Toronto Takes the Lead for Earth Hour, Raptors Host Clippers Tonight at ACC: TorontoIAM

This is a selection of recent popular blog articles from TorontoIAM where you will find the best blogs from Toronto, Ontario as well as video uploads, social networking, rumors, and blog authoring

Toronto Participates in Earth Hour Next Month

Val Dodge asks readers of The Torontoist if they can turn their lights off for one hour. The World Wildlife Federation is “challenging people around the world to do just that at 8 p.m. local time on March 29.” The world-wide event, called Earth Hour, is meant to “raise awareness of global warming.” The inaugural event took place last year in Sydney, Australia. “More than 2 million people and 2100 businesses turned off their lights. The result was a 10% reduction in the demand for electricity during the hour-long action.”

This year, Toronto has signed on as the “lead Canadian city.” The Star is the local media partner, and they have already started publicizing. “Unfortunately, the problem with having a major media outlet as a primary partner,” writes Dodge in her post, “is that there's been nary a peep from any of the city's other newspapers.” The city would like a million participants, and people need “time to prepare for turning their lights off for an hour on a Saturday night.” There are 20 cities confirmed around the world an in Canada, Oakville and Ottawa have signed on and Montreal is expected to do so as well.

Raptors Should have no Problem with Clippers Tonight

RaptorsTalk.com takes a pre-game look at the Raptors’ game tonight (February 8) against the LA Clippers at ACC. “The Raptors knocked off the Clippers 80-77 back on December 18th in Los Angeles.” Chris Bosh led Toronto with 24 points and 9 rebounds, compared to Clippers’ leading man Chris Kaman with 12 points and 16 rebounds. The Clippers have “struggled this season without their franchise player Elton Brand,” who’s been out with a ruptured Achilles and “sorely missed.”  

The Raptors most recently handed the Miami Heat their 37th loss of the season, 114-82. During that game, TJ Ford “made his surprise return to the line up.” Jose Calderon continues to do well for the Raptors, “averaging 16.2 ppg 10.7 apg and a measly 1.8 tpg in his last six starts.” Calderon probably won’t be logging 40 plus minutes every night, now that TJ is back, but his starting job isn’t at stake. “Sam Cassell will be matched up against Calderon, but should have trouble keeping the Spaniard from taking the ball to the basket at will,” writes our blogger in the post.

DemoCamp is the Grandaddy of all Unconferences

Over at blogTO, Tim introduces us to the term “unconference,” and announces the “granddaddy” of unconferences: DemoCamp. Unconferences feature a “novel and uber-participatory event format” and have “been making waves in the Toronto tech and marketing worlds for at least a couple of years now.” Last year unconferences presented in Toronto included TransitCamp, CaseCamp, PhotoCamp, PodCamp, and OpenCities.

David Crow, blogTO's “Best Web or Tech Evangelist,” explains in the post that during DemoCamp “presenters are given 5 minutes to demonstrate their product or present what they are passionate about. The goal is to engage, inspire or educate the audience.” You can demonstrate something you’ve built or give a presentation about it. DemoCamp is a “social event” where Toronto’s “community of entrepreneurs and developers to get together and see what other are working on.” It has served as a “test bed for how to grow participant-driven conferences.” There have been 16 DemoCamps since December 2005 and the next one is slated for February 25.

Do Africentric Schools Promote Self-Segregation?

On Reading Toronto, Peter Fruchter reports that Premier Dalton McGuinty has recently asked Torontonians to pressure school board trustees to over-turn “a controversial decision to create a black-focused school.” An article in the Star states that McGuinty wants us to tell trustees “how strongly opposed to this proposal we are.” Fruchter asks readers, however, if we actually shouldoppose opening Africentric schools. It hinges on “whether or not trustees are instigating segregation in Toronto.”Trustees need to help students stay in school, and “any free, democratic, tolerant and multicultural society absolutely must resist segregation.”

However, some are insisting it isn’t segregation “when any and all students will be welcomed to attend Africentric schools.” One young man in particular has called for the media “to disclose how indiscriminately welcoming Africentric schools shall be to absolutely everyone.” But does that only hampers “covert discrimination -- not overt broad-daylight segregation.” Many trustees “ridiculed segregation as any relevant legitimate concern… [one] asked to know what the big deal was.” Denying segregation as a legitimate concern is a frightening response. “We ought to know by now how communities seek to self-segregate for internal cultural homogeneity,” states the post.

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