The first photos have begun to appear online from this morning's Prentice Stampede Breakfast in Calgary. By early accounts, a strong crowd (including some media) attended with signs, t-shirts, and handouts to increase awareness of Bill C-61 and to have a chance to to speak directly with Industry Minister Jim Prentice. Photos online from Grant Neufeld (on Flickr) and on the Facebook event page. If you were in attendance, feel free to provide your thoughts in the comments.
Update: Coverage and photos of the event at NowPublic, Kempton Lam's Flickr photos, and bloggers (1, 2).
Update: Kempton Lam posts his thoughts on the event.
Thoughts
We attended, enjoyed a nice pancake breakfast, and I am certain that everyone who attended is now aware of opposition to C-61. The colourful signs “Bill C-61 makes _______ copyright criminals” were catchy and definitely got the point across. I would speculate that 5-10% of attendees were protesting the bill with signs or t-shirts.
Prentice himself seemed uncomfortable at first, then didn’t address the issue at all during his speech. As you can see in the picture, the large signs made it really hard to ignore this issue, and of course he can’t ‘hang-up’ on his own breakfast.
There were a significant number of other MP’s, Federal Government Guests and media at the event so it will be interesting to see what the reaction is. There will likely be more pictures and video to come so stay tuned.
NR
Heh, can you spot the “undercover” security? 🙂
Crack Book
Why do people insist on using crack book AKA face book for posting pictures. So people can see them.
I would like to see the pictures but have no desire to belong to face book
My 2 Watts
Security
The RCMP officers at the event actually came right up and identified themselves to us as soon as they saw us gathering (about 30 minutes before the event began). I never saw them doing anything to restrict our access to the minister, though they did watch us particularly closely anytime one of us got close to him.
The only person that actively tried to prevent us talking with Minister Prentice was Pam, whom Kempton acknowledges at the bottom of his blog entry—and of course the minister himself, by being cagey with his responses to our questions.
In my case, he looked straight at me (smiled, shook my hand and patted my shoulder) while I asked him my question, and didn’t try to squirm away until after he had given me his (short and evasive) answer. I came away reminded that the primary things which select for success among politicians are charisma, charm and ability to maintain your composure under fire.
All in all, I think the rally was very successful. By keeping it civil, we made it difficult for the public to dismiss us and impossible for the event organizers to get rid of us. By being an unignorable presence at the breakfast, we raised as much awareness about the issue as we possibly could (in the end, I distributed close to 90 audio CDs each with a lecture about the history and purposes of Copyright and DRM).
If you want to listen to the CD yourself, the contents are available here: [ link ]