Archive for the ‘Local’ Category

Don’t cancel the Drayton Theatre project

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

I wrote a rebuttal to a commentary in the local Cambridge Times mentioning the idea of canceling the Drayton Theatre project in Cambridge. Who knows if it’ll get published?

I wanted to comment on the idea that canceling the Drayton Theatre project would be a boon for Cambridge taxpayers.  I think making a move like this would be quite shortsighted and hurt our community in the long run.  Cambridge is in need of a facelift, badly.  In a recent Conference Board of Canada report we were given a “D” grade, which lumped us among Brantford, Windsor and Oshawa when it comes to attracting new people into our community.  That is not the type of company we want to be keeping when compared to other cities.

Cambridge needs to progress and evolve our community away from its manufacturing roots and begin to attract new, sharp, forward thinking minds to the area.  We need to work be towards a knowledge and information based economy in our region.  This can be achieved by giving people a reason to move here, investing in innovation and the arts instead of shuttering projects like the Drayton Theatre.  Stimulating the arts helps make our city a more vibrant and desirable destination for newcomers.

I think people of this community will forever feel second fiddle to cities like Kitchener, Waterloo and Guelph because we’re doing so little to attract new thinking and ideas to our area.  I’m a local web designer and frequently go to get togethers and meetups in Waterloo to interact with like minded people looking to enrich their skills and make new contacts.  I know of many other people from Cambridge making that same trek into Waterloo, since there isn’t any similar type of community available here.

We need to encourage the arts, not crush them in the name of shortsightedness.

Writing a letter to the editor definitely makes me feel like an old man. It’s the first time I’ve ever done it, so hopefully it gets into the paper.

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Why no WiFi at Cambridge City Hall?

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Cambridge City Hall and TechnologyI sent this email to the City of Cambridge today voicing my disappointment with the lack of WiFi available at our City Hall. Ironically when I pressed send I got a hasty response telling me that the address questions@city.cambridge.on.ca had failed, so it seems like they launched their City Hall website and didn’t check whether the address on the contact page was actually functioning. So instead I emailed it to the Mayor, Council and Community Services.

Hello,
I was curious as to why there is no free wifi available at City Hall?  I went there today to the Small Business Centre and found it to be closed for another hour because of a meeting.  I tried to access the internet through my phone, but found that the big stone walls of city hall allowed for little to no connectivity through my Rogers iPhone.  I know myself as a small business owner I would appreciate that I would be able to send and receive emails while conducting my business at City Hall.

For a public space claiming to that “the future is high tech“, I would anticipate something that every coffee cafe in Cambridge can offer would be able to manage what has essentially become a common courtesy to offer patrons.

Is there currently a plan to implement wifi in Cambridge City Hall, and if so when?

In building a beautiful new facility like the one Cambridge has I would figure it would be the goal to want to bring people to use and spend time within the facility.  Guelph is in the process of offering free wifi at their new city hall.  Burlington already does.  Cambridge needs to cater to their local technology community as the city looks to transition away from being a manufacturing based economy.  Offering simple things like wifi in public places helps keep smart, technologically engaged people living in the area instead of losing them to more progressive municipalities.

Thanks for your time,

jamEs harris

I’ll update this post if and when I get a response.

Update from February 2nd, 2010

Dear James,
Mayor Craig asked me to follow up with you regarding your note.  We appreciate your feedback.  As you can image, there are a number of services we provide through the Small Business Centre and most recently we upgraded the internet connections and provide a separate line, outside the city network firewalls so that entrepreneurs can access sites that are traditionally blocked by our network.  I was advised by the centre that there was a sign on the door which would have directed you to the second floor to Economic Development division as there is only one staff member who works at the centre.  Should you have needed the resources of the centre, it would have been opened for you where possible.

City Hall is a Wifi hot spot for Atria, however, access is not free and you would require a stick to utilize the service. There are no plans to provide this service free of charge at this point because of budget impacts but I have passed along your suggestion to our technology services team.  In terms of sending emails and using Roger’s service, I am not sure what might have happened for your system to fail.  The City uses mobile devices from City Hall without issue and in fact, service throughout Civic Square has been tested on several occasions.

Thanks for pointing out the old questions email.  The front page of our website and other areas within the site have been updated, however, the section you reference is a separate website and I will be sure to connect with the team that manages this content – it’s an older site but still part of our online materials to give the history of the project.  I really appreciate you taking the time to point this out.

I hope I have answered your questions and would be happy to reconnect should you require anything further.

Regards,

Lin

As far as I’m concerned an Atria pay solution simply does not cut it. I understand that there is cost involved, but setting up a wireless router on the main floor of the building doesn’t seem like rocket science. Even restricted network service that blocks content is better then nothing at all.

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Building a Co-Work space in Cambridge

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

I have recently been taking part in the planning of a coworking space in Cambridge. The idea was hatch by a friend of mine, Colin Carmichael who started the wheels in motion after running into a problem. After a couple of days of working remotely at local coffee shop the Melville Café, then the local library it became apparent he needed somewhere else to work, as neither venue was ideal.

For those not familiar with the concept of a coworking space, I’ll try to give a brief rundown. The idea is to create a working space for small business owners, sole proprietors, freelancers and non-profit organizations to have a place to meet and work. Office space is costly, running from $300 to $1000+ a month to rent your own business space. So many small businesses are like myself, they do their business working alone from their home and meet clients outside their homes at public places like restaurants or coffee shops. The problem with this kind of arrangement is it can tend to be rather isolating. I know myself sometimes you just get bored of your surroundings and want to get out of the house.
Coworking Space in New York
This is where a cowork comes in. It allows for a collaborative workspace where entrepreneurs can get outside of their regular work confines and get the opportunity to do some valuable business networking. I’ve been working on my own for roughly 8 months and sometimes you just wish you had somewhere to go to work, enabling you to separate your home and work life a bit.

Over the last 2 months a group of locals, mainly having been connected through Twitter are hashing out the groundwork for a coworking space to be located in downtown Galt. Colin has rather smartly setup a shared, public cowork Google doc for collecting Cambridge cowork ideas. If you feel like getting involved, feel free to get in touch and I’ll help you get in the loop.  I also created a Twitter list of Cambridge Cowork contributors.

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