curious, curious. i wonder what's on today?
One of the side projects I have been working on is helping the fine folk at Open Data Ottawa with their advocacy and logistics work. It’s a super great cause with super great people behind it. Part of my ‘portfolio’ in the organization is to do some public relations. I was recently featured in a local newspaper.
Interview behind le jump.
If you’re ever visiting Ottawa, or just want things to do aside from camping at home to avoid the frigid exteriors, here’s what you need to follow:
Apt 613 is an institution. Not that great for pure bulk of information, but it’s well curated, and written by folk that know local scenes.
A new startup, thanks to the Apps4Ottawa competition. Super stoked and already found some events I didn’t know about using this omghuge database.
I recently discovered The Wig. How I didn’t know about it before remains a mystery to me. A ton of events of all types under the rainbow.
Dial 613 was a great show listing site. It shut down though. The host is looking for someone to take over, though!
I went to DC to visit a couple of friends recently. There also happened to be a rally taking place. At a mingling of Canadian Embassy interns, I was taken aside for some thoughts on what the rally was, and the role of satire in political discourse.
Full article below the jump.
I’ve belonged to far too many small, non-profit, high-turnover organizations to count. Over the past 5 years, I’ve experienced some (most) which are organizationally ad-hoc, some which contain legacy procedures due to long-timers, and the rare one which has a small enough mandate to not need any kind of systematization.
If there’s one crucial protip I’ve learned from these is that if you want consistency in procedures, if you want long-term memory, and if you want cohesion in your brand, you must integrate your secondary procedures into your day-to-day. Three important principles to enact this:
For instance, say your organization keeps and maintains a library of policies, which are to be reviewed tri-annually, and proactively disclosed online. The way this is poorly done is:
This procedure is silly in a high turnover environment. Should a policy analyst make one mistake one year, there is no accounting for their gaff, and no accountability once they turn over. Policies will get lost in the share drive, never get posted online, due to the number of minute actions required. You’ll undoubtedly end up with every new policy analyst coming in, getting frustrated with the organization of the status quo, ignoring the hierarchy of the shared drive, and developing their own process.
The key problem here is that the policy analyst is accountable to a .doc, and responsible for being the machine that enforces the .doc. In other words, they’re accountable to themselves, because no one will invest the time to reading the .doc, and making sure the machine is well-oiled (except in the case where someone’s out to get your policy guy.)
The elegant solution is to axe the offline database, and make the online listing the only available directory of your policies, and have the system either send automated reminders about deadlines, or make it easily-discoverable that there are policies that need review. This way, should someone want access to a policy, they automatically know of the only place to get them, and the curator of the bunch becomes publicly accountable to ensuring the rules are being enforced. If they’re not, it looks bad on the organization, and suddenly, proper enforcement becomes the priority of everyone.
Everything from link sharing, tweeting, facebook posting, press releasing, media monitoring, and others can be systematized in the way above mentioned. The idea to integrate as many independent processes as possible, so the one core action automatically results in all subsequent. Your business can’t rely on an all-knowing overseer to ensure everything’s getting done–that overseer turns over every two years. Let exposure demand training, and things will work much smoother.
Why can’t we have a statistical agency that serves the public. Seriously, you want to charge me $3 to find out how old Canadians have been since 1998? No, $3 is not that much money, but that means I need to get authorization from superiors and be reimbursed for what might be not that useful data.
And hey, we filled out those surveys and pay for your office already. And you’re not letting me use it freely. Not only is that double taxation, it’s really dumb.
This is a moronic policy in the modern world. Next government that fixes it gets my vote and full support.
End rant.
The little project of love that I’ve poured countless hours into has just sprouted it’s first pedal. After a couple of months of learning more CSS, WordPress, social media tools, SEO, among others, we launched UBC Insiders 3.0: the regraphicsing.
An explanation as to why we moved. While the UBC Blogs platform offered us a great home, we have ambitions, and there were a number of things which that platform limited us with.
On the new site, you’ll notice a handful of features.
* Business management: We’re trying to grow. In order to grow, we needed to take our business practices more seriously. Things like: monitoring site visits, site usage, feed subscriptions. Now we’re keeping detailed track of how Insiders is used and our reach. By integrating a new revenue stream (ads) into this, we hope to develop the capital to expand even further. This is also an experiment for me to learn little entrepreneurial tricks here and there.
* Asides: We found we were throwing out the vast majority of the stuff we found, because either it was too small, or not newsworthy enough for a full post. We’ve now captured this content into short, one paragraph posts, called “asides”.
* Graphics: Our recent survey indicated people didn’t like the site design. Yes, it is bland, and that was the original intention. As we try to expand our audience though, we needed more graphical control.
* Complete control: Now, since we own the server and domain name directly, we can do things like: properly implement our calendar feature, register @ubcinsiders.ca email addresses, upgrade our wordpress ourselves, and have autonomy from UBC’s servers (not that we suspected anything fishy–we had backups).
* I could learn WordPress better: I was looking for a Summer project. Learning WordPress better was on the backburner, and this was an obvious venture to tinker with.
I’m pretty proud of what I managed to get done here. While the front design of the site doesn’t look that different from the theme we used, the back end was gutted, and you’ll find a lot of attention to detail. It wasn’t easy balancing reader demands and writer demands with the vision I had in mind. I think this strikes that balance.
Nightlife
There’s a couple of gems in this city. Of special note is Zaphod Beeblebrox, a bar themed after the Hitchhiker’s Guide. It’s basically the everything bar. The clientelle runs from chauch to scene, and the music from industrial to indie. My favourite to date.
Also of note is Babylon on Bank Street. It’s, as far as I can tell, one of the only divebars/hipster hideouts in town. Sunday Mod Nights are like a watered down Ice Cream Social. It’s the only place I’ve seen the hip congregate en masse. Aside for that night, they’re without a home as far as I can tell. Yes, they don’t even flock to the Soviet Union themed bar. Fascinating.
Food
Apparently Ottawa has a good food scene. I’m starting to understand the lay of the land a bit better. For any newcomers, you’re basically stuck to shitty Irish pubs and diners. Seriously, that’s 80% of the bars and food at first glance. You really need to look to find the gems.
So far I’ve discovered some of the best pho I’ve ever had. In Chinatown (a theme?), Pho Thu Do is rather epic. At typical pho prices, you get more noodles and meat than I’ve ever experienced, and a carafe of tea. And it’s delicious.
Best cheap pub is hands down Hooley’s. Their specials often include a $5 appy (which will fill you), and a $3.75 pint. I’m a regular on pierogi Thursdays. $10 for a filling dinner and pint? Please!
Also incredible is the boringly named Shawarma Palace. Look at these servings. Look at them!
Shawarma Palace noms.
Kinda pricey at $13 total, but oh so worth it.
Coffee
There’s a derth of indie shops around where I live unfortunately. Bridgehead is a local chain which is nice, but only has one hour wifi. Second Cup wins for the chains, because of it’s infinite wifi, and occasional french vanilla coffee.
The nicest indie shop I’ve found so far is Raw Sugar in Chinatown. They also host music nights, workshops, and various queer/activisty things. I met the owner on my first visit–seemed nice enough. We had a short discussion over why her coffee shop should have wifi.
Fortunately down the street is Umi Cafe, which while not as nice (e.g. does not have chandeliers in the washroom), is still plenty nice, has infinite internets, and Tuesday games nights.
Oh, and everything has the HST. No one in Ontario cares.
I recently accepted my first ever non-Vancouver gig as an intern in the five-person Canadian Alliance of Student Associations office in our nation’s capital, Ottawa.
WS 0564
I’ve been orienting myself to the city for the past week, thanks to the ol’ census and Google Maps. This city is quite a bit younger than Vancouver, thanks to two universities and a parliament, its density is half that of Vancouver’s, its mean temperature is roughly the same, but its temperature variance is far far greater. The biggest urban difference thus far is that downtown is architecturally abhorrent, and has no residential, meaning it’s a concrete graveyard by 6pm (I suddenly understand Jane Jacobs).
I’ve been learning the regional vocab. For instance, the humidex explains why yesterday was as hot as Kandahar. Thankfully, the Egyptian Method kept me cool in my non-AC’d interim sleeping quarters.
Office Muk Muk
Day one was spent getting a quick car tour with my new boss, then beers with friends. One of these friends has been on the hill for a while, and is an insider with the leader of the opposition office. He mentioned what I’ve just been starting to notice. The hill is like undergrad, without the partying. Parliament is a very young place, filled with summer students, recent graduates, and the idealistic youth. There’s also a strong base of former student association executives around. Who knew.
Day one at work was great. I’m basically a nerd-generalist. I’ll be doing some research, some numbercrunching, some idea-generating (20% independent project time!), some on-the-hill lobbying, some web design, and, of course, some data entry (I am the intern, after all.) I’ve already got two independent projects thought up of–one I got over beers with my boss.
I’m off to venture from my base of operations (nearby AC’d coffee house) to the bedroom sauna. If you want me to comment on anything in particular, drop a line in the comments.
When I first heard of GPS-enabled smart phones, I got an idea for an app. I’ve long been a student of the local health authority’s food inspection website. If you’ve never been, go now and find your favourite restaurant. By and large, most places in Vancouver are pretty good, but there are outliers.
What this data needs, aside from conforming to an open standard, is apps on top of it. One I’d love to see, Rotten Apples, dings at you when you’re in an eatery that… is less than stellar. You would be able to customize how severe things have to be before you get dinged, and the information that pops up. It could also ding at you when you’re making a good choice (though you will be awfully spammed in that case–most places are stellar.)
A simple app which would go a long way in keeping eaters safe, and eateries accountable.
The past three months I have spent on myself. Having just graduated from a life in academia, I’ve had the freedom to meet with those I haven’t seen in a while, catch up on reading, and most importantly, relax.
Many of my friends have asked, “what are you aiming for in the coming years?” I could never rummage together an adequate answer. My interests are varied, and I enjoy doing many things. Looking at my library card shows I have out books on food, education, geopolitics, and data visualization. Looking at my RSS reader shows I follow the courts, economics, music, fashion, and design.
I started answering the question with “I want to get into policy and research.” In what realm? “Something tech related,” but that answer was really just a comfortable placeholder. It only describes one of my interests–it misses over half of my headspace.
I was born in the late 80′s. I was raised in the middle of the telecommunications boom. As such, my childhood was spent in a world like my mother’s, and my adulthood is being spent in a very different world. When I was in elementary school, the cellular phone was a gimmick; now government forms have two phone fields (with one, ‘home phone’, being left empty). In elementary school, Doom was between me an the imps; now it’s between folk all across the world.
Living in the chokepoint between generations has irritated me, because the future of the young is being delayed by the olds’ ways. Fortunately though, this lends me the opportunity to bring my mother’s world into the world of my children.
I think I want that job. I want to be a generational translator. I want to translate the systems created by our parents into a language that’s understood by the collective conscience of the next wave.
