His new book: Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighbourhoods, will be released September 8, 2009, and talks about potential business uses of Twitter.

Walter Schwabe had a chance to chat with Mr Israel and have a few questions about his views on social media answered.  This will be the first interview in a series of them with Shel Israel, so be sure to check back often for the next interview!

Walter: How would you describe to an “outsider” the value of social media?

Shel: Social Media allows you to speak with people all over the world who share your interests. The places where you meet tham may be virtual, but the relationships that form there, the trust that builds there and the influence on what people buy, sell, read, watch, listen to or visit is very real.

You can purchase "Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk to Customers" from Amazon.ca

Walter: How would you define “social media expert?”

Shel: I think words like “expert” and “guru” are over-hyped in a field that is this new. When it comes to business, they become marketing gibberish. Social Media has been around for business since 2006. There are no best practices just yet, only good ideas.

I flinch when I’m called an expert. I’m a writer. I’ve talked to a lot of people in a lot of places about how social media is changing their businesses and their worlds in general. I’m a good story teller. But to claim expertise, would assert a level bordering on infallibility. And I am among the most fallible of people.

Walter: How did you manage to write a book and do all the other activities that you do each day?

Shel: Vitamins & coffee.

Walter: How has Twitter impacted relationship building in general?

Shel: Well this week it is allowing everyday people in the West to support and interact with the people on the streets of Iran. In so doing, we are bypassing government processes, many of the barriers of language or geography. We are discovering that we in the West and on the street of Iran both love freedom, for example. I don’t know how it will come out over there, but the relationships between many people over there and many of us in the west will change things in some way that is not yet definable.

That’s in specific. You asked in general. Twitter lets people behave online closer to the way we do in real life than any previous social media tool. For example, have you started more business conversations by saying something like: “Are you going to buy anything,” “You ate in ABC Cafe? I love that place, what did you have for lunch?”

Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighbourhoods" can also be pre-ordered from Amazon.ca

Walter: What is the most offensive thing you’re witnessed on Twitter? The happiest moment?

Shel: Offensive: The Florida-based creep who asks new mothers to send him breast milk. Can’t do “happiest,” but most inspirational was seeing @jkrums iPhone photo of US Air Flight 1549 landing on the Hudson river.

Walter: If you couldn’t use social media anymore ever what would you do?

Shel: I would use whatever came along to replace it.

Walter: Some psychologists suggest Twitter and social media are for people who cannot build “real” relationships, do you agree?

Shel: Pundits have been declaring the dangers of everything new probably since the kids hauled out of the cave using daddy’s newly created stone wheel.

Pundits now have academic titles so they sound like “experts” talking about technology that they do not use and do not understand. In the old days, they had clerical degrees and were called “witch-finders.”

I really appreciated the opportunity to interview Shel Israel.  We quickly recognized that there was simply too much we could talk about and agreed to expand our interview into a series.  We agreed that we’d start with some really basic questions and then progress to a discussion surrounding his work on “global neighbourhoods.”  Look for that coming soon…Walter Schwabe.

Biographical information courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shel_Israel
Picture also courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shel_israel.jpg

The debate between closing and maintaining the Edmonton City Centre Airport (YXD) has heated up as of late.  With City Councilors set to make a decision on July 8, opinion is still widely divided between the two view points.

With that in mind, fusedlogic will be hosting the “Great Airport Debate” at our studio in Sherwood Park.  We currently have Mack Male (creator of notmyairport.ca) and Dave MacLean (creator of saveourairport.ca) lined up to continue a discussion they began last week, but were unable to continue due to time restraints.  Well, we don’t have any of those here.  As well, we may be adding a few more guests to sit on the discussion panel – we’ll update this post as soon as any are confirmed.

Tune in to fusedlogic.tv at 7:00 pm MST this Monday.  There will be a chat room set up to allow viewers to engage in their own discussion and be involved with the main show.

We look forward to seeing you there!

There was some online discussion about the city’s choice to release the information in .pdf form instead of the more accessible .csv format.  While .pdf is probably more than sufficient enough for most people, check out links to the .csv versions below.

The one thing that the .pdf versions lacked were any pretty graphs.  As an accountant, a pretty graph is about the only way I can express my deep-rooted love for spreadsheets, and as such, have included some for you to enjoy below.

First up, we have a breakdown of the percentage of population by age and by year.  Note that these numbers become significantly altered when we include those who did not report their age, as 2008 saw a disproportionate number of people choose to remain ageless.
That disclaimer aside, it’s interesting to see age groups shift through the demographic spectrum.

Next up is a breakdown of population by Ward.  As you can see, Ward 5 is the largest – tho not by much.

Here’s a look at the population in each Ward broken up by Gender.  As you can see, in all but two wards, the men outnumber the women! I wouldn’t have guessed.

Lastly, I thought it would be interesting to look at how each Ward is broken up between people who own their home and those who are renting.

Thanks for stopping by. And props to the great people at the City of Edmonton for putting this information together.  It’s amazing to see how our great city has grown.

.CSV files:

Ward1 Ward2 Ward3 Ward4 Ward5 Ward6

Map of the Wards in Edmonton

We also got to meet some interestesting people from Chrysalis – an Albertan society for citizens with disabilities – who let us join them at their table.  And finally, we were able to chat with one of my favourite local artists, Ben Sures, who is spending the week creating a brilliant piece of concept art.

We’ve included some pictures below, but if you get the chance, check out the festival for yourself!

Post by Paul Ney, Captions by Evan Adnams

Discussion over the weekend covered the social web from several angles – monetization models, culture and demographics, and search metrics to name a few. Monitors with Tweetdeck rolled along tracking the hashtag #nextMEDIA throughout the venue, keeping conference-goers up to date on the most recent chatter in and around the event. Discussions regularly fell to differentiating between the hype of social media and its more productive uses.

Judging by the current viewer-minute totals for the fusedlogicTV channel, many of you know we were doing our best to broadcast live from that majestic castle in the mountains – the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. Most “castles” aren’t known for their blazing fast internet connectivity, and this one was no exception. The one (slow) connection shared between the entire hotel complex was regularly too slow to even check one’s email; something that turned into a common point of contention among attendees. That’s right folks: one of Canada’s premier tourist destinations is essentially an internet “dead zone.”

Is this a relevant or fair criticism? Actually, it highlights a problem somewhat rampant through many of Alberta’s well-used structures. Infrastructure is lagging behind requirements in many cases, and is further held up by venue owners and managers who think things are “good enough.” Conference organizers run the risk of tainting an event for nothing more than failing to provide decent internet access. Spotty connections aside, the fusedlogic team was still able to get some great interviews broadcast live and recorded for the interview-ees to embed on their own websites. By the second day, the amazing staff over at Achilles Media (the event organizers) were able to obtain a better connection and pipe it out to the rest of us. With that taken care of, the event flowed on seamlessly.

Even before these issues were sorted out, we were able to to do some pretty exciting things. With most of our time spent interviewing conference delegates, politicians, keynote speakers and special guests, we got a great look at the culture that surrounds online media and some of the traditional media that have jumped on board. Chats with personalities like Shira Lazar (a prolific content producer from the US) or Nadja and Joshua from B360 Media (who won the award for Hottest Emerging Digital Property for their Cooking, Lifestyle and Culture website) helped renew our faith in the online digital scene and the amazing content that can be produced there.

One of our most interesting interviews of the weekend was with a Canadian photographer and entrepreneur named Kris Krüg (check out his Flickr group). Kris built an online resource to create easily deployable, throw-away websites for groups like sports teams, churches, or other community organizations that needed a quick and simple online presence. After selling that company in 2007, he has gone on to publish his photography in such places as the LA Times and Rolling Stone Magzine and to speak regularly about online creative licensing. Based in Vancouver, but spending much of his time in Shanghai, he was recently asked to speak at the Ted Talks Shanghai event. Walter had a fascinating talk with Kris, which we would invite you to check out below:

Author: Paul Ney.
Contributions from Edmontonians article by Walter Schwabe.
Images are used under Creative Commons license from Kris Krüg. View originals here.