Travels – Page 2

Jan 20 2011

I moved

from my normal location to Edmonton for the weekend.

I suppose I am suppose to dazzle you will a blog post today, informing you of how amazing my life is. Well that is not the case, I’m average today.

Andrew, Mike and I decided to come to Edmonton… Then Jerid, who also works for the company, decided to come, so Mike decided to stay home. So on the drive Andrew and I talk about life, business and possibilities while Jerid read his book.

Finally we arrived in Edmonton to the Delta South Hotel, which for only $120 a night is fancy by my standards. Tomorrow is Ikea, and Apple store in morning and then Coffee Shop working in the afternoon.

It is a nice get away and I alway enjoy the drive as the conversation, which some what serious, always excites me about the possibilities and the future. But alas…. things change….

So from Edmonton, good night.

Nov 20 2009

How do you explain this thing!

To continue on a series of things I’m bad at I will go on to approaching people.

I don’t know how Journalist do it, I wonder if they learn it in school…. anyways. The challenge I have been prompted with lately is selling YkOnline. I now have the hits and traffic to sustain the site, as long as I continue to write, so I thought it would be a good time to try and sell some advertising. The reason I want to sell adverting is simple, I want to feed this passion. I love writing about Yellowknife and what is going on but it is starting to take up to much time. My problem is I am almost afraid of approaching businesses about it. I don’t know what to say to try and sell it to them. It is a toss up whether or not businesses in this town need another place to advertise. They already have NNSL, CJCD, YkTrader, Coffee Break News and a couple others, so what I would have to do is prove to them that I am different. For some reason I just can’t bring myself to go face to face with them and ask.

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Oct 21 2009

The Explanation

I guess I owe some the explanation of where I am and what I am doing.

Let us start at the beginning, where I was down at school in the little town of Dawson Creek, BC. School wasn’t going that great. I was there for business and even though I was finding some of it interesting, I began to feel it wasn’t what I truly wanted to do. On top of that the college’s campus I was at was not a very populated one. There were only 2 other people in all 5 of my classes and almost no student life outside of those classes. I think some of this lack of student life apparent to me was because I didn’t live in the residence. I lived in a nice, little, newly renovated apartment downtown only seconds from a very modern Cafe. The Internet was also 100x more reliable than what the residences apparently had, which I needed. So due to the lack of interaction with people I was starting to go nuts.

On to the other determining factor, which would be my other blog, YkOnline. It seems I have stumbled upon something and I am afraid of it! Turns out I love Yellowknife, who knew. Most of my life I have wanted nothing more than to leave the place, but that has all changed. Having lived in Yellowknife all my life I have gained a lot of knowledge about the place and am constantly seeking to find out more about it. So with that and my passion of Blogging I create YkOnline in May of 2009 and at the end of August of the same year it started to grow and fast. At that time I was just about to start school, which I was excited about and didn’t know what YkOnline could become. Thinking back now and I’m sure most people will agree with this that the turning point of YkOnline was the Municipal Election that just wrapped up. That and the Dump Fire links. The hits on the site went from 30 unique hits a day to 130 overnight and they haven’t come back down. In fact they have grown, I am now receiving around 200 unique hits a day with over 2000 this month. Granted more hits come when I post an article that day. At that point I knew I had something and I ran with it. I kept updating as frequently as I could from down south. I used Google Alerts, the local paper, CBC, and friends online as my sources of information and it worked quite well but it was still difficult not actually being there.

At the beginning of October I hit an interesting point. I was desperately lacking interaction with people in real life. Sure I talked to people everyday, people who were online Yellowknife and else where, but some would say I was border lining on depression. 80% of my time was spent hiding away in my apartment staring at computer screens. I had decided weeks before any of this to come back to Yellowknife over Thanksgiving, to 1. see family and 2. to attend 2 social media gathering and meet with a couple people about YkOnline. But when I came back I made the very tough decision to move back. Although in this post it seems pretty clear but it definitely not.

I feared people would think I was giving up and would think less of me. That and I, myself thought I was giving up and if I couldn’t handle this, how would I ever get anywhere in life. I also had to amazing friends who lived 45 minutes outside of town. They had once lived in Yellowknife and I really value their friendship and knew going back to Yellowknife would mean I wouldn’t be able to see them very often.

On the flip side here as some positive reason for coming back. Family would be one and I guess I’m obligated to put that in here, as I know my father reads this blog. One of the others and a big one would be YkOnline. Like I explain above, that little site I created because I’m passionate about this place grew and gained momentum. I have so many ideas and am so excited about the site I felt I couldn’t continue it unless I was back in Yellowknife and the majority of that is true. I hope to explain more about what I have in store for that site in the next couple days.

So here I am in Yellowknife, ready for a fresh start. I should maybe reread this and make sure it all makes sense but I’m just going to “Go with it” today.

More will be uncovered about what I will be doing over the days to come. Just need to make that clear, haha. Smile.

Jul 29 2009

Drive from Yellowknife to Grande Prairie

This will be quick as I do not have the patients to write out an elaborate post tonight. So this will be more of a photo blog.

All packed and ready to go the night before.

At 5am Yellowknife look like it was going to be a nice day.

This was a neat photo I randomly caught crossing the bridge at Rae.

We saw lots of buffalo on the road, lots of which were just standing on the road.

There was still lots of bridge construction going on.

The ferry ride was uneventful. I think I have lived in the north to long.

The wee town of Grimshaw.

I normally try and take photos of the beautiful Dunvagan Valley but because the construction on the bridge, which I am fairly certain has been happening for 3 years now, I wanted to focus on driving.

This was our little set up in the Grande Prairie campground. I thought it was very redneck to have a lazy boy and computer chair set up outside.

I was always uncertain as to how much the bunk could hold. I think there was about 200lbs on it and it didn’t collapse on my brother so it must be decent.

We spent most of today in Grande Prairie shopping and skateboarding. We also drove over to Wembley to check out a new skatepark we were told about. I must say for a small farming town, it was a pretty nice.

Note* We got to Dawson as well today and I was able to get my apartment. I will put up another post with picture tomorrow.

Jul 25 2009

My Mind is Racing with Ideas

I feel like my mind is racing so fast that I can’t take the time to stop and blog about it. So I am going to try really hard here right at this moment to stay focused on writing this.

Couple things that I have been pondering and watching this morning are the development of YkOnline and the Blogathon that is happening in Vancouver as well as all over the world over the next 24 hours.

I will start this with YkOnline. It has yet to be written in stone as to what I want the site to be, although it does seem to be something. I have been watching several other “community” blogs trying to taken in how they are built and maintained. Ones such as BlogTO and Beyond Robson which are Fresh Daily blogs, Torontoist and The Coast. These are all well established sites, run by several people and catered to 100x more people than Yellowknife’s population. But I believe that someday soon with some dedication I can get the site to become not only a great site for locals but also a resourceful site for people researching about moving to Yellowknife. I’m facing some challenges as I have to leave the north for 8 months for school but I know in the long run it is a good thing and will only help with the site but in the mean time I don’t want it to die. I will have more details about YkOnline soon.

As for the Blogathon, this has got me excited. I absolutely love the idea. I’m watching a lot of Vancouver bloggers do it right now. Check it out at Blogathon.org and consider donating. What is happing, is several bloggers have gotten together (you don’t have to, but they have chosen to this time around) and will be blogging for 24 hours straight. They will each publish a post every 30 minutes about what ever they like. Each blogger has their own charities they are getting pledges for. Some of the bloggers are writing about their charities and why they are blogging for them, while others have themes to go off of.

My mind is flying with ideas and possibilities for a Yellowknife Blogathon. I am just imagining all the local bloggers getting together at Javaroma or some other local for 24 hours of blogging. Now I’m not sure if Yellowknife’s Bloggers get enough recognition but I still think it would be fun and worth it for the charities.

Got a comment or suggestion about either of these things. I would love to know.