The Daily Bulletin is published by Internal and Leadership Communications, part of University Communications
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The Daily Bulletin turns 25 today
With those five fateful words, the Daily Bulletin made its debut on monochrome video displays across campus in the spring of 1993.
Of course, there was plenty of news - the "no news" that founding editor Chris Redmond referred to had to do with the lack of concrete information surrounding the impact that the Ontario government's "Social Contract" for employees in the public sector would have on University faculty and staff. The news bulletin also informed campus that James Downey, the University's fourth president who had arrived on campus in April 1993, would deliver an inaugural state-of-the-university address entitled, fittingly, "A Humanist Meets His Waterloo."
25 years and 6,172 issues later, the University of Waterloo’s pioneering electronic chronicle of campus life is still publishing news that campus can use every working day, whether there is anything to report or not.
And when we say pioneering, we mean it: the Daily Bulletin is one of the first, and oldest continuing, daily blog anywhere on the Internet, existing before the word "blog" was even coined.
In fact, the Daily Bulletin was online, in a manner of speaking, before the University had a web presence.
Redmond recalls being invited to a meeting of a group of people from the University’s library and the department of computing services (the forerunner to IST) to discuss how the University might best use Gopher, an early internet protocol developed at the University of Minnesota, that could deliver text files from a central server to a network of "dumb terminals" connected by, in Waterloo's case, Gandalf modems. What the committee came up with was Waterloo’s version of a “campus-wide information system.” Dubbed UWInfo, the text-based system was accessed through a numbered menu navigable by arrow keys, and Redmond hit on the idea of uploading some news briefs to the network to supplement the University's printed newspaper, The Gazette.
“Without advance planning, I posted a four-paragraph news summary to UWinfo on the morning of Tuesday, May 11. The next day I published another roundup, and a third one came on Thursday," says Redmond. "I had invented the Daily Bulletin, although that title would not be visibly applied to the five-days-a-week report until July.” The Daily Bulletin was established as number 5 on the UWInfo main menu.
No sooner had he gotten the digital publication going than Redmond went on a pre-planned vacation, and there was such an uproar on campus when the Daily Bulletin went on temporary hiatus that Information & Public Affairs had to scramble to create some in the editor's absence. The Daily Bulletin appeared every working day following Redmond's return from vacation on July 26, 1993, for a total of 4,566 issues by the time he stepped down as editor in November 2011 (I will note that my 1,600th issue as editor of the Daily Bulletin landed on Thursday, May 3).
In the spring of 1995, the first Web versions of the Daily Bulletin (still text-based, but with hyperlinks to the nascent online world) were given a test run. As of Monday, May 1, 1995 the Web version of the Daily Bulletin became the default, though it was still pushing its content to UWinfo and the uw.general and uw.campus-news newsgroups.
At first, the Daily Bulletin was intended to supplement the information provided in the Gazette, repeating and updating print stories, but as it continued to grow in size and breadth of coverage, the situation began to reverse itself, with the Gazette's columns becoming filled with reprints of news and chatter from the previous week’s Daily Bulletin. Redmond, who served as editor of both the Gazette and the Daily Bulletin, shifted to the Daily Bulletin full-time and within a few years, the Gazette ceased publication, with the Daily Bulletin picking up the slack, publishing the listings of available job positions from Human Resources, and notices of PhD oral defences, a tradition that continues to this day.
Other highlights:
The Link of the Day debuted in the winter of 1998, with the first one linking to the CBC's website coverage of the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Check out the hyperlink - http://cbc.sympatico.ca/fs-intl-low.html.
As you can imagine, many of the Links of the Days from those early years point to dead sites. The earliest Link of the Day that is still functioning is February 9, 1998's link to the official Olympics website.
The uploading of photos in the Daily Bulletin became commonplace in 1999. Embedded videos began to appear in 2011.
The Daily Bulletin's "When and Where" event listing was introduced in 2003, and the Daily Bulletin's look and feel received a major overhaul in 2006 to match the visual identity of the University's main website. The current design elements of the Daily Bulletin date to April 2015, when the Daily Bulletin finally joined the WCMS family.
In the fall of 2016, the Daily Bulletin e-newsletter began reaching campus inboxes, with more than 4,000 subscribers receiving daily summaries of the website's contents.
The publication's back issues are all available in the Daily Bulletin archive.
What goes into the Daily Bulletin? For a quarter century, it's been a little bit of this, that, and the other thing. It's been described as "a combination of breaking news, facts, highlights and a modest amount of literary comment". Readers will find announcements and news of campus-wide importance, brief mentions of events taking place in the next day or so, information intended to be of widespread use to people on campus, and links to even more information.
Announcements that come from the University's administration, from within University Relations, and from individual departments, institutes, associations and clubs are regularly featured, as are observations of campus life, interesting photographs, videos, and other items of interest. And if I can squeeze in the occasional punny headline, then I feel like I've done my job.
The Daily Bulletin seeks to be the perfect blend of material that is useful to the reader, useful to the management, and interesting enough to keep someone reading.
And on that note, as always, thank you for reading.
New funding is a fine kettle of fish for water researcher
This is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared on Waterloo Stories.
University of Waterloo researcher Heidi Swanson is set to receive a portion of $1.2 million, over five years, from the Federal government’s $75 million Coastal Restoration Fund to perform community-partnered research. The aim of the project is to restore fish in the Coppermine River and other river systems near Kugluktuk, Nunavut. The funding is part of the $1.5 billion Ocean Protections Plan — the largest investment ever made to protect Canada's coasts and waterways.
Climate change and the rise of land masses after the last glacial period can leave fish stranded during migrations due to decreasing river flows. To address this critical issue, Swanson’s team will work alongside the Kugluktuk Hunter and Trappers Organization to identify migratory patterns and overwintering habits of Arctic char and Dolly Varden char in and around the Coppermine River. A restoration plan will follow for priority streams that support these fisheries.
Swanson, an assistant professor from the Department of Biology, has been building relationships with subsistence fishers in Kugluktuk for over a decade. In a model example of community-driven scientific research, Swanson’s team has responded to concerns initially posed by the Kugluktuk Hunter and Trapper Association about their fishery — specifically, why numbers of Arctic char in the Coppermine River are in decline, and if there are streams used by migrating fish that can be restored to increase fish passage.
“The way the project started is that colleagues from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and I met with the Hunter and Trapper Association in Kugluktuk to hear about their fishery concerns,” said Swanson. “We developed this project based on those concerns.”
A significant portion of the funding will go to the Hunter and Trapper Association for traditional knowledge research, and to support hiring of local field and restoration workers.
Read the rest of the article on Waterloo Stories.
Coming Soon: The Keystone Picnic
A note from the Office of Advancement
Are you a Waterloo faculty or staff member, or a Waterloo retiree? If so, you’re invited to the 17th annual Keystone Picnic.
Join us Friday, June 1 from 11:30 to 1:30 in the DC Quad for live entertainment, a fabulous lunch menu, popcorn, cake, cotton candy and our ever-popular dunk tank. For those of you who work in the evening, we haven’t forgotten you! Join us from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the SLC.
Here’s a map to show you where all the fun takes place:
The picnic recognizes the campus community for their generous contributions as Keystone Campaign donors and volunteers. All faculty, staff and retirees are invited, and if you’re a current Keystone donor, you’ll find a Save-the-Date postcard in your mailbox. Wear the sticker on the back of the card for a chance to win a prize. See you June 1!
Concrete canoes, steel spans, other Friday facts
The University of Waterloo is hosting the 2018 24th Canadian National Concrete Canoe Competition and 3rd Canadian National Steel Bridge Competition (CNSBC).
Student teams from across Canada have been working tirelessly all year to build their designs and participate in this year's competition.
Both events will be running concurrently from May 10 to 12. Over 400 engineering students from across Canada will be coming to Waterloo to participate.
The concrete canoe competition consists of a swamp test at Laurel Creek and canoe races. Believe it or not, these things actually float.
Not to be outdone, the steel bridge competition involves a speed building race and a loading test. Each team of four to six students will build a bridge roughly 20 feet long. Judges will rate them on a number of elements, such as aesthetics and strength.
Canoe and bridge design displays took place in the PAC on Thursday.
Today, canoe presentations will take place in STC 1012 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., with the Steel Bridge Competition scheduled from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in the PAC.
A graduate poster symposium will take place in the M3 Foyer from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., and from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., presentations will continue in MC 1006.
On Saturday, May 12, the swamp test at Laurel Creek will run from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. The swamp competition tests the weight each canoe can carry. The concrete canoes will be off to the races beginning at 10:00 a.m.
In a calculated move, the University is also hosting the Data Open Waterloo Datathon this Saturday from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. in M3 1006. A hundred students will compete for $25,000 and a chance to interview with Citadel and Citadel Securities as they work in teams to examine large, complex datasets, identifying problems and possible solutions. They are trying to find meaningful solutions to a problem statement around public health, and provide it to a panel of judges. By modelling real-world situations, students receive training while meeting with high-profile clients to showcase their skills.
Are you interested in participating in an international experience that would enhance your role at the University of Waterloo? Could sharing best practices with peers at one of Waterloo’s partner institutions serve to make you more effective in your role? If so, the Staff International Experience Fund is available to support this type of international experience. There’s still time to submit an application for this year’s Staff International Experience Fund so please review the information and application on the Waterloo International website.
Interested but uncertain about potential destinations or partner schools? If you have an idea that you would be interested in exploring through an international experience, and your role doesn’t normally involve foreign travel, then Waterloo International wants to support you to consider an application. The application deadline is May 14, so please get in touch with Tony Munro for information and assistance.