LeVar Burton was in Toronto today for an interview with CBC‘s The Hour. With about an hour’s notice he posted a Tweetup. I was there, with about thirty others, including someone from CityTV.

I grew up watching him on both Reading Rainbow and Star Trek: The Next Generation. I didn’t take any convincing to head over to Hemmingway’s to meet him. On the way I was working up questions to ask him, and I had the chance later.

Early in the evening he asked how many of us were Reading Rainbow fans. The entire audience cheered and put up their hands. He was startled but grinned afterwards. Someone admitted that he didn’t watch it alone, it was with his daughter, and after finding out that some folks there who grew up with the PBS show were in their late twenties and had kids of their own he said he felt old.

When I got a chance to speak to him I told him that there were hearings underway to try to understand the Canadian content situation and potentially regulate. I posited that quotas would not work on the internet, he didn’t seem to disagree, and then I asked if he could tell me from the standpoint of a director or an actor what these artisans would need. He said he didn’t want to give a statement since he didn’t know enough about the situation. Fair enough.

I understand his hesitance and felt guilty for asking afterwards. I’d thought that as someone who wasn’t beholden to the local unions he could give me a candid understanding from either the director or actor’s standpoint. The locals aren’t very accessible, I’ve found. Once that was over I became part of the audience asking about his new movies.

I milled about and got to meet some cool people. The folks from Torontoist and blogTO come to mind first, but also the gentleman whose name escapes me (Dan?) with whom I discussed the return to tribalism and art returning to the common person on the walk home.

After the success of this tweetup with only an hour’s notice, and his burst of views after claiming his Twitter account, I think Mr. Burton is seeing the value of social media. I’m happy to have met one of the artisans who I grew up with.

Mr. Burton, I hope you enjoy your stay in Toronto.

Update April 8th 2009: There’s a Bell autodialer reporting that Twitter charges will be refunded.

I’ve been experimenting with Twitter‘s resumed SMS service in Canada. Right now it only works with Bell Mobility and, well, I’m a Bell subscriber. Twitter claims the service is free but I quickly heard reports of fifteen cent charges cropping up on the #belltwit hashtag. I decided to do my own experiment while waiting for Twitter’s correction.

Yesterday at about four o’clock I sent a message to 21212. I forgot to input my PIN, so I got back an error message. I sent another message with my PIN this time and it got posted. Next, I got someone to DM me so that I could receive a SMS, and then I got the same person to post a public message after I enabled “device updates” for his account. I received both the DM and the public message, then called *611 to see what the charge was.

Long story short, I was told to call back today. I logged in to my Bell account and saw six new charges. One was “text message from internet” and five were “txt message – short code programs.” So I called *611 again.

Total charge: $0.45. I asked them to look up the Twitter short code as a biller and apparently it’s not there as a subscription service, so you’re not being charged for incoming messages.

Bell has since confirmed that they won’t charge for incoming messages from Twitter. This is consistent with what I found out through billing. I sent two messages, so get charged $0.30, plus I got a message from Google Calendar, adding the other $0.15. I didn’t realize that Google Calendar messages costed so I’ll be cancelling those today.

Update: Original Bell press release says charge was intended to be incoming and outgoing.

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