My name is Cedric Sam and I'm an IT and digital media specialist. I was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
I graduated in computer science at McGill in 2004. During my formative years, I participated in student press in a variety of roles and created websites for organizations long before blogs and CMSes became the norm.
For two years until September 2009, I worked for CBC/Radio-Canada, Canada's public multi-platform broadcaster, as a developer and a programmer for Radio-Canada.ca. During two major electoral events in Fall 2008, I also worked in television, creating real-time Google Earth results maps.
I'm an open-source and D-I-Y guy at heart, and use Linux as my main operating system. For the past years, I've been very interested in my cultural roots and started a blog called Comme les Chinois. I have my own food site called Metro Boulot Resto and contribute to a public space blog called Spacing Montréal.
Among my technological interests, I've a little something for geographic information systems. I'm also fascinated with how today's data visualization techniques have helped "democratize" otherwise inaccessible data.
I currently work at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong. I am mainly creating digital media projects focusing on Hong Kong and China. I am also a teaching assistant and becoming quite good at hacking Wordpress.
My name is Cedric Sam and I was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. I speak and write both French and English fluently, while I have been exposed to Chinese (Cantonese) since my birth and have taken two years of for-credit Chinese (Putonghua) classes in university.
I'm trained in computer science (McGill, 2004) and specialize myself as a solver of IT challenges in the field of media. I also obtained a previous degree in Biochemistry (McGill, 2002), which still serves me today to gain insights about the world from nature's point of view.
When I was a student (when paper was still fashionable), I was the editor-in-chief of my college newspaper and stayed involved in student press (real or simulated, for youth parliaments and model United Nations). When I was studying my last year in biochemistry in 2001-02, my passion for newspapers was still there -- so in between studying for the next exam, I would put out a monthly newsletter where I'd interview (or have my university mates interview) profs and interesting people in the university.
After I graduated for the second time, from my degree in computer science, I slumbered through a few years without being involved in publishing a newspaper. But my writing skills and care for presentation were very much welcomed when I worked in 2004-05 as a teaching assistant at McGill's department of microbiology and immunology. Back then, I researched and edited (and sometimes taught) the notes and exercises for a new mandatory bioinformatics module.
After McGill and a year with a consulting company specialized in open-source and Linux called Savoir-faire Linux, I was hired in summer 2007 by CBC/Radio-Canada, Canada's national public broadcaster. More specifically, I worked for Radio-Canada.ca, one of the most popular websites, with one of the most respected media brands in Canada. As a design-analyst, I analyzed IT problematics and designed (and implemented) their solutions. They could be questions such as: how do you let your crew of Web editors schedule contents to appear on the website's main page, because such and such important drama show or press conference was going to be webcast over the weekend? Day-to-day, I would program in either front-end or back-end contexts, work on database design and sometimes even do server administration.
In Fall 2008, I obtained a special mandate with Radio-Canada Television during both the federal Canadian election night and the provincial one in Quebec. Using only open-source software, I designed a system that merged live election results with geographical data for electoral districts. Our senior political analyst then used the resulting maps on Google Earth to graphically explain poll results as they came in during the evening.
Like a lot of people nowadays, I also blog: on my Chinese-themed blog Comme les Chinois and my general interest one Smurfmatic. I also volunteer at Radio Centre-Ville a Montreal community radio in Cantonese where I had my own music show in summer 2009 and still call in for a weekly life in Hong Kong vignette.
In March 2009, as part of vast layoffs at CBC/Radio-Canada, my contract ending that month as a temporary employee was not renewed. I continued to work there on short-term contracts, leases to other departments like BAP.fm, and finally saw my last paycheque sometime in September 2009. Then, after hesitating a bit, a good deal on plane tickets fixed my decision to do what I wanted to do for the past 6-7 years: find work and live in Hong Kong.
Now in February 2010, I am employed at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre (University of Hong Kong), one of the world's most recognized school and research centre in its field focusing on Asia and more particularly Greater China. In my day-to-day job, I create digital media projects that make use of GIS, various public API (Google Maps, Twitter, etc), and where I can use my skills in Linux system administration and programming (shell, Python, etc). I am also a part-time teaching assistant for various classes and setup websites (Wordpress-based) for the JMSC's affiliated projects. I hope that my work helps me combine my eclectic interests in China, open-source technology (and DIY in general) and media (as in communication between people, groups of people).
Comme les Chinois
Canada 2008 by polls
Canada 2008
Métro Boulot Resto
Spacing Montréal
Electoral Contributions
CBC Digital Archives
Teasers 2 (R-C)