Jim DeLaHunt, world-ready

I’m going to be in an opera! I am in the chorus of Heroic Opera’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth on Friday 5. July and Saturday 6. July in Vancouver. It will be a marvelous show. The singers are powerful and exciting, the direction is incisive, the costumes are lavish.

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My home, Vancouver B.C., just announced new names for two public places: “Å¡xʷƛ̓ənÉ™q Xwtl’e7énḵ Square” and “Å¡xʷƛ̓exÉ™n Xwtl’a7shn” . In contrast to just about every other name in this town, these names are not Scottish- or English-derived. Nor are they a Chinese phoneticisation of a Scottish-derived name. Instead, at long last our town asked the First Nations leaders, whose people have been here the longest by far, to contribute the names. I think it is awesome. It is a step towards reconciliation, tiny but real. I think these names will become Vancouver’s new shibboleths.

But names like these represent change, and change is unsettling. The characters are unfamiliar-looking! We don’t know how to pronounce them! There are rectangular boxes showing missing text! There is no É™ key on our keyboards! Heh. We seem to have no problem expecting immigrants who grew up with Chinese or Ge’ez or Gujurati writing to learn how to write and pronounce “Granville”, but we are reluctant to step up when it’s our turn.

Never fear. I’m a software engineer specialising in internationalisation and Unicode. Let me explain how to read, type, and spell these names.  It’s really very interesting. Continue Reading »

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A month ago, three human beings were in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Now they are in Canada, and I am part of the team helping to take care of them. It has been wonderful to watch Canada welcome them. Continue Reading »

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Welcome to Vancouver, B.C. You want to get involved in the entrepreneurial technology startup “scene” here? That is wonderful. Here is my current list of activities and organisations that form good entry points into the entrepreneurship community in Vancouver. Check them out. Participate in what interests you. Ask at these events for further suggestions. Enjoy!

Note that I am not an authority on the totality of entrepreneurship in this area. I am just an ordinary participant. This is my worm’s-eye view. It’s probably incomplete. Perhaps others will post in the comments the wonderful events and orgs that I missed. But this at least will get you started. Continue Reading »

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This is a description of the Radiogram Game, a skill-building activity for amateur radio emergency preparedness groups to conduct on their radio nets.

Many amateur radio operators love us our emergency preparedness. The Canda-based Radio Association of Canada (RAC) has an Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) activity. The US-based Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) has an entire National Traffic Systemâ„¢, a structure of procedures and organisations and schedules and routings. I personally am a member of VECTOR, a amateur radio group affiliated with the city of Vancouver, B.C.. VECTOR operates a weekly radio net. It operates according to formal radio procedures of the sort we would use in an disaster, so just checking in following the right procedure is good training. But the organisation is looking for more ways to train its members. Anytime you can turn training into a game, it makes people more eager to participate. The Radiogram game is a skill-building activity disguised as a fun game.

A radiogram is a structure for short messages, designed to be sent by amateur radio volunteers during a disaster, when other communication links are down. Knowing how to hear a radiogram message over the air, and transcribe it correctly, and use the right forms and handling instructions, is a useful skill for the emergency preparedness volunteer. The ARRL’s National Traffic System publishes a radiogram form (fillable PDF, 2-up letter size, 71kB). (There is also a simpler but bulkier 1-up radiogram form; PDF, 442kB). See the NTS’s manual for instructions on how to use it as part of the NTS, especially in chapter 1, The ARRL Message Format, of the NTS Methods and Practices Guidlines.

Here’s how the game works.

The club announces the game to its members in advance. At the radio net on such and such a date, a radiogram will be sent. Any member of the club is encouraged to transcribe the radiogram, and submit it back to the club for points. Draw up a scoring list: so many points for transcribing the message, with deductions for errors; so many points for correct routing information; so many points for submitting it in person at the next club meeting, and so on.  See below for a possible scoring list. It helps to award points for both fun and amusing activities as part of the scoring; maybe you want to award points for the best dramatic reading of the radiogram at the next club meeting.  Designate the proper way to turn in completed radiograms (in person?  by email?). Don’t forget to designate the deadline.

The club picks someone to be the radiogram author and reader. The challenge for the author is to make the message concise but interesting and amusing. Maybe embed a joke or puzzle in the message. Maybe have the message parody local events.  The goal is both to help the participant learn a bit more about radiogram use, and reward them with a chuckle.

It might be nice for the club to clear with the operator of the radio net that the radiogram game will be played, so that they aren’t surprised by it!

During the radionet, at the appointed stage in the proceedings, Net Control turns the frequency over to the game’s reader. The reader sends the radiogram using correct methods and practices, getting the listeners accustomed to hearing radiogram delivery in its full glory. Listeners who care to participate by transcribing the message, and submitting it as directed. The reader reminds listeners of what those directions are, and what is the deadline for submission.

The ringleader for the radiogram game collects the submitted radiograms, and awards points.  The winner can be announced at the next club meeting. All participants should be thanked for taking part, and given their score. Personally I think they should be notified by email even if they aren’t at the meeting in person. This interaction is also a great time for a more experienced member to coach the participant on how well they did, and to answer questions. The interaction then also becomes a touch point which builds relationships within the club.

The game will be more effective with repetition over time. At first, many people won’t hear about the game in advance. They won’t be prepared. They won’t know what to make of it. But over time, especially if it sounds fun, more and more people should take part.

Here’s a sample message: TWO HAMS MARRIED X COMBINED THEIR ANTENNAS X CEREMONY WASNT MUCH BUT RECEPTION WAS SPECTACULAR . Sure, it’s a lame joke. But it fits in the radiogram form, and will give people a chuckle.

Here’s a sample scoring list:

Message body: 50 points if fully correct, 1 point off for each wrong word.

Handling: total 10 points, 5 points if handling information fully correct. 5 points for the receiving station’s information.

Procedures: 20 points for recording message on an ARRL Radiogram form (printed from ARRL web site OK). 10 points for writing it legibly on any other medium. (The point being to make people familiar with the radiogram form.)
Delivery: 10 points for submitting message by correct method, on time.  6 points if method is nearly correct, or missed deadline by less than 72 hours.

Having fun with it: 10 points for best dramatic reading of the radiogram at the next club meeting. 5 points for others who try the dramatic reading.

Total: 100 points.

Judges can award bonus points for any variation which makes the game more fun or more educational.

I have come up with a message for the radiogram game. I can’t wait to try it out on my club.  The above are the guidelines I came up with. I have no doubt that others will improve them. I wouldn’t be surprised to find I’ve reinvented something someone else has already done.  If you try this game, please comment below about how it went for you!

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Open Data Day was celebrated here on Sunday, 4. March 2017. The Open Data Society of B.C. sponsored a buzzing, successful hackathon, with participants from several communities in the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island, and even Washington State.

I plunged back into my continuing project for Vancouver Open Data Day, to make a language census of Vancouver’s Open Data Catalogue. You can check out our Team Meta #VODay hackathon report as submitted via github. I’ve summarised it below.  I was very pleased to be awarded the City of Vancouver Focus Challenge Prize for the work we accomplished that day. Continue Reading »

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I favour electoral reform. I am a newly-minted Canadian, who deeply hopes my first vote for Parliament will not be conducted under the current, archaic, unfair First-Past-the-Post system. So, when my MP convened a Town Hall meeting on electoral reform, I made a point of attending. Here are some notes on the event. I hope they are helpful documentation for other democratic reform advocates.

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Last month, the Vancouver Opera announced that it was going to have one more year of a regular season, then switch to a “festival” structure. That is, instead of four productions spaced throughout the year, it was going to have a concentrated three-week burst of opera once a year. Or at least that’s how the story seemed to run. Yesterday, I went to a town hall for subscribers. General Director Jim Wright spent 30 minutes laying out the Opera’s business situation, and an hour in a lively question and answer session. It was informative, and placed the Opera’s strategy in a much better light. Continue Reading »

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Our little meetup now has a name: Vancouver Globalization and Localization Users Group, or VanGLUG for short. Follow us as @VanGLUG on Twitter.  We had an outreach meeting in late January. So it’s long past time to conclude this series of thoughts about VanGLUG. Part 3 discusses “Where, When, and How”. Earlier in the series were A Technology Globalization meetup for the Vancouver Area: (1) What, Who (Oct 31, 2014), and A Technology Globalization meetup for the Vancouver Area: (2) Why, Naming (Dec 31, 2014).

Where

One challenge of an in-person meeting is where to hold it. The usual habit for such events is to meet in downtown Vancouver. This can be inconvenient, not to mention tedious, for those of us in Surrey or Burnaby. But I expect this is how we will start.

I would, however, be delighted if there was enough interest in other parts of the Lower Mainland to start up satellite groups in other locations as well.

Could we meet virtually?  In this day and age, it should be cheap and practical to do a simple webcast of meetings. Some may want to participate remotely. An IRC channel or Twitter “second screen” may emerge. But in my experience, the networking which I suspect will be our biggest contribution will come from in-person attendance.

When

In an era of busy schedules, finding a time to meet is likely an overconstrained problem. Our technology industry tends to hold meetings like this on weekday evenings, sometimes over beer, and I suspect that is how we will start. But it is interesting to consider breakfast or lunch meetings.

When to get started?  The arrival of Localization World 2014 in Vancouver got a dozen local localization people to attend, and provided the impetus to turn interest into concrete plans. After Localization world, we started communicating and planning. The net result was a first meeting in mid-day of Monday, December 8, 2014. Despite the holiday distraction, we were able to land a spot guest-presenting to VanDev on 6 essentials every developer should know about international. Our next opportunity to meet will likely be April 2015, perhaps March.

How

The Twitter feed @VanGLUG was our first communications channel. I encourage any Twitter user interested in monitoring this effort to follow @VanGLUG. We have 37 followers at the moment. We were using the twitter handle @IMLIG1604 before, and changed that name while keeping our followers. The present @IMLIG1604 handle is a mop-up account, to point stragglers to @VanGLUG.We created a group on LinkedIn to use as a discussion forum. This has the snappy and memorable URL https://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=6805530. If you use LinkedIn, are in the Lower Mainland or nearby, and are interested in localization and related disciplines, we welcome you joining the LinkedIn Group. We are also accepting members from out of area (for instance, Washington and Oregon) in the interests of cross-group coordination. But for location-independent localization or globalization discussion, there are more appropriate groups already on LinkedIn.

Subsequent communications channels might perhaps include a Meetup group (if we want to put up the money), an email list, an outpost on a Facebook page, and other channels as there is interest.

GALA (the Globalization and Language Association) is one of our industry organisations. It has a membership and affiliate list that includes people from the Vancouver region. I spoke with one of their staff at Localization World. They are interested in encouraging local community groups. I believe this initiative is directly in line with their interest: we can be the local GALA community for here.  They have included us in a list of regional Localization User Groups. We are also on IMUG’s list of “IMUG-style” groups.
Do you want to see this meetup grow? If so, I welcome your input and participation. You can tweet to @VanGLUG, post comments on this blog, or send me email at jdlh “at” jdlh.com. Call me at +1-604-376-8953.

See you at the meetings!

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I am helping to start a regular face-to-face event series which will bring together the people in the Vancouver area who work in technology globalization, internationalization, localization, and translation (GILT) for networking and learning. This post is the second in a series where I put into words my percolating thoughts about this group.  See also, A Technology Globalization meetup for the Vancouver Area: (1) What, Who (Oct 31, 2014).

Happily, this group has already started. We held our first meeting on Monday, Dec 8, 2014. Our placeholder Twitter feed is @imlig1604; follow that and you’ll stay connected when we pick our final name. And we have a group on LinkedIn for sharing ideas. The link isn’t very memorable, but go to LinkedIn Groups and search for “Vancouver localization”; you will find us. (We don’t yet have an account on the Meetup.com service.)  If you are in the Lower Mainland and are interested, I would welcome your participation.

Continuing with my reflections about this group, here are thoughts on why this group should exist, and what it might be named.

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