Monday, February 26, 2018

What's that sound? Raves on the front page of the Edmonton Journal, February 26, 1993.

~ ~ This article brought to you by the patronage of A.B. ~ ~

It has been 25 years since the Edmonton Journal published a front page, feature length article about something never before heard of: “raves.” The city newspaper's February 26, 1993 edition landed on the doorsteps of Edmontonians and titillated them over their porridge. The headline, white on black, shouted in letters an inch high:

Headline of the February 26, 1993 edition of the Edmonton Journal. "RAVE ON: A Dance Party for the 90's Flower Children"
It was the first time raves appeared on the Journal's front page.

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

E-town Rave History Project Seeks Volunteers

E-town Rave History Project can't be done by one man
The E-town Rave History Project is growing by leaps and bounds. To use the lingo of software startups, it's time to "scale" the project.

I'm looking for volunteers to analyze the growing number of flyers, newspaper articles, and interviews in my collection. In some cases, you will be getting your hands dirty with primary source materials that haven't seen the light of day in 20 years.

Here is where we will start:
  • You will receive a scanned flyer (example)... you will type all the words including DJ bios, schedule information, and any text.
  • Or, you will get a scanned newspaper article (example)... you will use OCR to convert image to text, and correct the output.
  • Or, you will get raw of images scanned flyers... you will crop the images and save them in accordance with a naming convention.
Things get interesting fast: the next tasks centre on linguistics and statistics. If you're interested in working with exclusive interview footage, that's on the menu too. See below for more details.

So I ask you:
  • Are you a data nerd? 
  • Are you good with language (spelling, grammar, punctuation)?
  • Are you careful and precise? 
  • Do you love the whole universe of techno -- from the 1980's on? 
  • Do you want to actually MAKE history in Edmonton?

Find me on Facebook and get in touch.