Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

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.

What is Hyperlocal Blogging? Is it my niche?

I have struggled for a long time to find my blogging niche. I love blogging but I have felt I don’t blog about anything interesting and what I constantly am trying to do is create myself online.

So it wasn’t until I moved down to Dawson Creek did I realize I had found my niche, I just hadn’t realized it. After seeing how successful YkOnline was or could have been had I still lived in Yellowknife I thought I would try a similar thing for Dawson Creek.

I think subconsciously I like to create these types of blogs because not only does it bring community together online but it also helps me get out into the community. Meeting knew people has always been a fault of mine so by giving myself these projects to keep up with it forces me out there. Then once I start to grow the readership I continue to do it because I feel it is expected of me. Make sense?

So what type of blogs are these? Well they are referred to as Hyper Local Blogs.

Hypelocal described by Wikipedia:

Hyperlocal content, often referred to as hyperlocal news, is characterized by three major elements. Firstly, it refers to entities and events that are located within a well defined, community scale area. Secondly, it is intended primarily for consumption by residents of that area. Thirdly, it is created by a resident of the location (but this last point is discussed because for example a photo or a gov stat can be hyperlocal but not locally produced).

This type of content should be contrasted with local news which tends to be less geographically constrained.

There are other types of data which have local or hyperlocal relevance, or be of interest to residents – e.g. a government statistic on crime rates in your neighbourhood. Such data, while relevant to residents are of a qualititively different type.

I guess some would call it just a Local Blog and would say that I am trying to be a Citizen Journalist and maybe I am. Watch the quick video below describing citizen journalism and tell me if you think that is what I am doing.

Whatever it is I am doing, I enjoy it and want to peruse it with all the information I can get my hands on. Over the next couple days I am going to do some more research on this niche and will write about it so 1. I can understand it better and 2. you have a better idea of where I want to go.

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.

Keep Waiting, I’m Tired

I know you’re all waiting to see what crazy crap I can come up with next but I got no time (in my opinion anyways) to write a full fled post.

You see I spent the good portion of the day in the airport, I mean like 6.5 hours. Don’t ask. Miss communication between me and buddy in charge. Picked up 4 skaters and was told we couldn’t get into the arena to build the ramps that are needed for tomorrow (Saturday). 8pm rolls around and the final skaters arrive and the ramp building commences. So here we are at 11pm, just got home almost all the ramps complete for the competition tomorrow.

The catch to all of this is that I still haven’t caught up on the sleep I missed coming out of night shifts. So for the last 16 hours I have been running on 5 hours of sleep but before that I was up for about 21 hours. As you can tell what may see like simple tasks were dragged out because of my lack of sleep.

Tomorrow is a new day and this weekend is packed full of events and I hope to pop in and out of them getting pictures and what not.
I’m tired so off to sleep I go to try and get at least 8 hours.

Peace.

I Use to be Able to!

It has been sad before, that Twitter can kill a persons blog. This is because before Twitter those people would blog about how they feel, what was happing, where they were going, etc. but now that Twitter has come around there is not need to blog it. You can just tweet it and still have the same amount of people read it.

Sometimes I feel that is what is happening to my blog or I don’t want to blog about certain things anymore because people actually know who I am. If you look back you can see I wrote about some pretty personal things. Now a days 2,3,4 days can go by with out me posting anything. This could be because nowadays I spend most of my time in front of a computer and can’t come up with anything to write or it really could be because of Twitter.

Who knows maybe my adventure outside of Yellowknife starting this summer will bring my lots to write about.

Maybe some video?