Success Stories
Eagle Vision Video Productions
City: Fort St. John
British Columbia Regional Science & Technology Network Council: Science and Technology Association of the North (Sci-Tech North)
Between professional and family commitments, many British Columbians have difficulty finding time to stay up to date on local news and events, or to take part in municipal happenings like city council meetings.
In northern B.C., this time crunch is further complicated by the expansive geography that defines and characterizes the region. However, a new website package, http://www.fsjnewswire.ca/, is making citizen participation easier for residents of Fort St John.
This website is a point of entry for residents looking to participate in polls and forums on local issues, find out about local events, and stay informed about local government news.
Two innovative features – Council Cast and TXT Alert – have proven particularly effective in engaging the community’s younger residents. Council Cast streams live council meetings and presents them as podcasts on http://www.fsjnewswire.ca/, while TXT Alert notifies subscribers, via text message, of traffic situations, power outages, forest fires, missing children, and so on.
These applications were designed and developed by Eagle Vision Video Productions, a digital marketing communications company that normally works in video production services and digital still photography.
Research and development was carried out locally, with support from the Science and Technology Association of the North, and funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s industrial research assistance program.
The software underlying both Council Cast and TXT Alert programs, now protected under copyright, has many applications for government, commercial and retail settings. Council Cast takes a traditional – and in some cases, intimidating – business meeting and makes it accessible to a greater range of people because it can be customized to the consumer. The benefits go beyond broadcasting council meetings – the ability to host a meeting with a variety of participants that can be broadcast in real time via the Internet could also be useful in the private, public and academic sectors, as well as being adaptable to recreational “chat-room” forums.
TXT Alert is unique in that it applies a known technology to mass media, with an emphasis on emergency advisories. The program has been used to report gas leaks, missing persons, road closures and widespread power outages, thus saving subscribers time and effort in travel, work, communication and so on.
From a commercial standpoint, TXT Alert has great potential: for other communities, as part of an emergency services program; for industry, as a tool for reaching a specific customer base quickly and effectively; and for applications in academia. Furthermore this technology is particularly useful for northern communities, as it effectively eliminates the geographical element that limits communication.
For more information, please visit: http://www.fsjnewswire.ca/ or http://www.eaglevisionvideo.ca.
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