Nadia has written a post wondering who should be the next mayor of Montreal. Her conclusion – and mine as well – we could do a LOT worse than André Boisclair in that job. Boisclair is dynamic, (more or less) bilingual, young, knows provincial politics well (an essential point for the next mayor), and popular. Popular? Well it wasn’t Montreal that voted massively against him for Premier – that was the rest of Quebec. It’s time to turn to a new generation of politician. Tremblay has seemed bored and devoid of vision for years – Montreal needs someone who actually wants to do the job, and will represent Montreal as it really is. The election is coming in 2009 – there’s more than enough time left for him to turn his attention to municipal politics.
Archives for November 2007
Bars in Montreal: 1950
Kristian Gravenor has posted a Google map that locates every bar in Montreal in 1950 in his fun blog, Coolopolis.
Perspective on the new Facebook announcements
Sebastien Provencher has written a very good post about the new Facebook advertising opportunities that were announced this week: The Facebook Community is Worried. I was at the Montreal Facebook Camp on Wednesday night and was struck by the fact that no one seemed to have a clear idea on what opportunities might really exist within Facebook, other than for small app developers. There was a lot of noise about “we will go where our customers are, of course” – but from the same folks that spend most of the budgets they have on overwrought flash monstrosities.
Followup about Anderson and the PR folks
At the beginning of last week, Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and the Editor-in-Chief of Wired, announced that he was permanently blocking the email addresses of PR people who had sent him inappropriate email and published a list of those addresses. The post garnered a lot of attention, and a couple of days later (Nov. 1) he posted a followup: PR Blockage: The Aftermath. Definitely worth a read if you have any involvement with media relations.
More on the WGA strike
Derek Powazek has written about the Writer’s Guild of America strike: Luddites on the Picket Lines? He’s right – the writers need to demonstrate that they understand the internet a lot better than they have so far.
But before you start talking about the internet, read up. Internet distribution is not the same as TV or DVD. A DVD buyer is someone who then owns a shiny plastic disc with stuff on it. Codifying a viewer online is a lot trickier. If I watch half a show on NBC.com, do you get half a royalty? What if I only watched 12 minutes, while the browser was in the background, while I was also chatting and texting and doing whatever it is the kids do nowadays?
There is a distinction between, say, a paid download from iTunes and a YouTube viewing, and if the writers want a percentage of the latter, well, they’re going to be waiting a long time.
