The city of Edmonton Youth Council, in cooperation with the wonderful staff of City Clerk’s Office and Councillor Iveson, recently put on the second annual “Mock Council Meeting”. This event, originally established to educate on the procedural matters of City Council, was again a huge success and featured 3 items on the agenda: A business revitalization funding request, an administrative inquiry into the possibility of a 24-hour transit system, and finally a city-wide ban on trans fats.

Here are some of the photos from the event.

Next on the horizon for the Policy Subcommittee is an exciting fact-finding project about youth in Edmonton. The details currently in the works, but we hope to launch an Edmonton-wide survey of junior high and high school students to find out what youth want Edmonton to look like in the future. It could be very useful to not only our other subcommittees, but to City Council as a whole!

In other news, Youth Week is kicking off with the Youth Excellence Awards presentation on Saturday May 1^st, so be sure to stay tuned for more tales of inspiring young Edmontonians! Get more information online at www.edmontonyouthweek.ca

First of all, apologies for the big gap between posts. Getting all the information from paper into electronic form has taken much longer than anyone expected. Our working group is having a bit of a shake-up. Some of our volunteers are no longer able to offer the amount of time they had previously, so we’re moving slowly (but we’re still moving). We have all the notes you all wrote on the tables entered now, but it’s taking a while to get everything organized. I hope I will have more for you next week.

Secondly, thank you to everyone who provided feedback on the first Engage: Your City Your Voice event through our surveys, over twitter, and in the comments on my last post. Your feedback is important as we build Engage into a series of events.
And because your feedback is so important, I’ll take this post to share with you some of the themes that came out of your feedback and how the working group is planning to move forward.

photo credit: mastermaq

Generally speaking, the majority of the feedback we received was quite positive.  It’s very apparent that you think discussion is important and you want to participate in your city, and you think that Engage: Your City, Your Voice is a good way to do that. That’s exciting for me because it means there’s a large group of people out there who want to contribute to making the city better.

There were, of course, constructive criticisms and the working group is taking them very seriously. There were 4 big things that stood out amongst the feedback. And as with all feedback, there were good and bad comments on each.

1. Venue: Opinion was pretty evenly split on City Hall as a venue for this type of event. Lots of you really love City Hall and thought it was an inspiring place to hold the event, especially given the topics. The other half thought the space was too large and too loud for good discussion.

The working group thought City Hall was a great venue, especially for our first event, but we are planning to try different venues around the city in an effort to try and reach different groups of people.

2. Accessibility: Nearly everyone who provided feedback was glad the venue was easily accessible by public transportation.
The working group will definitely keep this in mind as we book spaces for future events.

3. Audience: Some people felt the audience or participants were not diverse enough. A number of people felt that this was the same general group of fairly privileged people providing opinions on inner city issues and homelessness without including homeless people and people from lower income neighbourhoods.

Part of the reason the working group wants to try different venues is to try to reach different groups of people. We will also try other ways of getting the word out about our events to engage with a more diverse crowd.

4. Facilitation: There were mixed reviews on this as well, but generally the comments agree that we need to have better trained facilitators to make these events meaningful for everyone that attends.

Our facilitators are volunteers and have varying experience with facilitation, but the working group will prepare them better for future events.

Thank you all again for coming out to Engage: Your City, Your Voice – Life in the Urban Core. I hope you’ll continue to attend our future events (including the upcoming Community Challenge, there will be a post about this from Tegan next week) and bring your passion and enthusiasm for Edmonton.

Just as Lyndia promised in her post a few weeks ago, members of the City of Edmonton Youth Council are going to start blogging. I’ll be the first to post about my experiences with the Youth Council, in particular about my position as Youth Council Chair and how I work with the General Assembly.

Although the majority of the Youth Council’s work is done in separate subcommittees (which will be discussed in later posts), the heart of the City of Edmonton Youth Council (CEYC) is the General Assembly (GA). The General Assembly is made up of all the members of CEYC (currently about 35 volunteers) who meet the first Wednesday of every month to hear updates from the Exec about the goings-on of the different subcommittees, as well as participate in social events and/or educational presentations and discuss issues concerning the GA as a whole.

MC for the Streets Speak mural series event at City Hall, February 16. 2010.

Contrary to what you might expect, as Chair I do not manage the agenda of the GA meetings. Rather, the meetings are run by a speaker chosen from the GA, a position that is rotated to a new GA member every month.

At first glance, the role of Youth Council Chair seems to be straightforward. In practise, however, the position of chair is rather open-ended. When I first ran for Chair in the summer of 2009, I was aware of the position’s official duties, which included planning and coordinating executive meetings as well as providing leadership for the Youth Council as a whole.

I soon found, however, that it was up to me to decide exactly what ‘providing leadership’ meant. The previous CEYC Chair had chosen to focus on heading the Homelessness Subcommittee. I however, felt that it was more important to allow my excellent executive to complete their tasks as they saw fit. I thus have chosen to provide a supporting role, sitting on three of our six subcommittees.

CEYC Transportation Subcommittee

And therein lies the most important duty of the Chair, in my opinion: regardless of the level of direct control the Chair chooses in exert in any given subcommittee, it is absolutely essential for the Chair to provide support and direction for the Youth Council as a whole. This can range from providing feedback for the executive to fulfilling the duties of the paid Coordinator when he or she is unavailable. This year, I felt that it was critical that CEYC improve the overall participation and attendance of the GA. This is a responsibility shared by the entire executive but the Chair needs to be especially aware of any problems facing CEYC at any given time. As the head of the City of Edmonton Youth Council, the position of Chair is absolutely vital.

Accepting the Youth Week 2009 Proclamation from Councillor Iveson

It has been an absolute pleasure to serve as the Chair of the City of Edmonton Youth Council so far, and I look forward to the rest of my term!

The cameras are in place, participants will soon be starting to arrive at the Art Gallery of Alberta (and online) for the Open City Workshop.

Join the LIVE  (bilingual)WEBCAST here. We will be broadcasting all day, so check out the video feed or if you’re participating remotely you can also join our chat room to get involved in the conversation. You can also follow the conversation on twitter with the #yegdatag #openyeg hashtag

UPDATE: We are working hard to get the video archive of the panel up soon. So stay tuned.

Workshop Agenda

9:30 – 10:00 am Registration
10:00 am – 12:00 pm Morning session and activities featuring panel discussion
12:00 – 12:45 pm Lunch (provided on-site)
12:45 – 4:00 pm Afternoon session featuring collaborative break-outs

With over 160 people registered today is sure to be a day full of interesting conversation on the topic of open government, the City’s Open Data initiative.

We’ll also be joining up with the Gov. 2.0 Camp in New England over our lunch hour. Great minds think alike.

It’s been quite a journey for me these past few months. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some amazing and dedicated colleagues organizing the November 21 Open Data Workshop and building the Open Data Catalogue.  Shortly after that workshop and release of the data catalogue, fellow blogger Ashley and I had the good fortune of attending and being inspired by CityCamp in Chicago. Since then I’ve been working with even more of my colleagues on the next steps, including the upcoming March 6th Open City Workshop.

The majority of participants in last year’s Open Data Workshop were from Edmonton’s technology community. And like the bulletin board systems that predated today’s internet, these early adopters helped explore this new ground. But in order for these concepts to thrive, the value they represent needs to find a home in the minds of a broader collection of individuals and leaders in the community, academia, private sector and the public service. Even more importantly, we need representatives from all of these groups together: talking, collaborating and sharing insights and ideas.

Open Data Workshop participants brainstorm ideas about the principles of open data.

Government 2.0 isn’t about brandishing technology like a panacea, nor does it constitute simply pushing government services onto the web. With any successful technology, it will evolve with time until it becomes effectively invisible until, for example, we try to lock our car door with the keys still inside.

So what does that have to do with government?  Let’s take an icy intersection as an example. How many drivers (or their ABS systems) on a given winter day discover the dangers of a particular strip of black ice for themselves? What if you instructed your vehicle’s ABS computer to share the where and when of the incident with a common, open system, one that belongs to the public? Cars coming by later could then warn their drivers, or maybe display a caution symbol on in-car navigation systems. Just as importantly, as this information comes in, it becomes possible to very quickly and accurately pinpoint trouble spots as they form.

The first steps towards this would (were I to wager a guess) involve some imperfect data, perhaps drawn from traffic volume and accident rates, and the initial applications of it will probably only be available as web or mobile applications on phones belonging to tech-savvy early adopters, it would be some time before this might appear as a “no-tech-skill required” feature in vehicles and navigation systems.

But Government 2.0 is more than just improving traffic safety and other services. Sure, these sorts of solutions and innovations would emerge, and principles of “openness” help to remove a lot of the barriers, but I like to think of it as the enabler of this sort of idea and vision. The example above is just my own idea, I haven’t yet vetted it, so maybe it’s not even a good idea. But it’s safe to say I’m not alone in this, there are many more ideas both good and bad out there in the community. Sharing our ideas with others and getting their feedback allows us to discern the great from the good, discover if others have the same sorts of ideas, and then perhaps move from concept to reality.

In sum, the way I look at it, what an Open City really does is enables the community and its members to: 1) bring their ideas together and share them, 2) to develop and build on those ideas, drawing out the best and most visionary of them, and 3) take part in making those ideas a reality. Government then, is the platform that enables this to happen, it always has been, but now we have new approaches and new tools to bring us closer to that reality. These are not easy problems, and there are no perfect solutions to any of them, but we’re taking steps.  Open Data, for example, speaks primarily to #3, enabling those with technological inclinations to bring new ideas to life. With time, some of those technical barriers will fall, but I believe there are other possibilities to enable more of the population to work together towards initiatives like open data and open gov.

Despite the number of laptops present at the planning sessions for the Open City workshop the event on March 6th will be an inclusive conversation that doesn't focus on technology alone.

This Open City Workshop (which I think you’ll find is a bit different from what you might expect from a government run event) is just one way we’re working towards sharing and developing ideas together, and maybe more possibilities will emerge from it. I know I have more ideas to share, I hope you do too.

So what does an Open City mean to you? Come to the Art Gallery of Alberta on March 6 (or participate online) and let us all know!

The contents of this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture at City Hall by Richard Heinberg, an award-winning author and educator. Heinberg, who hails from the Post Carbon Institute in Santa Rosa California, is a futurist and leading international commentator on Peak Oil. He is the first speaker in the City of Edmonton’s Distinguisher Speaker Series that will help inform The Way We Green, Edmonton’s new environmental strategic plan. Heinberg’s topic was peak oil and how this trend could impact Edmonton’s future.

Part 1

So what is peak oil?

Peak oil occurs when new discoveries of economically viable oil deposits and related production begin to decline over time. In his presentation, Heinberg said the US used to be the world’s foremost oil producer. But oil production in the States peaked in 1970 and has been in decline ever since. A similar trend is happening world wide. As Heinberg explained: “Global oil production falls when loss of output from countries declining exceeds gains from those expanding.” In other words, one barrel of oil is now being discovered for every five being consumed and world oil production has been flat since 2005.

Part 2

On the day of Heinberg’s lecture, the Wall Street Journal reported: “A shortage of oil could be a real problem for the world within a fairly short period of time.”

Part 3

Could this shortage of oil affect Edmonton? Surely we have a huge supply nearby in the oil sands? Well, this is where things can get complicated. The costs of mining and extraction from the oil sands are significantly higher than those with conventional oil. Heinberg added another twist in that it is not only the quantity of oil produced that constitutes a challenge but the cost.

Part 4

He explained how the supply of oil affects our economy and how our standard of living is related to a narrow crude oil ‘price band’. If prices are too high, the economy slows down, for example, the cost of air travel and food production increases. If prices are too low, investment decreases and economic expansion is limited and the building of our infrastructure diminishes.

Part 5

Richard Heinberg suggested that we view fossil fuels not as an end point but as a bridge to a future of renewable energies and that we plan and act proactively while we still have the opportunity to do so.

Part 6

In the coming months, we will be posting updates on the main City website (The Way We Green) and on the Transforming Edmonton Blog, including more videos from our speakers’ series and reporting on the progress of Way we Green planning process.

Since returning from CityCamp at the end of January, I’ve been immersed in the world of #opengov #gov2.0 and the City’s work on #yegdata. I know this probably doesn’t make sense to many of the people reading this, but I’ll try and do my best to explain. No promises though, I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything.

I suppose a good place to start is CityCamp. Held in Chicago at the end of January, CityCamp was an unconference dedicated to practicing gov 2.0 at the local level.  Devin Serink, from IT, and I were fortunate to go as representatives of the City of Edmonton. Devin provided a bit more of a background about open data, gov 2.0 and City Camp in his post “Edmonton Goes To City Camp” prior to our trip. We were both excited for what this unconference had in store. CityCamp was going to be an excellent opportunity to meet and develop relationships with representatives from other municipalities and organizations who were interested in open government and to learn how Edmonton can become a leader in this emerging field.

photo credit: eylerwerve

We spent the weekend with government, community, and media leaders from across North America to discuss new ways governments can use technology to interact with and engage residents. We were pleased (and a little surprised) to discover that Edmonton had just as much to teach as we did to learn. From exploring the uses of new technology, learning how to develop online security, how to leverage the internet to be neighbourly, how to run an apps contest, even how to engage citizens through the use of video games, we quickly realized that the possibilities of creating a more open and transparent government are endless.

photo credit: Tony Webster

photo credit: eylerwerve

photo credit: eylerwerve

Following the weekend at CityCamp we were invited to participate in an Open City Summit. At this workshop we met with other governments who have, or are on their way to having an open data catalogue. Organizations like Sunlight Labs, The Open Planning Project, Code for America, the Urban Institute and Every Block participated in this workshop, because they are interested in having and providing support to open, transparent and democratic governments.

Since we’ve been back there has been a whirl-wind of activity. There’ll be more specifics in posts to come, but to give you an idea of what’s been happening so far, Devin and I have been collaborating with our colleagues, including leadership from IT and Communications and community members to continue the City’s work to educate residents about the benefits of open governance, open data, and open systems.

We are in the process organizing a followup workshop for March 6th to continue the conversation about Edmonton’s initiatives in open data, but also to talk about the larger context of open government from a Canadian and Edmonton perspective. It is our hope that community, government, and academic leaders from across Canada will meet in our city on March 6th to participate and help as we continue to take those next steps towards Edmonton 2.0. Chris Moore, the City’s CIO will be posting to the blog later this week with more on this. Stay tuned.

Last week I got to facilitate a discussion group for the first event in Next Gen’s Engage: Your City, Your Voice series. Wait, you haven’t heard about this before? What is Engage: Your City, Your Voice? Well, let me fill you in!

The series of Engage: Your City, Your Voice discussions brings together Edmontonians from all walks of life who are interested in sharing ideas about the future of the city we call home. Next Gen wants you to come voice your thoughts and ideas, and engage with other visionaries, thinkers, and creatives in our community who want to build a better and more vibrant city. Over the next year, we’ll have a series of discussions on topics that are important to the citizens of Edmonton. I wanted to be a part of the working group that plans these events because I think this is a great opportunity for citizens to communicate back to City administration and City Council about our vision of what we want Edmonton to be.

photo credit: mastermaq

So, last Thursday (January 28th) was our first event – bit of a trial run, a bit of a learning experience for the group, but I thought it was a great success. Our theme this time was Life in the Urban Core and we had a great mix of people who wanted to talk about living, working, visiting, and using the core of our city. Over the course of the evening, participants got to discuss specific topics that were most important to them and connect with other Edmontonians who are interested in building a better, more vibrant city.

photo credit: mastermaq

As I said, I got to facilitate a disscussion group and my table had lots of energy and really thoughtful ideas about what makes the core attactive to certain groups of people and less attractive to others. One major theme that came out of all of our discussions was the disconnect between perception and reality of what is really going on in the core – be it crime rates, different housing options, transportation accessibility, or things to do.

My group wants Edmonton’s core to be a destination and a place to live. They want to see all kinds of different people living in the core, using our public spaces, and creating venues to connect with each other. They want the core to be alive. It was an exciting and inspiring group to talk to. I wanted to hear what all the other groups had to say and get going on planning our next event. We wanted to keep this dialogue alive and keep the conversations going!

photo credit: mastermaq

So here’s how we’re going to do just that: The working group will be compiling the feedback from all of the discussions over the next few weeks and will create a document to go to City administrators and eventually City Council. I will also do a series of posts for Transforming Edmonton about each of the discussion topics as the information comes together. The information will be available for anyone who was at Life in the Urban Core or anyone who wants to find out what was said.

We will also use feedback from the participants to select the next discussion theme, so keep an eye out – it’s sure to be another great evening.

photo credit: mastermaq

If you’d like to find out more about Engage: Your City, Your Voice or the Life in the Urban Core discussion, contact the Next Gen office or look for us on twitter (#yegycyv, @EDMNextGen).

Last June the City had the chance to host the ICLEI World Congress 2009 and I was fortunate to chair the event organizing committee. It was exciting to welcome over 600 municipal leaders from 56 countries to Edmonton talk about environmental sustainability.

So what made hosting ICLEI such an important event for Edmonton? You may not know that Edmonton has an international reputation when it comes to our environmental initiatives and hosting the ICLEI Congress gave us the chance to share our knowledge while providing the opportunity for us to learn from other communities around the world.

It’s interesting to note that the membership of ICLEI is made up of municipal leaders. The truth is, most environmental action has taken place at the municipal level so who better to push it forward? When it comes to the environment, we’re all in this together. Every country needs to start taking action on things like climate change, clean air and water and reducing our environmental footprint. Gatherings like ICLEI show us that there are positive steps that any community can make.

But municipal environmental programs are only as successful as the citizens who support them. That’s why the ICLEI Congress featured a number of events for the public including an art show, a concert on community sustainability with local Indie musicians, an exhibit of crafts made of recycled or reused materials, as well as a concert featuring local school children. Hopefully you had the chance to take in some of these events and they got you thinking about what you can do to become more environmentally active and aware.

I think ICLEI showed many of us that environmental responsibility is often about simple steps. There are lots of things you and your family can do to be more environmentally friendly. How about taking the bus or walking more often? How about not idling your car if you’ve stopped for more than 60 seconds (except in traffic of course)? How about replacing your furnace with a high efficiency model or replacing your old appliances with energy star models? How about getting an energy audit of your home? How about switching your light bulbs to the CFL variety? All it takes are a few changes to make a big difference.

We all need to keep up with the things we learned at ICLEI and continue Edmonton’s international reputation as an environmental leader.

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when my interest in Open Data first came into being. My work on collaboration technology here at the City must have sparked it, as I started to really appreciate the incredible capacity, creativity and value of both the global and local community. So what does this have to do with government or Open Data?  To explain that, I’ll have to set aside the story for a moment.

What Open Data ultimately boils down to is information, which is why we collect data in the first place.  Yes, I realize, there’s lots of information available through Edmonton.ca, 311, and maybe even this blog, but it’s not just about the city telling you things, it’s about enabling the community to decide on the what and where of that information:

• What information I want: Maybe you simply want to know how long until the next bus arrives without having to examine a schedule, or what the councillors’ votes were on decisions x, y and z.  Maybe you want to know if there’s a pattern in the number or types of trees a neighbourhood has and surrounding property values. The possibilities are infinite, and the city’s resources are not.
• Where I want to access it: Wouldn’t it be swell if you could just use the map tool you’re already familiar with to plan your bus trip, or one that already has other features like the ability to search for businesses (you can, thanks to this data).  Maybe you want to see road construction projects, or traffic alerts live on your car’s navigation system.  The city doesn’t make the software for your car’s navigation, but could we enable those who do? (yes).  But will they make use of it? Only if it will help sell for navigation systems, so it’s up to you: their customers.

So how does Open Data achieve this? It does so through the community I mentioned earlier, through academia and through private corporations as small as local Grayscale Apps and as large as Google.

Data is not just for computer programmers either. Tools like Yahoo Pipes, and Intel Mash Maker are working hard to make it easier for anyone to create useful visualizations and applications out of online data. It’s also incredibly easy to display geographic data layered on top of Google Maps.

What Open Data is not about is revealing private information or replacing public information sources with commercial ones.  The transit data hasn’t replaced the city’s own Trip Planner, it has simply opened the doors for anyone, not just government, to create new, different, or more convenient ways of accessing bus information.  In fact, for the most part, Open Data is not even about revealing all that much new information, most of it can already be accessed in some form if you’re willing to fill in enough forms, navigate enough bureaucracy, search the website, or call 311, but these are just the channels that government has envisioned and created, designed to be reachable by as much of the population as possible, but not necessarily exactly what everyone wanted from it or where they want it.

As for the rest of my story, as I began to see and imagine the possibilities: better access to information about your city, more transparency around government operations and decisions, and the ability for citizens to see and use the same information we use for those decisions, I grew more and more excited at the prospect of being a part of this growing movement here in the City of Edmonton. Momentum is already building: discussions at ChangeCamp, Don Iveson’s council inquiry, a workshop on the subject, chats over beer after work, lots of twittering, and even a blog post.

For other examples of Open Data in municipal government, check out: Vancouver, Toronto, Nanaimo, D.C., New York, San Francisco and others all over the world and at all levels of government. One of the great things about Open Data is the way in which the sum is greater than the parts: each city that opens their data bring more value to all of the other cities. Google Transit didn’t start in Edmonton, but we benefit from it. MyStops did start in Edmonton, and yet many other cities now benefit.  Other innovative tools await as we work towards opening the data they are based on.

Oh, and sorry Robert, beer sharing is still an app-free activity, but with the right data, there is one that can help you get safely home afterwards.