I usually have an April Fool's joke lined up for my April 1 blog post but this year it just totally escaped me. So instead, here's a link to a MetaFilter post on the topic o' the day. Weird to note that I often end up doing two blog posts on April 1 for some non-joke reason. Not sure why. Hmm, maybe I should post this then go and do another one? Sure, just listening to the new “She and Him” album streamed from NPR so why not – what else am I going to do?
I wrote a lot about what the number of Facebook friends may or may not mean in a political race during the NDP leadership campaign last year.
I'm not sure what if anything these same numbers might mean for a more local race like the one that's currently happening in Regina – Coronation Park. But I do sincerely believe that politics has permanently changed in the new media landscape so you can't ignore these types of outlets – blogs, web sites, Facebook, Twitter, etc – both as a way to reach people and also as an indicator of support and trends within a race.
Knowing that, I thought it might be interesting to see how the various Coronation Park candidates' numbers changed coming out of last weekend's NDP convention. Although the majority of people at convention won't vote directly in this race, they are the most active, involved members of the NDP so any changes should be seen as potentially significant.
On the other hand, I'm not going to do a full work-through of each candidate's friend list to see if there are any noticeable gaps or omissions in terms of high profile NDP'ers supporting one candidate in this race but not another. And obviously, any of the gains any candidate had in the past week or so aren't all attributable to the Convention either as I'm sure all candidates are out pounding the pavement and working the phones.
Here's what I found…
[Edit: May 15 update inspired by Tory McGregor's correction below. Apologies for my earlier oversight where I'd missed his Facebook group in my searches. Also added a late joiner to the race, Roger Bucsis and history may be repeating itself as I can't find any Facebook presence for him either.]
I freely admit that part of why these numbers are the way they are is because Harder and Kress may not have stood to gain a lot of Facebook friends coming out of convention because both were already quite well known entities within the NDP whereas Jaime is still probably a new face to a lot of people.
But for me, the parallels to what happened with Ryan Meili and the groundswell of support as people got to know him and know his story during the leadership race are pretty exciting to see. I think Jaime has that same ability to impress with his sincerity and enthusiasm and I'm sure he made some believers at the convention based on these numbers.
My candidate for the NDP Coronation Park nomination, Jaime Garcia is having a steak supper fundraiser this Saturday night. If you're in Regina, why not come out and support a future leader of the province?
It's not where I got the name for this recurring feature but did you know there's an advocacy campaign to promote music education that's actually called Music Monday?
Here's a catchy little a capella number from Serena Ryder that's the theme song for the cause which will be sung by school children across Canada on May 3…
Easily the best session at the PLA Virtual Conference I hosted at RPL last week was the one on “Marketing as Conversation: How to Interact with Your Community Through Your Web Site”.
In fact, throughout the
presentation, I just kept nodding my head and grinning like a goofball,
thinking to myself, “Yep, uh-huh, that's right!”
We went to the Western Development Museum in Moose Jaw today (I didn't post it on my Facebook in case someone saw my status update and broke into our home as many will be led to believe is inevitable if they saw the fear-mongering report on the CKCK evening news yesterday – terrible! )
We then had a fun rest of the day bombing around one of my favourite communities in Saskatchewan – walking downtown, visiting the library (I can confirm that SILS works – we took out a bunch of books and magazines with no problem!) then a nice stroll through the park before going back downtown for gelato – hey, it's +5 in Saskatchewan – that's warm enough for me!
A company that makes an alternate to traditional female hygiene products, the Moon cup, has a brilliant marketing gimmick on their web site where they encourage readers to submit their pet names for their, ahem, lady bits.
One of the many jokes in the list of entries (I would give anything to hear George Carlin read that page by the way!) is that the name with the highest number of submissions is “Moot” who happens to the creator of the infamous site, 4Chan and received this many votes as a token of “love” from the site's users. (And that's all I'll say about that because the site's users kind of scare me!)
I've been writing stories since I was a kid. I specialized in creative writing while doing my BA – English. I worked for five years in Saskatchewan's publishing industry. I worked for three and a half years in Alberta's writing industry. I organized and participated in writing retreats, writing groups and workshops. I served on the board of the Saskatchewan Book Awards. I published articles in newspapers and magazines. I'm a creator member of Access Copyright.
