provide me with what I think is a much broader spectrum of career possibilities. But I can tell you one thing… if you invite me to a chemical plant (as Molson did when they invited me for a tour of their Kitsilano plant at the Brew 2.0 event) you will see my eyes brighten and my smile sparkle. I still am a chemical engineer!

2.  If you could see any one performer in concert, who would it be and why?

Growing up, my parents raised me and my brothers in the classical music realm. I grew up with Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Chopin. The kind of piano pieces I play (despite the fact that I don’t play nearly as well as my brothers do – they play concert-level) is very much influenced by Chopin and Beethoven.

But as I’ve grown older, I’ve become very open to other kinds of music. My very favorite artist right now, hands down, is Vancouver-based Sarah McLachlan. Every time I’ve wanted to see her in concert, there has been *something* that has precluded me from seeing her. Actually, in recent months, I’ve had such bad luck with live performances (I couldn’t go to kd lang despite the fact that I actually had tickets) that frankly, I’d be very happy seeing Sarah McLachlan this 2009. Her voice is just amazing, her music brings me to tears and moves my heart in ways that many other performers don’t. And, of course, she IS Canadian 🙂

3.  What is your guiltiest pleasure?

My biggest guilty pleasure is watching romantic (girlie) movies, curled up in the couch with a cup of rooibos tea and a fleece blanket. Yes, I admit it. I did watch “Sex and The City: The movie”. Not only that, I rented it. Furthermore, I have rented “27 Dresses”, “P.S. I Love You” and (hangs his head in shame) “Never Been Kissed”. Ok, somebody find me refuge… where can I hide now?

4.  What was the best present you got for Christmas this year?  The worst?

I’d have to divide these amongst material and non material. The best present (not material) I got was the chance to spend Christmas with my brother and family and Mom. Was such a wonderful time. The worst (non material) was the cold temperature in Calgary – 37 oC. Not for me. The best present (material) I got this Christmas was my trademark cologne, Herrera for Men. My Mom knows I love this cologne. My worst material present was definitely the huge amount of snow we have been getting since Christmas! And it’s been snowing for over a day now here, nonstop! ARGH!!! Somebody take me to Mexico, pronto!

5. Are you a Canucks fan yet?

As many of you may know, I used to care less about hockey a year ago, but I am definitely a Canucks fan, now. Rebecca has been a primary influence on this aspect, since she is a die-hard Canucks fan. Besides, John and her (along with JJ, DaveO and Alanah) have The Crazy Canucks. Moreover, people on Twitter are *always* talking hockey. I seriously have to ramp up my game. So yeah, I am a Canucks fan. But I still need to be MORE of a Canucks fan 🙂 Work in progress!

Want to get in on the fun? You can be a part of it by following a few simple steps…
Send me an e-mail with the subject line “Interview Me”
I’ll respond within 24-ish hours with 5 questions directed to you (I promise to try and be unique)
Answer the questions on your blog (or Facebook or MySpace) and link back to this original post
Invite others to participate by re-posting these steps

Complexity, self-organization and social media in 2009

It’s January 1st, 2009, and many fine folks engaged in the social media world are doing their predictions around what the social media landscape is going to look like. Just off the top of my head I can recall Colleen‘s post, Mhairi‘s post and Michael‘s. Excellent posts, all three and kudos to Colleen, Mhairi and Michael. Honestly, I didn’t want to go and Google the WWW to read more about how social media is going to change in 2009, but I’d recommend you to read these posts from my friends.

Now, back to the topic… There is ONE thing I will tell you, and I’m pretty sure about it – the fluidity of the Internet and social media itself will prevent us from making any accurate predictions of what the social media landscape in 2009 will look like. In other words – if you are making predictions about it, you’re already wrong, even before you start.

There is a whole body of analytical work done around the future (also called Future Studies, or also Futurology). As someone with quantitative training, that’s perhaps one of the things I enjoy the most about mathematical modeling (something I’ve done frequently): some mathematical models allow me to predict future behavior in phenomena. This predictive power increases system stability.

Sadly, the same can’t be done with our good ol’ pal The internet. There is no accurate mathematical (or game-theoretic, or any kind of formal modeling technique) that will tell us what’s going to happen in social media in 2009. Based on our previous experiences in the world of social media (from the various perspectives we have), we can offer trends, suggestions, insights, look for patterns. But seriously, we can’t predict. We can’t make accurate predictions in such a self-organizing, fluid, complex system as the Internet, and more specifically, social media.

Social media is the perfect example of a Complex Adaptive System. It is social (therefore, exhibits network properties), bi-directional (and in the case of connectivity tools like Twitter, multi-directional), multi-scalar (and doesn’t recognize geographical barriers). Moreover, it is complex (as human behavior always is), it is adaptive (as it changes according to responses) and it is systemic.

A while ago, I wrote asking what would Web 3.0 look like. Personally, as someone who doesn’t do social media/tech for a living, I thought that it would include mobile communications. Mhairi mentioned in her post that geo-based tools would stay at the forefront. My sense is that, we won’t exactly know until we’ve seen it. Much as I really dislike that phrase, I think it’s true. We won’t know what 2009’s social media landscape will look like until we are up to our eye-balls in it.

All I’m saying is that, since we can’t predict the Internet and we can’t really predict much about social media, let’s just all enjoy it and take it from there.

For more Complex Adaptive Systems stuff, I’d recommend the website of the Santa Fe Institute.

My New Year’s Eve 2008

Part of my resolution for 2009 was to write more about environmental issues, but I can’t let this opportunity to thank my friends AF and DM for a wonderful NYE party. Months ago, while we were preparing for the New Year/Christmas holidays (I have brothers in the US, Canada and Mexico, so we really need to schedule our holidays and plan MONTHS in advance), I decided that if I had to stay in Canada for the holidays, I would spend it with friends.

My current group of offline friends that has been coalescing from various walks of life has actually been really very good at keeping me grounded and sane. While we deeply missed the company of HZ and CS and JH, who would have spent the NYE with us had they had a chance to do so, we enjoyed the company of SF (whose birthday was precisely yesterday!), the other SF and her sister, ML, BB and JN, BS and J, and NM and her fiancee R. It was a small group, but very fun.

This is a particularly awesome group because with them, I feel like I can be just myself and not worry about anything. I can hang out with them and they won’t judge anything. I was almost late in submitting a job application and they didn’t mind that I edited it on the spot.

For my friends, whom I absolutely adore, I am thoroughly grateful.

Adaptation to extreme climatic events in Vancouver

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should have recently noticed a cold snap in Vancouver that has brought us a White Christmas and a really cold month of December 2008 and now January 2009 starts with more snow. Vancouver is, of course, a mess because “it never snows in Vancouver” (the now infamous phrase that people have been using to tell me why Vancouver is so ill-prepared for snowy and icy conditions)

There are two inherent problems with having this somewhat-delusional view of the world. First, while it may be true that this weather is not common, the mere fact that we are seeing such dramatic fall in temperature should have triggered an “Emergency Preparedness Action Plan”. Which apparently, we don’t have. But don’t get me wrong – we don’t have tools to prepare and adapt to extreme weather events. We do (as I researched it) have Emergency Preparedness workshops that are more targeted towards earthquakes and other kinds of catastrophes.

Second, it’s not really about the drop in temperature itself. A lot of climate skeptics have been laughing “global warming? see.. it is freezing and snowing in Vancouver!” You see, the problem with climatic change is not as much just a question of “global warming” but a question of extreme climatic events. And as you can see (from all the people who have been stuck in the snow, whose travel plans have been delayed by icy road conditions, the homeless people who have been perishing in an effort to try and keep warm), we NEED an adaptation plan towards extreme climatic events.

I’d be more than happy to point my readers out to the literature on adaptation to climate change (I had to read these for my PhD dissertation), but one accessible resource you can access is Natural Resources Canada’s website on Adaptation. Give it a read, you might find it interesting.

Happy New Year – Welcome to 2009!

Well, so 2008 is gone. One of the toughest years of my life, that’s for sure. Although, in a way, I feel a bit cheated out of time. By August of 2008 I was asking myself “hey where did my 2008 go?” And the answer I have is “no clue”

2008 was a great year in terms of novelty and a steady incoming stream of friendships and knowledge. This was, in no small part, thanks to social media. As I was telling my friend NM, would I have ever known that I was going to do this (blogging/social media) with such passion? No. I didn’t even think about it. Before I started blogging, I had read one blog here, one blog there…

I was aware of some academics who blogged (like Instapundit) but, at the time, I thought of myself as purely an academic. Now, I see myself as an academic who blogs. I am very lucky, because my position is in some ways, unique. I don’t make money off of social media. It’s a hobby and I write because I love communicating. But the good thing is, I have learned enough about technology and social media that I can have conversations with the pros about the stuff they eat, breathe and work on, and not make a fool of myself.

Being able to be immersed in Vancouver’s tech/social media scene has also given me a new perspective on my own academic work, and has inspired me to branch out and do some academic research on Internet and society topics (despite the fact that I am basically an environmental specialist).

As I had mentioned before, I am not sure the shape that 2009 will take for me, but I can assure you that it will be awesome. More importantly, regardless of how long I blog for or what the shape of my involvement in social media will be in 2009, I will never forget about my friends. As I tweeted a long while ago “blogging brought us together… it is now up to us to maintain the relationship”

Happy New Year everyone 🙂

WordCamp Whistler Call for Sponsors

I was talking to Duane and he told me that WordCamp Whistler would still offer sponsors a place to contribute, and given the large scale of this event, and the world-wide readership that our WordPress blogs have, I am really excited that WordCamp Whistler can give sponsors such degree of exposure.

I recently saw a post by Rebecca on the same topic, and you know what? I know you want to contribute, so I know that you want to sponsor WordCamp Whistler because it’s such a cool event, Duane, Rebecca and John are putting so much work and other people are also contributing… this will be SUCH a good event. And you will be very widely promoted. You can contact WCW via the Twitter account or via email as well.

2008 – A year in review – social media

Many people may think that it’s a little bit too early to be thinking about an End-of-the-Year review but I’ve been thinking about this for a long while now, and it’s better to publish it now that it’s fresh in my mind rather than when I hit December 31st, 2008 and I will not really remember what the heck I wrote this post for. Particularly because I will be publishing a series where I write about what I’ve accomplished this year.

Blogging is my hobby and the Internet is my playground. I don’t do this professionally, although I am lucky that I’ve been getting some freelance writing and consulting gigs out of blogging for fun, which is nice! I started blogging as a distraction and I now do it with such regularity that I sometimes check my blogging GMail before I check my research or personal email!

So here is a summary of the things that I have accomplished so far in 2008 with respect to the social media/blogging world:

– I moved from Blogger to WordPress.com (after much prodding by everyone, particularly Rebecca) and I’ve enjoyed the rewards ever since.

– I gave my very first non-academic talk to a geeky audience (WordCamp Fraser Valley 2008), on moving away from Blogger on to WordPress. I had a wonderful time and had an opportunity to meet new friends that had only known in online life, including Tyler Ingram, Gary Jones, Jeremy Latham, Gregg, Tom, and a few others I had befriended before, including Liam, Jodi Hamilton, Lorraine Murphy, Kulpreet Singh, Andy Peatling, to name just a few.

– I recently went self-hosted, which was something I should have done AGES ago. But whatever. At least I did it! And I couldn’t have done it without the very capable help of my friend J. Karen Parker. Thank you!

– I started attending regularly-scheduled local tech/social media/PR events, including Third Tuesday, Net Tuesday, Vancouver Bloggers Meetup, Sales Performance Meetup, Young Professionals Meetup, Real Estate Tech Meetup. All this socializing has led to attending even more local techie events and making new and valued friends (who have now become very close, like Gus Fosarolli, Monica Hamburg, Tanya Davis, Airdrie and Derek Miller, Kerry Anne, Degan Beley, Erica Hargreave).

– I liveblogged numerous events throughout the year, something I hadn’t ever done before. Rebecca encouraged me to liveblog even when she was liveblogging an event. To me, Rebecca is an expert in liveblogging, and I’ve taken many cues from her work. She invited me to guest live-blog Michael Geist’s talk at St. John’s College and on Rebecca’s own blog, one of the NetTuesdays on widgets for social change. I also liveblogged Mhairi Petrovic’s talk at Third Tuesday (probably one of my best crafted liveblogs) and, while I wish I had been able to liveblog Rebecca’s talk at Third Tuesday, I only did a recap (but I think it was a good one as well). I plan to write a detailed list of all the liveblogs I’ve done as part of my portfolio (not just now).

– My blog’s Technorati authority increased more than 15=73 points since August 2008 (reaching 273 right now, which situates me in the top 12,500 blogs in the world). I point out to the increase in Technorati authority not out of being conceited, but I am still shocked (and pleased) to have an increase of 150% in authority within three months.

– My readership increased to the point where I can now point out to tens of thousands of unique views 🙂 Considering that when I started my blog I had 3 readers, I’ve come a long way. On the same note of increasing readership, I finally managed to be able to harness the power of my blog to do good, something I owe to my readers. THANK YOU.

– I did a 24 hour, 2 posts an hour Blogathon, raising funds for the BC Cancer Foundation. I am very privileged for having the friends I do. 18 (yes, you read right, eighteen) bloggers answered my call for guest posts. Thank you all, I raised over $ 400 dollars for cancer research.

– I kept the same tone for my blog all year long. It is still a blog about ME. My life in Vancouver (which includes a lot of tech/social media/PR events), my friends (both online and civilians), the Hellion family and my good friend DMcN (my household) and my research.

– I started publishing a number of posts giving snippets of what I do for a living (research/teaching). These posts have been really well received, and while I do have a professional blog (which I’ll be unveiling soon), I still like to talk a bit about research here on my personal blog.

– The mainstream media has been very good to me in 2008. I managed to appear in the 24 Hrs Vancouver newspaper a whopping three times. Considering I had never been much of a mainstream media target (my research is really interesting, but I never actually have sought publicity or MSM coverage), it was a very pleasant surprise. The three 24Hrs articles had to do with SteakCamp, Blogathon 2008 and my involvement in the local blogging community as the organizer of Vancouver Bloggers Meetup. Furthermore, The Georgia Straight did a fantastic piece on local bloggers that gave a wonderful overview of my role as a Vancouver blogger, something I’m very proud of.

– I’ve been approached several times to do paid advertisements on my blog, which is also very very cool. I’ll be dealing with those soon, as this year has been a total blur.

– I’ve covered many local events as a media outlet. Most of this coverage has been tech/social media/PR events, but I’ve also managed to cover some film festivals and sustainability-related events.

– The social media world has also been very kind to me this year. I’ve been nominated to the Canadian Blog Awards 2008 in three categories (outstanding, as I had never been nominated before) and luckily, I’ve passed the first round, so that was awesome. I was also nominated for the Best of 604 Awards in the Personal Blogs category.

– I became the Top Ranked Blogger in UrbanSpoon and managed to maintain this leadership almost throughout the year.

– I helped organize BarCamp 2008, and although I missed the actual conference, I had a lot of fun at the party.

THE BEST PART OF THIS 2008 IN SOCIAL MEDIA? MY FRIENDS.

I made new friends. Great friends. Wonderful friends. I opened myself to the world of social media and tech, and in return, I was able to capitalize and create wonderful and meaningful relationships that I think will stay with me throughout the years.

Some people have been very kind in telling me that in less than a year, I went from being a nobody to being a cornerstone of Vancouver’s social media/tech/PR scene. While I think those people are being too kind to me, I am very flattered and grateful.

It is, nevertheless, you guys who read my blog who honor me day after day, post after post. Thanks for giving me a reason to keep going, thanks for sharing my life and thanks for making my world so much brighter every day. You rock.

EDIT – Even if I didn’t mention you by name, you all who are my friends know who you are, so no need to mention it specifically 🙂

What Super Hero Are You?

Via Larry Yatkowsky, and just because I think of bloggers as superheroes and non-bloggers as, well, civilians 🙂 here is the test to find out What SuperHero Are You.

You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 100% Superman 80% Robin 80% Supergirl 75% Green Lantern 70% Iron Man 70% The Flash 60% Wonder Woman 55% Batman 40% Hulk 40% Catwoman 35%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Get-away to Victoria (even if only for one day)

I’ve been seriously thinking of heading to Victoria for a quick getaway, as part of my holidays. It is very rare that I spend parts of my December holidays alone, usually I am ALWAYS around family. But this year-end seems to be the perfect time to have a get-away, and one of the cities I love the most is Victoria.

Given that I now know (thanks to the magic of Twitter) a LOT more people in Victoria (or Vancouver Island, for that matter) than I used to do, I might organize a Tweetup or just hang out with a few tweeps over there. The family of my former partner lives in North Saanich, but that’s just literally out of Swartz Bay and I don’t necessarily have to spend any time in Saanich.

Besides, being in Victoria might give me an incentive to do some research on the wastewater treament plant plans. You know, because even holidays can be opportunities for field research 🙂

North Shore Rescue – Please donate/contribute

Recently, I have learned of the awesome job of North Shore Rescue. From their website:

North Shore Rescue (NSR) is a Mountain Search and Rescue Team based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The team consists of approximately 40 volunteers skilled in search and rescue operations in mountain, canyon and urban settings. The team provides search and rescue services to:
* Provincial Emergency Program (PEP)
* RCMP and municipal police services
* Municipal fire services
* BC Ambulance Service
* Other SAR teams in BC and Washington
* Local and regional governments during civil emergencies

While I don’t ski, lots of British Columbians do, and therefore, they may require the services of North Shore Rescue in the future at some point. They recently rescued 3 skiers (you can read the story here). As an entirely volunteer organization, they rely on donations, so why don’t u consider donating to their cause? Thank you.

My year in review – Water governance and policy research

While I blogged WAY MORE about water this year than I have in the past, I didn’t do much in terms of research. I used the field research notes that I had accumulated during my almost three years of fieldwork on wastewater governance in Mexico (2004-2006) to produce one journal article (that actually was already accepted for publication in early 2007, so it shouldn’t really count).

But other than that, I haven’t done much with it. I gave a talk this summer on wastewater governance and watershed councils, and I received really good feedback. This feedback was so solid that I have decided to pursue independent projects on each one of the research streams that emanated from this talk.

One of the reasons why I think my involvement with the social media community has become part of a very successful cross-pollination process is that I’ve learned to use many Web 2.0 tools to strengthen my own findings, to advance my research agenda, and to make it easy for me to publish research thoughts in draft form that I may be able to polish in the future (much along the lines of what danah boyd does). Furthermore, I am also in talks with Rachel Black, who also does research on water, and I wouldn’t have met Rachel if it hadn’t been for Twitter (and Anthony Nicalo, as well).

Speaking of tools that make my life easier that I wouldn’t have come across if it hadn’t been for my involvement in the tech community, Blurb is an online (free) software that Arieanna and Colleen used (in the case of Arieanna to publish the photos from their trip to Europe, and Colleen to create a Christmas gift for their families).

I’ve been mulling over publishing one version of my book (in Spanish) on wastewater governance in Mexico (a book that I had finished writing in 2006, but with the further development of the International Year of Sanitation – which was 2008) using Blurb. Another method I’ve been considering is an on-demand press, as Beth Snow did with her first book).

I REALLY, REALLY want to have at least one volume of my book printed out by the end of 2008 so that I don’t feel so terribly lousy about not having done much with such a large body of work. I mean, it’s kind of stupid. I did compare the wastewater policies of five states (the Mexican equivalent to provinces) and I really should be able to produce more stuff (particularly in the English language journals).

If I manage to publish the book with Blurb, I’ll be VERY happy. I’ll let you guys know what I managed to do with that. Overall, my 2008 wasn’t all that bad for my water research. Learned about new topics, thought more about where my water research agenda will go, and used social media tools to strengthen my research. Good stuff.

Petition to Twitter – change the tagline!

I know that many people who are new-ish to Twitter (or want to explore it) want to know what the heck is Twitter and how to best use it. I have repeatedly said here on my blog and on Twitter that my use of the tool is primarily social networking. I like to chat with my friends online while I do work.

I will admit that I have also used it to
(a) help me learn new things, not only about social media but also about my own research
(b) find interesting trends
(c) ease my worries by providing me instant, real time information about catastrophes – such as the one that afflicted Los Angeles in recent months
(d) push my blog posts using TwitterFeed
(e) organize social events
(f) get real-time tech support from my friends
(g) find new friends worldwide (which also has given me newfound points of reference)

So, I can completely understand why some people would be frazzled about using Twitter, or even perplexed. After all, Twitter asks you the question “what are you doing?”. The truth is, I very rarely complete that sentence. I know that it would be the logical thing to do. After all, the status on Facebook has been SO predominant that when people explain Twitter they say “it’s like a chatroom with Facebook statuses“.

So, this morning, while doing some work, I mused about the topic, and my thought and suggestions seemed well received. After all, most of us are just saying stuff, not really updating what we are doing. So, it would be better if Twitter changed the tagline to “Say something right now” instead of “What are you doing?” It would definitely make my life easier when I explain why I use Twitter!

What are YOUR thoughts on the matter?

More coffee shops around Fraser Street, please :)

I’m quite glad that my earlier post where I discussed the question on whether Fraser is really the new Main was so well received (thanks Tom, Urban Dweller, Michael, Malloreigh and Robb for chiming in, and Sean for linking to me). One element that I unfortunately left out was the fact that the area around Fraser and 2nd all the way through to Fraser and King Edward doesn’t have coffee shops.

Admittedly, you could say that The Faux Burgeois do have a coffee shop, but … if you think about the number of cafes you get on Main Street from, say, Broadway and Main to King Edward, I can name several off the top of my head:
– Cafe Barney
– Waves
– Cuppa Joe
– Starbucks
– An independent, Italian coffee shop whose name escapes me right now
– Bean Around the World (2 locations)

Where, along the same stretch (and even on Kingsway all the way from 7th Avenue to Fraser, you onl really have Our Town Cafe, a coffee shop I love). So, really, there IS room for growth in the coffee shop business on Fraser Street before King Edward. Malloreigh was mentioning that she wanted to open her dream coffee shop there, but she ended up not doing so. Well – now you can! There is LOTS of room for that! And trust me, the demand IS there!

Of course, if the owners of my dream house on 18th and Columbia decided to open a coffee shop there, I’d be more than happy to give them some promotion on my blog!

Testing the newfound freedom of self-hosting

I’ve wanted to embed songs and Vimeo videos for a long while, and while I am still finding new things about my WP.org self-hosted install, I want to test if I can embed a song (one that I’ve already published here on my blog, “I Love You”, a Manoo and Francois Remix). Since they offer the code on the website, I’ll see if it works.

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Summary impressions of my visit to Calgary

Bullet point form as I’m preparing to go to sleep, and this laptop is SLOOOOW.

– People who live in Calgary know how to drive in the snow. Better yet, the city of Calgary spends a substantial amount of money cleaning up the roads.
– People shop in Calgary. A LOT. Consumerism by the minute!
– This city needs to change its approach to urban development. It’s a sprawled city. I didn’t realize how much until I saw that my brother’s town house was just one in a complex, whereas the next 10 blocks around his house were single-family dwellings.
– Downtown Calgary is very pretty. And much more cosmopolitan than Vancouver’s. If anything, it reminds me of Ottawa and in some parts, Montreal. I can tell you right now that downtown Mexico City is much more cosmopolitan than Vancouver’s!
– People in Calgary (at least the youngsters I saw) are pretty damn hot, IMHO. It may just be that they are my type.
– Calgary is NOT a city for transit. This is a city that MUST be driven. Sorry to say this, as I am an ardent environmentalist, but it’s true.
– I would definitely move to Calgary, even with the -25/-37 oC that I experienced. It has a nice feel to the city.
– I missed the chance to hookup with a couple of my former students and a good friend of mine who hails from here, but I’m glad because it was just family time.
– I miss Vancouver despite the fact that I know all its foibles.

TweetDeck as a standard Twitter client

While I think Tris was the very first one whom I saw using TweetDeck, I’ve started to notice lately that many of my friends are adopting it as a tool to manage their Twitter contacts.

It’s been hard for me to do so while away because I haven’t had a chance to download the software (the laptop I’m using is not mine so I don’t feel at liberty to do so) but I did before my previous laptop became defunct, and it was AWESOME. For someone who was an evangelist for Twhirl, I simply love TweetDeck. I’ve noticed that many more of my Twitter friends are using it, even Mac users (like Andy Peatling) or Ubuntu users (like Stephen Rees).

I know that Cecily Walker also uses TweetDeck, and she was jokingly telling Tris and I that we were late adopters. I’d say that TweetDeck should cut both Tris and I a share of the revenue, since we’re both evangelists, hehe (and unpaid ones, at that!). No, seriously… I think that TweetDeck has established a high profile and has started to become the industry standard for Twitter management.

Same as Tweetie is quickly becoming a standard for iPhone Twitter management (I know for a fact that Arieanna and Ianiv use it extensively, as does Jeffery Simpson).