P-A-R-T–Y? Because we gotta!
Hey, our fore fathers didn’t fight for our right to party so we could sit at home watching people who think they can dance.
Heck, no.
They’d have wanted you to head down to Whyte Avenue’s Wunderbar for 7pm this evening to enjoy some local entertainment, local cake, and beer from all over.
A blog (and podcast) only get to turn 1 once.
We’d love to you see you tonight, so come say “Hi.”
You don’t even have to bring presents. (Though they are accepted.)
Good morning, Starshine.
Today concludes my week of morning livecasting from coffee shops (and let’s be honest and say Second Cups, because they seem to have unkillable wifi).
This no doubt leaves you asking, “Who cares about livecasting nothing from coffee shops?” Oh INTERNETS, you always make the best arguments.
The point of trying this on for size is to make ourselves available to the community at large. Have something on your mind? Something you want to promote? I am literally sitting here, waiting to hear it. With a webcam pointed at my stupid face. That’s the reason we started the edmontonian, after all – to give the community a voice we felt was being lost amidst the decline of original, locally produced news content.
Look for these morning webcasts to be a weekly occurrence, starting this fall.
Oh what a wonderful…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………
Well, I am up and at zem bright early again this morning, continuing this week’s trial run of morning show webcasts.
I didn’t go into great (read: any) detail about this last time, probably because I was a no-sleep zombie, but the reason for this week’s Mon/Wed/Fri morning show broadcasts, as well as the episode of Saturday Night with Samsonow we did last month, is that we’re spending the summer months trying to test out the best (read: cheapest and easiest) ways to integrate regular webcasts into the normal swing of things around here. It’s all just another way to tell stories about Edmonton, folks!
Anyway, this morning me and the webcam will be sitting in awkward silence at the Starbucks on Jasper Ave and 101 St. (I think it’s 101 St., it’s the one by Quizno’s) the Second Cup at Milner Library between 7 and 9 a.m. If you have anything you’d like to talk about, come down and see me. I’ll be the one asleep on the table in front of a webcam.
Good Morning Edmonton!
In the fine tradition of things we thought of at the last possible minute and decided to execute anyway, we present our latest foray into live streaming. I mean, if we’re going to become a media juggernaut, we have to have a morning show, right?
Here’s how it works. This is literally the definition of interactivity. From 7 a.m. until 9 a.m. this morning, I will be sitting at the Second Cup on Whyte Ave. and Gateway. If you’d like to be on the show, come down and talk to me. In the meantime, I’ll just be sitting here like a weirdo, doing work with a webcam pointed at me. I will also try to remember to give you weather and traffic updates at the top and bottom of the hour.
The Samsonowich will destroy breakfast as we know it
Why would someone create a sandwich of waffles and danish? If I’m remembering the story correctly, I’ll tell you why.
We went and tried one of McDonald’s new healthier options, a Southwest Salad. We weren’t fans of the BBQ sauce on the salad, but have since heard other reviews that place the salad in higher esteem. Maybe the restaurant we went to was just phoning it in.
Anyway, we thought it would be funny to create a salad of cheeseburgers. It was. We didn’t eat that though.
Twitter got rolling on things and before you know it CJSR’s Makin’ Whoopee is talking about the “Samsonowich,” a breakfast delicacy made of waffles and danish. With whipped cream or syrup to top it off.
Fast-forward to Saturday, and our attempt at a live, late-night, Edmonton talk show, and you’ve got a need to create this monstrosity of breakfast, in a cooking segment.
You know what? It was actually pretty good.
We used Eva Sweet (vanilla) waffles, so we started with the best waffles any of us had ever had. I picked up some danish (It has to be cherry!) at Sobeys, whipped up the cream myself, and put it all together live on the air.
It’s likely not a healthy option to start your day, but damn if it isn’t a delicious, messy way to kick things off.
—–
Saturday Night with Samsonow is continually looping on our livestream.com account. We didn’t know it would do that, but it’s kind of cool.
If you watch, just pretend the parts without sound are our attempt at an artsy film school submission.
Saturday Night with Samsonow
Because we never give ourselves enough work to do we’re attempting a live talk show.
Tonight. 9pm.
Come right back here. You might have to refresh this page (or the main page if that’s what you’re on) to get the live stream to kick in.
Tonight’s guest is local social media darling Adam Rozenhart. Plus, we’ve got Pepe Duenes as our band. We’ll also be crank-calling an actual local media celebritity. And eating the long-rumoured Samsonowich.
See you then!
(Although, we won’t be able to see you.)
If the website is hiccuping at all, you can try watching at our livestream.com account too.
Photos! Video! Words! Music!
We are having a great time at SOS Fest.
That's Forestry rocking the Black Dog right there.
One Year in Edmonton
Hope you’re enjoying our continuing look back at the year that was. For the edmontonian that is.
First off, we thank you, again, for sticking with us for one year. That is a long time in the Internet world. I mean, there’s plenty of awesome stuff on YouTube to distract everybody.
Now, let’s look at interesting, weird, odd, intriguing stuff from the last year. And stats. Everybody loves stats.
75,000+ people have checked us out. Sure, lots of those people come back again and again, but you’re supposed to use stats to make yourself sound cool. They stopped by hundreds of thousands of times. That is cool. Period.
We’ve averaged 3 posts per day. That explains why our logo is burned onto my retinas.
We’ve got more than 2 comments per post. (Again, an average.) That’s pretty good since a lot of items don’t even have comments. But we can always count on Gregg Beever to get you angry enough to say something.
In the last year we’ve posted more than 780 times. This is 789. We’ve also shown off more than 1,500 photos of Edmonton. If only our Flickr group reflected that. (Totally my bad, you guys.)
Beyond an audience, Sally and I started the edmontonian one year ago hoping we wouldn’t be the only ones writing and talking about Edmonton.
You made that a reality. And how!
We had 40+ contributors who wrote, took photos, shot video, gave us prizes, and did lots of other great stuff, all helping to tell Edmonton stories. If we paid you we’d be a real magazine or something.
Thanks Lorraine Poulsen, Janine Edwards, Derek Clayton, Ryan Engley, Mack D. Male, Brendan Berg, Ryan Dunford, Edward Monton, Joe Melin, Trevor Prentice, Josh Macedo, Jenn Prosser, Jay Runham, Pam, Derjis, Brittney LeBlanc, Andrea, Cherie Bucy, Manny (our first of many Bureau Chiefs), Linda Hoang, Paul Poulsen, Eri Gayler, Jason Bouwmeester, Tess Dehoog, Marilyn Kontz, Brent Welch, Gregg Beever, Dustin McNichol, Lauren MacDonald, Benjamin Tippett, Colin Enquist, Kristi Shmyr, Brenda Kerber, Alexis Kienlen, Adam Rozenart, Colin MacIntyre, Jordan Schroder, Heath Sperling and Mina Hideshima, Pepe Duenes, Katie McLaughlin, Angela Ostafichuk, Chris Chan, The Joe, Veronica Petrola, The League of Extraordinary Media, and anyone I missed while scanning though a year’s worth of posts.
And thanks to the many more people we’ve had the pleasure of talking with, collaborating with, linking to (and haven’t complained about us linking to them or embedding their videos). Thank you everyone!
In the last year we’ve talked about:
- Most of Edmonton’s festivals and events, like Bikeology, Dreamspeakers, Litfest, Capital Ex, the Fringe, fashion weeks (still some of our most popular stuff),Taste of Edmonton, the Olympic torch run, and mall openings.
- Cultural institutions like the Alberta Ballet, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton Opera and Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.
- Sports and teams including the Capitals, Rush, Wildcats and Huskies, roller derby, the (MMA) fights and Concordia.
- 150+businesses, business owners, entrepreneurs, biz people, artists, musicians and bands.
And we’ve made about 2,379 self-deprecating jokes.
Here’s to another year of talking ’bout Edmonton!
(This post would have been up a little sooner. But I actually got distracted on YouTube.)
#YegSwap on your TV
We came into your homes last weekend, via our live stream and this CTV story (above).
Neat.
Although this means the real media doesn’t see us a threat to their audience and market share. (ex: CTV isn’t going to be covering Global events anytime soon.)
So we have them right where we want them.
Time for some Juggalo news
The other day we were talking about Edmonton’s new radio station, it’s umpteenth on your FM dial, and joked about Sally applying to the CRTC for all Juggalo-news radio.
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Hey, if we get to 50 radio stations do we all win free iPods? Because there’s no Nickelback on those!
Anyway…we’re trying to add some firepower to our potential on-air lineup.
Next time, the CRTC won’t so easily dismiss the idea of the Juggalo-nation having its own broadcasting power.
Oh, and if you aren’t quite sure who, or what, a juggalo is, you can catch up thanks to the wonders of the Internet. I’m pretty sure juggalos invented the Internet.
Going Mobile
Well, the Internet isn't on phones for Zack and I.
This one doesn’t really have a lot to do with Edmonton, except that I’m in Edmonton and so are you and so is your phone.
If you’re not like old Zack Morris over there (and me…) you can probably point that fancy phone of yours to all points across the Internet and literally carry the world in your palm. I’m happy for you.
I’m so happy for you, in fact, that I’ve tweaked our website for your phone. If you head to theedmontonian.com you won’t be bogged down with giant Flash photos and other web junk anymore. No sir, you’ll be phone-surfing to our new mobile website (ooh…ahh) which is clean and simple because time can’t be wasted, in this fast-paced world, waiting for giant websites to load.
It also means you have even more opportunities to read my mundane rantings.
The Internet: it’s on phones now.
We called it!
(A tip of the hat to Stephen Colbert for the headline.)
Back in July (July, Edmonton!) we had a contributor put forward a plan that would revolutionize Fort Edmonton Park. It included rides, mazes, virtual realities, interactive pictures, videos and exhibits.
They all laughed.
Well, today the laughing stopped.
(The laughing at us and Janine I mean. You can feel free to laugh at the idea of a high-tech old timey park.)
If only we had predicted the log flume.
What if I told you the horses were actually holograms? (Photo: Fort Edmonton Park)
