After previously saying I wouldn’t go to a TEDx event because of the way they’re set up, I’m happy to post that they don’t have to be that way.

Registration for TEDxUofC is open, and cheap. Students get in for $5. Everyone else gets in for $10. It doesn’t get cheaper than that. And there’s no “how awesome are you?” filter on the registration. You prove your awesomeness by showing up.

Now this is interesting. A series of focused events, each on a different topic, open to anyone who wants to come and make a difference. Sure, the speakers are selected ahead of time. Sure, the topics are selected ahead of time. That’s ok, and the way it’s set up looks like it could provide an interesting series of events.

Now, to try to arrange child care for The Boy™ twice a month, so I can head down to Hotel Alma (the new facility on the main U of C campus). Actually, I wonder if he’d like to go. He is a student, after all…

We had to leave at half time, because it was just too much sun for The Boy™ to endure, but the first half of the game was a great one. When we left, the Dinos were ahead 10-8 over the Golden Bears. Sounds like the second half was exciting, too, with the Dinos holding onto the slim lead to win the game. Whew.

It’s still pretty small scale, compared with giants like WordPress.com and Edublogs.org, but the growth looks pretty much exponential. I’m glad we’ve got lots of room to scale this puppy. And that campus IT isn’t upset with growing demands on database resources.

Edu-Clean has bugged me because it hijacks the front page by using home.php, rather than using a page template to render the front page. The annoying part of this technique is that it makes it difficult to list blog posts within that site – so news updates posted on the main blog only show up on the “latest posts” widget, and then disappear from sight when they roll off the bottom of the widget.

And, the Edu-Clean theme, while looking fantastic and being very well designed and polished, is really just the Edublogs theme. So, my straight reuse of the graphics and styles was a bit confusing (I had a couple people mention “oh, that’s edublogs. I know that.” – um. no. it’s not, but it’s using the same theme… confusing…)

So, today I decided to sit down and hack the best parts of Edu-Clean out, and graft them into a copy of the sweet and flexible Carrington theme.

I’ll post a description of what I did, why, and where, but for now it’s basically working. It’s still very much a work in progress (I’m thinking it’s a little busy, but I like the focus on community, content and function rather than marketing). The other nice thing that the use of page templates allows is the WordPress front page setting – I can set the front page to be rendered by a static template, and set the “real” blog to be displayed at another page on the blog – Site News, for example. Much better, IMO.

Here’s the previous design, powered by the elegant Edu-Clean theme:

And the redesign, based on Carrington:

I’m certainly no designer, but I like that the featured content is right up front, rather than marketing info about the service. It’s also much easier to spot the login info (if not logged in) and stuff you can do (list of your blogs, etc…) without having to scroll down.

I’ll be tweaking it, but I think it’s a keeper.

Fast forward to 2008, and the TLC just produced a walking tour of the U of C campus, featuring Julie Walker, a naturalist and hiking guide with the University of Calgary Outdoor Centre.

Grab a copy, drop it on your iPod (or PSP, or cell phone, or laptop, or cough Zune) and follow along with Julie as she guides you across campus.

University of Calgary Walking Tour

The video recording of the presentation is just over an hour long, and includes some questions from some of the faculty members in attendance. I recorded the session with my little Flip Ultra camera, and it did a surprisingly good job.

(slideshow not visible in RSS feed readers)