Mark Roseman's Blog

And ten years on, it is time to say “enough.”

9/11.

Who You Are, Where You Live

By now many people in the Edmonton area have read the letter to the editor in St. Albert's local newspaper entitled Higher-earning families part of St. Albert's appeal, and the shit storm that developed on social media and beyond. I think enough has been said about the various logical fallacies (no or less drugs in rich schools? please...), and the sheer audacity of the value system the letter brings out.

The letter writers have also done an incredible disservice to the vast majority of people in St. Albert who have more respect for others, and done more to reinforce a negative stereotype about the community than would be countered by the hundreds and thousands of acts of daily good will that occur there.

It sounds like the letter writers more or less stand behind what they say, and I wouldn't be surprised if they believe the backlash is from a bunch of young socialists, live off government welfare type of people who don't properly contribute to society. The type who really are jealous of the position the letter writers have achieved in life, and will realize it if they grow up and find their way into the real world.

How did we get here?

Certainly a trend in society has been to increasingly measure people's value in terms of their economic power, how much they own, how much they consume. We see far too many articles, letters to the editor, etc. where people begin with "As a taxpayer...", and carry on by arguing the greater their share of the tax burden, the greater their voice should be, and the more their tax dollars should be about serving solely their priorities. People who pay less taxes (because they have less income) should have less of a say, and their priorities are trumped by those who contribute more.

We see this everywhere in civic and political discourse, and the Gazette letter carries forward that attitude to a horrid extreme.

People are part of communities, and societies. We recognize that diversity is a strength, not a weakness of those societies, and that contributions and value come in many different forms. When we forget that we are citizens and members of a community, and become only economic actors and taxpayers, we are not helping either ourselves or anyone else. We all lose.

And folks like the Perry's may not realize, but its not just the poor people you're scaring off. And I don't need to go all Richard Florida to reinforce that. Here's one small personal example.

Pauline and I are I would say pretty well off (she's a psychiatrist, I run a small business). We moved back to Alberta after ten years in Ontario. She took a job at the Sturgeon Hospital in St. Albert (amid several choices in the Edmonton area); and yes, people in St. Albert do need mental health care too. We also recently bought a house here, albeit in an older area, but worth as much or more as many in Kingswood or other new areas. Not having 2.2 children, the newer suburbs wouldn't be a great fit for our lifestyle, and I personally hate having to get in a car to go to a grocery store, bank, etc. We're walking distance to most things where we are now.

Even though we'd lived in Edmonton before, we didn't know too much about St. Albert, but had heard the snobby reputation. We've found it to be a nice city for essentially a bedroom community, with mostly friendly people, though yes, it could use a bit more vibrant of a downtown, a few more interesting restaurants, a bit more diversity, and a few more things to do.

When we first came out here we rented a place in Oliver in Edmonton, as our house in Ontario took a while to sell. When it did, we spent a long time discussing the pros and cons of where to buy a place, in Edmonton or St. Albert. Having just moved from a vibrant and diverse (economically, culturally, politically, etc.) small city out east, it wasn't an easy choice. Ultimately, doing a reverse commute from Edmonton to St. Albert every day (and with me working at home) just didn't make sense, and we bought in St. Albert.

I wonder though, if we'd read that letter to the editor in the Gazette around the time that we were selecting between jobs, or selecting where to live, if things might have been quite different.

Kudos for 20 years in the internet business!

Congratulations to Stefan of small business enabler WinWeb as he reminisces on 20 years of participating in the internet industry.

WinWeb is one of those low-hype, high-value, long-term businesses that is really going out there and making a difference in the life of small business owners, helping them leverage the internet as a tool so that they can run their businesses more effectively. This is decidedly not one of these breathless "if you adopt our ground-breaking new business paradigm which we came up with in the shower this morning" ideas, but a collection of decidedly unsexy but essential tools and services offered at an affordable price. It stands in the background and helps reduce the friction of all those routine unpleasant things so small business owners can focus more on their business.

We should celebrate these types of businesses far more often than we do.

Sinking in to Alberta

It's been a busy time the last month or so, both good and bad, but I guess that's partly to be expected in the transition time that we're in.

On the quite recent front, we finalized a house purchase yesterday (a week after it went on the market). It's a quite nice 20 year old two-story on a small cul-de-sac backing onto a ravine in a don't-have-to-drive-everywhere part of St. Albert. We get possession around end of November.

I guess I have to make some obligatory comment given its the first day of snow here, while back in Ontario it's still a bit more comfortable.

And because I still refuse to live in Alberta politically, I'll pick out only one incident on the intolerance and racism front which actually had a bright side to it. A transexual teacher was dumped by the Catholic school board in St. Albert (which is somehow the "public" school board) for the reasons one would imagine from such an open-minded organization. The bright side though is that there was actually a public outcry about this, heavily criticizing almost every aspect of the situation as far as the school board's actions, behaviour, responsibilities, ethics, funding, morals, role in the community, and more.

If you stand on your head, deprive yourself of oxygen, imbibe the substance that guy over there on the street corner is peddling, and squint just the right way, you'd think there might be a tiny glimmer of hope for this province yet.

Speaking of motivation.

I have to say that it has been wonderful to see how excited Jean-Claude has been with his hardware hacking in recent months. After being a bit more adrift in recent years, I'm glad he's found something he really enjoys to turn his considerable energy and inventiveness towards.

Motivation and Rewards in Creative Work.

Dan Pink delivered an interesting talk at a recent TED conference. The focus was on how intrinsic (e.g. doing something that matters) and extrinsic (e.g. money) rewards can affect performance, particularly in creative work.

House in Guelph finally sold.

Phew, that took just a little longer than expected!

Going to be out in Guelph Sept 8-11 to get everything moved out (and into storage in Edmonton) until we find a place here.

Speaking of which, anyone in Guelph and area who wants to buy some furniture, exercise equipment etc. cheap please check out our stuff for sale.

With Pauline's job at the Sturgeon hospital in St Albert working out really well, and with me working from home, we're actually contemplating living out there rather than in Edmonton proper. Given that, hard to justify the daily commute really, both for time and environmental reasons (plus we'd probably be able to get rid of the second car).

While St Albert has its good points (a nice downtown, great farmer's market, a great park and trail system, rolling hills) it's urban sprawl personified. The newer cookie cutter suburbs (or heaven forbid the outlying 'acreage' communities) with the McMansions and where you have to drive everywhere don't really do it for us. Maybe we'll find some nice places in the older areas.

Thinking also about heading to Portland end of September for the annual Tcl/Tk get together; haven't made it to one of those in a while.

Web Startup Success Guide.

Bob Walsh's new book, The Web Startup Success Guide is now available. I've posted my review at Amazon.com.

Social Media Impact on Local Events.

For some reason, I got very interested in the recent debate in Edmonton about closing the small municipal airport located just off downtown. I think this had something to do with the alternative plan being a very transit-oriented, anti-sprawl infill development, and the thought of that actually happening here might help reduce my general discomfort at moving to a province that largely acts as an environmental dinosaur.

The "keep it open" crowd was for the most part a fairly vocal, well-organized group of business owners in the area, and others who actually used the airport (a very small minority in Edmonton, since the flight services it offers are very restricted). Most people I think were fairly apathetic in the sense that it wouldn't affect them directly. Proponents of closing were motivated I think largely by ecological and environmental sensitivities, e.g. urban sprawl.

One of the nuances to the story is the role of social media in influencing the debate. Mack Male's review and lessons post is as good a starting point as any other to get a sense of how that played out.

It's always hard to quantify the effect that social media (in this case, blogs, Twitter and Facebook) may or may not have had. I think all of the following are open questions that are worth considering.

1. It's clear that the "pro-closure" side got a bigger benefit from social media. Would that have been different were there a central, organized "old school" campaign for closure, as there was for the "keep it open" side? How might the dynamics have changed if such a campaign was present? Would that be the focus, with Twitter etc. in a supporting role? Would that be the place where people gathered to find up-to-date information, rather than searching on Twitter?
2. The culture that has evolved around Twitter use is generally polite, respectful, values logical discussion, and encourages hearing out different viewpoints. You can see this for example in how a single "hash-tag" (#ecca) was used to discuss the issue, both for and against. This differs greatly from conventions in many other systems, where participants would choose to "support" one side or the other, where people might follow blogs only from a particular side (political blogs for example), or where people may only be interested in pushing their opinion (e.g. newspaper article comments). How much impact did this have in terms of positively engaging people in sincere discussions about a highly divisive issue? How might that have been different in the past?
3. What impact did this really have? How many people got engaged in the debate because of social media? Did their engagement make any difference to the outcome? What was the actual reach of social media in this debate? What makes it different from a chamber of commerce meeting, Rotary meeting, or a bunch of old men talking about this at their local coffee shop? In either case, you've got a fairly small number of people involved in the discussion; how much impact do they carry outside their group?
4. Why now? What changed (if anything) to make social media visible on this local issue and not so many others before? How much of it was the MSM's recent (yet perhaps fleeting?) infatuation with Twitter? How much of it was having a large enough critical mass of local users all on the same sites (Twitter, Facebook), a condition that perhaps wasn't there before? (Side note: BBS users in the 80's were more locally involved by necessity, because using far-away sites cost real long distance money. When people started adopting the internet, they could effectively be dispersed around the world, at no charge. Perhaps only now we're seeing enough local activity concentrated in a small number of local sites to have an impact).
5. How do involved Twitter users differ from any other perhaps disproportionately vocal special-interest group when it comes to local events?
6. As alluded to before, I think a fair number of people found out about the social media activity surrounding this issue because of several reports in the local mainstream media. Did this result in many new people coming to participate? How was social media perceived by people seeing this coverage? Was it just another "oh, the young'uns are doing their Internet thing about the airport.."?
7. Is there anything in particular about Edmonton as a community that may have impacted the way social media was used or its effect? Things like the level of activism, willingness by different sides to engage in dialog (wait, this is Alberta right?)

I ask these things not so much because they're keeping me up at night, but because I really would like to tease out some of these dynamics. The breathless "social media changes everything" fanboy articles don't really do it for me. Thinking back on all the different collaboration technologies I've used, researched and developed over the years, I believe there is a definite benefit in having a deeper understanding of how the technologies are used in practice, and the factors that affect that practice.

It figures.

Ten years in Ontario, not more than a couple of small stone chips on the car windshields. We've been here two months and already the MINI has a huge crack in its front windshield. WTF?

Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller.

Yesterday I picked up and read through Jeff Rubin's new book, Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller. It's a book that discusses the realities and implications of peak oil, from a guy who's certainly got the street cred as until-recently chief economist at CIBC World Markets, and one of the people who actually predicted the run-up on oil we had before the current recession caused everything to tumble down. So not exactly someone you'd criticize as a hippie environmental wingnut.

Short review: if you care about what the future might look like, and what kind of impact it will have on you, just buy this book. It puts together a very high level integrated picture of how and why we got to where we are, and what tomorrow is going to look like, and it does so in a remarkably clear, entertaining and often humorous way. Unlike a lot of such books that tie together many loose threads, it's a very easy read.

The book makes a strong case for, among other things, the following:

• the current recession, as with those before it, was much more influenced by oil prices than is generally recognized
  
• the economic theory of supply-and-demand has been failing us, because while lower prices cause increased demand, we're not going to be seeing the increased supply; the amount of cheap-to-produce oil is declining rapidly; higher oil prices are going to be here to stay
  
• past advances in energy efficiency were (as supply and demand would predict) offset by our increased use (bigger houses, longer commutes, etc.)
  
• the increased costs of transportation are already putting more of a dent in global trade than any tariffs would, eroding the labour advantage of Asian outsourcing; as oil prices continue to rise, getting all our inexpensive goods (and food) from across the world makes little sense
  
• local production will be further boosted when we start accounting for carbon rather than leaving it as an externality; despite the perception today, we will realize that doing so is actually in our economic interest, as western countries are already more carbon efficient, and monetizing that advantage increases our competitive advantage
  
• the cost of oil will impact us personally in terms of where we live (the decline of outer suburbia), what we buy (local, seasonal food), daily travels (more public transit infrastructure, less cars), how we vacation (less and closer), the type of jobs (more people leaving the service industry), and so on
  

What I particularly like is that Rubin invites us to consider the positive aspects of these changes. While undoubtedly decreased car usage isn't a big win for a place like Windsor, on a broader scale, there are many positive aspects. The whole idea of making the world a smaller place (more local, etc.) invites us to consider what that might look like, and how that might improve our lives in different ways.

A cleaner environment, walking and exercising more, eating out less, eating more healthy food, being more involved in the community and less alienated from others all have a delightfully retro charm to them, but it's hard to argue that our current approach has been a big net win.

If we're willing to accept that certain economic factors will produce the type of world he envisions, the opportunity is really about how to most effectively transition ourselves towards that new world, investing in the things that will maximize the future benefits, and helping ease the pain of those affected as we make the transition.

Bailing out auto companies, or using infrastructure stimulus money to build roads is a pretty foolish investment when taken from that perspective; that this will happen is pretty much inevitable due to short term political considerations though).

Again, the real benefit of this book is that it ties together a highly coherent story of where we've been and where we're likely going, in sensible cause-and-effect terms rather than degenerating into moral whinging, and invites us to consider how we might all participate to make the best of that world for us all.

Edmonton - the Ugly

Following on the previous posts, some truly ugly things about Edmonton:

• urban sprawl; driving from the south end to St. Albert on the new "highway" (freaking slow), the massive new cookie-cutter suburban developments in the middle of nowhere were just disgusting to look at
  
• Alberta politics, but I've told everyone that while I may physically be living here, I'll politically stay living back in Ontario, and keep myself completely ignorant of what's going on here
  
• every main road into the city; it's visually ugly, ugly, ugly what with all the dirty, semi-industrial and low-cost commercial businesses that line these routes. A sharp contrast to some of the pretty parts along the river. Only place worse I've lived is Hamilton, where the overpowering sight of the steel plants going over the Burlington skyway eclipses what is some of the nicest geography along the Niagara escarpment
  

While owing to working at home I'd decided to include weather in the "bad" rather than "ugly", I think owing to a snowfall warning in late May that I'll give it an honorary "ugly" placement as well.

Edmonton - the Bad

Following on from Edmonton - the Good, a few not-so-good things about Edmonton.

• too much traffic, too many traffic lights, and way too many potholes and roadways in bad repair (infrastructure spending bad... but see, low taxes!)
  
• ridiculously slow speed limits, and too many traffic cops; I thought there was a crime problem here, isn't there a better use for them? I know taxes are evil here, but there has to be a better source of revenue than traffic tickets.
  
• user fees, user fees, user fees, thank goodness everything is privatized so that means lower taxes
  

Ok, enough said on that theme. Some other things:

• the weather; this would be "ugly" rather than "bad" if I didn't work from home and hence not have to go out if I don't want to
  
• needing to register with pharmacies to get over the counter anything.. tylenol-1, iron supplements, needles... can anyone explain this to me?
  
• spending freezes and service cuts in health care
  
• with some notable exceptions (certain areas like Glenora, the downtown factories redeveloped into lofts, etc), low appreciation for architecture and heritage
  
• "adult interdependent relationships".... eww, we couldn't say common-law spouse now, could we?
  
• groceries that are way more expensive than in Ontario
  
• the City Center Airport; this would be ugly except that there seems to be a more sincere push to finally close it and redevelop the land into something useful (still objected to by a small number of vocal and well-funded out-of-town business people), and that with night curfews and only small planes using it, it's not that loud at all (and the condo we're in now is right under the flight path, fairly close by)
  

Edmonton - the Good

Having been back in Edmonton now for a few weeks, after ten years living in Ontario, it's interesting to reflect on some of the changes in the city, or things that I hadn't really thought too much about before. Some surprising, some not so much. Today will be about good things; bad and ugly will follow.

First the obvious:

• the river valley, and the fact that there is a trail system that is relatively well maintained, extensive, and actually goes places
  
• a quirky culture (at least in some areas), translating into a very good set of interesting restaurants, and lots of good coffee choices
  

Some other positive things:

• a major downtown renaissance and intensification, fueled by lots of new residential, educational and business development, which actually makes the downtown a fantastic place to live and work; this probably deserves a separate post later on
  
• lots of places who are aware of and sensitive to food allergies (celiac friendly menus? wow!); admittedly this is of limited impact unless it impacts you, in which case it's worth celebrating
  
• a solid city-backed recycling program (can't tell I lived in Guelph, can you?)
  
• some suggestions that public transit (i.e. an LRT that might go somewhere useful), urban intensification, and other such commie bohemian concerns may actually be on the civic agenda
  
• lots of people walking or biking to work
  
• for the most part, a decent economy, all things considered
  
• some vibrant and informative online communities about local issues, both fairly general and about specific issues like real estate
  

More to follow...

Made it.

Made it out to Edmonton and getting settled into the condo we're renting for the time being. The last of the stuff we sent from Guelph (including the all important espresso machine) arrived this afternoon, so things will be back to normal soon. :-)