Yule Heibel Writes — by Yule Heibel

Will Victoria grow its start-up muscle?

November 23, 2008

Via an older blog entry from Richard Florida, a pointer to an article by Ben Casnocha, Start-Up Town, which describes (among other things) how Boulder, CO went from being “a little hippie college town to a little hippie college town also boasting an impressive and growing congregation of Internet entrepreneurs, early-stage venture capitalists, and bloggers.” […]

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News that skews

November 22, 2008

This is an entry about a story of local interest, but its implications are broader. It is also about truth in newspaper reporting, about credibility, and the problems that develop under a media monopoly. The other day I came across two versions of the same article, published by two different papers in the Canwest newspaper […]

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Fantasy, failure, and faux: that’s Victoria!

November 20, 2008

There are plenty of important things to write about (like Canada’s miserable inability to defend net neutrality), but I just realized something important about fantasy, failure, and the city of Victoria’s self-deceiving love affair with faux heritage. It’s a mind-set espoused by way too many people, and likely to contribute to our upcoming stagnation. A […]

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mint.edu’s Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis

November 19, 2008

I came across this excellent graphic the other day, posted by mint.edu in A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis. Click through to mint.edu’s blog post to read more. There’s a long comments thread, too.

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Low voter turnout

November 18, 2008

Last Saturday, British Columbia held municipal elections. Here in Victoria and the other 12 surrounding municipalities that together comprise the CRD (Capital Regional District), we too voted. There’s a problem, though: the turnout is low, low, low. The City of Victoria managed to get just under 22% of eligible voters to cast a ballot; Saanich: […]

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The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

November 16, 2008

“The secret of success* *It’s not what you’d expect” (globeandmail.com) Interview with Malcolm Gladwell about his new book, Outliers. Rather depressing stuff in some ways. I gather that not only do I NOT work hard enough, but I was born at the wrong time of year, not to mention with the wrong background/ role models/ […]

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Victoria Labour Council: skewing democracy?

November 11, 2008

While America voted for a president whose motto, “Yes, we can,” indicates how willing he and his team are to embrace change, it looks like the city I live in — Victoria, BC — is about to slide into another stultifying episode of Status Quo Stagnation. Check out Vibrant Victoria‘s blog post, VLC and CUPE […]

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The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

November 9, 2008

Barack Obama: Youth To Pull Up Pants For Obama! Terrific ~30 sec video clip included on this page: QUOTE Barack Obama did an interview with yesterday with Sway, MTV’s official friendly ambassador from the land of hip hop. A viewer asked him about towns that try to pass laws banning baggy pants. First Obama said […]

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Cracking cement: Industry and municipalities could work together

November 8, 2008

Les Leyne had an interesting article in today’s local paper, Cement industry fears carbon tax squeeze, which prompted me to write a letter to the editor in response. It seems to me that this problem offers an opportunity for some disruptive creative thinking, which could create a win-win situation for municipalities and industry. Some key […]

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