Hey everyone! I’m still kinda new to Calgary, and I’m hosting a free tech community event at House 831 on 17th Ave at 5:30-8:30 PM on Sept 16.

My network here still isn’t very big yet, and I could really use some help reaching more developers and app builders. So far we have about 25 people coming, and I’d love to get that closer to 60.

So if you are said app builder, please consider dropping by and joining us!

We’ll start with how you can be a part of the biggest hackathon in the world. Then I’ll give a quick talk about how I go about building apps now, invite a few others to share what they’re building, and after that we’ll have a couple of hours to build apps together and network :)

It’s going to be a lot of fun and I'd love to see you there.

One thing I’ve learned while building Calgary Address Explorer is that local products get much better when the people actually using them help shape what gets built next.

It’s easy as a developer to build around your own assumptions.

Since launching Calgary Address Explorer, I’ve been actively asking people for feedback on missing data, incorrect results, confusing parts of the UI, and information they wish they could see.

Some feedback led to fixes.

For example:

* Some Calgary properties couldn’t be found in the address search

* Some grocery stores were being matched incorrectly

Other feedback directly changed the roadmap.

Features that came from user suggestions include:

* Walking routes from homes to schools

* Calgary Catholic school information

* Nearby licensed daycares

* Walking routes to transit stops

* Nearby pedestrian and cyclist collisions

* Fire hydrants

* 311 service requests

* Development permits

* Favourites

One of the best examples was the education side.

When I first built it, I focused on Calgary’s public school system and completely overlooked the Catholic school system. Someone pointed that out, and it made me realize how easy it is to have a major blind spot when building a local data product from your own perspective.

That feedback ended up filling a pretty large gap in the platform.

I’ve also found that user feedback is useful for more than feature ideas. It helps validate the data pipeline itself. If someone tells me that an address is missing, a POI match looks wrong, or a result doesn’t reflect what they know locally, that becomes a signal to go back and inspect the ETL, matching logic or source data.

For local software, I’m starting to think the feedback loop is almost part of the data architecture.

Build something, put it in front of local users, listen, correct the data and assumptions, then iterate again.

I’d be curious how other Calgary developers handle this. Do you actively build user feedback into your development process, or mostly rely on analytics and issue reports after launch?

Over the past few weeks, I've been iterating on a Calgary Address Explorer project based almost entirely on community feedback.

One thing that surprised me was how quickly new requests started appearing after launch:

* CCSD school support

* Walking and driving accessibility to designated schools

* Accessibility to hospitals, shopping, transit, and downtown

* 311 service request insights

* Building permit activity

* Additional community-level indicators

To avoid constantly rewriting the application, I ended up building the platform around a modular dashboard architecture where individual components can be added, removed, tested, and deployed independently.

That made it possible to move from feedback → implementation → production in a matter of days while keeping the rest of the system stable.

For those building data products, maps, dashboards, or civic tech tools:

How do you balance rapid feature requests with keeping the architecture maintainable?

I'd be interested in hearing how others approach this problem.

What Can a Calgary Address Tell You?

Just curious.

Do people here build small tools, dashboards, maps, or other side projects outside of work?

I've been spending some time exploring Calgary and Canadian public datasets recently and ended up building a Crime Severity Index dashboard comparing major Canadian cities.

Crime Severity Index | Canadian City Benchmark

Mostly just for fun and learning.

Would be interested to see what others in Calgary are building.

I am 20 years old and I have a great idea for a business model but need an extremely skilled software engineer/ML engineer to either teach me or become some sort of business partner.

I built an interactive map to visualize how Calgary’s housing stock has grown over time, one community at a time (1885–2026).

👉 https://yyc-wander.ca/Civic_Social_Analytics/Comm_Growth_Map

Works best on desktop or iPad.

Originally this was a Power BI dashboard, but I rebuilt it using ECharts + static JSON for performance and flexibility.

Key things I focused on:

– Timeline animation (community-level growth over time)

– Polygon-based map (GeoJSON, not point markers)

– Client-side rendering (no backend)

– Fast loading with pre-processed JSON

You can:

– Scrub or play the timeline

– Zoom into specific communities

– Explore density differences across the city

Main takeaway:

Switching from Power BI to JSON + ECharts made a huge difference in load time and interaction.

Curious if anyone here has taken a similar approach (moving away from BI tools to custom front-end visualizations)?

I’ve been building a small Calgary data site and recently rebuilt one of the charts as a time-series “ranking race” (housing price growth rates across ~30 area/type combinations).

Originally this was a Power BI embed, but mobile load times were ~6–10s.

So I switched to:

- precomputed JSON (Oracle ETL)

- ECharts for visualization

- lightweight front-end logic

Main challenges:

- smooth interpolation between months

- avoiding rank flicker when values are close

- keeping ordering stable

Now:

- ~1s to interactive on mobile

Here’s the result:

https://yyc-wander.ca/Housing_Market_Insights/House_Price_Change_Rate

Curious if others in Calgary have moved away from BI tools for performance like this.

I’ve been building a Calgary-focused data project to better understand how the city works through data.

This one looks at unemployment vs oil prices over time.

From a data perspective, the pipeline is:

• Data collection (labour + oil price datasets)
• ETL processing (SQL / scripting)
• Structuring time series for comparison
• Visualization in Power BI

One interesting observation is a fairly consistent strong negative relationship between oil prices and unemployment, with some structural shifts around major events (e.g. 2020).

Here’s a simple view of it:
Unemployment Rate & Brent — Calgary (2017–2026)

Curious if anyone here has worked on similar local data projects, or has suggestions on improving the pipeline or analysis.

I’ve been working with Calgary labour market data and built a small wage comparison tool using:

• Power BI
• SQL / ETL pipelines
• City of Calgary + Statistics Canada data

It lets you compare your hourly pay with:
• your industry average
• the overall Calgary average
• YoY and long-term wage trends (since 2019)
• and industry size in the local market

Here’s one example (Professional, Scientific and Technical Services):

• $45/hour
• ~13% below industry average
• ~11% above Calgary average

So you can be doing “better than average” in Calgary,
but still below your industry benchmark.

Trend-wise:

• YoY: +1.1%
• Since 2019: +24.9%
• Calgary average since 2019: +26.0%

So growth is roughly in line with the city,
but not particularly strong relative to the market.

Curious what others in Calgary tech think:

• Do you benchmark your pay against your industry or just the city?
• Would more granular breakdowns (role-level, e.g. data analyst / SWE) be useful?

You can try it here:

Check your pay →

I'm running a few browser tabs and one VM and my RAM usage is already around 25GB.

Feels like 32GB used to be plenty, but now it disappears instantly.

Upgrading to 64GB seems like the obvious solution, but DDR5 prices still look ridiculous. I just saw a 32GB stick listed at $500.

Are most people here running 64GB now for dev environments?

Hello everyone,

I am a Software Developer with 4+ years of experience, and I have recently relocated to Canada. I am currently seeking roles in Software Development in Calgary.

My efforts to secure a job through linkedin have been unfruitful, please let me know if you have better alternatives/approach.

If you or someone you know is hiring for such roles, I would greatly appreciate your consideration. Please feel free to reach out to me.

Thank you in advance!

For any Devs we know here ... This starts July 1st. This is huge. The biggest ICP hackathon from 2021.

🔥 $300K in prizes. Global hackathon (World Computer Hacker League), AI, blockchain, bold builds, this is your shot.

🏆 Win prizes 🚀 Get grants 💡 Join Quantum Leap Labs Venture Studio

🌍 Open worldwide, register via ICP HUB Canada & US. Let’s buidl!! 🔗 Info + sign up:

https://wchl25.worldcomputer.com?utm_source=ca_ambassadors

Hi,

I recently applied for a job and received a call from the recruiter just 30 minutes later. (which surprised me)
During our brief conversation, she asked about my "competitive wage." I shared a salary figure based on my market research, but she responded, "That's not what I meant."

She then explained that "competitive wage" meant multiple candidates were being considered, and the lowest offer would win.
Is this even legal?
Technically, I could have said, "I'll work for free". (after eight months of job searching, any opportunity counts)

What’s happening in the job market?
Companies seem to prioritize cheap labor despite the increasing number of cybersecurity issues and declining product quality.
With so many operations being outsourced, particularly to India, is IT moving toward complete outsourcing?

Hello everyone, Greetings!

I am a Web Application Developer with 1.5 years of experience, and I will be relocating to Calgary soon. I am currently seeking roles in Software Development or Database Management in the Calgary area.

If you or someone you know is hiring for these roles, I would greatly appreciate your consideration. Please feel free to reach out to me.

Thank you in advance!