[UPDATE: I just managed to score an invite to Google Plus.  Leave a comment below if you want me to send you one.]

Yesterday, Google unveiled Google Plus, their latest attempt at creating a social networking site.  Despite their spotty history in this area (remember buzz?), I’m actually kind of excited about this one because it solves a problem I’ve had with facebook for a long time.

I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that my facebook account doesn’t really reflect my real social life.  I’ve been really lucky, in that I have lived a lot of places and met a lot of amazing people, but because of the nature of my political and professional activities, I have a lot of facebook friends that I just don’t know that well.  They’re all good people, and I’m glad to have met them, but they aren’t necessarily people I want to share huge amounts of detail about my life with. Continue reading →

Towards the end of the 2011 federal election, I was invited over to the home of some good family friends for easter dinner.  My parents had gone down to Calgary for the weekend, leaving me without any family in town, and these fine people took pity on me.  Dinner was fantastic, with delicious food and interesting conversation, and as often happens when you’re the odd person out at an event like that, the chatter eventually came around to what I was doing, and accordingly to politics and the federal election.

This is always a dicey moment for a Liberal in Alberta.  The hosts were Liberals, or at least sympathetic, but I had never met most of the extended family members around the table, and the odds were pretty good that they weren’t as keen on my political leanings.  Dinner parties with strangers and children are rarely the best places to get into heated political debates, so I began explaining that I was working for the Liberal Party in Alberta’s campaign team, while walking the fine line that Alberta Liberals become so adept at straddling – the line between explaining our convictions and trying desperately not to incite anyone to begin hurling profanity in our direction. Continue reading →

I’ve been meaning to write about this since the federal election campaign ended, but Apple’s recent announcement of iOS 5, and especially iMessage, makes this an especially good time to finally get it out.

What not a lot of people realize, even people with an interest in technology, is that before Blackberry took the business world by storm, even before Barack Obama became RIM’s most famous customer, there was one group in particular that saw the advantages of the devices from very early on and to whom RIM owes a lot of its initial success: Canadian political staffers. More specifically, the campaign team that got Paul Martin elected as Prime Minister.

In 2002, Martin’s campaign was in full swing and a large group of dedicated staffers had built a network of campaign workers and volunteers across Canada.  Mr. Martin had been “resigned” from Cabinet and had plenty of free time to criss-cross the country and campaign for the party leadership in earnest¹.  In these heady days before iPads and 3G data sticks, co-ordinating between campaign workers at the head office, the people traveling with Mr. Martin, and the disparate staffers across the country was often a challenge.  It just so happened, however, that only a few hours down the highway from the campaign headquarters, the people at Research in Motion’s campus in Waterloo were preparing to release a device that could make many of those challenges disappear.  Even more conveniently, RIM’s CEOs were supporters of Mr. Martin and only too happy to introduce his campaign to their revolutionary devices. Continue reading →

1. This is all based on my hazy recollection of the campaign, historical accuracy should be judged liberally [↩]

This will definitely go well.

Periodically I fall under the notion that it would be both useful to me and interesting to my friends if I started writing down my thoughts about whatever has captured my interest at any given moment. Usually this notion passes quickly, but occasionally I run with it a bit and start writing, before ultimately deciding that whatever subject I am fixated on isn’t actually that interesting, and I move on.

But I’m going back to school soon, and I think that it would be good to start developing the kind of discipline that being a good blogger requires. I’ve also noticed that my interests have slowly shifted over time from politics, which most of my potential readers (read: my friends) couldn’t care less about, to areas like business and technology that some of you might find more interesting.

So, without further ado, I will begin. No promises on how long I’ll keep it up, but I’ll try to post something a least once a week as ideas strike me. So check back often! Or click on the little orange box up top on the right to add me to your RSS reader. I have a couple of posts starting to take shape in the drafts folder at lmitchell.ca’s orbiting HQ, so you should start seeing some content soon.