We had to get out of town this weekend, despite contemplating the staycation, so enjoying a little R&R along with my sister’s family.
We’ll be back in a few days but I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who made my DreamBank dream come true. Thanks to all those who contributed – and those who have been reading this blog over the years – I will be attending the world’s largest blogging conference September 19-21. After raising almost $10,000 for the Union Gospel Mission during Blogathon you were still able to give me a hand and I’m truly touched. I can say with all my heart that I have the best readers on the planet.
Growing up in Surrey I know that when someone tells me they are from Cloverdale or Fleetwood, they’re still really from Surrey. Today I was interviewed by Erin and we discussed the fact that it’s sometimes fun to just state the fancy neighbourhood name when people ask you where you’re from. Panorama Ridge? How lovely!
I came home to find a similar neighbourhood-type discussion on Twitter, between @nickb and @ddonat. Nick, who works with the online creative writing community that is Protagonize, made a comment about the financial district in Vancouver. This lead to a discussion about what is exactly is Vancouver’s financial district and where are the boundaries? What do people consider downtown, midtown, crosstown and all the other ‘towns’ (like Gastown, Chinatown and Yaletown).
A friend told me the other day she was to meet someone in what they described as Yaletown, however she ended up near the Vancouver Sun building on Pender and Beatty. We both agreed, that location was definitely not what we would consider Yaletown.
The Davie Village meets Yaletown at which street – Granville perhaps? Does Coal Harbour turn into the financial district at Burrard? Wiki offers up a nice list of neighbourhoods in Vancouver yet there are also unofficial areas such as Railtown – (Railway street between Gore and Princess but North of Hastings – or perhaps Pender?)
A few years ago it was announced that the official “downtown” of Vancouver was where Burrard meets Dunsmuir, although I’m sure many could argue that title.
When I venture out of the West End to meet Duane at Smiley’s I would tell John to meet us “downtown” and in what I would consider the “financial district” since there are so many banks around and the area is pretty deserted on weekends (well it was before Cactus Club opened up anyway).
But then again, did I just come from the West End or the West End at Robson, the West End at Stanley Park, the West End at English Bay or the West End – Davie Village?
We all have our own criteria and although some of the boundaries are clearly laid out, all of these neighbourhoods are on the downtown peninsula of Vancouver and they each have their own style and traits.
You may have seen the adds around town, “Montreal vs Vancouver”, pitting Canadians cities against each other as though it was a warm up for the hockey season. On August 31st, 2008 Nike is arranging a global 10km fun run in 25 cities, starting at the same time on all continents.
The event kicked off in Vancouver with a VIP reception under the Granville Bridge. It’s been strange to see all the hype surrounding the race as it seems very exclusive so far.
After spending some time on the Nike Plus website (and after making a Manga-type character or “Mini me”) I searched for more information in order to find out what all of this is actually about aside from being a big marketing push.
Usually running events in Vancouver are planned and advertised months in advance and my favourites are all for great causes, like the upcoming Run for the Cure. The Human Race a neat concept when you think that you’ll be running through the streets of Vancouver at dusk while someone else will be doing the same at that moment, running through Lima. However, what is the cause here? Where does the registration money go?
Run locally, help globally. During registration choose the charity you want to support: UN Refugee Agency, Lance Armstrong Foundation, or the WWF. Nike will donate $5 of each $50 registration fee to the Nike+ Human Race fund to be distributed equally to the three Nike+ Human Race charities, up to US $1.5 million. Funds will then be distributed in proportion to the kilometres run by runners supporting each charity. [FAQ]
I was also wondering about the entertainment. The race kicks off at 7:00pm and the shows follow at 7:30pm with an opening band. Then The Trews take the stage with Theory of a Deadman wrapping up the event at 9:45 until 11:00pm. If you’re running the 10kms (and probably do so in about 60 minutes) you’ll more than likely miss the first few bands.
You can check out more information on the “Race Blog” (which doesn’t have an RSS feed or comments) and watch the site for route details that will be released, hopefully sometime in the next 4 days so you can plan for those road closures accordingly.
This month’s Net Tuesday meetup will be taking place tonight at Workspace in Gastown. The theme is “How Drupal can help you save the world” and the event will feature talks from Boris Mann (BootupLabs), Scott Nelson and Karianne Blank (FearlessCity.ca), and Phillip Djwa (Agentic). More information is also available on the Facebook event.
My live blog will start at around 5:30pm so please stay tuned to this post to find out more about how these technologies and community builders can assist non profits and create social change.
Update: 16:30 – A quick shout out to tonight’s sponsors: Communicopia, CitizensBank and WorkSpace.
Update: 17:30 – I’m awaiting the arrival of Mr Bollwitt but have already chatted with David Drucker, Jordan Behan and DaveO – who handed me a super cool Gnomedex post card.
Update: 18:00 – Boris is the first speaker and notes that while talking to some folks before the event started there are many different versions of what people think the speakers will be addressing tonight. “What is a Drupal?” Well, in Boris’ words, it’s an open source CMS framework – founded in Belgium. The word itself is a mistyping of the Dutch word “village”.
To start, Drupal is a community. Next, open source – what is it? Share, make changes, the code is open to all. This works well in the realm of non profits, and Boris will explain why. “It’s a big toolkit, it can do a lot of things and the open source mission can be tightly coupled to the means of non profits but ultimately it’s a tool kit.” Continue reading this post ⟩⟩
Last week I was interviewed by Leah and Jay from Giant Ant Media. The goal was to put together a video for New Media BC and they got us all talking about our experience with the events surrounding VIDFEST. You can now view the finished product on the Giant Ant website and I have to say, it looks pretty wicked.
