Of the social media ventures I’ve undertaken, I think my favourite is the Mr. PG fanpage. I made it two years ago when fan pages were relatively new, basically because it didn’t exist.  I sent an invite to a few friends, and left it at that. Within days, there were hundreds of fans, it was mere months before it hit 1,000, and it currently sits at over 4,000. I do very little with it other than add photos and the odd bit of Mr. PG news. I don’t want to turn it into a platform for anything other than for people to express their admiration for Prince George’s faux-wood mascot. I’ve become the de facto social media spokesperson for a forty-year-old symbol of Prince George, and I’m not going to muck it up by pushing any sort of agenda– no promoting non-Mr. PG related events, pages, or people, no matter how worthy they might be. Stick to the message: he’s a big replica of a wooden man who currently stands at the intersection of Highways 97 and 16, greeting visitors to the city.

I think it’s this philosophy that lets the community surrounding Mr. PG flourish. People write on the wall commenting about how they feel about Mr. PG and the city he stands for. While some of it is negative, some is juvenile, the overwhelming number of comments are things along the lines of “I love Mr. PG!” My favourites are stories about Mr. PG back in the day, be it the niece of the guy who played Mr. PG in the Grey Cup parade, or just people who have moved away and say that whenever they see Mr. PG, they know they’re home. It’s nice to give people a platform to express positive sentiments about the city when so much of the online chatter is negative.

I also think that people in Prince George have reached a point where they actually DO feel pride about Prince George. Some people seem to be embarrassed at being represented by a wooden lumberjack, but many more seem to view him as an important symbol of the city’s foundations as it moves into the 21st century. Rapid globalization has made people look for things that anchor them in a particular locale, here in Prince George Mr. PG is one of the most potent symbols of where we are. Celebrating and reinterpreting what that means is a big part of what’s happening on the Mr. PG fanpage. I love seeing the stuff people come up with, and hope the community continues to grow.

photo: Mr. PG mural for Studio 2880 by Irene Fyvie. 8′ X 4′ acrylic on wood

Canadian Death Race 2010 Brochure

I don’t listen to a lot of radio from the States, but after seeing three recommendations for “This American Life” in three days, I decided to give it a go. I visited their website and clicked on “Favorites” and ultimately chose “20 Acts in 60 Minutes.” The gist is simple: in the hour-long show, they present 20 stories. The math is simple: 3 minutes a story, less, if you account for time the host uses and breaks.

It is brilliant.

Since I regularly put together 2 minute segments on Daybreak, I am even more in awe of how much they are able to convey in such short time. I often find it challenging cutting down a five-minute interview into a two-minute tape, so that they are taking full stories and distilling them to their bare essence is simply inspiring. Particularly great are the stories at the 8:15 mark about a local classifieds radio show in Tennessee and especially the one at 21:59 about the greatest dog name in the world. The thing about both of these is they are such simple stories– the second one, in particular, with two brothers aged 12 and 13 explaining how they named their dog– this could happen anywhere. And yet the story-telling is such that you are captivated by the narrative of this simple non-event that must happens hundreds of times every day around the world– the sort of thing that could easily be glossed over while looking for the next great news story, yet makes for the most memorable bits of radio.

I’m going to take this as my new gold standard for putting together radio packages. If you put the right amount of care into any story, it’s bound to be compelling so long as the person telling it finds it interesting, too.

You can bet I’ll be listening to more of this show on upcoming road trips, and I recommend you do, too: the episode I’m talking about is here, or in the audio player below.

Remember this? The open house on the issue is tonight:

It’s the 2nd Floor of the PG Golf and Curling Clubhouse, which is here.

If you can’t make it you can read about the plan here, fill in a comment form online here, or download the comment form right here and email it to kwatt@city.pg.bc.ca.

Other ways of submitting are dropping it off at Planning & Development, 2nd Floor City Hall, 1100  Patricia Boulevard, Prince George , B.C., V2L 3V9 or faxing (250) 561-7721.

With such a huge chunk of land at shape, there’s not really a good reason to not take a quick look at this and form some thoughts. Local governance sometimes seems like one of the few levels left where public input can actively affect policy, so hopefully this opportunity doesn’t go to waste. Oh, and I’ve embedded a copy of the plan right here, so you can read it without downloading.
Preliminary Draft Golf Course Pine Centre Neighbour Hood Plan

More to follow.

“RCMP are anticipating thousands of people could turn up for a “tubing” event Saturday in the Miworth area.

“With the expected large number of participants, Liquor Control Board regulations will be strictly enforced with the issuing of fines and seizure of liquor. Open liquor and the consumption of liquor in a public place are among those offences being targeted. A police boat will be patrolling the river in order to keep the event safe and to assist with any emergencies. There will also be a number of road checks deployed throughout the Prince George area in order to detect and deter impaired driving.”

Nice to know police are prepped for this, but I’m not a fan of high-traffic areas out in nature. Still, a river float is a classic Prince George experience so if you’re looking to do it with a few thousand friends, you may want to check this out: 2nd Annual HUGE River Float on Facebook

“The Community Radio Fund of Canada (CRFC) is pleased to announce that the campus and community radio sector will receive vital funding following the decision released today by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on the Review of the Campus and Community Radio Policies.

“The Commission approved part of the CRFC’s request for mandatory funding from the private broadcasting sector through contributions to the Canadian Content Development (CCD). Once in place, this will mean that the CRFC will likely receive $775,000 annually. This funding will then be distributed through the CRFC’s programs to more than 140 stations and their representative associations.”

via CommunityRadioFund.org

Sounds like good news for CFUR, but I’ll have to look in to what, exactly, this means.

One thing I love about working at CBC is having the onus to contact random people and talk to them about what they do. You never know what you might learn.

Take, for example, a story I just did on the 41st Annual BC Old Time Fiddler’s Competition here in Prince George. What sparked my interest in this was that it was number 41– meaning this competition dates back to the sixties. Based on the age and the name of the group “old time” I expected this to be a small group of older people carrying on their tradition.

Wrong.

As it turns out, the organization has anywhere between 140 to 160 members in Prince George alone. That’s a sizable force in a city of 80,000. There’s older members, yes, but every age group from under 10 to over 80 is represented. And while the BC Old Time Fiddler’s Association is a province-wide community, it turns out that Prince George is its historic headquarters:

The British Columbia Old Time Fiddlers’ Association was formed in 1969 in Prince George by a group of individuals dedicated to promoting and preserving the Canadian style of old time fiddling in British Columbia. By 1978 other fiddlers from throughout B.C. were interested in forming a provincial association and approached the Prince George group with the proposal to turn the name British Columbia Old Time Fiddlers’ Association over to the provincial body. After some discussion, it was agreed upon and Prince George became Branch #1.

via bcfiddlers.org

So here we have an organization founded in Prince George over forty years ago that has spread throughout the province and continues to have a strong presence in the city– but how many people in the city are more than vaguely aware of it?

Prince George has so many stories, yet you continuously run in to people who feel like there’s nothing here, there’s no history, and there’s no ability to have an effect beyond the city limits. The more I learn about what’s going on here and what’s come before, the more it becomes my goal to eradicate this attitude as much as possible.

My sister recently completed her undergrad, and we marked the occasion with dinner and cake. Here’s the mandatory photoshoot– I went for a behind-the-scenes look.

More on Flickr

I keep a notebook with me most of the time to jot down ideas and notes. Here’s some I took yesterday during a storyboard meeting:

This isn’t as bad as it looks.

Here’s a cool event from “northern BC’s music capital” (not sure when they got that designation, but events like this certainly help make the case). Essentially, in order to encourage people to try out bus routes they offer free transit that includes local musicians playing on the bus. Would love to see that here in Prince George. Via fortstjohn.ca:

Music that Moves You”. On June 16, July 21, and August 18, 2010, from 7:00 – 9:00 pm, you can hop on a transit bus and enjoy live music as the bus travels around the city.  This is also a great way to try out the transit system!  Each event will feature a different bus route – so you can try out all three throughout the summer.  And the best part – the event is free!  Support local musicians and try out transit for no cost.

…

For each event, you can either start at the Cultural Centre or you can join the bus at any stop along the chosen route.  And of course, you can get off at any stop you like.

*EDIT*
@brent_hodson tweeted this video from a previous Music that Moves you event:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

My favourite thing is the sunflower, which is just so bright against the white fence. We need a few more.

Here’s the front, which was already ok, but needed a few more plants:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I also took advantage of the weather and tidied up the shed, which is now much more walkable.

So aside from helping the parents-in-common-law pick out a new computer and finishing my current read (a pretty good one, too) that was our Sunday.

I went to going-away shindig for a coworker earlier this week. That’s not altogether unusual. What is unusual is the number of people outside of my workplace who are aware of and care about the fact that this going-away is happening. You see, it was for none other than Daybreak North host Chris Walker who, after three years manning the microphone here in in PG, is heading off to a news position in Kelowna. The response in the form of emails and such from people saying they’ll miss him and wishing good luck has reminded me of the unusual nature of my current job, which is that people outside of my workplace have daily access to what I’m doing.

In most jobs, your interactions are limited to those in your workplace, be they co-workers or customers. You certainly have an effect on the world beyond your office walls, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the rest of the world is aware of it, and it definitely doesn’t mean they feel like they’re on a first-name basis with you. It’s different in radio.

I’m saying this as someone who until recently interacted with radio as an audience member, and who still feels more of an ‘outsider’ than an ‘insider’ when it comes to the experience of being on-the-air. When you work in radio, your job is part of hundreds of people’s daily routines. When I’m at the CBC researching stories and pre-interviewing guests, I’m helping put together the program that people throughout northern BC use to find out what’s going on both around the world and around the corner. And when you listen to a local show, you feel a lot more connected to it. It’s in your community, on-the-air guests are literally your neighbours. I have family in Dawson Creek and friends in Smithers who hear the show and know who “Chris Walker” and “Robert Doane” are, even if they’ve never met them.

I’m impressed with these people who go on the air for two and half hours a day, five days a week, in every community north of Williams Lake up to the Yukon border. In so doing, you’re inviting anyone with an radio dial or an internet connection to hear you, while you work, and form on opinion on how you’re performing. I’m still getting used to the experience of people I know saying “I heard you on the radio the other day”, and all I do is read the weather and community notes once in a while. I’m even more surprised when I speak to my grandma and she mentions hearing me, because she lives a day’s drive away. And, quite frankly, when I go on the air I’m not thinking “this is going out across the province, and people are listening.” I did at first, and it threw me off too much. But over the last little while, I’ve taken myself so far out of it that I completely forget I’m going on the air. I’m just doing my job.

At some point, I’ll have to reconcile the two. I haven’t been at it long enough for people I’ve never met to recognize my name when I meet them somewhere, but I suppose it could happen eventually. I know that my first days of work at the CBC were some of the most surreal I’ve had simply because I was meeting people I sort of already knew– or at least their voices and their names. Even more surreal was the experience of speaking to the hosts in Prince Rupert because they are still bodiless voices, but they’re addressing you, directly, through headphones or the telephone– it felt like one of those Twilight Zone-style deals where the TV starts talking to you. Now it’s becoming surreal in the other sense– I’m addressing people who I’m not sure are there. I know people are listening, but I never know exactly who they or what they’ll think of how I do it. And over time, they’ll start to form an opinion of me, and maybe even feel like they know me.

I don’t know what I think about that, really, but I do know one thing: there’s something very unique about the relationships people have with their favourite radio shows, one that isn’t replicated in their relationships with celebrities, or tv, or even blogs. I think it’s the voice aspect of it– in print, whether online or off, there’s a degree of separation, editing, and a time-lapse. On TV, it’s either fictional characters or celebrities so famous or so far removed that they may as well be fictional. And audio is the one thing you can have wake you up and continue to be engaged with while eating breakfast, making lunch, and driving to work. That builds the relationship over time. Plus there’s the voice coming live, directly across the air into your house or headphones or car. And sometimes it’s talking to someone else, but often enough it’s talking directly to you, telling you the weather or asking you for your song requests. And that builds, too.That is why people who have never met Chris Walker care that he is leaving. He’s built up this relationship with people over the last few years that feels more direct than most one-to-many relationships out there. And even though I just have a small part in this, and have only had any role to play in it for less than half a year it’s a good reminder: this is one cool job.

they don’t usually grow past the lower part of Washington State, I understand