I moved to Calgary in May, 2006 from Regina. When I left Regina I thought I was a big-city boy and when I reached Calgary I realized I was a small-town boy. From the start, Calgary has been an adjustment, but a good one.
I have been getting to know Calgary’s communities slowly. First, I broke into the creative writing circles—reading at various literary readings around town and even at a music festival in Fort McLeod. As I began working and meeting more people, I became exposed to different people and places—soccer teams, coffee shops, local pubs, restaurants, etc. The most recent is getting to know the web design and development community in Calgary through Twitter and Demo Camp Calgary. Plus, for the last eight months, I started working in the field.
Like all cities, Calgary has its own web dynamic. Calgary isn’t San Francisco, but it’s has a few notches on it’s belt (iStock, for instance). There are a handful of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts in Calgary, but for the most part there doesn’t seem to be (or I haven’t been introduced to) any companies that are really embracing Web 2.0—specifically social media and blogging. There seems to be a pause because, I can only assume, they are not sure if the web is going to be social or not.
Spoiler alert: The web already is social. Passive and static read-only web sites are a thing of the past. With web agencies not embracing the social web, the majority of companies haven’t embraced it either. I think there are two ways to deal with this:
- The Calgary hillbillies don’t know nothing about the web and I’m darn tootin’ angry.
- Calgary hasn’t embraced the social web and that means there is a lot of opportunity for me to share that knowledge.
I choose the latter of the two. Companies that aren’t embracing the social aspects of the web are going to be less and less visible online and—in turn—reality. There are many values to building a socially-based website: better search engine ranking, recognized as leaders in any given field, potential for ecommerce or other monetization options, etc. but the ultimate reason to build a social site is to build a community. Just like when I came to Calgary, I sought out a community. Everyone wants to be in community.
I am in Calgary and here to help you build or consult on a blog or a social website.
Photo by D’Arcy Norman
