Monthly Archives: January 2011

Posted by on 26 January

Invitation to TheSpec – join citizens in live streaming Council

I contacted The Hamilton Spectator Tuesday after they used a live video stream I was providing with other volunteers of Hamilton City Council meetings on their website Monday.

Myself and the others providing the stream have requested The Spectator join us in providing the stream instead of using our work on their website without any contribution.

Those of us volunteering to provide the live streams of City Council make absolutely no money – it costs us time, labour, and resources.

Our goal is simple: Create a precedent that the City of Hamilton provide an Open Data-compliant live video stream of all City Council and Committee meetings. The City also provide the streams on-demand following the meetings.

Under the headline “Spec Live,” The Hamilton Spectator informed readers of thespec.com that they were providing live coverage of the Hamilton City Council meeting with a small link to livestream.com/joeycoleman at the bottom.

They did remove the live video stream for Spec Live coverage from thespec.com when requested.

Had The Spectator contacted us, we would request, at minimum, they donate their profits from embedding the live video stream to the United Way. They were not aware that other sites, such as RTH, had agreed to link to the video coverage instead of embedding specifically in recognition of the work involved in providing the stream.

The Spectator was putting the sites which support community collaboration and provide support to the live streaming of City Council at a disadvantage – it appeared The Spectator was providing “Spec Live” video when this was not the case. The Spectator did not intend this to be the case.

We’re glad  The Spectator was interested in using the live video stream and want to help them by allowing them to add live video provided they donate all ad revenues to charity.

Speaking for myself, I’m relieved. It’s difficult to provide informative live written coverage of Council at the same time as my attention is split on the technical aspects of streaming the meetings.

The Spectator is more than welcome to use the video streams for Wednesday, Thursday, and Monday’s meetings.

Same for other for-profit media outlets such as The National Post, Fan 590, CHCH, 900CHML, OpenFile Hamilton.

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The Spectator can do more than hitch a ride on the back of citizens who are volunteering to provide service journalism – they can join us in scaling this mountain and getting the City to start live-streaming their meetings.

I emailed The Spectator earlier today requesting they do so.

Specifically, The Spectator we request they provide their camera, one of their laptops to process the video, the tripod for the camera, one XLR audio cable, one firewire cable, and a power bar.

This equipment was sitting in a cabinet at their offices yesterday – they have it and instead of collecting dust, we can use it at City Hall tonight, tomorrow and on Monday.

This costs The Spectator nothing, volunteers will take care of everything.

In exchange, the entire community receives a high quality live video stream of Hamilton City Council with multiple camera angles and video of the overhead slides being shown to Council.

The Spectator will gain significantly greater traffic to their website than they currently receive.  (When I live streamed City Council on August 10, 2010, traffic on thespec.com shattered every single traffic record.)

Further, I’ve also offered to train The Spectator staff to produce their own live streams in the future. This training is free.

In the future, thespec.com will be able to provide live streaming during events such as municipal elections or news conferences similar to the Tiger-Cats news conference announcing Ivor Wynne Stadium.

This is payment enough for me – improved news coverage in Hamilton.

To summarize:

The Spectator provides:

  • Equipment to add a second camera to the live video stream
  • Proper credit to all the volunteers who make the video stream possible on thespec.com
  • A requested donation of all  advertising revenue from thespec.com live video stream to the United Way

The Spectator gains:

  • The significant increase in traffic to thespec.com
  • Free training of a staff member
  • The positive karma from joining with citizens to improve civic engagement and knowledge

Citizens provide:

  • The time and the labour

Citizens gain:

  • The precedent that the City should provide live streaming without any restriction on use.
  • thespec.com able to provide live streams of news.
  • Two cameras to better follow the City Council meetings

———————–
Wednesday’s City Council meeting will be live streamed.

The live stream embed code can be found at http://www.livestream.com/joeycoleman

Anyone may embed the live stream code.
We request that any commercial enterprise using the live stream donate their advertising revenue from the web page they are displaying it on to the United Way.

The United Way is short $300,000 of it’s campaign fundraising goal. (Read story on thespec.com) We hope we can do our bit to assist in meeting the needs of our community.
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Lastly, on a personal note, thank you to everyone who has spoke up on my behalf during the past 24 hours.

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Posted by on 25 January

In case your wondering, he dances for Hamilton

The following article was originally published on OpenFile.ca

He says he does it because he’s a born-again Christian who is moved by the gospel music he listens to on his MP3 player. And because he brings smiles to the faces of those he passes.

Jed “The Dancing Guy” Lifeson is a viral sensation, the subject of a Facebook page titled, “The guy that walks up main street dancing to his mp3,” where he’s accumulated more than 7100 fans. Hamiltonians will stop him on the street to take pictures, to ask for advice on their dance moves. And they talk about him online.

His story begins in 1955 in Sabac,Yugoslavia, now Serbia. His family came to Canada in 1968 and settled in Toronto where he learned to speak English. He completed high school, worked a variety of jobs over the years, married, had two children, and took care of his mother.

Lifeson says he was never much of a dancer and never saw himself become the “Dancing Guy,” so well known to Hamiltonians. As a matter of fact, he never even saw himself living in Hamilton.

His dancing began, he explains, after a “miracle.”

In 2003, when they were living in an apartment in downtown Toronto, Lifeson arrived home one day to find his mother in a diabetic coma.

“I walked in and saw a dead person,” he recalls. “I gave up on seeing her again. I was hoping, praying that she would come back to life.”

The doctors did not expect her to survive but, after 17 long days, Lifeson received the phone call he’d longed to hear: his mother was awake.

To celebrate, he danced. And he didn’t stop that day. For the next two weeks, Lifeson says he danced everywhere. And then, just as suddenly as he started, one day he stopped.

People asked him if everything was all right. He just stopped dancing, that’s all, he told them. But, after being asked a few more times, Lifeson started dancing again to stop the questions.

In 2008, he arrived in Hamilton, following a job offer. But ultimately, the recession hit and Lifeson soon found himself unemployed. He travelled the city in search of work, dancing along the way.

He hasn’t found work yet, and survives with Ontario Works to pay the rent. He eats at the Good Shepherd Centre, The Salvation Army, and other local charities.

It was at a community Christmas dinner in 2009 when Lifeson met its host, Moe Masoudi, Founder and CEO of BIZCLIP studios. It was the beginning of a friendship that Lifeson describes as being one of his most important.

“He just wants to give back,” says Masoudi. “He feels that people have given him so much.”

People like Angel Igneski, owner of Caryl Baker Visage in Jackson Square, who bought Lifeson a new MP3 player when his old one broke. His carefree spirit makes her day, she explains.

People like the stranger who created the Facebook group in his honour. “I didn’t even know what a Facebook was,” he jokes.

Lifeson wants to make the most of the spirit of good will surrounding him. With Masoudi’s help, he is trying to establish the Art of Giving Foundation that will benefit underprivileged children. When the Foundation is granted official charity status, they plan to embark on a journey, first to Buffalo, and then across North America, raising funds. Lifeson will dance the route, Masoudi will drive alongside him.

In an August 2010 blog post titled, “The dancin’ man and me,” local writer and television producer Rikki Ratliff poses the question, “Why does Jed dance?”

She answers herself in the following sentence. “The answer for him is hard to unpack because it’s so complex, but for me it’s simple — because I need him to. “

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Posted by on 23 January

Personalities getting in the way at City Hall

Update: Mayor Bratina was at GIC on Monday. Ms. Peggy Chapman, his chief of staff, informed me Sunday at 9pm of this change in his schedule.

Mayor Bob Bratina will be missing Monday’s special General Issues Committee meeting as he’s scheduled to be in Regina for the Big City Mayors Caucus organized by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

On its own, this is noteworthy but not newsworthy – the Mayor is often unable to attend meetings due to city business.

What makes his absent newsworthy is that the Mayor called the GIC meeting for January 24 and then requested the meeting be moved to the 27th due to the scheduling conflict.

Bob Bratina is running a small office of only three staff, only one of whom has previous experience at City Hall, as administrative assistant to former Ward 15 Councillor Margaret McCarthy.

The scheduling of a special GIC meeting when the Mayor is unavailable is a mistake his office should not have made.

Early this past week, Mayor Bratina emailed City Councillors requesting the rescheduling of the meeting. In order to reschedule, a majority of Councillors were required to agree. While the results of the “vote” are unknown, Monday’s meeting is continuing as scheduled.

Mayor Bratina and a majority of Council do not see eye-to-eye; there are strong personality clashes. This is not surprising when you consider the now-Mayor was known for numerous arguments with fellow Councillors last term, including the infamous pencil throwing incident.

These personality clashes are now showing in how Council is being conducted and conducting themselves.

This is a problem for all of us. City Council must function for the next four years. The Mayor and Council need to work out their differences.

The best way for this to happen is for the 16 individuals to work together on a vision for the direction they need to take the City over the next four years.

The plan needs to be more than “the best place to raise a child” or we’ll “address poverty in the ‘Code Red’ neighbourhoods.” Only with a set of concrete goals can Council and the Mayor have a shared agenda with which to overcome their personality differences to work towards improving Hamilton.

With the Pan Am debate finally coming to a finish, the City needs a positive vision to revive the public mood after the great disappointment of the stadium debate.

In a nod to nostalgia, we can become the “ambitious city” once again.

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