The news that Ryan Merkley had been hired as a temporary communications director came in a week in December when I was swamped with other things, so I didn’t note his impending arrival.
However, here is my post noting that Ryan, a prolific Twitterer by the way (see evidence at Tab 1, his photo of city hall as he arrived at work Monday), started this week.
Merkley, a young, energetic guy with an interest in new ideas, was working with Toronto Mayor David Miller and was a big advocate of that city’s move to open government, i.e. making city data available to those who want to reconfigure it for various apps. As I’ve noted in previous posts, there are a lot of links between the Miller people and the Robertson people. Ryan has been one of those links.
But he’s no stranger to Vancouver. He was part of the crew that came in to work on the Vision Vancouver campaign in the fall of 2008. I’ll be interested to see whether this “temporary” job gets extended at the end of six months.