design

‘Unhealthy’ To Stare At Tweets All Day, Twitter Co-Founder Says

by CP on February 22, 2012

Huffington Post…

MONTREAL – Twitter co-founder Christopher Isaac “Biz” Stone has a message for those followers who stare at their tweet feed for hours on end. It’s not healthy. Stone says he’d prefer that people visit the popular social networking site frequently than sacrifice their life to it. He told a Montreal business audience even he is amazed by the influence of Twitter, which the founders initially thought would just be used for fun. Stone says it has instead ended up linking millions of people and been used to spur social change such as the so-called Arab spring, triggered by pro-democracy movements in the Middle East. The entrepreneur’s speech focused on tips for business people including that they should show empathy for their employees and shouldn’t be afraid to fail. He also says creativity is an unendingly renewable resource.

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‘Unhealthy’ To Stare At Tweets All Day, Twitter Co-Founder Says

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Gambling Gains: Another Victory for Sports Betting, in N.J.

by Ron Dicker on January 10, 2012

Huffington Post…

Fresh off a victory in his state on the path towards legalizing sports betting, New Jersey state Sen. Raymond Lesniak pledged Tuesday to take the fight nationwide. On Monday Lesniak, a Democrat, succeeded in rushing a sports-betting bill through the state legislature. The bill would allow wagering on pro and college games in Atlantic City and at the state’s racetracks if a federal ban on sports betting is reversed. Following an expected signature of the measure by Gov. Chris Christie, the New Jersey attorney general could file suit in federal district court as early as this month to try to overturn the federal prohibition, Lesniak said. The economic funk is empowering gambling proponents like Lesniak, who is also behind a state online gambling bill. New Jersey is bearing $10 billion of a collective $95 billion debt carried by U.S. states in 2012. And the Garden State is losing gambling revenue to Nevada and betting rings run by organized crime, Lesniak said. While other states are looking to generate revenue through casino gambling, New Jersey is taking the lead on sports betting. And it’s doing so without much help. “Other than mild encouragement, [other states] let us carry the ball for the rest of the country,” Lesniak said. If New Jersey’s challenge succeeds in overturning the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, people could bet on the Super Bowl and other sporting events in any state that legalizes bookmaking. Four states — Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon — are already exempt from that law. Americans bet $100 billion a year on sports, legally or otherwise, according to the University of California, Los Angeles gambling studies program. Lesniak believes that all that stands in the way of cash-hungry states getting their share though sports betting is persuading the court that the law is unconstitutional. States should be allowed to determine how they raise revenue, particularly when four states are already given the privilege, he said. New Jersey’s expected battle with the Justice Department would be a rematch of sorts. Lesniak, through his law firm, filed suit last year to strike down the ban. He firm handled the work pro bono, he said. But the federal appeals court threw out the suit, declaring that the state itself would have to file the action. Momentum has been building for pro-gambling forces. The Justice Department this month eased its interpretation of the Wire Act, opening the possibility for states to pursue online gambling for games such as poker. And Lesniak is optimistic about the upcoming challenge against the Sports Protection Act. He cited a letter in which the Justice Department objected to Congress’ passing the law because it violated states’ rights. The letter was addressed to Joe Biden, the current vice president who was then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Attorney Peter Dugas , director of government affairs for the Washington, D.C., firm Clark Hill, said no challenge has come close to eliminating the sports betting ban and that a different outcome was “really questionable.” Lesniak remains undaunted, saying if the court addresses substance over procedural issues, the outcome should be a no-brainer in favor of his side. “It should not take long in U.S. District Court to get a decision,” he said.

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Gambling Gains: Another Victory for Sports Betting, in N.J.

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Seriously? Verizon To Charge Fee For Paying Bill Online

December 29, 2011

In a move that is sure to upset some customers, Verizon has announced on its website that it will start charging a $2 convenience fee “for customers who make single bill payments online or by telephone.” The $2 fee will apply to those who pay with credit or debit cards on a per-statement basis, either through the company’s website or by telephone, and the company says that the fee is designed to offset the cost that credit card companies charge Verizon for processing payments. On its website, Verizon is encouraging its customers to choose one of seven alternative payment options to avoid incurring the fee — those options include enrolling in an Auto-Pay system on the company’s website, paying via check or cash via mail, paying at a Verizon kiosk, or paying with a Verizon gift card. The new fee goes into effect on January 15. Here, from the Verizon website , is the complete list of your options to avoid the new $2 fee: Electronic check online (My Verizon Online, My Verizon Mobile/Handset). Fee waived. Electronic check via telephone. Fee waived. Enrollment in AutoPay using credit/debit/ATM card or electronic check; fee does not apply Online from the customer’s home-banking service provider website; fee does not apply. Credit/debit/ATM card, electronic check or cash at a Bill Payment Kiosk, Panel or with a representative at a Verizon Wireless Communications Store; fee does not apply. Use of a Verizon Wireless Gift Card or Verizon Wireless device Rebate Card to pay a bill in-store, online or by telephone; fee does not apply Paper check or money order mailed to the VZW remit address on customer’s bill; fee does not apply. Consumer advocacy blog Consumerist, meanwhile, offers an eighth option for avoiding the $2 fee: Switching to another wireless carrier. Public outrage over the new fee is mounting: A popular post in online message board Reddit’s “WTF” section has already attracted dozens of upset commenters , as have the comment sections on stories posted on CNet , Aol sister site Engadget and Geek.com . Typical of the frustration are calls to stop using Verizon , a proposed campaign to get everyone to send in paper checks and money in order to overwhelm Verizon’s billing department, and labeling the new fee as “another ridiculous cash grab.” Verizon customers can change their payment options on Verizon’s website .

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Marcin Jakubowski On The DIY Civilization

December 19, 2011

In this special year-end collaboration, TED and The Huffington Post are excited to count down 18 great ideas of 2011, featuring the full TEDTalk with original blog posts that we think will shape 2012. Watch, engage and share these groundbreaking ideas as they are unveiled one-by-one, including never-seen-before TEDTalk premieres. Standby, the countdown is underway! Watch Open Source Ecology Founder Marcin Jakubowski discuss the prospects for an open source, do it yourself civilization. Then read Isaiah Saxon’s follow-up blog post on that idea below. Our species is defined by our relationship to machines — the countless “extensions of man” which now completely encase our lives. The particulars of this relationship — the quality and style and outcomes — are of utmost importance to everyone. So far, the general story is that over the last 10,000 years we’ve increased specialization, scale, and efficiency, which has led to an abundance of nearly everything. Some places have missed out, but, we are told, its only a matter of time before everyone lives longer, wealthier lives . In another TED Talk, Matt Ridley has correctly made this argument for specialization, owing much to the original essay, I Pencil , by Leonard E. Read. However, there is a growing desire around the world to fundamentally remix this relationship with machines and specialization — to increase access, engagement, and understanding. This movement wants to put people at the center — to both democratize and demystify technology. Some in this movement are fueled by necessity, while others are uncomfortable with passive consumption, while others seek out fun. The DIY ethic unites them. Their banner is OSAT — open source appropriate technology. The most idealistic, defiant, and ambitious project among this movement is being led by a group called Open Source Ecology . This scattered network of engineers, farmers and supporters is working to build the Global Village Construction Set — a modular, DIY, low-cost, open source, high performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different industrial machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts. Wow, that’s a big sentence. Their primary aim is to lower the barriers-to-entry into farming, building, and manufacturing. They are crazy, naive, and headstrong — but they may succeed, and the implications would be incredible. So far, they’ve prototyped 8 of the 50 Machines — the tractor, drill press, soil pulverizer, torch table, hydraulic power unit, compressed earth brick press, walk-behind tractor, and 150-ton hole puncher. Along the way, they’ve been publishing the designs and instructions on their wiki . They’ve been financially supported by the crowd. A growing base of more than 400 “true fans” pays a small amount every month, and their recently successful Kickstarter campaign will help to build a 5k sq. ft. fabrication training facility at OSE’s rural Missouri headquarters. OSE’s next step in 2012 is to build the next 8 prototypes of the GVCS — and they’re focusing exclusively on fabrication tools. This “Open Source Microfactory” would make it possible to transform scrap metal into the products of advanced civilization. Right now, to build one of the GVCS machines, you need to order parts online, but the Microfactory would enable DIY production of a majority of those components — including ball bearings, hydraulic motors, electrical generators, microcontrollers, nuts and bolts, and steel tubing. The lineup of the Microfactory looks like this: CNC Multimachine, CNC Circuit Mill/3d Printer, Induction Furnace, Ironworker, CNC Torch Table, Universal Welder, CNC Lasercutter, Hot Metal Roller. The science fiction author Robert Heinlein once said “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” This exuberant version of humanness is visible in OSE’s founder and director, Marcin Jakubowski . He’s a Princeton graduate and earned a Phd in fusion energy, yet he spends his time in the muddy trenches of a cold farm in the middle of nowhere — fabricating, farming, and building. He’s thrown his whole body at this project in a way that some see as courageous, others as unyielding. In Missouri, Marcin leads research, prototyping and testing of the machines. It’s a constant adventure, being displayed on OSE’s blog . However, the whole point is to share the instructions, and they’ve got to be comprehensive. So, for every machine they build, OSE is publishing an online library that includes pretty much everything — the design rationale, 3d CAD files, 2d fabrication drawings, circuit board design files, wiring diagrams, machine-readable CAM files, exploded parts diagrams, CAE analysis, step-by-step videos, control codes for automated devices, scaling calcations, the physics of why it works, and the performance and cost analysis vs. industry standards. They’re also promising a user manual that will include the operation procedures, safety, maintenance, troubleshooting, and repair. There’s a lot of activity in this space. Groups such as Practical Action , Appropedia , and Howtopedia all provide instructional knowledge repositories. Recently, a new gold standard for the “how to” genre was released by two Swedish designers — taking a cue from IKEA. Their instructions for a pedal-powered industrial juicer are able to transcend language barriers through pictograms — enabling semi-literate engineers in Kenya’s informal maker economy . In the states, Farm Hack is working to publish improvised solutions useful to young farmers. Lasersaur , DIYLILCNC , Reprap , and others are all sharing plans and promoting a culture of Open Hardware — not to mention the resurgence of consumer kits. The GVCS is distinguished from these projects in that it seeks to create an entirely new, integrated ecology of machines. Their thinking is that we can’t always rely on fixing old stuff, and old stuff is different wherever you go. Decisions regarding which machines to include in the GVCS are made using a rigorous selection matrix that skews towards robust utility and the fulfilment of necessities. Their design methodology emphasizes user serviceability and heirloom strength. Remember, its the 50 machines that it takes to build civilization from scratch and scrap. A lot of people think this is ridiculous and overly ambitious. It is. It’s a big, hairy, audacious goal . Frankly, they’ll need way more help if it’s going to happen — more project managers and more full-time leaders like Marcin. Ironically, their first sign of real success might be to see the plans being used in cheap Chinese factories. Whatever happens, I think there’s a lot being discovered by this project. Can people from all over the world come together over the internet to recreate their relationship to industrial machines? We’ll shall see.

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Verizon Secures Deal With Huge Cable Company

December 16, 2011

NEW YORK — Cable company Cox Communications on Friday said that it has agreed to sell some of its airwave licenses to Verizon Wireless for $315 million and will resell Verizon service in its stores. The deal mimics on struck between Verizon Wireless and three other cable companies two weeks ago. Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks gave up their ambitions to run their own wireless network and signed co-marketing agreements with Verizon. Unlike the other cable companies, Cox had taken steps to use its spectrum. But it gave up on its plans to build a wireless network earlier this year, saying it couldn’t compete with bigger cellphone companies. Privately held Cox is the third-largest cable company in the country. It is based in Atlanta and has about 6 million customers. The spectrum Cox is selling is in the same frequency band as the licenses the other cable companies agreed to sell, which makes it easier for Verizon Wireless to put it to use. It covers 28 million people, chiefly in areas where Cox provides cable service. Cox also has spectrum in another frequency band, which is not part of the deal. Spectrum sales are subject to approval by the Federal Communications Commission. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of phone company Verizon Communications Inc. of New York and Vodafone Group PLC of Britain. An odd consequence of the deals the cable companies is that Verizon Wireless stores will be selling cable TV service, in competition with Verizon Communications’ own FiOS TV service. Verizon Communications shares edged up 23 cents to $38.65 in midday trading.

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Lorraine Devon Wilke: Design Media & MashPlant: Small Companies Successfully Occupying Main Street

November 21, 2011

As crowds occupy cities to protest the dubious moral codes and fancy financial finagling of big business and bigger Wall Street; as Republicans rail against taxes and regulations on the 1% under the guise of protecting the 99; as Dems struggle with competing missions within their own party, and all of this exhaustively plays out on national and world stages, out here on Main Street where most of us live, the push toward hope and reinvention quietly continues. Yes, homes and businesses are foreclosed every day as unemployment persists and people remain shaky about what’s next, but even in the cacophony of chaos there are many still doing what creative people do when left to their own devices: They’re being creative. Becoming entrepreneurs. Imagining, brainstorming, providing services, launching ideas, sustaining companies, managing innovations and, somewhere in there, they’re having fun, worrying a lot, supporting their families and doing good, solid work. They’re survivors who maintain faith in themselves and their ideas; faith in our economy, our country, and our government. Yep… Main Street kind of folk building Main Street kind of companies. Two of these happen to be founded by people I know, people with bold mission statements and relentless drive to make a difference. One is shepherding a new endeavor at a time when other, less courageous, entrepreneurs are back-burnering their “good idea.” The other has been around for a while, surviving despite the precarious downturn that hit her industry hard. Let’s start with her. Pamela May is the hardest working woman in the media business. With 30 years into Design Media , a company she founded in San Francisco, CA, to provide “learning and performance solutions across a wide range of industries and content topics,” this creative, indefatigable thinker has put it all on the line to build, develop and sustain a small company focused on the “art, science and design of learning.” With a tight, creative team, and a wealth of experience and business acumen, Pamela has built a deep and loyal client base from the biotech, finance, and government industries, to museums, schools and retail companies. Working in collaboration with her clients, Pamela and her staff develop and create innovative educational websites and web-based training pieces, instructional videos, intranet productions, classroom training protocols and a whole slew of cutting edge media product. Those are the buzzword descriptions. The “web content” take. But as any small company knows, the tone is set by the CEO, the head, the top banana, and Pamela is a unique combination of charm and fierceness, brilliant awareness and consummate loyalty; deep consideration but no tolerance for bullshit. In short, a kickass businesswoman. She laughs like no one else (tears are inevitable!), has profound empathy, but is decidedly selective in her friendships and collaborations, always choosing the best and brightest in both categories. She raised a family of three girls with her husband, a successful San Francisco physician; has traveled the world, fronted a band, and still prefers dancing over other forms of exercise. And while handily spinning all these plates, she somehow managed to keep a small business afloat even when the belt-tightening threatened to cut off proper circulation. She’s a success by every measure of the word and as the economy slowly creaks its way back to solvency, one can only hope this dedicated, tenacious businesswoman is awarded mightily for keeping people employed, producing quality work, and being the exact sort of entrepreneur who exemplifies the mission statement of our country. Visit her site ( www.DesignMedia.com ), give her a call, and if she and her team can assist with your project’s needs, you’ll be in excellent hands. Then there’s Jason Brett , a wild, gregarious, whip-smart fellow who’s wrangled everything from music (a popular performer in the Chicago area), to theater (one of the original founders of the Apollo Theater in Chicago), to film (co-produced the seminal ’80s hit, About Last Night ), and, most recently, to the clever and timely creation of MashPlant , a tween-oriented alternative to Facebook. At a time when families with kids in the precarious age bracket of 9 to 12 are frantically (and usually futilely!) running interference on Internet sites geared for older kids and adults, this father of two decided to take his creative experience and business savvy to conjure an exciting social media alternative kids of the age would actually gravitate towards. MashPlant launched earlier this year at a time when naysayers might have suggested waiting for some uptick in the economic temperature, but Jason is never one to pause. A pilot, a widower who raised two girls on his own, a newly-married man grounded to the neighborhoods and friendships of his youth on the South Side of Chicago, Jason long ago discarded the cliché of safe and sure, angling, instead, for edgy, exciting, and always fun. Put him in a room with anyone and he’ll have them in stitches before they can state their names. That trait has won him many a fan; his friends love him for the whole panoply of heart and soul he invariably brings to the table! MashPlant is finding its feet as “a cool, new space for 6th, 7th and 8th graders, where creativity and collaboration rule!” They recently teamed up with the Chicago Tribune to sponsor the ” Make Your Mark On Literacy ” campaign, raising funds using an original song written specifically for a MashPlant-sponsored flash mob , the video of which can be found at their site. If you have kids of a certain age who you’d like to steer away from TMZ, YouTube and Facebook, may I suggest a peruse of the colorful and very cool MashPlant? These two innovators and entrepreneurs are colleagues, collaborators and, mostly, friends, but I’m writing about them not to promote their businesses or burnish my friend-cred; I’m writing about them because at a time when so much media attention is focused on the negatives of the economy, when political campaigning too often mongers fear and pits one side against the other, when nameless, faceless Big Business is too often associated with corruption and callousness, I think it bears reminding that in big cities and small towns all over this country, Main Streets are still occupied by bright, creative people working hard and contributing much… and doing so with unassailable integrity and inventiveness. There’s no big money here (not yet, anyway!), no big stories, no reality shows, scandals or tawdry tales. Just two good, honest people creating jobs, producing good work, and making a positive difference in the world in which they live. They’re not the only ones. I just thought you should meet two of the best. For more information on Design Media, go to www.DesignMedia.com . For more information on MashPlant go to www.MashPlant.com .

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Software Maker To Lay Off Hundreds As Part Of Restructuring Plan

November 8, 2011

Adobe Systems Inc plans to lay off 750 positions and take a charge of up to $94 million as part of a restructuring to re-focus the company on digital media and marketing. Shares in the design software maker, which is updating its suite of products to keep pace with new trends and moving to support the increasingly popular HTML5 programing language, fell almost 7 percent in after-hours trade. Adobe said in a statement on Tuesday it expects to record pre-tax charges of $87 million to $94 million for consolidation and severance, of which $73 million to $78 million would be booked in the fiscal quarter ending December 2. Adobe said it was sticking with previous estimates for the fourth quarter for both revenue and earnings excluding items. In September, Adobe projected revenue of $1.075 billion to $1.125 billion, and earnings excluding items of 57 cents to 64 cents a share, on a non-GAAP basis. Shares in Adobe slid to $28.30 in extended trading, from a close of $30.42 on the Nasdaq. (Reporting by Edwin Chan; editing by Carol Bishopric) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Soren Petersen: Music Stylist — the Commercial Effect You Can Hear and Feel

October 27, 2011

A soundtrack counts for at least half of the experience in the creation of a commercial and the music stylist is the one responsible for setting the director’s visual universe to music. Creative people often specialize in a narrow field and may possess only rudimentary musical knowledge. Often, a music stylist is brought in to provide relevant, innovative and unexpected music themes and to translate them into powerful tunes that evoke strong emotions in the listener. Jesper Gadeberg, from Denmark, is one of the world’s leading music stylists, assembling commercial soundtracks for firms ranging from American Airlines, Audi and Volvo to Guinness and Absolut Vodka. He developed his passion and knowledge of music while working in a record shop in Copenhagen. Over time, he realized there was a market for locating just the right sounds for commercials. He now specifies sound effects, discovering tracks and brokering deals between producers and artists from around the world, and much of this magic is performed from his beautiful cottage on the Danish coast! In advertising, as in many creative fields, having the best contacts is key. It is very important for major clients to work with those they consider the best of the best. This includes everyone from the director, stylist, prop guy and location scout to the actors and music stylist. The advertising industry has a unique business model since it makes its money by charging fifteen percent overhead when buying slots for commercials in TV, radio and movies. Web-episodes are now popular and the trend is for commercials to become longer and to be based on short fiction format stories. The product is introduced in the beginning and then reinforced by one or more product placements. The creation of a soundtrack begins with the music stylist receiving a reference advertisement and storyboard of the commercial. Ideally, they then present proposals for a soundtrack before beginning to shoot and this is especially essential if the actors need to sing in the commercial. Sometimes the music does not yet exist and has to be created from scratch, while, at other times, musicians can take an existing track and change it to match the envisioned commercial. Commercial soundtracks can be powerful social trend promoters and music stylists can spot promising future bands and help make them famous. A unique commercial for Spanish beer quickly launched a new band to the top of the charts when all summer long, the whole of Spain began humming the song from the commercial. So, as with many other endeavors, being a successful music stylist is about staying in the forefront of your field, doing inspired work and building and maintaining your connections.

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Matt Cohen: Design by Committee Is Dangerous: How Too Much Input Can Kill Any Good Idea

October 4, 2011

If you ever work as part of a committee, team, or task force, you may want to circulate the following case study: According to the masthead, the artists and writers for MAD Magazine are collectively known as “The Usual Gang of Idiots.” In the interest of full disclosure, I am obliged to tell you that I am one of MAD’s writers. As a member of that gang, I can personally verify that all of the members are indeed complete idiots. But even idiots can be smart sometimes. For example, back in 1959, MAD Magazine ran a classic article that specifically dealt with market research. The article, written by Sy Reit and featuring art by Bob Clarke, was called “America’s Dream Car.” The premise was that people were dissatisfied with the current state of car design and therefore a little market research would produce some innovative new vehicles that everybody would love. According to the introduction to the article, … MAD took a nationwide poll, asking people what changes they wanted–and here are the results of that poll. Using a composite model of typical American cars, we’ve indicated below what the public wants included in America’s Dream Car. Here’s their picture of the average American car (remember, this was published in 1959.) The boxes with arrows contain 22 suggestions that they gathered through their market research. Obviously, they’re all made up by writer Sy Reit, but many of the requested changes seem like things that could have plausibly been said by somebody completing a survey, including: Increase head and leg room. Shorten over-all hood length to improve driver’s visibility. Simplify dashboard instruments. Eliminate excessive and gaudy chrome. Re-design body shell to raise doors for better clearance at curbs. Re-design and reduce size of tail fins. That sounds like sensible feedback, right? Any sane marketing department would tell the design division to make those changes happen ASAP. The article goes on to say that after conducting their market research, …We took all of those ideas, sat down at the drafting board, and went to work. And on the following page you’ll find the results of our labors. Yes! Here at last — based on your suggestions — is America’s Dream Car! Here’s what they came up with: That one image is the perfect visual representation of the dangers of design by committee. There’s no denying that this “new” design takes all of the feedback into account: There’s more headroom, the hood is shorter, the dashboard isn’t cluttered with too many instruments, the tacky chrome and dated tail fins are gone, and the doors won’t bang into the curb. But nobody in their right mind would say that the Model T is an improvement on, say, the 57 Cadillac. You’d have to be a real idiot to think that. And yet, you’ve probably seen otherwise intelligent coworkers fall into the same trap that MAD warned us about over 50 years ago. Sometimes the trap springs when market research is misinterpreted, misapplied, or simply accepted as gospel without any further investigation. At other times, the trap lurks in a committee meeting full of people willing to water down a design or a strategy in the name of compromise. Whatever the case, the next time you see design by committee happening at your office, ask everybody if they want to build the visionary car of the future or the consensus-driven car of the past.

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GM labor deal heads toward UAW vote

September 20, 2011

By Bernie Woodall and David Bailey DETROIT (Reuters) – About 48,500 General Motors Co workers at U.S. factories will begin considering the details of a proposed four-year contract on Tuesday that represents the first labor deal for the automaker since its 2009 bailout by the Obama administration. Local leaders from the United Auto Workers union are scheduled to meet on Tuesday in Detroit to review and approve the deal, which will then be sent to a ratification vote by GM workers expected to be completed within a week. That clears the way for UAW President Bob King to turn to Chrysler Group LLC, the smallest of the Detroit automakers, where contract talks broke off last week on the cusp of an expected agreement. Chrysler Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne is expected to return to Detroit by Tuesday to resume talks with UAW President Bob King. The GM deal is expected to provide a rough blueprint for contracts at Chrysler and Ford Motor Co, although total compensation at the companies is expected to differ more sharply than in the past. Chrysler, which is controlled by Fiat SpA, has insisted that it hold the line near its current level of about $49 per hour in average wages and benefits. By contrast, GM and Ford are higher, at $56 per hour and $58 per hour respectively. The UAW’s four-year contracts with all three Detroit automakers expired last week. All three contracts were extended indefinitely as talks continued. At stake are wages and benefits for about 112,500 unionized U.S. auto workers at GM, Chrysler and Ford, who have gone without a base pay increase since 2003. The contracts will also set a benchmark for wages at auto parts suppliers and at nonunion plants operated by Asian and German automakers in the southern United States. The talks in Detroit have played out at a time of increasing uncertainty about the strength of U.S. auto sales and the risk of another recession. The outline of the proposed GM contract has become clear since GM and the UAW reached a deal late Friday, but details of the agreement have not been confirmed by either side. Sources with knowledge of the proposed GM contract have said it includes recalling about 570 laid off GM workers, one-time bonus payments of about $5,000 and bringing new assembly work to an idled Tennessee plant that had been the home of the Saturn brand. Workers hired at a second-tier entry level wage of about $15 per hour under the 2007 agreement between the union and U.S. automakers would also receive wage increases of about $2 per hour under the proposed deal. The bonuses and profit-sharing were offered by automakers rather than traditional wage increases to prevent the rise in fixed costs that contributed to the industry’s near collapse. The UAW gave up its right to strike GM or Chrysler as part of the government bailouts. Workers at Ford, which did not take a government bailout, have indicated that they expect a better deal than the one just negotiated with GM. Ford funded its turnaround on its own and workers retained the right to strike at the No. 2 automaker. The UAW has hoped to use new labor agreements with the Detroit automakers as a springboard to winning first-ever contracts to represent workers at U.S. factories operated by Japanese, Korean and German automakers. (Additional reporting and Kevin Krolicki in Detroit; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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GOP Congressman Calls For Independent Investigator In White House Loan To Failed Solar Firm

September 20, 2011

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on Monday called for an independent investigator to look into a $528 million loan approved by the Obama administration for a now-bankrupt solar energy company. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said an outside lawyer is needed to determine “whether politics played a role” in the Energy Department loan for California-based Solyndra Inc., which declared bankruptcy this month and laid off its 1,100 workers. “An independent examiner will uncover the truth about whether politics played a role in influencing the Obama administration to favor Solyndra over more financially stable loan applicants and thus ensure the integrity of the bankruptcy process for all creditors,” Smith wrote in a three-page letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. The FBI and the Energy Department’s inspector general are already investigating the Solyndra loan, which has become a flashpoint in a partisan debate over subsidies for so-called green jobs. The Fremont, Calif.-based company was the first renewable-energy company to receive a loan guarantee under a stimulus-law program to encourage green energy and was frequently touted by the Obama administration as a model. President Barack Obama visited the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters last year, and Vice President Joe Biden spoke by satellite at its groundbreaking. Since then, the company’s implosion and revelations that the administration hurried Office of Management and Budget officials to finish their review of the loan in time for the September 2009 groundbreaking has become an embarrassment for Obama as he sells his new job-creation program around the country. An Associated Press review of regulatory filings shows that Solyndra was hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars for years before the Energy Department signed off on the original $535 million loan guarantee in September 2009. The company eventually got $528 million. Republicans also question a decision in February to restructure the loan in such a way that private investors, including an Obama fundraiser, moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default. Administration officials say the restructuring was necessary. Without an infusion of cash, Solyndra would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, they said. Given the company’s shaky financial condition, Smith and other Republicans say the decision to restructure the loan raises questions about whether the administration protected political supporters at taxpayers’ expense. A spokeswoman said the Justice Department had received the letter and was reviewing it.

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Rocky Kistner: Intelligent Design; the Little Light Bulb Maker That Could

September 15, 2011

About an hour from  the birthplace of Thomas Edison, in a cul-de-sac of a suburban industrial park outside Cleveland, is the biggest energy-saving light bulb company you never heard of. That company — TCP Inc — is part of a money-saving lighting business  that is revolutionizing the way consumers think about light in their homes. For more than a decade, TCP (Technical Consumer Products), has been quietly stealing the thunder — and engineering staff — of its much more recognizable Cleveland neighbor, GE. But TCP has become the mouse that roared. It’s leap-frogged larger traditional lighting companies in a global quest to make innovative energy-efficient bulbs of the future. Thanks to companies like TCP, new watt-cutting lights are an easy way for consumers to slash their rising utility bills. And the bulbs will only get better.   TCP now produces more energy-efficient compact fluorescents (CFL) than any other, making in-house brands for giant consumer outlets like Home Depot. Company engineers continue to use their technical wizardry to improve light bulb characteristics, including new quick starting and dimable CFLs to highly efficient 50,000 hour LEDs  that will save customers big bucks long into the future.     And starting next year, TCP will be producing a new and improved incandescent that is 50 percent more efficient. For those fans of Edison’s original bulb design, people can stop  hoarding. TCP has solidified its role as an innovation leader by developing an energy-efficient incandescent  with the same traditional shape, but that uses half the watts.   TCP’s Ohio headquarters and bulb warehouse      All photos: Rocky Kistner/NRDC Also on tap next year are plans to expand  its Cleveland engineering and warehouse facility to start making highly efficient CFLs. That’s a welcome relief for an economy desperate for new employment opportunities. TCP officials say even more U.S. jobs will be created as light bulb manufacturing becomes more automated, reducing the incentive to base plants overseas.  Bringing home jobs is an important objective of Ellis Yan, TCP’s founder and president. As a U.S. college student, Yan recognized the value of a more efficient light bulb, a technology that hadn’t changed much in a century. Yan grasped the importance of the CFL after it was invented by former GE engineer Ed Hammer (now a TCP consultant) during the energy shocks of the 1970s.  GE didn’t actually produce the early CFLs since there wasn’t an efficient way to make them. Each one had to be made by hand. So in 1993, Ellis and his brother Soloman formed TCP and began manufacturing them in their native China, a country where labor was cheap enough to hire thousands of workers to bend the glass into curly-q-bulbs one by one. But times have changed. TCP quickly developed an automated system that now has the capacity to crank out nearly two million bulbs a day at its manufacturing plants in China. And more of those manufacturing jobs will be brought to the U.S. next year when the company begins making CFLs at a new production line in Ohio. TCP lighting assemblers and engineers in the lab Looking forward, TCP will continue to create more efficient bulbs, thanks in no small part to people like Tim Chen, TCP’s chief engineer. Chen worked for nearby GE until he was talked into joining TCP’s ambitious bulb designing team three years ago. Since then, Chen has helped the company overcome some of the most important CFL technical challenges; slow start up, no dimability and poor color temperature. TCP now makes bulbs that can be dimmed and start up quickly, producing different color temperatures of light that people can use in different settings of their house. The new designs and lighting technology advances have turned the sometimes ridiculed curly-cued CFLs into bulbs consumers have come to embrace. Chen says his engineering feats are due to the company’s philosophy of taking risks to solve specific problems. “I give all the credit to our founder (Ellis Yan),” Chen said. “He said this is the problem, you go solve it. Lots of companies aren’t willing to take that risk.” Tim Chen and his engineering colleagues are given free rein to solve the vexing problems that lighting engineers face everywhere. They huddle in their labs, tinkering with electrical components and gasses that squeeze more energy efficiency into each bulb and improve the color and lighting variability each one puts out. Vast trays of lights blink on and off in a ceaseless effort to create bulbs that are more efficient, durable and more pleasing to the eye.  TCP Chief Engineer Tim Chen and racks of bulbs undergoing testing in Ohio. Engineers say in the future, the light bulbs of the world may all talk to each other the way computers do now. They may be smart enough to turn on and off automatically, and perhaps even change the color and temperature of the light depending on the mood of the moment. Bulbs someday could even outlive the people who bought them. Who knows, maybe they will be passed down through the generations. These are the kinds of things TCP engineers will be grappling with as the demands of the world change. But one thing is for certain; the light bulb of the future will in no way look and act like the common incandescent light that dominated the world for so long. They no longer will be your grandfathers’ bulbs.  For future generations — and a sustainable planet — that is a very good thing.

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Study Finds Gov. Workers Cheaper Than Contractors, As Politicians Tout Cutting Their Ranks

September 14, 2011

The federal government could save billions of dollars by doing more work in-house instead of outsourcing to private contractors, a new study shows. The Project On Government Oversight found that the federal government pays private contractors on average 1.83 times more than it pays its own employees for the same work, according to the group’s study released yesterday. In 12 out of the 35 occupations categories POGO analyzed, the federal government paid private contractors more than double the rate of federal government employees for the same services. The study indicates that a widely held view — that privatizing government services would make them cheaper — may be wrong. Despite the POGO study findings, Republican candidates for president are touting the notion that the government spends too much money staffing its own ranks as they campaign for their party’s nomination for president. Marick Masters, a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, said that while the study doesn’t compare the overhead and material costs of government projects to those of private contractors, it indicates that the government could be spending too much of private sector contracts. “We want to take a good careful look at the real cost of contracting these services and whether we’re getting as much out of it as possible,” he said. One way of doing this, POGO suggests, is for Congress to make the pricing process for awarding federal contracts more transparent, among other recommendations. “The federal government is not doing a good job of obtaining genuine market prices, and therefore the savings often promised in connection with outsourcing services are not being realized,” the report said. Though the study finds that the government spends more overall on private contractors than on government workers federal government employees make 5 percent more per year on average than a private sector worker performing a similar services, according to an ABC News report . This may be because government workers are more likely to have benefit plans. About 20 percent of private sector workers have pension plans, compared to 79 percent of public sector workers, according to the ABC report. The POGO report stands in contrast to a study published in 2010 by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, which advocated hiring more private contractors because government workers earn more than private sector workers performing the same services, even when accounting for skills differences. Even with debate on the issue still brewing, Republican presidential candidates are advocating on the campaign trail to shift more government work to the private sector. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, one of the front-runners for the Republican nomination, said there are “too many” workers in the federal government’s ranks during a New Hampshire campaign stop last month, according to Think Progress . “Federal employees, we’ve got too many of them, and they’re paid too much,” he said. “In many cases, they do a good job, we respect the work that they do, it’s important work that they do. We just have too many.” Texas Governor Rick Perry, another Republican frontrunner, has said repeatedly that he believes the government isn’t a place for job creation, even as he grew added state government workers during his tenure as governor, according to an ABC News report . Republicans aren’t the only ones wary of the cost of government workers. President Barack Obama enacted a two-year freeze on the salaries of government workers in November that could harm “the government’s ability to hire and retain federal employees and thus increase the need for contractors,” according to the POGO report.

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Analysis Suggests Earthquakes Pose Greater Risk To Nuclear Plants Than Previously Thought

September 1, 2011

WASHINGTON — The risk that an earthquake would cause a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear plant is greater than previously thought, 24 times as high in one case, according to an AP analysis of preliminary government data. The nation’s nuclear regulator believes a quarter of America’s reactors may need modifications to make them safer. The threat came into sharp focus last week, when shaking from the largest earthquake to hit Virginia in 117 years appeared to exceed what the North Anna nuclear power plant northwest of Richmond was built to sustain. The two North Anna reactors are among 27 in the eastern and central U.S. that a preliminary Nuclear Regulatory Commission review has said may need upgrades. That’s because those plants are more likely to get hit with an earthquake larger than the one their design was based on. Just how many nuclear power plants are more vulnerable won’t be determined until all operators recalculate their own seismic risk based on new assessments by geologists, something the agency plans to request later this year. The NRC on Thursday issued a draft of that request for public comment. The review, launched well before the East Coast quake and the Japan nuclear disaster in March, marks the first complete update to seismic risk in years for the nation’s 104 existing reactors, despite research showing greater hazards. The NRC and the industry say reactors are safe as they are, for now. But emails obtained in a more than 11,000-page records request by The Associated Press show that NRC experts were worried privately this year that plants needed stronger safeguards to account for the higher risk assessments. The nuclear industry says last week’s quake proved reactors are robust. When the rumbling knocked out off-site power to the North Anna plant in Mineral, Va., the reactors shut down and cooled successfully, and the plant’s four locomotive-sized diesel generators turned on. The quake also shifted about two dozen spent fuel containers, but Dominion Virginia Power said Thursday that all were intact. Still, based on the AP analysis of NRC data, the plant is 38 percent more likely to suffer core damage from a rare, massive earthquake than it appeared in an analysis 20 years ago. That increased risk is based on an even bigger earthquake than the one last week. Richard Zuercher, a spokesman for Dominion, the plant operator, says the earlier estimate “remains sound because additional safety margin was built into the design when the station was built.” The safety cushion would shrink, though, if the plant’s risk is found to be greater. Federal scientists update seismic assessments every five to six years to revise building codes for some structures. But no similar system is in place for all but two of the nation’s 104 reactors – even though improving earthquake science has revealed greater risks than previously realized. The exception is Diablo Canyon in earthquake-prone California, which has been required to review the risk of an earthquake routinely since 1985. The NRC does not require plants to re-examine their seismic risks to renew operating licenses for 20 years. After the March earthquake in Japan that caused the biggest nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, NRC staffers fretted in emails that the agency’s understanding of earthquake risk for existing reactors was out of date. In a March 15 email, for example, an NRC earthquake expert questioned releasing data to the public showing how strong an earthquake each plant was designed to withstand. The seismologist, Annie Kammerer, acknowledged that recent science showed stronger quakes could happen. “Frankly, it is not a good story for us,” she wrote to agency colleagues. Kammerer’s boss, Brian Sheron, who heads the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, wrote in a March 14 email that updated numbers showed the government “didn’t know everything about the seismicity” in the central and the eastern part of the country. “And isn’t there a prediction that the West Coast is likely to get hit with some huge earthquake in the next 30 years or so? Yet we relicense their plants,” he wrote. The NRC flagged the 27 plants for possible upgrades by calculating the likelihood of a severe accident based on 2008 hazard maps from the U.S. Geological Survey and comparing it to the seismic risk estimated in 1989 or 1994. Those data were used the last time existing reactors evaluated their earthquake hazards. The NRC identified the 27 reactors with the greatest risk increase but did not provide the risk numbers. The AP used the NRC’s data and methodology to calculate the risk increase for each reactor. The Perry 1 reactor in Ohio tops the list with the steepest rise in the chance of core damage: 24 times as high as thought in 1989. The four other plants with the largest increases include River Bend 1 in Louisiana, up nine times; Dresden 2-3 in Illinois, eight times; Farley 1-2 in Alabama, seven times, and Wolf Creek 1 in Kansas, also seven times. The smallest increase was the 38 percent at North Anna. Todd Schneider, a spokesman for First Energy Corp., which operates the Perry plant, said the increase in its seismic risk estimated by the NRC is misleading. He said Perry is capable of withstanding an even larger earthquake than is typical for the region. Personnel at a handful of other plants, including Indian Point outside New York City and Oconee in South Carolina, have already redone the NRC’s calculations, and they show a much lower risk of core damage from earthquakes. Those calculations have not yet been reviewed by the agency, which along with other federal agencies is developing a baseline earthquake risk for every nuclear power plant to use. The average risk to U.S. reactors of core damage from a quake remains low, at one accident every 500 years, according to the AP analysis of NRC data. But predicting earthquake probability and damage is dicey; the Japanese nuclear industry was taken by surprise in March when a quake-driven tsunami far surpassed predictions and swamped the Fukushima Dai-ichi site. The U.S. nuclear industry may not be fully ready, either. Current regulations don’t require the NRC to make sure nuclear reactors are still capable of dealing with a new understanding of the threats. It’s not just earthquakes. It is all types of events, including floods, tornadoes and hurricanes, said an NRC official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the agency’s recent seismic work. The worry about earthquakes is not so much direct damage to the reactor vessel, the hardened enclosure where the nuclear reaction takes place, but to water tanks and mechanical and electrical equipment needed when disaster strikes. The failure of those systems could disable cooling needed to prevent meltdowns of radioactive fuel. In some of the emails obtained by the AP, NRC staffers worried that U.S. reactors had not thoroughly evaluated the effects of aftershocks and the combined impact of a tsunami and earthquake. They suggested plants might need more durable piping as well as better flood barriers and waterproof storage of essential equipment. Staffers talked of a need for bigger supplies of fuel and batteries for extended losses of all electrical power. One email expressed concern about some key pumps at Dresden that might fail in an earthquake. In a separate problem reported last month, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy acknowledged that its older control rods could get stuck if an earthquake struck when reactors were running at low power. Control rods are needed to stop the nuclear reaction. The manufacturer has alerted the operators of 35 U.S. reactors at 24 sites, who are checking whether replacements are needed. The AP documented scores of instances of such wear and tear in a range of equipment in a June investigative series showing that safety standards have been relaxed to keep aging reactors within the rules. When the NRC ran preliminary calculations of quake risk last year, it was the first time the agency had reassessed the threat since most plants were built. “The plants were more vulnerable than they realized, but they weren’t unsafe. We look at rare, rare events,” said Kammerer, the NRC seismologist. Plants built a generation ago were designed to withstand an earthquake larger than any known to have occurred in the area. But since then, scientists have been able to better estimate the earthquakes that are possible. And in some cases, those rare quakes could be larger and more frequent than those the plants were designed for. “If they met a certain level, they didn’t look any further,” Gregory Hardy, an industry consultant at Simpson, Gumpertz and Hegger in Newport Beach, Calif., said of some of the industry’s earlier assessments. “Forty years ago, when some of these plants were started, the hazard – we had no idea. No one did.” Seismologists inside the agency didn’t recognize that increasing earthquake risk was an issue until operators started applying to build new reactors at existing plant sites in the central and eastern United States in 2003. Those applications included a thorough analysis of the risk posed by earthquakes, which is required for all new nuclear power plants. In some cases, the result was much higher than risk calculations performed by the industry in the early 1990s as part of a broader assessment of worst-case disasters. “We did have some idea that the hazard was going up” in the period between the late 1990s analysis and the applications for new reactors, said Clifford Munson, a senior technical adviser in the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactors. But Munson said some of the research indicated that there was disagreement on whether the ground motion predicted would damage nuclear power plants. Kamal Manoly, another NRC senior technical adviser, said, “There was nothing alarming (enough) for us to take quick action.” But a task force requested by President Barack Obama to make U.S. safety recommendations after the Japanese accident has questioned that. Its three-month review concluded that existing reactors should re-examine their earthquake risk more often. Some operators are expressing caution about the NRC’s initial analysis, and say their own early calculations show that their facilities are at much lower risk. The differences between the calculations of government and industry have prompted some to call for a third-party review. “It sort of defies logic to ask the regulated entity to do the seismic analysis to determine whether upgrades are necessary or relicensing is appropriate,” said California Sen. Sam Blakeslee, a geophysicist who pushed a bill through the Legislature giving the California Energy Commission a role in assessing seismic risk, particularly at Diablo Canyon. “There needs to be a more arm’s length relationship in getting this technical information.” There will always be uncertainties, experts say. “If all these plants were subjected to large earthquakes, that’s the only way anybody can say for sure. But the only ones we know of are in Japan,” said Hardy, referring to the quake that struck in March and another in 2007 that damaged the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. “There is a pretty good technical feeling that U.S. plants are going to be safe,” Hardy said, “but there is just a question of how much work it will take to show it.” ___ Donn reported from Boston.

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Mitch Joel: New Media by Design

August 23, 2011

Why is it that the majority of online news sources all look the same? There is no doubt that news as we know it has forever changed because anyone and everyone can report on an incident live and in the moment. It’s hard for the most respected traditional media outlets to break major news events in this day and age. There’s even been some recent discussion online about whether or not any one outlet can break news anymore with an exclusive report because of our always on/always connected world. In fact, it’s not uncommon for major news outlets to be following the social media channels to source stories as they happen. Look no further than the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed and you’ll find a short-step to a tweet by IT consultant and Abbottabad, Pakistan resident, Sohaib Athar , who unknowingly busted the Navy SEAL’s cover when he tweeted , “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)” as the dramatic military operation was happening live and in real-time. Things got even more Twitter-centric when Keith Urbahn (former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ‘s chief of staff) tweeted , “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn,” nearly one hour prior to the official announcement from President Obama to the media and public. While CNN would like to take credit, it could be argued that Twitter is one of the many digital places where the real news is unfolding before our eyes… long before the journalists get their scoops. What could the news look like now? With apps like Flipboard and people saving interesting online snippets in places like Instapaper , the look and feel of our news is beginning to morph, but the look and feel has not been re-invented and this is a very curious thing. For the most part, we have a title, subtitle, byline, date of publishing, body of text and — if they’re more web-centric — reader comments. Some of the more forward-thinking online publishers may include more updated information as the story unfolds, but the common/only way of knowing this is by a “last updated” insert that resides next to the date of the published piece (more often than not, it’s hard to tell which parts of the content have been updated). We fail to realize that text is now three-dimensional. The Web is not a printed sheet of paper and those publishing content online should experiment with what that means. Because of links, people creating their own content on a similar theme and the constant evolution of a news story, we have to look at better ways to both present and keep the content fresh, up-to-date and more interesting. Recently, the CEO of an up-and-coming pharmaceutical company was injured in an accident. The individual was someone I knew, personally, but was — for the most part — an acquaintance. I was interested in staying apprised of their situation, but the online channel wasn’t much help. The only news published online was a copy/paste of the articles that ran in the respective newspapers. It would be interesting if these types of news items became more three-dimensional by allowing people with information to update the news item (perhaps the publishers could then vet this information and put a star next to items they have validated to be accurate). Pushing that idea further, the news item could then be updated but readers could go “back in time” to see how the versioning has evolved from when it was first reported. Why not allow readers to “subscribe” to the specific news item and they can be notified (by RSS or email) when the news item gets updated (and this includes entirely new articles about the same issue)? This is what will make the digital news more interesting. It won’t only make the news online more interesting, it may actually make it worth paying for. In fact, if done well (pushing beyond just how the news is reported and looking at the overall layout and design) it could make digital news worth more than what we’re currently paying for news and information. The trick (of course) is in making it better. Currently, even the most engaging blogs and mobile apps are nothing more than an evolution of what was available in print. The hard work of making the new media worth paying for isn’t only about the quality of the content, it’s also about making the actual platform more engaging by design and function. The good is news is that anything is possible. The bad news is that most media brands see it as an impossible task. Mitch Joel is president of Twist Image — an award-winning digital marketing agency. HIs first book, Six Pixels of Separation , named after his highly-successful blog and podcast of the same name is a business and marketing bestseller.

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Lighter Capital Commits $500 Thousand To ‘Explosive’ Start-Up

August 13, 2011

Small-business finance company, Lighter Capital , announced this week that it would fund up to $500,000 to an “explosive” new start-up business who applies through their website by August 31. The Seattle-based company, which describes itself as “entrepreneurs funding entrepreneurs,” says it’s looking for companies with the potential for “explosive” revenue growth, according to a press release . “We heard the banks were tightening credit, so we decided to do the opposite. We have a clock ticking to invest half a million bucks in at least one company by 5pm PST on August 31,” said Randall Lucas, VP of Lighter Capital. “If the banks aren’t going to fund awesome, growing companies, we will, no matter what the market does.” Lighter Capital’s mission, according to its website, is to “liberate small business owners from the onerous demands of banks and VCs.” In doing so, it has sought out off-beat entrepreneurs — from Laloo’s Goat’s Milk Ice Cream to a company who produces festival-style tomato battles — companies they say have one thing in common: brilliant entrepreneurs building awesome businesses. Their “revenue-based finance” model exchanges growth capital for a fixed percentage of the company’s revenues, which they believe helps entrepreneurs stay focused on growing their business. “We don’t buy shares, and we don’t look for traditional loan structures — instead, we buy a small percent of the company’s revenues, up until some cap, as our repayment stream. So we share the risks with the entrepreneur, and we are 100% aligned with the company on juicing revenue growth,” Lucas said, according to Business Insider . The model also allows Lighter Capital to fund businesses more quickly than banks and gives companies who may only be brining in $1 million or $2 million in revenue access to capital that they wouldn’t get otherwise.

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The Newspaper Is Dead, Long Live The Newspaper

July 6, 2011

As the global news media shifts from pulp to digital, cries of “Stop the press!” seem destined to fade into golden, halcyon twilight. But Newspaper Club , a three year-old London startup, offers a glimpse into a future where paper and presses might just have a place after all. The online company — now more of a cottage industry than a members-only club — bills itself as a place to “help people make their own newspapers.” Users can upload PDFs of their own designs or use a custom web publishing tool to design and create their own papers on the club’s website. Print runs can range anywhere from one black and white 12-page paper (priced at £14) to five thousand colour papers (more cost effective, with copies running at 22 pence a piece). One of the co-founders, Russell Davies, explaines that Newspaper Club began in 2008 when he and some colleagues — all part of the British design partnership Really Interesting Group — came together to make a Christmas present for friends; a one-off newspaper that aggregated interesting writing from the web, called ” Things Our Friends Have Written on the Internet .” The gift was, Davies said, “Insanely popular,” and led the group to wonder whether there might be a business in making custom papers. Some near 600 years since Gutenberg invented the printing press , newspapers have, according to Davies, “Evolved into the right size and format. People know how to touch, use and deal with newspapers.” The group’s goal was make it supremely easy for people to print them — specifically, by brokering with printing presses to arrange for very (very) small runs. “Dealing with printers is not really easy — especially now,” Davies explained. “We wanted to have a minimum run of five newspapers. But if you turn up at the average printer and say that, they’ll just laugh at you.” After doing initial research, the group determined that presses often sit idle during the day, before the traditional broadsheets are ready to go to press. All time during which they’re available to outside jobs, and can print at reasonable rates. “When we started, we had to work really hard to get the printers to take us seriously,” Davies recalled. “We had to pre-pay and demonstrate that we could deliver stuff in the format that they demanded.” If the printers were initially skeptical, Davies said that the Newspaper Club has since earned their trust. “There’s been a change of atmosphere,” he said. “They realise that a lot of their traditional business is going away. I would be surprised if there’s any new newspaper group in the UK that hasn’t wondered out-loud when their last printed issue will be. They realise that they have to find other customers.” These days, Davies says his group represents “a reasonable amount of [the printing press'] business.” By his estimate, in 2010 the Newspaper Group printed 500 different newspapers, ranging from editions of five to 10,000. At present, the club ships globally, although all the printing still occurs in the UK. “If we had tried to start this in the US, we never would have made it,” he explained, owing to the fact that the printing industry in the States is “much more vertically integrated” than in the UK — where the printing and newspaper industries have been decoupled for a considerable amount of time. With the emergence of a new generation of digital printers around the world, Davies foresees a day not far from now when the group will be printing cost effectively from the States, and possibly continental Europe. But as successful as Newspaper Club has been, Davies is not comfortable with the notion that his group might rescue the printed word. “We’re not saving newspapers,” he said. “We’re democratising newsprint, in some ways.” In large part the content printed is not news but personal material (custom wedding and graduation papers), local (sports club gazettes) and niche (limited-edition art and design journals). To the pulp enthusiasts who see the group as nobly resuscitating a format for history’s sake, Davies explained that, “We didn’t want to be a heritage business.” Rather, Newspaper Group and its founders believe in the printed format, “because there are still some things it does better than anything else.” As an example, he recalled a customer who created a paper to protest the closure of a local school. “The organisers were saying that they liked the fact that you could wave a newspaper in front of peoples’ faces,” Davies said. With newspapers, there’s a “physical meaning that an iPad doesn’t have.” At the moment Newspaper Club is working on developing tools to give users more options for layout as well as content-sharing options. Davies says the group is “having initial conversations with particular newspaper groups” to potentially publish content and share revenues — an option that would allow customers to publish papers around a certain news theme, for example. Davies says that the printing press may very well go the route of the denim loom or the vinyl press: both industries that saw a sharp decline as a result of changing habits, but ones that have since rebounded in niche markets — albeit in smaller numbers. “I think with the people who print newspapers, there will be less of them — but the ones that remain will be really interesting businesses,” he said. “And it’s nice to be part of that.”

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4 Examples Of Successful Joint Ventures

May 31, 2011

Joint venture commercial real estate . 07:51Examples of how rates of returns are increased by using joint ventures in commercial real estate . www.mdcrei.com. Joint Venture . 06:22. Strategic Joint Ventures & learn why your …

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Marc Stoiber: The Toilet that Taught Me an Innovation Lesson

May 24, 2011

I’m a creative director with a passion for innovation, brands and sustainability. When I write, it tends to be on topics that touch on all three. It’s a fascinating space, with no shortage of inspiration. So I was a bit surprised to get a note a few weeks back asking if I’d be interested in writing a piece on the Numi toilet. At first blush, the Numi is not the sort of innovation that sparks my interest. It’s a piece of ‘bells and whistles’ technology (motion activated seat and music, anyone?) at a price that would make the everyman blanch. When it comes to pushing innovation forward, I can’t help but think there are better things Kohler could focus on. (In fact, Kohler products like the DTV Prompt feel like a real step forward for consumers, the environment and innovation-seekers.) Nonetheless, I rang Matt Rolandson of Ammunition , the design firm responsible for the positioning strategy and communications campaign on the Numi project. I’m happy to say the conversation was an eye-opener. Wake Up, So-Called Innovation Thinker To my surprise, Matt agreed the Numi was completely out of sync with the prevailing zeitgeist of conscious consumption. He even pointed out the hilarious Conan take on the toilet’s unapologetic excess. But when we dug deeper into the worldview of the prospective buyer, I realized I’d neglected to consider the psyche of someone completely outside my sphere of reference. My thinking was, in innovation parlance, stuck inside the jar. The Numi buyer was an Asian magnate, Russian business oligarch, Saudi prince or wealthy wannabe. He was rich, and wanted an ostentatious reflection of his success. The Numi provided that in spades, at a fraction of the cost of a new Bugatti. Did this person feel a pang of conscience installing a Numi in every bathroom? Of course not. Did we, the folks looking over the fence, begrudge him the purchase? Maybe. But as Matt pointed out, the favorite films of the Great Depression were big, glitzy and glamorous. And today, the Robb Report sells briskly to folks who definitely don’t fit the millionaire model. A Parallel For Conscious Consumers Learning about the Numi was a refreshing wake-up call. It also gave me new perspective on marketing to consumers in my sphere of expertise. It appears there are more than a few of us thinking inside the green jar. OgilvyEarth recently released an enlightening study on the chasm between green products and prospective consumers. It identified several walls marketers continue to run up against in their bid to sell green. These walls illustrate that consumers are complex, contradictory and not moved to action simply because their future is threatened. Perhaps we could all use a perspective shift to get a fresh take on what makes these consumers tick. Lessons To Be Learned So what are the takeaways from my Numi experience — apart from gaining a newfound appreciation for disappearing bidets and illuminated toilet remote controls? 1. Thinking inside the jar is severely limiting, and can blind you to opportunities. If you can’t see the merit in a potential innovation, it pays to engage someone whose thinking doesn’t immediately line up with your own. 2. Not every innovation needs to redefine a category. The Numi is a toilet with an incredible array of superfluous gadgets. It’s an incremental innovation at best. But for its market, it fills a need perfectly. 3. Lessons learned in one context can bring a breath of fresh air to another. Learning about the Numi and its target consumer enabled me to step back and question whether the conscious consumer can be as neatly packaged as many green marketers believe.

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Beck Hires Harri Jarvenpaa as Senior Designer

May 23, 2011

  ATLANTA, GA (May 23, 2011) – The Beck Group’s Atlanta office said today that Harri M. Jarvenpaa (top right photo) , AIA, LEED AP, has joined the team as a senior designer. Harri has more than 15 years of experience in healthcare design and complex high-rise mixed-use construction. In his new role with Beck, Harri will manage pre-development services, conceptual design and facilitate meetings with municipal zoning and code officials. During his career, Harri has managed and designed projects in Georgia, Texas, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. The majority of these project budgets were between $50 million and $100 million. “Harri has extensive experience in healthcare design and construction,” said Fred Perpall (lower  left photo by KARL W. RITZLER/Special from Atlanta Journal Constitution) managing director of Beck’s Eastern Division. “This skillset will be a great asset to our design team.” Before joining Beck, Harri was a senior designer with The Peacock Partnership in Atlanta. His career has also included positions with The Preston Partnership and Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart and Associates. Harri is a member of the American Institute of Architects and the U.S. Green Building Council. He holds a Bachelors of Architecture from Mississippi State University. Dallas-based Beck is a full-service builder. Beck is in the business of devising solutions for clients needs through the development of real estate, the design of architecture and interiors and the construction of buildings.  Beck serves a wide range of industries, including arts, corporate, healthcare, entertainment, religious and education. Beck has more than 500 employees, many of whom are LEED-accredited professionals, working from a network of offices in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Mexico City, San Antonio and Tampa. For more information, go to www.beckgroup.com .   Contact: Laura Dudebout O: 404.965.5023 C: 678.642.4301 ldudebout@wilbertnewsstrategies.com

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Anne Phillips: Suckers in the Garden

May 13, 2011

PT Barnum I guess said it best ” There is a sucker born every minute.” Unfortunately I think we can be much more gullible when times are more difficult. When we get a call from a potential client that has a large project, or one that says they have several properties and is looking for a landscaper to partner with, we want to believe that it isn’t someone looking for free design ideas. Just like the suckers on your roses that drain the plant of energy, these folks looking for suckers to take advantage of take time away from serious clients and work. My goal, as with rose suckers, is to spot them quickly and snip them off before too much time is wasted. I just returned from a meeting I was supposed to have at a firm that billed itself as one that will assist you in getting government contracts. I had my doubts when speaking with them on the phone but when I looked at the website it looked professional. You see chamber associations, Better Business Bureau, and a Forbes link. There weren’t any reviews on any site posted so I thought I would check them out. As I waited for my appointment I looked at all of these framed chamber memberships, and the Forbes piece. It turns out the Forbes piece was a paid advertisement — so not an article on them at all. Nothing that they didn’t pay for was on that wall. All chamber memberships (paid for), the Better Business Bureau (which costs you $300 or so a year), and this advertisement. All of this with the hopes of making them look legitimate. The sad part about this is that many people that don’t have the experience or education will think this makes them a credible company. They are going after contractors that typically don’t have the highest levels of education and fit that category of being the hardest hit in the recession. It turns out of course that they charge you a fee to find this work. This is work that is available to anyone for free on government websites. I left without having the meeting. I do have to say the person that has put this together is slick. They schedule multiple people to come in at once. This way it looks like you are competing with other people. They have desks in the waiting room with folks that look like they are working (if you listen you hear they really aren’t but one of them was playing a game on her computer). They make it seem like you need to be interviewed to qualify but no input was given when questioned what those qualifications really are. Things really haven’t changed much since PT Barnum. The same conman tactics apply. This week I had what seemed like a nice couple contact me about doing some landscaping at a home they were remodeling and going to sell. I was told that they had several investment properties and they were looking for a new landscaper to work with. The one they had been working with was not honest with his pricing. I met with them, produced the estimate with some ideas on plants and hardscape. But instead of questions I got a request for a sketch for their financial partner. This of course is usually explained as just a formality, we really want to go with you because we like your ideas so far. Having been a sucker a few times in my early years as a designer, I recognize this as the I am looking for a free design so I can get some folks that are not licensed or insured to install it for me at half of what you will charge. As I always do now I say ” Great, I look forward to working with you. I will send over my design contract and we can get started. Design fees of course apply towards the installation so you don’t have to worry it won’t be extra for you.” At this point unless I have really misjudged them (unfortunately rarely happens) I don’t hear back. On to the next potential sucker. Looking at it now, I see the same pattern as with this faux government assistance agency: Try to seem legitimate (they took me to a house they were working on), create the impression that only one or a few will be chosen (they kept saying they were interviewing others and of course only one will be chosen), make the mark (con man lingo) believe you like them and are going to select them if they just give you a free design (or wire money etc.), then when the mark gives you what you as a good con man you disappear. So life isn’t that different from what goes on in the garden. There is always a lot of weeding to do and keep the suckers to a minimum.

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Aristocrat Names Gaming Visionary Rich Schneider Chief Product Officer

May 11, 2011

Schneider to Oversee Product Design, Portfolio Management and Global Marketing

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An Xiao Mina: PHOTOS: How To Sustain A Pro Bono Design Practice

May 11, 2011

In 2009, Los Angeles-based designer Matthew Manos had a thought: “I was obsessed and fascinated by the idea that a design firm could actually devote 100% of is time to helping non-profits for nothing in return.” Two years later, his company, A Very Nice Design Studio , has done work for 100 clients, as diverse as a high school in Vancouver and the United Nations. It operates with 40 volunteers internationally, and 70-80% of the work is done pro bono, with the remaining work financially supporting the studio’s efforts. I interviewed Matt recently about his work and what it means to do pro bono design. What follows the slideshow is an abridged version of that conversation: An Xiao Mina: You have quite a diverse spread of clients. What are your criteria for working with an individual or organization? What do you look for? Matthew Manos: My answer is always “optimism.” I love working with individuals that are driven, passionate, and certain that the work they do will and does have a significant impact on our society. I take great interest in really specific or unusual concepts/models behind organizations — for example, in 2010, I worked with a non-profit named In Your Honor . Their mission was to provide the best birthday party for the elderly in assisted living. To me this is a prime example of a very unique, often forgotten about, and very specific cause. AXM: How does a pro-bono design studio sustain itself and its staff? What learnings can you share with other designers/studios interested in pro-bono work? MM: I learned about Muhammad Yunus, the Grameen Bank , and the concept of a “social business.” A social enterprise is one that thinks and operates as a non-profit organization would, but has interesting design in its planning so as to be able to sustain itself and actually create a profit as opposed to relying on government funding and funding from donors. This concept fascinated me — to be able to do good while sustaining yourself and not relying on others for monetary donation. On any project that is pro-bono, our work is done as volunteers — on any project that is paid, all collaborators get paid. The paid projects provide opportunities for the volunteers to take on for-profit projects. AXM: Tell me a bit about these volunteers/contractors — I understand they come from different parts of the world and different professional backgrounds. MM: In the very beginning, I recruited a few like minded people — Chris Fung, Dru Bramlett, Erik Kristensen, and Steven Kukla. Once we got going, we attracted new volunteers who had been looking for an outlet to provide service to non-profits. When a volunteer joins, I typically ask them to tell me if they are particularly passionate about any cause, this way if a client working in that field pops up I go to them first. I love to think that we all have a lot of fun doing what we do. AXM: I do see a lot of smiling faces in your staff photos! It makes sense: develop a portfolio of work while working on a cause you believe in. I noted some brand name clients like Amnesty International and MTV Networks. It seems like these folks would either have in-house design teams or established relationships with studios. MM: You are very right! Most of these big organizations actually do have in-house designers to take care of small, daily tasks, more marketing related. I think there are two things about AVNDS that attract our clients: quality and “goodness.” When a client has a choice between two design firms, and one is helping out a lot of non-profits, they will be attracted to the idea that their website will make another website possible. Above all this, though, we know our work has to be the best it can be — there is a constant pursuit of perfection in our work. AXM: Tell me a little about how you’ve worked to create in-house design firms as well. MM: Marketing and design are crucial assets to any businesses, but especially non-profits due to the necessity of engaging an audience in order to spread awareness around a cause, or build trust in order to raise donations or recruit volunteers. Now a very problematic aspect of working with a non-profit client on a pro-bono basis is a lack of sustainability — just launching a brand or website really is not enough, and can lack the consistency in brand awareness and marketing tactics that are necessary in sustaining a successful social enterprise or non-profit organization. We have worked with numerous non-profit organizations such as The $100 Solution and Youth Leadership America to contribute to not only the design of their promotional materials and branding, but to the design of their business model by incorporating marketing divisions and building teams / filling the seats for those positions for these organizations. These two organizations as well as other small non-profits we have done this for are now able to sustain themselves with the help of these designed divisions within their existing infrastructures. AXM: It’s easy to see how an organization focused on social action might want to pour more resources toward fundraising, or programmatic operations. Can a design team also play a role in the bigger picture of a nonprofit? MM: Yes. The role of a designer is changing — the overall process of a design project (conceptualization, prototyping, execution, iteration, feedback) is synonymous to that of an entrepreneur. Designers have a natural ability to understand systems, and to (most importantly) find the gaps or voids within those systems. Designers understand the importance of “user” feedback and are in a constant working cycle of iteration. All of these qualities make a designer an ideal leader, if they want to. Now this is not a new idea, *design-thinking*, but I think there have been a lot of missed opportunities to guide entrepreneurs and designers in both the conceptual phase (anomalous object), and in the implementation phase (solid object). AXM: Thanks, Matt, for sitting down to chat. Volunteers interested in joining a very nice design studio should contact Matt directly at matt@averynicedesignstudio.org . Originally from Los Angeles and Manila, designer and artist An Xiao Mina is currently based in Asia. She blogs regularly on art, design, technology and culture at http://www.anxiaostudio.com .

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John M. Eger: Creative Clusters Lead to Creative Communities

April 5, 2011

“Creative Clusters” are the early indicators that a creative community — committed to nurturing an economy and society based on the importance of art and culture — is being developed; that a new architecture of a city is taking shape. In the creative age, developing the “creative clusters,” like author Michael Porter’s earlier industrial or ” economic clusters “, is perhaps more important to meeting the challenges of a new, global, knowledge-based economy. Why? Because art and culture are central to ensuring vibrant economic activity and to workplace success in the 21st century. Indeed, as we talk about the development of creative enterprises today and the foreshadowing of a whole economy based upon creativity and innovation — the dawn of a Creative Age — we are more acutely aware of the importance of a new overlay called the creative cluster, and the growing importance of fostering the development of creative products and services. In a sense, these essentially real estate developments are often are the first signs that a community is awaking to the importance of creativity and innovation as essential elements of a successful new global economy, It is no surprise that these clusters of creativity are popping up in cities in Europe and across America. In the UK, co-location of creative industries has been a mainstay of economic development. The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts ( NESTA ) said it best in a major study on Creative Clusters and Innovation: “The case studies also show that the mere existence of a creative agglomeration is not enough for the benefits from clustering to emerge. The other crucial ingredient is connectivity between firms within a cluster, with collaborators, business partners and sources of innovation elsewhere… and finally, with firms in other sectors that can act as clients, and as a source of new and unexpected ideas and knowledge. These three layers of connectivity are underpinned by a dense web of informal interactions and networking.” In Miami, we are well aware of the astounding success the city has had establishing such a cluster. Maybe it was getting the most successful art fair in the world — The Basel — to host as second fair in Miami. Maybe it was the art deco hotels or the weather. Nonetheless, the Miami Design District is one of the most successful examples of a city revitalizing itself for the new economy. In the last few years, the Urban land Institute (ULI) helped start a project in Chicago called the “Industrial Renaissance” aimed at “establishing a Creative Industries District” in one of the oldest but most blighted areas of the city. If successful, the district will be a “jobs producing creative hub” targeting designers, graphic designers, architects, urban planners, all the entertainment arts professionals and others representing one of fastest growth sectors of the new economy, the “creative industries”. More than 200 organizations, and over 1000 individuals are part of the Chicago effort . And in San Diego, entrepreneur Pete Garcia, a successful artist and engineer, is also planning an arts district called I.D.E.A., for Innovation, Design, Education and Art. Garcia sees design itself, combining technology and art in ways that the new economy most values, as the next wave of economic development. Co-location, he says, is the secret to nurturing this kind of development and he and others involved in the effort envision a ten block area of the city as ideal for such a new district. Key, as elsewhere is getting the politicians, the business community, the developers and the education establishment to see the opportunity — indeed the urgency — of reinventing the city through incubators, through arts districts, through the establishment of creative clusters. It is slowly but surely becoming apparent that the most successful communities of the 21st century will be places with strong and vibrant creative clusters. Those communities placing a premium on cultural, ethnic and artistic diversity will likely burst with creativity and entrepreneurial fervor. Those that don’t will be the ghost towns of the era.

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Larry MacDonald: SEO: Art or Science, or Are You Putting Lipstick on a Pig?

April 4, 2011

When I searched the term “search engine optimization” on Amazon recently, I saw about fifty titles. And who with a business website hasn’t received a drizzle of phone calls and gaggles of emails from all over the world offering, nay guaranteeing, to get your site in the number one position on Google? With all these books and experts you might think it is terribly difficult to get high ranking and there are exact steps to take and if you take those steps, you will be at the top. Yet when you survey the results, it appears there’s many a slip between cup and lip. Were it that easy, everyone could be in first place. How much of a role does art play in SEO? How much does the art of marketing contribute to success? Or, as some might claim, is it all science? In many fields it is not enough to know what to do. You need to know how to do it, and why to do it. Without knowing the why, you can’t make optimal choices. And, as in cooking, writing a recipe is a far cry from attempting to execute it flawlessly. How hard do you beat the eggs? How hot is medium heat? Is that vegetable or fruit really ripe or over ripe? An artist in the kitchen might look at the whole picture a little differently than someone unfamiliar with kitchen tools and materials. A chef will know from touch if the temperature is right, if the food is fresh, and have the experience to know that he needs a thick pan for one task and a deep one for another. The chef understands the art of cooking. In search engine optimization, there are similar subtle aspects to consider that may go right over the head of someone lacking an appreciation of classical marketing. I am defining marketing as the analysis of what customers want and the strategy of how to give it to them. In marketing it is crucial to understand the customer’s needs. In SEO, it is important to understand both the customer and the middleman that mediates what the customer will be shown. That middleman, the search engine, acts a bit like the producer at a night club, picking acts based on what his customer wants. He determines what the audience sees. In our example, the owner of the club is Google and the producer is the Google algorithm. The person doing the search is in the audience inside the club. The producer picks the show, the audience only can choose the club, thus picking the show indirectly. How? The audience, the searcher, knows what they want and always has the option to go to another club if they aren’t satisfied. Just as when you search Google, you always have the option to go to Yahoo or Bing. Like the club owner, Google gets its revenue from people attending the show. Those are the searchers getting what they want in the easiest way and in the best form possible. Scientific approaches to SEO often miss the point that Google, like the club owner, is motivated to provide the most valuable information possible, because if they don’t they lose the audience and all the ad revenue generated from that audience clicking on those Google Adwords. If the audience in the club were scientific about the shows, they might ask for shows of an exact length, ones where everyone wears red, where the song titles all have three words, where the lighting is intense, and the sound track has a certain number of instruments. But, we all know that isn’t how a good act is put together. A good act depends on intuition, feeling, skill, experience, and knowledge. Those are not just rules and steps read from a book. The Google algorithm is said to comprise hundreds of criteria, and we have to guess what many are because Google doesn’t want us to game the system. I can tell you that it is a constantly improving attempt to evaluate web pages by formula in the hope of providing the most valuable results to the searcher. It simply wants to give you what it thinks you want: quality results. Why might a scientific approach miss the point? Because it is nearly impossible to model the Google algorithm in a set of instructions to humans, especially when we are guessing as to the content of the algorithm. And a scientific approach has no way to quantify something as abstract (artistic, if you will) as “the most valuable information possible.” It can only make assumptions based on what it reads. Notice that I didn’t say it wanted to give you sites with five word title tags, or a specific number of words or headlines. It sniffs out what it thinks is the highest quality information, even depending on rumor and innuendo from blogs and links. But quality in this context is not the quality of content that your English teacher demanded. It is quality as might be determined by a machine that can’t understand your thinking, only your presentation and words. It can detect poor writing and grades you like a grammar teacher. Google pretty much likes what I like when it comes to packaged information and uses a similar method of selection. I pick up books to look at based on their title. I go into bookstores based on their stores reputation. I scan the table of contents in books and the headlines of articles before I decide to read them. I can determine instantly whether the book or article I am holding is of value just seeing a few words in the titles, chapter headings, and headlines. You probably do that as well. That is what Google does and that is what you have to address in search engine optimization. You must provide quality to be judged superior. The art is in quality, where science can’t go. Thus I would argue that a successful search engine optimization strategy is the result of analyzing what the ideal target customer is seeking in the way of information and crafting the web page and site to provide it in the most desirable and concise form, even before any technical SEO tactics are considered. If you do that your site will be seen as valuable, people will link to it and write about it and your site will gain momentum. Only once you have carried out what I call an artistic marketing evaluation (I don’t mean the design), looking at the web site through the eyes of the customer, and done all you could to improve the value to that customer, should you attempt to use SEO tools to polish the site’s technical aspects. First give the searcher what they want. Only then should you optimize so the search engine sees your quality more clearly. Otherwise you may be putting lipstick on a pig. I would argue that a site with high value content, organized well and professionally edited without any tricky SEO will be preferred by searchers and rank higher than a site with mediocre content and organization that is all tweaked out using a formulaic approach to SEO. In other words, give the customer what they want first, then you can play with the SEO. Art before science. If you have a commercial website that deserves to be on the first page of Google, contact me at TopSpotters.com.

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Richard (RJ) Eskow: Merchants of Danger

March 22, 2011

Fukushima is “a very huge disaster that has caused very large damage at a nuclear power generation plant on a scale that we had not expected,” according to the deputy director general of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency . But the risk of disaster was easily calculated, and an effective regulator would have demanded that the Tokyo Electric Power Company take the appropriate precautions. That didn’t happen. The ugly truth, here and in Japan, is this: Unless government regains the will and the ability to regulate private industry, more catastrophes are all but inevitable. Corporate money has come to dominate politics, so change won’t come easily. Citizens will need to push for it as if their lives depended on it — because they do. And economies are at risk, too. In the wake of Japan’s disaster, two highly visible American CEOs are playing walk-on roles in the crisis: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is reportedly getting ready to travel to Tokyo, and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt is staying uncharacteristically out of the limelight. Dimon and Immelt, along with US politicians and their Japanese counterparts, are all part of a larger story — the story of what we’re losing as government crumbles before the power of corporate influence. Power Sources Remember the outrage expressed by some right-wing pundits when Obama bowed to the Emperor of Japan? They’re not nearly as outraged when he seems to bow to the nuclear industry. The Washington Post reported on the administration’s response to the Japanese disaster: “In sharp contrast to governments across the world that are moving to warn their citizens in Japan about radiation hazards and to reassess their own nuclear power programs, the Obama administration is pursuing a cautious course — standing firmly behind the U.S. nuclear industry.” We’re not here to debate nuclear power, and in fairness to the administration, it has also ordered a 90-day review of all 104 nuclear reactors in the United States to study their ability to withstand a Japan-like event. But decades of withering attacks on regulation — led by Republicans, but supported by some “centrist” Democrats — have made it more difficult to protect ourselves. The public has already seen what happens when regulators and politicians get too cozy with industry. If they can’t run a safe bank, the logic goes, how can they protect us from radiation? General Electric Goes to Japan As ABC News reported, flaws in the Mark I nuclear reactor design (five of the six reactors at Fukushima are Mark 1s) caused nuclear scientist Dale Bridenbaugh to resign in protest thirty-five years ago. Writes ABC: “Questions persisted for decades about the ability of the Mark 1 to handle the immense pressures that would result if the reactor lost cooling power, and today that design is being put to the ultimate test in Japan.” One nuclear regulator later said, “I don’t have the same warm feeling about GE containment that I do about the larger dry containments.” GE knew of the design flaws but sold the reactors anyway. That’s what corporations do if nobody’s looking over their shoulder. The regulatory body in charge at the time, the Atomic Energy Commission, was criticized for lax oversight and excessive industry boosterism. In response to criticisms of the AEC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was established and eventually forced GE to make the design changes that Bridenbaugh had wanted. The Fukushima reactors were among those retrofitted. In 2007 a presidential candidate lacerated the NRC, saying that it had become a “captive of the industries that it regulates.” That candidate was Barack Obama. The NRC just approved a 20-year extension for the Mark I reactor in Vermont, reports Kate Sheppard . And over in Japan, reports the New York Times , “Just a month before a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant… government regulators approved a 10-year extension for the oldest of the six reactors at the power station despite warnings about its safety.” And even though GE retrofitted its Mark I reactors, nuclear scientist Bridenbaugh won’t say that he’s satisfied. “What I would say is, the Mark 1 is still a little more susceptible to an accident that would result in a loss of containment.” And over in Japan, the Times reports that “the decision to extend the reactor’s life, and the inspection failures at all six reactors, highlight what critics describe as unhealthy ties between power plant operators and the Japanese regulators that oversee them.” Imagination at work GE doesn’t exactly have a sterling reputation in its financial operations, either. Last year the SEC concluded that GE Capital “engaged in knowing or reckless fraudulent activities resulting in numerous materially false and misleading statements or omissions,” concluding that “the conduct of GE involved fraud, deceit, or deliberate or reckless disregard of regulatory requirements, and resulted in substantial loss, or significant risk of substantial loss, to other persons.” These acts were just the latest in a GE crime spree that FAIR documented, which includes overcharging the Army for battlefield system and a guilty plea on charges of fraud, money laundering and corrupt business practices while selling jet engines to Israel. FAIR cites a 1994 report from the Project on Government Oversight which “found that GE had 16 instances of fraudulent activity against the government since 1990 — the most of any company listed.” Three additional offenses have occurred during the tenure of GE’s current CEO, Jeffrey Immelt: last year’s accounting fraud case, misreporting of retired CEO Jack Welch’s compensation, and the bribery of Iraqi officials under Saddam Hussein during the “oil for food” scandal. The SEC report appeared to identify the guilty parties within GE Capital, concluding that the company was “acting primarily through senior corporate accountants,” and suggested that it would be pursuing action against the individuals involved. It didn’t. Instead, the president named Immelt as head of his economic advisory council, which was given a new name that included the words “jobs.” Unmitigated risk Now Jamie Dimon’s going to Japan. As we commented earlier , it makes sense for JPMorgan Chase’s CEO to visit a country struck by tragedy to rally his own troops and reassure important clients. We have no criticism there. But Chase is exporting American-style financial instability. Japanese regulators placed it Number Three on their list of “too big to fail” banks, behind only Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Here at home, Chase holds an incendiary 40% of the derivatives market. Meanwhile, the bank runs one of the slickest lobbying operations in town. Dimon’s publicity operation has convinced legions of reporters that he’s the smartest banker around, as Dimon and his team lobby aggressively against banking regulations in all forms. Dimon claims that his unique ability to emerge relatively unscathed from the banking crisis proves that he’s a master of risk management, the science of identifying dangers and avoiding them. The problem is this: Dimon’s argument proves that he doesn’t understand risk management at all . Risk managers always plan for the worst-case scenario, not the best case. So if Dimon’s really the “too brilliant to fail” banker he claims to be, he would be planning for the day when he’s replaced by someone else — someone who could turn out to be more like Chuck Prince from Citigroup or Joe Cassano from AIG. Dimon’s a solid and competent banker, but he’s not the visionary he claims to be. Although he boasts about avoiding CDOs (collaterized debt obligations), for example, he was moving aggressively into that market with his Magnetar deal when the financial crisis struck. Even with that happy accident of timing, Chase lost billions in the subprime market. With $30 billion in subprime mortgages on the books, being issued at the rate of $3 billion per quarter when the crisis struck, let’s just say Dimon wasn’t the risk management genius he claims to be. That won’t stop the continued flood of “Jamie Dimon, Master of Risk” articles like this one . Dimon’s conception of risk apparently doesn’t include preventing corporate crime, since his record there is less than stellar. Under his watch, Chase had to forgo roughly three quarters of a billion dollars in fees after a particularly ugly bribery and corruption case that involved spreading $8 billion around the sate of Alabama. The bank has had to set aside $2.3 billion for litigation and/or the repurchasing of bad mortgages. It paid $25 million for selling unregistered securities in Florida and elsewhere, which is illegal. And we haven’t even talked about the ” Burger King kids ” who worked at Chase’s foreclosure mill. These massive breakdowns by the best “risk management banker” in the business didn’t stop Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, and others from insist that corporations’ own internal risk operations could protect the economy from future disasters. It’s true that there are some very smart risk managers who probably could prevent disasters… but they don’t run their companies. And CEOs are measured by their earnings, not by the number of tragedies they’ve avoided. Captured If the administration has been a disappointment on the regulatory front, the Republican Party’s worse… much worse. They’re aggressively campaigning against regulation in all its forms, insisting that we can’t afford it. If the president feels the need to compromise, entice, or appease large corporations, the GOP’s attitude is downright servile. Republicans in Congress are aggressively moving to stop last year’s financial reforms, which were themselves on the first of many needed steps. And they’re eager to defund regulation in all areas. The White House doesn’t need to be shy about arguing for meaningful reform. As a Senator, Harry Truman shamed dishonest military contractors by traveling across the country exposing waste, fraud, and inferior weaponry that endangered the lives of our troops (including my own uncle, who died piloting a defective bomber long before I was born). Can you imagine any Senator repeating Truman’s actions today? Most depend on corporate contributions to get reelected. Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced a Truman-like bill a few years ago and couldn’t get enough support to keep it alive. The reality is stark: As politics became more money-driven and less “retail” — as handshaking, baby kissing, and whistle stops became relics of the past — the balance between business interests and government oversight inevitably eroded. One of the 21st Century’s greatest challenges will be learning to restore that balance. Without it, we’ll always be at risk. Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future. This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project. Richard also blogs at A Night Light . He can be reached at “rjeskow@ourfuture.org.” Website: Eskow and Associates

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Steve Blank: The New Internet Bubble And The New Rules For Startup Success

March 18, 2011

We’re now in the second Internet bubble. The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. The rules for making money are different in a bubble than in normal times. What are they, how do they differ and what can a startup do to take advantage of them? First, to understand where we’re going, it’s important to know where we’ve been. Below is a quick history of the four waves of startup investing (Click here for slides). The Golden Age (1970 – 1995) VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability — quarter after quarter for at least five quarters. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. The reward for doing so was a liquidity event via an Initial Public Offering. Startups needed millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product out the door to customers. Software companies had to buy specialized computers and license expensive software. A hardware startup had to equip a factory to manufacture the product. Startups built every possible feature the founding team envisioned (using “Waterfall development,”) into a monolithic “release” of the product taking months or years to build a first product release. The Business Plan (Concept- Alpha-Beta – FCS ) became the playbook for startups. There was no repeatable methodology, startups and their VC’s still operated like startups were simply a smaller version of a large company. The world of building profitable startups ended in 1995. The Dot.Com Bubble (August, 1995 – March, 2000) With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. Underwriters realized that as long as the public was happy snapping up shares, they could make huge profits from the inflated valuations. Thus began the 5-year dot-com bubble. For VC’s and entrepreneurs the gold rush to liquidity was on. The old rules of sustainable revenue and consistent profitability went out the window. VC’s engineered financial transactions, working with entrepreneurs to brand, hype and take public unprofitable companies with grand promises for the future. The goals were “first-mover advantage,” “grab market share” and “get big fast.” Like all bubbles, this was a game of musical chairs, where the last one standing looked dumb and everyone else got absurdly rich. Startups still required millions of dollars of funding. But the bubble mantra of get “big fast” and “first-mover advantage” demanded tens of millions more to create a “brand.” The goal was to get your firm public as soon as possible using whatever it took because the sooner you got your billion-dollar market cap, the sooner the VC firm could sell their shares and distribute their profits. Just like the previous 25 years, startups still built every possible feature the founding team envisioned into a monolithic “release” of the product using “Waterfall development.” But in the bubble, startups got creative and shortened the time needed to get a product to the customer by releasing “beta’s” (buggy products still needing testing) and having the customers act as their Quality Assurance group. The IPO offering document became the playbook for startups. With the bubble mantra of “get big fast,” the repeatable methodology became “brand, hype, flip or IPO.” Back to Basics: The Lean Startup (2000-2010) After the dot.com bubble collapsed, venture investors spent the next three years doing triage, sorting through the rubble to find companies that weren’t bleeding cash and could actually be turned into businesses. Tech IPOs were a receding memory, and mergers and acquisitions became the only path to liquidity for startups. VC’s went back to basics, to focus on building companies while their founders worked on building customers. Over time, open source software fueled the rise of the next wave of web startups and the embrace of Agile Engineering meant that startups no longer needed millions of dollars to buy specialized computers and license expensive software — they could start a company on their credit cards. Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean Methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. Startups could now get a first version of a product out to customers in weeks/months rather than months/years. Startups began to recognize that they weren’t merely a smaller version of a large company. Rather, they understood that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. This meant that startups needed their own tools, techniques and methodologies distinct from those used in large companies. The concepts of Minimum Viable Product and the Pivot entered the lexicon along with Customer Discovery and Validation. The New Bubble: 2011-2014 Signs of a new bubble have been appearing over the last year — seed and late stage valuations are rapidly inflating, hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest since the last bubble and investors are starting to openly wonder how this one will end. Breathtaking Scale The bubble is being driven by market forces on a scale never seen in the history of commerce. For the first time, startups can today think about a Total Available Market in the billions of users (smart phones, tablets, PC’s, etc.) and aim for hundreds of millions of customers. And those customers may be using their devices/apps continuously. The revenue, profits and speed of scale of the winning companies can be breathtaking. The New Exits Rules for building a company in 2011 are different than they were in 2008 or 1998. Startup exits in the next three years will include IPO’s as well as acquisitions. And unlike the last bubble, this bubble’s first wave of IPO’s will be companies showing “real” revenue, profits and customers in massive numbers. (Think Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, LinkedIn, Groupon, etc.) But like all bubbles, these initial IPO’s will attract companies with less stellar financials, the quality IPO pipeline will diminish rapidly, and the bubble will pop. At the same time, acquisition opportunities will expand as large existing companies, unable to keep up with the pace of innovation in these emerging Internet markets, “innovate” by buying startups. Finally, new forms of liquidity are emerging such as private-market stock exchanges for buying and selling illiquid assets (i.e. SecondMarket , SharesPost , etc.) 3 Rules in the New Bubble Today’s startups have all the tools needed for a short development cycle and rapid customer adoption: Agile and Customer Development plus Business Model Design . The Four Steps to the Epiphany , Business Model Generation and the Lean Startup movement have become the playbook for startups. The payoff: in this bubble, a startup can actively “engineer for an acquisition.” Here’s how: 1. Order of Battle Each market has a finite number of acquirers, and a finite number of deal makers, each looking to fill specific product/market holes. So determining who specifically to target and talk to is not an incalculable problem. For a specific startup, this list is probably a few hundred names. 2. Wide Adoption First, Revenue Later Startups that win in the bubble will be those that get wide adoption (using freemium, viral growth, low costs, etc.) and massive distribution (i.e. Facebook, Android/Apple App store.) They will focus on getting massive user bases first, and let the revenue follow later. 3. Visibility During the the Lean Startup era, the advice was clear: focus on building the company and avoid hype. Now that advice has changed. Like every bubble, this is a game of musical chairs. While you still need to focus on customers for your product, you and your company now need to be everywhere and look larger than life. Show and talk at conferences, be on lots of blogs, use social networks and build a brand. In the new bubble, PR may be your new best friend, so invest in it. Lessons Learned We’re in a new wave of startup investing – it’s the beginning of another bubble Rules for liquidity for startups and investors are different in bubbles Pay attention to what those rules are and how to play by them Unlike the last bubble, this one is not about selling “vision” or concepts You have to deliver. That requires building a company using Agile Engineering and Customer Development Startups that master speed, tempo and pivot cycle time will win

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Ron Ashkenas: Solving the Rubik’s Cube of Organizational Structure

March 17, 2011

A recent post by fellow HBR blogger Gill Corkindale illustrates how dysfunctional or outdated organizational designs can make it difficult for managers to operate effectively. Judging by the spirited responses , her examples resonated with many readers. As today’s executives struggle with the fallout of a globalized economy, they are likely to make their organizational structures even more complex. It’s like trying to solve a constantly moving Rubik’s Cube . The colors will never line up, no matter how many times you spin it. What results are multi-dimensional matrix structures where decision-making is torturous and unclear; siloed functions that underleverage people’s efforts; or serial reorganizations that create constant uncertainty. Despite this whitewater environment, there are still steps that managers can take towards simplifying their own structure — which may influence senior executives to adjust the broader design. Here are a few approaches that you can try: Work with the current structure: Managers love to reorganize when results are not what they need to be. After all, it’s a convenient way to create the appearance of taking decisive action to reduce costs, refocus priorities, etc. But often this just creates more complexity . Most organizations can be made to work if leaders set the right goals, hold people accountable, streamline end-to-end processes, and put in place appropriate disciplines. In the absence of these (and other leadership actions) any structure can appear to be dysfunctional. A few years ago, the consumer division of a packaged goods company went through five different redesigns in an eighteen-month period, with little change in performance. Only after a stronger consumer business leader was put in place did results get better — without any further reorganization. Make sure that structure is aligned with strategy: It seems obvious that organizations should be designed to advance business strategies. But many times strategies evolve and change while seasoned managers clutch tightly to their old ways of structuring their units and organizing their teams. In a certain copier company, sales branches traditionally had been responsible for re-selling equipment that had gone off lease. However as lease times were shortened and new models were introduced more frequently, the backlog of used equipment grew dramatically. To reduce the backlog, the head of sales proposed setting up a centralized unit that would focus exclusively on re-selling the old machines. However, his branch managers opposed doing this, wanting to keep these extra “sales” for their teams. Not wanting to fight his branch people, the sales manager shelved his strategic idea — and the backlog continued to grow until the company president was forced to intervene. Structure around purpose instead of personalities: While organizational structures are usually portrayed as sets of interconnected boxes, the reality is that the boxes contain human beings with strengths, weaknesses, and personalities that often don’t fit with the logic of the organizational design. But instead of directly dealing with those “misfits,” most managers make accommodations to the design of the organization. This leads to structures that don’t quite work as they should. In one major teaching hospital, for example, a very skilled physician was selected to direct several small outpatient clinics. As these clinics expanded and multiplied, her lack of managerial discipline created severe operating issues, unnecessary cost overruns, and frustration among the clinics’ staff. To avoid offending the doctor by shifting her to a more appropriate role, the hospital president added a Chief Operating Officer for the clinics, who subsequently added other operating managers. Soon the overall structure grew more complex, with added layers and fuzzy accountability. Two years later the hospital president realized his mistake and brought in a new director (one with managerial experience) for the outpatient clinics, who quickly streamlined the structure and brought the operation under control. It may not be possible to fully solve the dysfunctional design puzzle in your organization. But a good way to start is to ask yourself these three questions: (1) Is the problem the structure, or the way we are managing it? (2) Does the structure match our strategy? (3) Has our organization design been compromised by accommodating to personalities? You can tackle these tough questions with your team or with more senior managers. Starting a dialogue like this may not solve everything, but it might help you start shifting those organizational pieces into their correct place. What is your experience with trying to change organizational structure? Cross-posted from Harvard Business Review

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At California Nuclear Plant, Emergency Response Plans Don’t Include Earthquakes

March 16, 2011

As the world’s attention remains focused on the nuclear calamity unfolding in Japan, American nuclear regulators and industry lobbyists have been offering assurances that plants in the United States are designed to withstand major earthquakes. But the emergency plan for the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant on the California coast, which sits less than a mile from an offshore fault line, does not include a ready response for an accident triggered by an earthquake. Though experts warned from the beginning that the plant would be vulnerable to an earthquake, asserting 25 years ago that it required an emergency plan as a condition of its license, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fought against making such a provision mandatory as it allowed the facility to be built. As Americans absorb the spectacle of a potential nuclear meltdown in Japan — one of the world’s most proficient engineering powers — the regulatory review that ultimately enabled Diablo Canyon to be built without an earthquake response plan amplifies a gnawing question: Could the tragedy in Japan happen at home? Experts who recall how the California plant came to be erected offer a disconcerting answer: Yes. And some are calling for more urgent government action to review safety at nuclear plants across the country. “What they’re displaying now is exactly what was wrong in the past with the nuclear establishment, which is that they didn’t have their priorities right,” said Victor Gilinsky, who served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Diablo Canyon debate and agreed with the call for greater attention to earthquakes in emergency plans. “They’re more concerned about the protection of the plants, and installation of further plants, than they are about public safety. The president should be saying, ‘I want every single plant reviewed.’” Back when the California plant was being finalized in the mid-1980s, local activists and environmental lawyers sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in an effort to slow the project, arguing that the clear risks from earthquakes nearby required additional planning. The case made its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., where a 5-4 majority — including current Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and former Clinton independent counsel Kenneth Starr — ruled that earthquakes did not have to be included in the plant’s emergency response plans. The underlying theory was that the plant’s design, which came after years of planning and geological studies, could withstand any foreseeable earthquake in the area — the same assumption that guided thinking in Japan. Emergency response plans at the Diablo Canyon plant still do not take an earthquake-induced nuclear release into account. “What they’re saying is that there could be an earthquake, but in no way could it ever cause a radioactive release at the same time,” said Rochelle Becker, who led the San Luis Obispo, Calif., group that first sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over earthquake preparedness in the 1980s. “I’m pretty sure we now have evidence that it does.” A spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirmed that the emergency response plans at Diablo Canyon do not have an earthquake contingency plan because the commission is satisfied that the plant’s structure will be able to withstand an earthquake in the area — calculated as a maximum magnitude of 7.5. But officials at Tokyo Electric Co., the operator of Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant, said over the weekend that the strongest earthquake they had anticipated was much lower than the magnitude-9.0 quake that struck last Friday. “That’s a lesson that we ignore at our own peril, because we could be wrong, too,” said Joel Reynolds, the attorney who originally brought the case against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and who is now a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in California. “It is a story as old as science that we’re always learning new things. We’re always discovering the unexpected.” Critics have raised particular questions about how a standard emergency response to a nuclear disaster could be complicated if it had been caused by an earthquake, where roads and other surrounding infrastructure would also be impaired. So far, the commission has not specifically recommended any changes to safety regulations or emergency response procedures at nuclear plants in the United States. “All our plants are designed to withstand significant natural phenomena like earthquakes, tornadoes and tsunamis,” the commission’s chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, said earlier this week. “We believe we have a very solid and strong regulatory infrastructure in place now.” He added that the commission would “continue to take new information and see if there are changes that we need to make with our program.” Michael Mariotte, the executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a group critical of the nuclear industry and the regulatory process, said the pushback on response planning reflects an environment where the industry is helped along by regulators. “That’s the logic behind a lot of our nuclear regulation, unfortunately, is that it’s designed to accommodate the operation of a plant, and not necessarily the protection of the public,” Mariotte said. “If they acknowledged that an earthquake occurred that damaged the plant, then they’re also acknowledging that an earthquake has damaged the transportation infrastructure, that you can’t get people out properly, that the plant doesn’t work, and then it can’t be approved.” At the time the Diablo Canyon case was being litigated in the mid-1980s, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the electric utility looking to build the plant had been dealing with more than a decade’s worth of federal and state reviews for the facility. Federal regulators were comfortable with their seismic reviews of the remote coastal area between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Comments made during closed meetings, later released to the public, showed that some NRC commissioners were concerned that additional public hearings surrounding the emergency response plan and earthquakes would slow the process further. “One of the things that I think makes me shy away often from hearings is because as soon as we hear the word ‘hearing,’ you see so much time elapse that it maybe over-influences one,” then-NRC Chairman Nunzio J. Palladino, who has since passed away, said at the time. “I do feel that at this late stage, requiring a delay while we wait for a hearing is not in the best national interest.” When the case involving earthquake response was eventually litigated all the way to the federal appeals court in D.C., which ultimately sided with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the five-member majority noted that there had already been extensive review of seismic activity around the plant. “We can think of no potential natural or unnatural hazards, regardless of their improbability, that the Commission would not be required to consider,” failed Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork wrote in an opinion for the appellate court. “That is a prescription for licensing proceedings that never end and plants that never generate electricity.” The four dissenting judges, including current Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, noted: “The very purpose of the exercise is to plan for the unthinkable eventuality that the design safeguards will not prevent an accident.” “It defies common sense to exclude evidence about the complicating effects of earthquakes from a proceeding dealing with how to respond to a nuclear accident at a plant located three miles from an active fault, a plant in which seismic concerns dominated the design and construction proceedings for well over a decade,” the justices wrote. In recent years, the utility that operates Diablo Canyon, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, has recently found another fault line less than a mile from the plant after conducting research with the U.S. Geological Survey. The plant’s original design had accounted for a fault that was farther offshore — about three miles from the plant. The spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Lara Uselding, said the utility has not found evidence that the newly discovered fault line would pose a risk to the plant. The commission is currently reviewing the company’s geological report.

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Heba el Habashy and Charles LaCalle: The Burberry Revolution

March 9, 2011

Rain poured from mechanical spouts above the podium, splashing the bloggers, the editors, and the celebrities in the front row of the Burberry Prorsum show. Transparent rain slickers protected the model’s matching Burberry trenches. Perhaps this was Christopher Bailey’s allegory for Burberry’s unique ability to weather the global financial crisis that left veterans Lacroix and Yohji Yamamoto in financial ruin. Yet, financial meltdowns sometimes provide unique opportunities for reinvention. In the early stages of the crisis in November 2008, Burberry’s stock price was £175. By January 2010, the share price had risen to £1,116. Is it Emma Watson, a la Hermoine Granger, bewitching consumers through her advertising campaign? Probably not. The real reasons for Burberry’s success are complicated but can serve as a guide for both luxury brands and young designers trying to survive in the competitive retail sector. Step 1: Rejuvenation of the Brand Image From 2000 to 2004, Burberry’s image was hijacked by what the financial times called a “sub-culture prone to drinking and anti-social behavior.” Slate called them a group of “tough guys, skanks, soccer hooligans, lower-class unsophicates, and cheesy celebrities”. The Chavs, as they are known in England, began wearing Burberry plaid as a sort of Droog uniform to signify their status. Given their reputation, it was not long before they became victims of sartorial profiling. The denouement of the Chav takeover came when Daniella Westbrook, one of the high priestesses of the Chav religion, was photographed in a tartan ensemble complete with a tartan baby stroller (or “pram” since we’re talking about the Brits). Needless to say, Burberry became the classic example of prole-drift, a term coined by Paul Fussell to describe when products of culture become associated with the working class or sub-culture of a society. This proved financially expedient in the short term as sales for products with the tartan design flew off the shelves, but it could not be sustained as the print became too closely associated with the subculture. In 2004 the brand responded by scaling back the tartan on the outside of apparel, while still allowing the iconic print to mark the lining. Then in 2005, the Buberry Prorsum collection saw an abrupt shift. The previous season was inspired by the singer and drug addict Marianne Faithfull and by Christopher Bailey’s home in Yorkshire. In 2005 , the collection seemed closer to weekend attire for Balmoral than for Yorkshire. In the years since, Christopher Bailey has continued to produce heritage with an edge for the historic house. Step 2: Supply Chain In 2006, Angela Ahrendts joined Burberry as CEO and began transforming the business as drastically as Bailey was changing the image. Currently, Burberry may be more poised than any other brand to compete with fast fashion retailers. Their secret weapon lies in their responsive supply chain. For a luxury brand like Burberry, a streamlined infrastructure is vital for sourcing raw materials and finished goods, maintaining wholesale accounts, and merchandising Burberry distribution outlets. In 2006, Burberry began a full-scale makeover of its supply chain management systems, the fruits of which investors are just now able to see. The costs associated with such a system were extremely high because of the complexity of the Burberry supply chain. Burberry spent £21.6 million in 2009 on the installation of the system. As of now, approximately 90% of Burberry’s stores are converted to the new SAP systems. In 2009, Burberry deployed its new SAP system in the United States. A retailer’s dream is to decrease inventory levels, and Burberry was able to do so by an astonishing 36% as a result of this new system. The company could now monitor and predict what items to merchandise. Imram Ahmed notes that this system allows Burberry “to react rapidly to sales trends and capitalize on bestsellers.” Step 3: China Burberry has taken big risks by opening stores in emerging luxury markets like Serbia, Egypt, and Israel, but the most rewarding market has not surprisingly been China. Burberry added 13 new stores in China last year, making a total of 50 in the mainland. Burberry has operated in the country since the early 1990s through a partnership with franchiser Kwok Hang Holdings. In 2010, the brand bought back the license from its business partner for 70 million pounds in order to create a consistent global brand image. The China strategy was the last major effort to rein in the global Burberry licenses. Shareholders overwhelmingly approval of the China strategy, which put Burberry in a position to take hold of the rapidly expanding Chinese luxury market. A Mintel report recently stated, “despite unemployment and extreme poverty, China’s young, affluent consumers have enjoyed a fast rate of growth over the past five years, making it the fourth largest [luxury market] in the world.” Burberry’s rival Prada saw a 75% increase in turnover in China in 2010 alone. By many accounts, China is set to become the largest luxury market in the next few years, and Burberry is now in a position to easily take advantage of this. Step 4: Retail Burberry is relying less than ever before on its wholesale accounts by shifting to a retail-led growth model and utilizing creative retail schemes. Burberry chose to buck the trend of showcasing specific collections in certain stores, instead featuring all lines in each of its retail locations. Additionally, the existing stores in its portfolio have been upgraded and remodeled to achieve consistency across locations. While most luxury houses were reluctant to imperil their brand image by moving online, Burberry focused heavily on e-commerce development. This strategy has proven extremely successful. Online sales for Burberry rose 60% last year and are likely to continue increasing as more consumers shop online. Even in the brick and mortar locations, shoppers have access to tablets to purchase clothes to be delivered later. For the spring 2011 collection, the brand partnered with Verizon Communications to create a retail theater in its stores. Shoppers in 25 outlets worldwide were able to order items straight off the runway as the show was being broadcast live during London fashion week. Items were delivered within seven weeks. While many luxury companies rely on one ‘it bag’ to make up the bulk of revenue, Burberry offers an array of popular items and also recently introduced a cosmetics line. Because of this variety, the company has not had to resort to a diffusion line like many other luxury companies. While companies are fighting fast fashion by going down market, Burberry has had massive success with the Prorsum line. Established in 1998, this line was meant to bring a youthful flair to the historic brand while maintaining luxury prices and quality. Burberry’s bottom line has also been bolstered as one of the fastest growing segments in retail in part due to its focus on menswear. Men’s clothing is an afterthought for most brands, but Burberry places equal emphasis on both men’s and women’s ready to wear. Burberry’s grip on e-commerce, strong product lines, and focus on menswear will surely amount to huge profits in the coming years. Step 5: Social Media Just last year, Tom Ford created a frenzy when he closed off his fashion show to only the most select coterie of editors. Burberry is doing the exact opposite as it strives towards “democratic luxury positioning”. For its Fall 2011 show, the brand live streamed the event on the iconic Piccadilly Circus mega-screen as well as to 150 countries around the world. Burberry is the brand that is most “liked” on Facebook with over 2 million fans. Burberry’s “Art of the Trench website capitalizes on the craze for street fashion by portraying highly stylized ways common Burberry consumers wear their trenches. This site inspired rival Hermes to create a similar site focusing on their iconic scarves. The focus on the consumer does not stop there. Burberry recently introduced a bespoke line for the classic trench. Now customers can choose the detailing of their coat and make it as edgy or as classic as they want. This emphasis on “customer knows best” is in line with Buberry’s focus on “democratizing luxury”. Instead of forcing styles on consumers, Burberry is giving them the power to reinvent the classic trench. This shows a huge confidence in the sophistication and awareness of the luxury customer. Consumers no longer buy idly as they are given reign make crucial design decisions. For those who want a one of a kind piece, the bespoke line offers unique pieces that others do not have access to. For those who want to share their design with friends, the bespoke line creates a new sales force of consumers-cum-designers. Despite Burberry’s historic roots, the brand refuses to be tied down by the heavy burdens that tradition can sometimes impose. Burberry has evolved even faster than many other younger brands and as a result has maintained a loyal customer base as well as growth in the double digits. Burberry’s embrace of the Internet goes farther than e-commerce. The real value that the company has gained from the Internet is a close connection with its customer as social media has allowed the brand to reach millions of followers. Instantaneous feedback from these followers allows the brand to outpace its competition in crafting strategy. It’s not immediately apparent how to draw the lines between a major brand like Burberry and emerging fashion designers. Up and comers don’t have massive supply chains and they definitely do not have enough volume for their image to be hijacked by a subculture. Nevertheless, connecting with consumers, expanding into new emerging markets, and brand consistency are important for designers at any stage of development.

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Susan Buchanan: New Orleans Tap Water Beats Odds, Meets All Regulatory Standards

February 17, 2011

The Crescent City draws its water from the Mississippi — a river lined with petrochemical plants and storage tanks and full of waste from northern neighbors. Residents worry about spills in the river, and wonder if oil lapping at the coast has affected their faucet water. In a weekend last November, city dwellers endured a boiled-water advisory after a plant problem. And life on some blocks has been disrupted by water main breaks in recent years. Local, state and federal authorities, however, say the city’s tap water meets and, under some criteria, exceeds their standards because of controls on discharges in the river, constant water sampling and cleansing at plants. Last week, the purification superintendent at the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans rated the quality of the city’s tap water as “excellent.” The 106-year-old Carrollton plant, outfitted with pumps, pipes and generators to pull water from the river, uses conventional purification processes, filters the water and provides 135 million gallons daily to nearly 300,000 people over hundreds of square miles. The facility’s tile-roofed buildings employ 200 workers, and contain a water-quality laboratory. Vincent Fouchi, Superintendent of Water Purification at the S&WB, said “we have the same plants, the same chemicals and procedures as before Katrina.” Across the river, the Algiers plant supplies the West Bank with 10 million gallons of drinking water each day. “We monitor the two plants daily and monthly to comply with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state Dept. of Health & Hospitals water-quality guidelines,” Fouchi said. “We’re in compliance with current regulatory levels. The state’s Dept. of Environmental Quality has done a good job of controlling the flow of industrial waste in the river by strict permitting of plant emissions.” The U.S. Coast Guard has helped enforce those permits. Fouchi said, in his opinion, “the S&WB provides excellent-quality, potable water to our customers.” He continued, saying “DHH tests for agricultural runoff and pesticides in the river.” And while the BP spill was too far away to hurt the city’s water supply, “we remain vigilant for upriver oil spills between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.” The DEQ has an Early Warning Organic Compound Detection System or EWOCDS for spills. The S&WB lab analyzes river water daily and reports any contaminants to the DEQ. Fouchi said river pumping operations are halted “when we choose to stop taking water from the river.” Decisions to stop drawing are based on types and concentrations of contaminants. “We have more than one river pumping station and sometimes a spill may affect one, but not two stations,” he said. In a long-ago study, released in 2003, the Natural Resources Defense Council said the city’s water quality was good, but source protection was poor. Fouchi said “for source-water protection, EWOCDS is our best tool. The Mississippi River is leveed between Baton Rouge and the mouth of the river, so the only sources of possible contamination along this stretch are permitted industrial discharges and marine traffic accidents.” He noted that other large cities on the Mississippi like St. Louis draw their water from the river, though Baton Rouge gets its supply from deep wells. New Orleans, meanwhile, is strapped for cash for upgrading the water system. “Our infrastructure needs are still significant, and greatly outreach our current, capital-improvement funding levels,” Fouchi said. “We’re doing our best to repair infrastructure and equipment, as needed, within our current, budgetary constraints.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is installing a new generator at the Carrollton plant in an estimated $48 million project. Nancy Allen, Army Corps spokeswoman, said a contractor is building a structure to house the generator, which should be in place this September. At the Algiers plant, “we switched from elemental chlorine to sodium hypochlorite about two years ago,” Fouchi said. Sodium hypochlorite is a chemical compound used to disinfect water. “We’re currently constructing a sodium hypochlorite storage and feed facility at Carrollton, where sodium hypochlorite will replace elemental chlorine as our disinfectant.” Those change are intended to eliminate risks from chlorine gas releases. Clyde Carlson, New Orleans-based, district engineer in the Office of Public Health of the La. Dept of Health and Hospitals, said “the city is in compliance with safe-drinking water regulations. Customers can look at the S&WB’s website and read its consumer confidence report released last summer, along with updates on that report.” In terms of water quality, the city’s purification plants meet all state and federal, including EPA, standards. Under EPA requirements, a consumer confidence report must be mailed to customers once a year. The S&WB plans to send out its next report this summer. New Orleans drinking water escaped any affects from the Gulf spill. “We’re 100 miles upstream from the mouth of the Mississippi River, and the BP spill occurred 50 miles out in the Gulf and in no way impacted water quality in New Orleans,” Carlson said. “We’re vigilant about any spills that might occur on the river upstream from us, however.” A network of monitors, involving the DEQ, DHH’s Office of Public Health and the U.S. Coast Guard, alerts stakeholders and water authorities about any detected spills in the river. The last, big river spill in New Orleans occurred in July 2008 and left residents concerned about tap water. “In the 2008 incident, in which a barge overrun by a tanker spilled oil in the river, we saw a quick response from the Coast Guard, DEQ, EPA and Louisiana’s Office of the Oil Spill Coordinator,” Carlson said. “The S&WB Algiers’ plant closely monitored or closed down water intakes from the river in an appropriate response.” A water advisory was issued for Algiers, however. As for leaky water mains and pipes in New Orleans, Carlson said “mains that have exceeded their design life are a challenge for aging infrastructure across the country. However, with enough positive pressure from electrical and steam power in the distribution system, contaminants are unlikely to get into tap water from broken mains.” Last November’s boil-water advisory in New Orleans, Carlson said, “was based on an abundance of caution after a brief power outage at the Carrollton plant affected delivery of water to the distribution system, but didn’t alter treatment.” Carlson continued, saying that joint, water-quality testing is performed by S&WB and the DHH. “Daily, monthly, and yearly reports are sent to us at the Safe Drinking Water Program of the Office of Public Health.” Bacteriological sampling is conducted monthly at the East and West Bank distribution systems, and all EPA protocols for monitoring pollutants are followed. “Sampling is routinely done under lead and copper rules and disinfection byproduct regulations,” he said. The S&WB water lab is state-certified every three years. Carlson said “the Carrollton power plant was flooded by Katrina, but in a staged recovery, potable tap water in areas closest to the plant was back on in about three weeks.” Other city neighborhoods were gradually brought back. “However, it took almost a year for the Lower Ninth Ward to have potable, tap water because of water quality and pressure issues,” he said. Fouchi at S&WB said the Carrollton plant was shut down for several days after Katrina, but it was several months before normal operations resumed because it hard to procure water-treatment chemicals. Meanwhile, the Algiers plant was not flooded by Katrina. As for other water sources, Carlson said Baton Rouge relies on wells because of high-quality ground water in that area. New Orleans has some wells that aren’t for drinking. Audubon Park, for example, contains a well for irrigation purposes. Ground water in the New Orleans area can be highly colored or highly saline, and would require different treatment than river water, Carlson said. “And there are some instances across the country where ground water withdrawals have caused subsidence” or ground sinking, he noted. Jesse Means, geologist with the Drinking Water Protection Program at the La. Dept of Environmental Quality, said “our program focuses on public awareness, and we did surveys across the state from 2000 to 2003 to locate water wells and surface water intakes, including intakes in the Mississippi River, for every public water system.” The DWPP is an outreach program to help communities protect aquifers, rivers and lakes used for drinking water. The surveys have been updated in recent program work. “We’ve identified facilities and activities such as chemical plants, gas stations, and cemeteries near public wells and water intakes that have chemicals associated with them,” Means said. Barge-cleaning operations, anchorages and wharves have been recorded. “We’ve surveyed everything from St. Francisville down to Boothville on both sides of the river, and tried to identify all plants and other activities discharging into the river,” he said. A third of Louisiana’s residents get their water from surface water–lakes, rivers and bayous–while two-thirds drink water that comes from wells and is pumped out of aquifers. Means said “the DEQ looks at drinking water use and what the quality of the river water needs to be, and has a strict, discharge-permitting system. Plants are allowed to discharge a specified amount of treated waste water into the Mississippi River under their permits.” He continued “if plants treat their water and follow what’s authorized in their permits, they are not unduly polluting the water supply. The DEQ has routinely worked to locate unpermitted discharges for years in the New Orleans area and elsewhere.” The U.S. Coast Guard permits and inspects sewage-treatment systems for vessels in navigable waterways. Means said “the DWPP tries to get as many people and businesses involved in pollution prevention as possible. We’ve set up volunteer committees–made up of citizens, officials, water-system operators, business owners and anyone that’s interested in participating–to visit businesses near water-supply intakes and wells, and we try to educate them on best management practices to prevent pollution.” Meanwhile, in an issue that has resurfaced, Carlson said “OPH is aware of the recent, EPA draft guidance on perchlorate, and will continue to work with EPA on related rules and regulations in the future.” In early February, the EPA said it will regulate perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel, along with sixteen other volatile organic compounds that can cause cancer. Carlson also said “the Office of Public Health does not advocate point-of-use treatment devices for water, particularly when water meets regulations. However, if a resident chooses to use a filter, they should use an NSF-certified device.” NSF International, an independent, public-health group, tests and certifies products. Carlson advised “run tap water until the temperature changes, especially in older buildings in the morning, to flush out plumbing contaminants and metals from old pipes. And always use water from the cold tap for consumption.” Also, make sure prescription drugs are not disposed of in sinks, toilets, drains or through any conduit to the watershed, he said. This article was published in the Feb. 14, 2011 edition of “The Louisiana Weekly.”

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INC Research Augments Pediatric Clinical Trial Capabilities

February 3, 2011

Kathy Bohannon Brings Valuable Multi-Discipline Therapeutic Expertise to Pediatric Trial Design and Management

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Ian Fletcher: Obama Whistles Past Economic Graveyard in Deluded SOTU Address

January 26, 2011

Not that I really expected otherwise, but Obama’s State of the Union address was a great disappointment on economic issues. Although the president made token noises about how serious our economic problems are, he immediately negated these gestures with other statements that made clear he does not understand. Statements like the following: We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. Unfortunately, as I discussed at some length in my book , the old “education is the solution” mantra just won’t cut it: One commonly suggested solution to America’s trade problems is better education. While this would obviously make America more competitive, that it would be enough is unlikely, if by “enough” we mean able to maintain wage levels in the face of foreign competition. For a start, our rivals are well aware of the value of education, so it can’t be a unique source of advantage for us. And unfortunately, the U.S. is simply no longer formidable from an educational point-of-view. Roughly the top third of our pop-ulation enjoys the benefits of a world-class college and university system, plus other forms of training such as the military and the more serious trade schools. But the rest of our population is actually worse educated, on average, than their opposite numbers in major competing nations. Thanks mainly to the high-school movement of the early 20th century, the U.S. once led the world in high school completion, the most readily comparable international measure of education. But we have been slipping behind for decades. This is clear from the fact that while we still lead a-mong 55-to-64-year-olds (who were schooled over 40 years ago), we rank only 11th among 25-to-34-year-olds. (South Korea is first.) Not only is our college graduation rate of 34 percent behind 15 other nations, but it does not even reach the average for developed countries. Studies designed to measure specific skill sets tell an even direr story. According to the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment, American 15-year-olds were outmatched in math and science by students from 22 other nations. The very bottom of our population is more alarming still: one 2003 study reported that a third of the adults in Los Angeles County were functionally illiterate. Furthermore, it is a testable hypothesis whether education on its own can protect wages, and the evidence is to the contrary. For one thing, a college degree is no longer the ticket it once was: workers between 25 and 34 with only a BA actually saw their real earnings drop 11 percent between 2000 and 2008. And, as David Howell of the New School for Social Research has written after looking at this problem on an industry basis, “Higher skills have simply not led to higher wages. In industry after in-dustry, average educational attainment rose while wages fell.” This should be no surprise, as merely shoveling education into workers’ heads obviously will not save them, or the industries they work in, if these industries are bleeding market share and revenue due to imports. Neither can people be expected to devote time and money to acquiring more education (or be able to afford it) if there are no jobs for them at the end. Who feels like pursuing advanced training in automotive engineering today? The weak education of American workers is thus a self-reinforcing problem: educated workers not only support, but require , strong industries. As for “innovation” as the solution? That’s another thing that’s nice enough, but not a solution per se to our economic decline; some remarks by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) make this point well: Putting money into research is this Holy Grail for people here who are all college educated when the majority of the country is not, and who put themselves on this elevated plane thinking they know. I remember [Clinton Labor Secretary] Robert Reich saying, ‘Here’s what America has to do, Marcy: see this salt shaker?’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘America’s going to do the design,’ he said. ‘It’ll be made elsewhere, but we’ll do the design.’ I thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be an answer from a professor?’ I want both! I want engineering and pro-duction because I know the people in my district who used to make goods but don’t anymore, and they have a right to make what they end up buying. Ralph Gomory, no less than the former chief scientist of IBM, has criticized what he calls “the Innovation Delusion” in this very webzine.

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Mentor Graphics’ VP, Joseph Sawicki, Joins ISQED Board

January 12, 2011

SANTA CLARA, CA–(Marketwire – January 12, 2011) –  The International Society for Quality Electronic Design ( ISQED ) today announced that Joseph Sawicki, vice president and general manager of the Design-to-Silicon division of Mentor Graphics Corporation ( NASDAQ : MENT ), has joined the group’s Strategic Steering Committee. Mr. Sawicki is a leading expert in IC nanometer design and manufacturing challenges, and is responsible for Mentor’s design-to-silicon products, including the Calibre® physical verification, DFM and RET/OPC platform, and the Mentor® TessentT design-for-test product line. The ISQED Strategic Steering Committee is responsible for mapping the future direction of the organization.

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Andrew Winston: The Top 10 Green Business Stories of 2010

December 30, 2010

Here’s my attempt to capture the most important stories that affected the greening of business in 2010. To keep this to blog length, it’s going to be quick, so see the links for more on these stories. The first five are macro-level issues that affect the context for business: 1. The climate bill dies in the U.S. Senate. Any hope for a national approach to tackling the largest challenge facing humanity petered out pathetically this year (see the complete, sad tale in a Pulitzer-worthy New Yorker article). Unfortunately for every other country, this is a global story. When the U.S. can’t get its act together, the world can’t create global policies, and thus the Cancun meeting last week resulted in some nice agreements to raise funds for adaptation — arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, anyone? — but no binding targets on carbon. 2. Nature strikes back/climate change is real. Ironically, given the rising debate in the U.S. on the science, the world got hotter , a lot hotter, this decade and this year. Russia saw its worst drought in 1,000 years ( video ), and Pakistan was overcome by flooding ( video ). Scientists will always give the caveat that you cannot blame climate change for any single weather event, but let’s get real — this is what devastating climate change looks like on the ground. These weather events also directly affect resource availability, bringing me to my next point… 3. Resources get very tight. The drought in Russia destroyed 40 percent of its wheat crop, so Putin pulled wheat — 1/6 of the global trade in the crop — off the global market, driving up wheat prices . The floods in Pakistan helped double the price of cotton . And I could write a book on the topic of rare earth metals, those precious elements that make nearly every green technology possible and go into every iPhone. China mines 95 percent of these metals, and it needs them all now, making the U.S. ” vulnerable to rare earth shortages .” We’re also vulnerable on fossil fuels. We learned from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico that readily accessible oil is a thing of the past — we don’t dig one mile under the ocean for the heck of it. So most natural resources are getting more scarce, from oil to metals to crops. Smart companies like Hitachi are trying to find solutions, such as its new plan to develop rare earth recycling technologies . 4. China, China, China. Did I mention rare earth metals? Or the rise of the world’s largest solar producer from a manufacturing base of nearly nothing a few years ago? Or how about China’s unparalleled (and some would say illegal) support for its renewables companies , which has the World Trade Organization fretting about trade barriers ? China is very serious about its green ambitions , with support from the very top , and the business community is taking note. 5. Renewables are for real and moving fast. Ok, there’s some good news. The market for renewables is growing fast. About 45 percent of Portugal’s electricity comes from renewables, and this is up from 18 percent in just five years . Germany, not really the sunniest country in the world, added 1 percent of its electric needs in solar in 2010 alone (it took 10 years to get the first 1 percent online, and just eight months for the second 1 percent). No wonder HSBC says the market for clean tech and climate change solutions will top $2.2 trillion by 2020 . Now for the company-level stories: 6. Supply chain pressure continues to rise (a.k.a., Wal-Mart doesn’t slow down) . Even coming out of the recession, this was a big year for green supply chain announcements. In February, Wal-Mart said it would eliminate 20 million metric tons of GHG emissions from its supply chain. Then in October, the retail giant announced it would double the amount of locally-grown produce on its shelves (and former sustainability exec Matt Kistler indicated this year that products getting higher scores in its Sustainability Index would get more shelf space ). We also saw big announcements from P&G and Kaiser Permanente on supplier scorecards, IBM greatly increasing its demands on suppliers , and Pepsi using detailed carbon lifecycle data to make suppliers rethink how they grow Tropicana oranges . 7. Zero is the new black. Companies seem to be tripping over themselves on the path to “zero waste.” GM announced that 62 of its plants now send zero waste to landfill, and UK retailer Marks & Spencer reached a 92% diversion rate on the way to its zero goals. And Sony one-upped everyone by setting a goal of zero environmental impact across its operations by 2050. 8. Big goals were back. Recession-schmecession. Sony wasn’t the only one setting aggressive targets. Panasonic said it wanted its GHG emissions to peak by 2018 and it would greatly increase sales of eco-products. Unilever has probably gone the furthest , announcing it would double sales by 2020, but halve total environmental impact ( among other big goals ). Unilever’s leaders are serious about driving these plans into the operations of the whole company. 9. Electric vehicles storm the market. The Nissan LEAF was just named 2011 European Car of the Year , and GE announced it would buy 25,000 electric cars . Since the auto industry is one of the biggest in the world, there will be ripples from this movement. Enough said. 10. Small guys can do it too. It’s easy to get caught up in the tales of giant companies. So one of my favorite stories of the year is a simple example of eco-efficiency and savings from 10-employee Bowman Design with just 2,000 square feet of office space in Southern California (where else?). See founder Tom Bowman’s description of his company’s path to a 65 percent reduction in GHG emissions and $9,000 savings annually (OK, I’ll admit that I didn’t mind that Tom name-checked my book Green to Gold in his article, but I don’t know him). 11. (Bonus!) The military gets serious about green. Honorable mention to the government and military, which is technically not “green business.” But they’re not kidding around, from plans to greatly reduce reliance on oil and diesel in army operations, to navy sustainability plans and test flights of planes running on biofuels . Go military green! Looking Forward to 2011 No list would be complete without utterly over-confident predictions for the future. It’s obvious that the pressures/themes above will continue to get stronger in the coming year. In particular, and in addition… Supply chain pressure will evolve and get more sophisticated (such as retailers who said in August they would not buy fuel from Canadian oil sands ). This shift will be partly driven by… A data explosion around green is brewing. Companies will know more than ever about their impacts up and down the value chain. Water will become a very big topic for business (it began this year, but there will be some great stories in my 2011 wrap up a year from now). My first couple of blogs of the New Year will look at water strategy. Biomimicry, the design principle that suggests looking to nature for great ideas, will gain currency Energy innovation will be the order of the day (e.g., the Paris metro station that captures body heat to warm a nearby building) But here’s my final, shocking prediction: climate change policy won’t matter (much). Even though the failure of the bill was my #1 above, #2 through 10 tells me that for business, the logic of green does not depend on believing in climate change, or in having a law in place . The natural resource, supply chain, innovation, and profit drivers are just too strong. Business will be getting a lot greener in every sense of the word, no matter what political battles are waging. We’re going to stop debating climate in the business community and just focus on the larger case for prosperity, for companies and countries alike. I’m sure I missed many, many great stories. Please share your favorites here, and have a Merry Green New Year! This post first appeared at Harvard Business Online .

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Michael Tasner: My Favorite Things, Oprah Style

November 24, 2010

My favorite Oprah episode of the year (yes I admit it, I watch Oprah from time to time) is her “Favorite Things Show.” While I understand these are not always her favorite things (as companies pay handsomely for the product placement), I simply love watching the audience reaction when they hear they are getting things like: • Diamond Earings worth $2000 • A Volkswagon Beetle (the new 2012) • High end Pot Set worth $500 • And Beyond In following Oprah’s Favorite things show, I decided to release my first ever “Michael’s Favorite Things.” One big thing I do want to point out, however, is that these really are my favorite things, and I was not paid by any of these companies to mention their names. Here we go… Project Management: BaseCampHQ — Most companies have a variety of projects going on at the same time and lots of moving pieces. We found that it was essential for clients to have everything in a central place, especially with projects that we had to involve outside vendors. We turned to Basecamp and have never looked back. For example, all of our design projects are in Basecamp with milestone dates and to-do items so everyone can see everything. It has saved us quite a bit of time and headaches. Document Sharing and Email: Google — There are some days when I say Google more than my own name. My staff and I simply use Google for pretty much everything. From email and sharing files to creating slide shows, all stored in the cloud. It’s an amazing tool and at $50/year it’s totally worth the money. Managing Customers: Salesforce.com — One area that I’ve noticed most people need some support is in managing their customers and their leads. Many people simply don’t track this information, and if they do track the information it’s all over the place and incomplete. We’ve been using Salesforce.com for over five years and have found it to be an amazing tool. We track our leads, customers, contracts, and even our contractors through Salesforce.com. The data is once again stored in “the cloud”, so you can access the information from anywhere without having to download any software. Video Conferencing: Skype — As I have contractors throughout the world, it wouldn’t make sense for me to buy a phone plan for everyone, so we turn to Skype. While I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Skype (sometimes it simply does not work), it has been an amazing tool. When you take a step back and realize you are talking to someone halfway across the world for free, and with video it makes you wonder where technology will be in another five years or so. Web Sites: Wordpress — Boy do I love Wordpress. Every web site that we designed in the last 12-18 months has been in Wordpress. It’s easy to use, easy to customize and has the option of being scaled to drastic levels using one of the tens of thousands of plug-ins. Member Sites: Wish List Member — Passive, reoccurring revenue has been the name of the game in a down economy. We’ve been accomplishing that through membership-based web sites. As all the sites we design have been in Wordpress, we wanted to find a really cool plug-in that makes making membership sites a breeze, then we stumbled upon Wish List Member (created by two really cool guys). The plug-in has rocked our socks off and seems to get better every version they release. Sharing Files: Dropbox — Last but not least, Dropbox. Remember the days of sending files (small or large) back and forth or using a site like Yousendit.com. Those days are long gone. Install Dropbox on your computer (s) and you’re in business. You can upload files and it will automatically sync those files with your other computers in the office. Need to share a folder or file with someone? Right click share, put in their email and the files start transferring to their computers. My favorite part — if you share a folder with someone once, anytime you move anything into the folder it gets shared with them automatically, like magic! I could have went on and on with some of my other favorite things but I wanted to limit the list to seven things that you should be using regardless of your business size. These tools are all easy to use and can be deployed quite quickly. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the US. And to everyone else, have a rocking week!

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Avon Protection Systems Announces Appointment of John Kime to the Position of Chief Operating Officer

November 15, 2010

CADILLAC, MI–(Marketwire – November 15, 2010) – Avon Protection Systems, Inc. ( LSE : AVON ) a global company in the design, development and manufacture of respiratory protection products for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN), toxic industrial chemicals (TICs), and toxic industrial materials (TIMs) applications, announced today that John Kime has been appointed to the newly-created position of Chief Operating Officer.

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Brett King: How to create a sexy bank

November 3, 2010

Getting to the bank of tomorrow seems daunting. For banks that are entrenched in physical elements such as branch distribution networks, long-held conventions around paper-led compliance procedures, embedded silos and P&L (that are more likely to collapse completely than change) – how can a change to a better bank be navigated? How are you going to issue credit cards when there is no plastic? What will checking accounts be called when you don’t issue check books anymore? The challenges facing the banking sector today are extreme… Gaming and Silos that frustrate Banking This problem of change is amplified by the tendency towards internal gaming in the institution.  As banks we compete department by department for precious budget dollars each year. We compete across product for customer, with no tangible connection between a customer who comes as a credit card account holder to a customer who has a mortgage with the exception of the brand. In this environment, how do we develop a culture of innovation, of unyielding focus on customer excellence? Embedded silos and this type of internal gaming frustrates customer innovation and improvements in the customer experience. We fight annually to retain our silo’s budget for the coming year, without a greater goal considered around whether or not those budgets are actually accomplishing what we need for the customer. We have poor metrics that reinforce existing paradigms. We lack the ability to measure customer behavior and realistically assess how customers are working with us, thus as an industry we largely ignore the obvious massive changes around mobile, social media and Internet adoption. Basically, forget the concept of any spontaneous change in organization strategy that creates an innovative bank, one that intuitively gets the customer behavioral shift – this is going to be very, very hard work. Don’t bet the farm The mantra of senior executives looking at social media, mobile banking and payments, next generation Internet banking, augmented reality or geo-location, and other such technology initiatives reminds us of the classic Jerry McGuire call to “Show Me The Money” ! ROI is a massive focus, but the problem with living in a rapid adoption environment like we do today, is that if you wait to see how business models develop 2-3 years down the track to prove there is ROI, you are already going to be 4 years behind the competition. So how do you innovate when you can’t demonstrate short-term ROI, but you know that you MUST be experimenting with different approaches? How do you foster a culture of break out strategies or approaches when existing silos and gaming leave you with minimal budget to try something new? The trick is that you have to be ready to play with new ideas and test new approaches cheaper, faster and better than the traditional IT or channel deployment approaches of yester years. Your bank has to learn to prototype. Playing with BANK 2.0 models Although as a competency interaction design, usability, behavioral economics, prototyping and other such elements have been around for a couple of decades, the banking sector has largely remained immune from this type of thinking. Predominantly we’ve let bank process, policy, compliance and regulations define how we behave as a bank, and customers have had to yield to this environment. As Facebook credits, PayPal, NFC enabled iPhones and other such innovations continue to ‘bite’ we realize that as an industry we’re going to have to redesign customer journeys and improve engagement. Experimentation is a great model to help us get to where we need to go. IDEO recently attacked the redesign of the humble ATM with BBVA. The project took almost 2 years to get from prototyping to finished product, but in bank terms, this is warp speed. The traditional design process would not have produced the same outcome as what you see is the end result, which is truly a revolution in ATM design. Check out the video that documents the project and the prototyping and the design process complete with vital “human” input. The Future of Self-Service Banking from IDEO on Vimeo . Immersion as an observation technique Experiential immersion and behavioral observation studies are increasingly powerful ways to understand how customers respond to prototype environments. Recently I visited NAB in Australia where I met with Mark Appleford’s team who have built an Immersion and Design Centre for the purpose of testing their NextGen approaches to engagement banking. The Immersion and Design Centre allows for rapid configuration of physical spaces and interaction, without having to actually build a physical retail environment. A large video screen and configurable room enables NAB to create a simulated environment complete with visual feedback, portable signage, ambient sounds, mock-up screens and interfaces (like a cardboard box and touch screen that doubles as an ATM). In the images below you can see a mock-up of a bank shop environment complete with the video wall configured to show shoppers milling in the retail space, and you’ll see a NAB staffer sitting behind an ATM mock-up feeding mock currency through a slot to customers in a test of an ATM design iteration. A retail shopping environment projected on the rear wall of the immersion space The staffer here is manually feeding notes to customers through the ATM mock-up Fail often, fail early, save big bucks… The objective in building the prototype bank is to fail often, re-iterate and get the design of the customer interaction right, while it doesn’t cost you too much to change. If you’re already at User Acceptance Testing and you find a major customer hiccup, the cost of re-architecting the solution is prohibitive – so bad designs often go live just because they are too costly to change when testing reveals problems at the user-end of the journey. If you are going to be a really innovative bank, you have to learn to experiment with different models of engagement in a cheap, but productive manner. Start thinking of ways to prototype the future of your bank.

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Lucio Lanza Joins Jasper Design Automation Board

October 14, 2010

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA–(Marketwire – October 14, 2010) –  Jasper Design Automation , provider of advanced formal technology solutions, today announced well-known investor and silicon pioneer Lucio Lanza has joined its board of directors.

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Mariam Naficy: How I Found a Great CTO

October 11, 2010

In a hyper-competitive engineering recruiting environment, my company, Minted.com , is announcing officially today that we have hired a Chief Technology Officer. Minted.com is both a global design community and stationery retailer. Independent graphic designers from all over the world submit designs to our ongoing design competitions, and Minted’s community votes to tell us what to sell. We sell the winning designs to customers in the form of personalized wedding invitations, Christmas cards , and other stationery and photo card products. Because we achieved our most aggressive revenue targets and built a strong community, we realized that we had a broader opportunity to change the world of graphic design. However, we needed a head of engineering to recruit and lead a larger team to accomplish our larger goals. I’ve occasionally worked with executive recruiters, for example in hiring a CTO for my first company, Eve.com. This time, I decided to handle the process myself. I felt that I had to re-educate myself on the engineering talent landscape given how fast it is evolving, and had a deep curiosity regarding what the best engineering leaders of right now looked like. The first thing I did was to find an advisor who I could trust. I was lucky to sign on as advisor and investor the founder of a very high-profile consumer Internet site who happens to also be a former engineer, who I will call Richard. He is a broad, strategic business thinker, has a deep understanding of engineering talent, has very high standards, and is someone I can always have a real conversation with. After talking it over with Richard, I decided that Minted was looking for three must-haves in a head of engineering: 1) he had to have seen ‘great’ – he had to have been in a highly respected engineering environment, 2) he had to be able to attract engineers, have a strong network of up-and-coming engineers, and enjoy recruiting, and 3) he had to have strong planning, communication, and management skills, but still code. Richard introduced me to Yishan Wong, formerly Director of Engineering at Facebook and Paypal and co-founder of Sunfire, an invite-only engineering co-working space that has attracted star engineers. I liked Yishan too (he has an incredible balance of technical acumen, managerial talent and emotional intelligence), felt that he would have the time to help me, and persuaded him to take on a 3-month part-time assignment to advise me on building our engineering team, in exchange for equity. One night, meeting Yishan in Mountain View to hammer out the details of the project, Yishan’s Sunfire co-founder Niniane Wang showed up and grilled me with lots of very good questions. Richard was prophetic in saying that he hoped Niniane would become interested in Minted too, and sure enough Yishan quickly persuaded her to join him as an advisor in a 2-for-1 deal. Having two well-regarded and well-networked engineers on an advisory project created a stream of terrific VP candidates for Minted and taught me a great deal about the culture and current popular beliefs of the hottest engineering talent in the Valley. What did I learn that engineers wanted? The people I spoke with were remarkably clear and consistent in their priorities. Team – top engineers place huge value on the caliber of their future colleagues when making a decision to join. Size of Opportunity – market size, revenue or usage, exit outcome and their ability to get equity early are all important. Product Passion – to many engineers, they have to be stoked about the idea to work there. Culture – a fun, collegial work atmosphere. Social Good – a surprisingly high percentage of engineers I spoke with placed importance on having a positive impact on a community or society. Programming Language – many top engineers I spoke with prefer python and don’t like working in PHP. Personal Lifestyle – commute is a factor in their decision process. Unlike my fellow MBAs, who are not daunted (and are even possibly motivated) by the prospect of being the smartest person in the company, the engineers I spoke with were turned off if they felt their colleagues weren’t smart. Engineers I spoke with regularly said, “If you don’t ask me tough questions during the interview, I don’t want to join” or “I want to be the dumbest person in the room”. I also noticed that despite the laid-back surface of the engineering culture, there are similarities in behavior between elite business environments (like Goldman Sachs, where I once worked) and elite engineering environments: people care a lot what you majored in and where you went to school. As I interviewed several fantastic candidates to lead engineering at Minted, it became clear that there was a hidden fourth criterion that was absolutely critical: the candidate had to have chemistry with our team and have a deep passion for the design community we were building – enough to act like a founder and owner of Minted. For those of you who haven’t guessed the end to the story, as we worked on the search, one face repeatedly came into my mind as the perfect person who I wanted to work with: Niniane Wang. And she, thank goodness, also began to fall in love with Minted as she heard me give ‘the pitch’ to candidates over and over again. So we ended up offering the job to Niniane, she accepted, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Niniane has 11 years of experience at Google and Microsoft; at Google, she was a founding member of Desktop Search, led Gmail monetization, founded Google Lively, won a Google Founder’s Award, and served on Google’s hiring committee for five years. She, like Yishan, balances very high intelligence with emotional strength, and her drive and love for the idea of a design community changing the design world make her a great fit with our culture. She’s going to have a big impact on Minted’s future. To sum up, here’s what I would do again as a non-technical founder looking for a technical co-founder or CTO. Find a river guide who is a well-networked, experienced engineer and has been in a respected engineering environment. Embed yourself in the world of engineers to understand what person you’re looking for and how to talk to the person once you find her. Do it yourself and don’t delegate it. You’ll be surprised at what you find, given how fast the engineering landscape is evolving. Don’t be afraid of developing a contrarian viewpoint on what type of person is perfect for your company as CTO, and how you’re going to find that person.

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Brett King: The Customer-Centric Initiative Project

September 23, 2010

Getting a head start on customer centricity As I tour the globe talking to banks and other financial institutions, the issue of how to make the migration to a truly customer centric organization is often agonized over. While many are keen to see that goal materialize, there are just as many who feel organizational inertia and long entrenched silos are just too significant a hurdle to circumvent. Innovation in the customer space is often a challenge too. How do you really create an innovative organization when your traditional roots are all about, well…tradition. The big ships of industry, banks definitely included, are like massive supertankers. Ships that turn slowly and once they have a head up of speed are very difficult to slow or turn when set on a course. In a world where channel complexity, technology adoption and consumer behaviors are pushing the envelop of just about every service organization to adapt at warp-speed, how do we create speedboat type instincts when the organization is lumbering along supertanker style? Big Banks are like SuperTankers – they don’t change direction easily The Google Time Initiative Google gives it’s engineers 20% of their time to work on the project of their choice. The Google time initiative is consistently cited as one of the reasons why employees rank Google as one of the best companies to work for as voted by Forbes, FastCompany, etc. It’s also a great generator of innovations as adhoc collaborations are born out of necessity, common interest or just the pure exploration of a better user experience. Some of those initiatives like Android end up becoming a stable of Google’s core range, while others like Google Wave burn bright for a time, create great learnings, but go on to become something entirely different from what started. Getting a bank to give their employees 20% of their time to work on a project or initiative of their choosing, might be too much of an ask for those ships of industry, but it is a way to drop a speedboat in the water and see how it performs. If the idea works, it can then be incorporated back into the overall business as part of a longer-term shift. The VC Approach If you’ve ever engaged in discussions with Venture Capital firms about a business plan, you’ll appreciate how brutal the process is in dismissing badly thought out ideas or poor business cases. If we ran a lot of the existing bank processes, products and business units through a VC selection process these days, many simply would not survive. But because they are embedded ‘traditions’ they get retained. Good examples of this today are paper statements sent by snail mail, or offering a checking account to new customers by default. If we were a brand new start-up bank, it’s unlikely these would be the preferred approach in a business plan today. Using the VC approach, however, can select the most likely candidates for success in the innovation sandbox. VCs often use the formula of reviewing 100 business plans, selecting perhaps 5-10 for further review and selecting perhaps 2 or 3 for some scale of investment. This is a solid approach to pitching new ideas for seed capital internally to see if individual innovation initiatives have merit versus other competitive ideas or bids. It also means that work isn’t done on the basis of simply cool technology, but real revenue or cost savings thinking. The IDEO Approach I’ve always admired the IDEO design team for their deep dive methodology. I think that the deep dive remains probably the most creative management and design process that there is today. By dividing teams into separate groups to brainstorm innovative approaches, you get not a single idea, but many competing ideas to flesh out. The advantages to this process can best be summed up by a great quote from their design team: Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius… IDEO Design Once a month, or once a quarter, try getting your channel team together and brainstorming a new customer journey or experience. Then use the VC approach after you’ve prototyped the idea to come up with something better for the customer. The deep dive process will take you to new heights of innovation much quicker than the planning of the lone banker. Especially if that banker has had 30 years of banking experience – trying to get him to think innovatively is like trying to turn that huge supertanker. The Customer Centric Initiative So putting all of these best practice approaches to innovation together, I propose a new initiative for your bank today to get started on the path to customer satisfaction, deeper relationships, and more profitability. Give everyone in your product and channel team, 20% of their time over the next 2-3 months to spend on improving customer journeys and experience. Underpin this by creating a multi-channel deep dive session once a quarter where all of the channel teams, supported by product representatives, look at new ways of engaging the customer. Prototype the customer journey on paper. Sketch up new web, mobile, or ATM screen flows to show how the interaction could be simplified and improved, or even come up with completely new ideas based on behavioral analytics. Let’s get this customer centric initiative on the road. It takes a long time to break silos, so let’s not even try to tackle that until we can get the team thinking about customers. The Customer Centric Initiative is a way of doing that without breaking the bank…

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CDEX Announces New Management, New Focus and New Future

September 16, 2010

TUCSON, AZ–(Marketwire – September 16, 2010) –  CDEX Inc. ( OTCBB : CEXI ) ( www.cdexinc.com ) — We are pleased to announce that Jeff Brumfield has been appointed as the new Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of CDEX Inc. He brings back to the Company Dr. Wade Poteet as the Chief Science Officer who will be overseeing the development of all new technology, as well as providing oversight of all key employees in the area of research and development. We are also excited to bring back Carey Starzinger. Mr. Starzinger will be providing his expertise in the area of computer science, and Mr. Jim Ryles is back as the chief engineer who will be responsible for the design and final production of all products. We are also very excited to announce our new Board of Directors. The new members are Brian Jenkins, General Robert “Doc” Foglesong, Frank Wren, and Thomas Payne. They

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CDEX Announces New Management, New Focus and New Future

September 16, 2010

TUCSON, AZ–(Marketwire – September 16, 2010) –  CDEX Inc. ( OTCBB : CEXI ) ( www.cdexinc.com ) — We are pleased to announce that Jeff Brumfield has been appointed as the new Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of CDEX Inc. He brings back to the Company Dr. Wade Poteet as the Chief Science Officer who will be overseeing the development of all new technology, as well as providing oversight of all key employees in the area of research and development. We are also excited to bring back Carey Starzinger. Mr. Starzinger will be providing his expertise in the area of computer science, and Mr. Jim Ryles is back as the chief engineer who will be responsible for the design and final production of all products. We are also very excited to announce our new Board of Directors. The new members are Brian Jenkins, General Robert “Doc” Foglesong, Frank Wren, and Thomas Payne. They

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Gregory Unruh: Scarcity: The Fountain of Innovation

September 16, 2010

Monday morning Tianjin, China and it’s the first session of the World Economic Forum’s “Summer Davos 2010″ event. Ironically, after a filling breakfast in opulent surroundings, my panel colleagues and I are discussing scarcity. With concerns about peak oil, peak water, peak real estate, peak financial markets – and just about peak everything else – scarcity is on the minds of business and political leaders alike. The panel members come at scarcity from diverse disciplines. I come at it from the perspective of environmental sustainability, where scarcity has been a polemic since at least the 18th century (although the roots go deeper to Roman times in the west and ancient Chinese culture in the east). Most people remember the “Limits to Growth” debate about resource scarcity posited by the Club of Rome in 1972, but the modern dispute begins with the early economists like Robert Malthus, who in 1798 recognized that exponential growth can’t go on forever. When we talk about resources scarcity, we tend to think of energy and material constraints. But that’s only half of the story because it forgets a third important resource: human creativity. It is our current state of know-how that determines how scarce something is. Give a 1970s muscle car to 1 billion Indian drivers and oil will become scarce fast. But if you give them Priuses, it’s a different story. Scarcity is relative. And the mere act of perceiving scarcity changes the game. Great designers understand this. Charles Eames says design is all about innovating around constraints. And it’s the constraints – the scarcity – that fires the designer’s creativity. Smart business people “get it” too. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos embraces self-imposed scarcity saying, “One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.” These guys are bright and talented, but as is often the case, our best scarcity tutor is Mother Nature herself. Nature is the ultimate example of leveraging the power of self-imposed constraints. Just look outside your window. Amazingly, 95 percent of every living thing you see is made out of just four elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Out of the 90 plus naturally-occurring elements in the periodic table, nature constrained herself to just four in manufacturing the living world. Most importantly, scarcity of design options has not limited nature’s creativity. There are tens of millions of diverse species and even more miraculous functions. Just think of the super computer banging around in your skull or abalone nacre, a substance that humbles our best high-tech ceramics. And nature builds all these wonders, not by tapping into the intense heats and pressures possible with fossil fuels, but from the free rain of renewable energy of the sky. Nature can do this because of eons of innovating under (self-imposed) scarcity. The result is a tremendous store of know-how encoded into the DNA of living things. Now to be fair, nature has had over 3 billion years to experiment. But remember, nature experiments randomly, subjecting haphazard mutations to the forces of natural selection. If the mutation makes a critter more fit, then the knowledge is conserved in DNA and added to nature’s patrimony of know how. If not, it’s deleted. This fact gives us an innovative advantage. Unlike nature, we can be purposeful in our design decisions, not random. Given the right signals, that is the right constraints, we can innovate ourselves out of scarcity problems. As my WEF Panel colleagues rightly point out, however, it does take some time. Proactive policy that corrects externalities and market failures before a crisis point is reached is needed. But business and government leaders should not fear constraints. Given the right signals innovative designers, engineers and entrepreneurs can get us out of the box. Cross-posted from Forbes

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Inder Sidhu: The Millennials: Your Guides to the Future

September 13, 2010

Will you ever forget your first job out of college? Chances are Andrew Phillips won’t. Less than two months after graduating in May with a degree in Motion Graphic Design and Sound from Ex’pression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville, Calif., Phillips landed a corporate job working at Cisco’s world headquarters in San Jose. His assignment: help the company’s partner management team better communicate with allies over the Internet. That meant long hours setting up and testing corporate Web sites. But that’s not all Phillips did. He found plenty of time to sing and dance at the office–and film himself doing so. Encouraged by his managers to put his video editing and song writing skills to the use, Phillips began making music videos that he shared on YouTube, Facebook and other sites. Then he teamed up with another Cisco newcomer, intern Greg Justice, to produce a video extolling the virtues of Cisco’s Flip cameras. In the video , the two Generation Yers rap on a balcony outside the company’s executive offices. “Cisco interns crazy flow, cruising in Mercedes slow. Eighties babies round the globe, interna-tional,” they sing to a driving, hip-hop beat. Promoting Cisco consumer technology? Not a bad gig, Phillips concedes, especially when compared to what other members of the Millennial generation are doing. Perhaps you have read about them. They are the 20-somethings that are coming of age and looking for work in droves. Born between 1982 and 2000, Millennials represent 41 percent of the U.S. population–nearly 80 million individuals. By 2014, they will account for half of all U.S. workers . But today, they are struggling to find their way. Of the 100 men and women who graduated with Phillips, only a dozen have found professional jobs. Many are busing tables or channel surfing. All are hoping for a spike in hiring, but they know what they are up against: the worst jobs environment since the Great Depression . Phillips says he considers “every day a blessing.” He dreams of buying a house and starting a family–two milestones that would have been harder to attain had he stayed in his previous job, working as a barista at Starbucks. While he enjoyed working there, corporate life provides him an opportunity to put the skills he honed at school to use. That’s not by accident, either. While some organization struggle to make room for Generation Y–they have a reputation for questioning everything and for expecting instant gratification –Cisco and other organizations are eager to leverage their unique skills and experiences. Statistically, Generation Y is the most educated and technologically experienced of any generation to date. Millennials have never known adulthood without the Internet, and are perfectly at ease with social media, digital content creation and mobile connectivity. Take Phillips. He can write HTML code, produce videos, post Web content and compose music. Is that a skill set your company can leverage? Cisco certainly thinks so. That’s why it is encouraging employees–even interns–to spread their wings. Since taking on his current role, Phillips has been urged to find ways to put his full complement of talents to work. In return, Cisco has netted a great deal of exposure that it wouldn’t otherwise have enjoyed. Consider the videos that Phillips and Justice produced. Since they went live, the videos have been viewed nearly 200,000 times. Justice’s first video alone generated more than 90,000 viewings and was featured in an online story on All Things Digital , one of The Wall Street Journal’s technology sites. That kind of attention is hard to come by at any price. More than mere exposure, the impressions created by Phillips and Justice have helped shape Cisco’s image with the new generation. Could a 23-year old have a similar impact at your company? Maybe, if you have a culture that encourages workers to push the bounds of convention, and the means by which to accommodate them. If your business deals with environmentalism, social responsibility, globalization or any number of emerging interests, then take another look at what Generation Y has to offer. From video production to tweeting and more, they could help cast you in a new and more favorable light. Who among us over 30 couldn’t benefit from a little bit of that? Inder Sidhu is the Senior Vice President of Strategy & Planning for Worldwide Operations at Cisco , and the author of Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today’s Profits and Drives Tomorrow’s Growth . Follow Inder on Twitter at @indersidhu .

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Andrea Chalupa: Garbage Moguls: God Bless the Eco-Capitalists

August 21, 2010

The BP oil spill has nothing on the hundreds of miles of garbage floating in the Atlantic Ocean , and its bigger sibling, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch , a plastic-soup in the Pacific Ocean estimated to span the size of the continental U.S. Our oceans are our landfills, a fact that nags at me with every take-out container and other piece of trash I dispose of in my kitchen. I’m just one person making all this trash, and my internal-dialogue now sounds like the hitchhiker woman in Five Easy Pieces : “Pretty soon there won’t be room for anyone!” I admit that these three horesemen of the enviornmental apocolypse have me seriously considering the possibility of reincarnation. To hell with future generations, what if we are forced to join them, in the mess that we’re creating? Enter the eco-capitalists, please. Garbage Moguls , a show airing tonight on the National Geographic Channel, follows Tom Szaky, the 28-year-old Princeton University drop-out and founding CEO of TerraCycle , a New Jersey-based company that reincarnates trash into incredibly cool stuff, from messenger bags to kites to lunch boxes and picture frames. Albe Zakes, Tom’s right-hand man and one of the stars of the show that takes you inside TerraCycle as it tries to win-over big corporate clients, sums it up in a press release: With shows like Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of New Jersey as popular as they are, it seems it was only a matter of time before a New Jersey TV show about ACTUAL trash got made. On Saturday August 21st, National Geographic will air three all-new episodes of Garbage Moguls, an inside look at the zany way TerraCycle, “the coolest little start-up in America” ( Inc. magazine), develops products made completely out of trash. Drama rears its tense head as TerraCycle’s team has two weeks to create an entire line of pet products for Pedigree by making leashes, collars, and pet clothes out of dog food bags. In another episode on tonight, Tom pitches Home Depot a garbage can made of chip wrappers, and in the third also on tonight, the design team has to create a suit jacket made of Target shopping bags and an entire line of new products. All this reality show goodness jump starts the catchphrase, “Why buy new?” If TerraCycle and more companies like it take hold of the mainstream, we won’t have to. There’s a viewing party tonight on Twitter. Just follow @TerraCycle and use #garbagemoguls to interact with the TerraCycle team. Follow it up with trivia questions on the TerraCycle Facebook fan page , to enter to win cool TerraCycle prizes. While these eco-capitalists are pouring their blood, sweat, and presumably some tears into the next great industrial revolution, Colin Beavan has a handy list of tips on how you and I can create less trash , meaning less fights over whose turn it is to take it out. Colin and his wife Michelle Conlin, busy parents, spent a year living “no-impact.” They drastically reduced their carbon footprint and continue to incorproate these strategies into their hectic New York lifestyle. Garbage Moguls premiers tonight 8-11 PM ET/PT. For clips and more info, check out the National Geographic Channel . And for more on living no-impact and greening your life, check out the No Impact Project .

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David Isenberg: The GAO Transcripts, Part 15: Coordination is Easier Said Than Done

July 17, 2010

This is the fifteenth installment of the Government Accountability Office interview transcripts that were prepared pursuant to the July 2005 GAO report ” Rebuilding Iraq: Actions Needed To Improve Use of Private Security Providers .” This transcript illustrates that nearly two years after the U.S. invaded Iraq the U.S. authorities’ still had little ability to keep track of private security contractors, as this passage illustrates: ROC currently does not have the manpower necessary to maintain a database of contractors __________ emphasized that contractors are not contractually required to participate in the PCO’s ROC. Registration of contractors at the PCO is not cross-checked against a database of PSCs. The ROC does not maintain an attendance roster of PSCs Interestingly, some companies took avoidable risks, such as “driving their cargo like a stagecoach” (i.e. driving without any protection or without notifying the military of their actions)” which should have raised their insurance costs. The transcript also mentions a delicate topic, which is not talked about all that often in public, i.e. shooting incidents between contractors and soldiers: Have there been any “blue on blue” or friendly fire incidents due to the military being unaware of private security contractors in their sector? There are many Blue on Blue incidents, but not because the military was not aware that PSCs were in their sector. 5. Can you site any situations in which the military has fired upon a private security contractor or contractor or vice versa? YES. What conditions led to this situation? Conditions range from poor fire discipline on the part of soldiers to deep anxiety and nervousness borne of many SVBIED (Suicide Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Device) attacks. How does the PCO’s ROC prevent friendly fire? The ROC documents cases of blue on blue and engages MNFI over them. It has proposed improvements to facilitate better coordination between PSCs and the military. It has provided PSCs with recommended TTPs for avoiding such incidents. Through the LMCC, it has enabled the military to have visibility on whom is in their AO. Finally, given that the Commission Wartime Contracting held a hearing last month on ” Are Private Security Contractors Performing Inherently Governmental Functions? ” this passage should be of interest: We have heard from several contractors that there is concern that __________ [Aegis] not sufficiently fulfilling their contract and that they are wary of sharing information with a peer. Many contractors believe that communication function performed under the___________ contract is an innately governmental position and should be performed by a DOD entity. Because of these concerns, several contractors have stated that they will utilize the PCO’s resources but do not place much faith in the program? Engaging in firefights with terrorists is also an innately governmental position, but unless the government chooses to provide manpower far above current levels, we must rely on contractors to provide shooters, communicators and other experts fulfilling critical roles. Standard disclaimer: I have put in ( _____ ) to reflect those words of phrases which have been blacked out in the transcript. I have also put in the underlining as it appeared in the original transcript. As in the transcript, I have left out letters from various words, even when it seems obvious what the word is. Prepared. by: Kate Walker Index: Type bundle index here Date Prepared: January 9, 2005 DOC Number: Type document number here Reviewed by: Type reviewer name hem DOC Library: Type 1ibrary name here Job Code: 350544 Record of Interview Title VTC with PCO, Baghdad Purpose To learn about status of the PCO Contact Method Video-conference Contact Place GAO HQ and Baghdad, Iraq Contact Date January 18, 2005 Participants __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ ____________________ ____________________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ Tim DiNapoli, Assistant Director, ASM, GAO Carole Coffey, Analyst in Charge, DCM, GAO Kate Walker, Analyst, DCM, GAO Chris Durbin, Analyst, DCM, GAO Mike Avenick, Analyst, DCM, GAO Comments/Remarks: We met with several members of the Project Contracting Office (PCO) staff and the Logistic Management Coordination Center (LMCC) via video-conference. __________ in Baghdad, led the discussion. He opened our meeting by emphasizing that the theatre in Iraq is unprecedented and that lessons are being learned every day as the PCO adapts to the changing environment. __________ entioned that in addition to the items raised in our questions, the PCO would also like to address 1) PSB Insurance __________ Page 1 Record of Interview __________ __________ 2) the creation of a government armory to distribute weapons locally in Iraq. In response to our questions regarding the handover of the PCO to USACE, __________ ndicated that the rumor of the demise of the PCO was premature and that only parts of the PCO will be migrating to other areas. For example, USACE will maintain control of the administration of reconstruction projects. PCO contracting authority was moved to the GRD. Administrative contracting officer responsibility was sent to the GRD after the task order was issued. In September 2005, the PCO contracting was to be assimilated into GRD contracting. Below follows the list of questions we sent the PCO and their responses. I have annotated their responses with notes from our conversation. Current Status of the PCO and Security 1. Is the PCO currently disseminating information on the security situation to contractors and guiding contractor movement? Via the Regional Operation Center (ROC) at the PCO. 2. Which contractors are actively participating with the PCO? Participating contractors include, but are not limited to __________ __________ __________ __________ What resources does the PCO’s ROC offer to PCO contractors? 1. Operations 2. Information 3. Coordination Non-PCO contractors? Same PCO subcontractors? Same Does the PCO maintain a database of participating contractors? Yes. Participation is voluntary, but registration, to the best of my knowledge is not cross-checked against a database of PCO security contractors (because a database does not exist). (** Analyst note: __________ noted that the PCO’s ROC has only been up and working since mid-October 2004 and that the ROC is still working out some kinks. The PCO’s ROC serves as a facilitator for cooperation and advocacy for PSCs. __________ dicated that the PCO’s ROC currently does not have the manpower necessary to maintain a database of contractors __________ emphasized that contractors are not contractually required to participate in the PCO’s ROC. Registration of contractors at the PCO is not cross-checked against a database of PSCs. The ROC does not maintain an attendance roster of PSCs, however, all primes and subs are welcome to participate. __________ elieves that the ROC has been successful and sites that the UN and the Iraqi ministry have contacted the PCO regarding participation in the ROC. __________ r to send number of billets and staff at PCO. The original design-build contractors had to provide all the security and life services. This was found to be cost-prohibitive and contractors have found a middle meeting ground by utilizing the PCO’s LMCC and ROC. There was an initial handshake agreement that if contractors participated in the PCO’s ROC and LMCC then medical and security responses would be provided to them. By having contractors participate in the LMCC, there was also hope that the cost of insurance for contractors in Iraq would decrease because the contractors would be better Page 2 Record of Interview protected. For example, those companies that are “driving their cargo like a stagecoach” (i.e. driving without any protection or without notifying the military of their actions) should expect to pay more in insurance than those that are driving on secured roads with contact to the ROC and LMCC. LMCC hopes to maximize the benefit of coordination and decrease the escalating costs of insurance. __________ informed us that the PCO has made aggressive attempts to try and get USAID to participate in the ROC and the LMCC, but USAID refused to participate. __________ described USAID as “not a team player .” For example, USAID transferred authority of the Baghdad International Airport (BIA) to the Iraqi Ministry, which is now refusing to transfer big-ticket weapons. The military and Department of State were not conferred on this decision. Me. Holly indicated that dating back to the 1970′s BIA was a notoriously poorly operating airport and that the Iraqis operating the airport were poorly trained. He believes that it was a poor decision to turn the airport over to the Iraqi’s and that the importation of weapons and necessary military equipment will be severely hampered. In another example, USAID would not participate on an Economic Security Board that sought to prioritize security in Iraq) 3. Is the PCO’s ROC fully operational and integrated with Iraq’s regional operation centers? If you’re referring to the Regional ROCs, the answer is yes. There is close coordination between the ROC and the RROCs. (** Analyst Note: There are six regional operation centers planned. Only two of these operation centers are not fully operational–Camp Victory and Ramadi. Camp Victory has a life support problem. Ramadi is operating in a very dangerous work environment and is standing up a team in Fallujah until the Ramadi site is fully operational. __________ ndicated that Rarnadi has a very close relationship with the 1st MEF Marines unit in Fallujah. __________ ssed what steps would be taken to ensure that the transition from the 1st MEF to the 2nd MEF would be smooth and would ensure that the strong relationship with the ROC at Ramadi would be continued __________ indicated that while there would be a few organizational changes in the GX at division HQ, overall he believes that the transition will not change the active relationship between the ROC and the MEF.) 4. What is the current security situation in Iraq? Depending on the particular area, this can be a tough, challenging, difficult environment. Even short distance trips are dangerous, time-consuming and expensive. Project sites are subject to attack and loss of materials and workers because of treats and intimidation. For the latest information on the security situation in Iraq, contact DIA J-2. How has this situation changed since the initial arrival of troops in Iraq? A ground war evolved into an insurgency featuring asymmetric warfare and terrorism. (** Analyst note: __________ndicated that defining the security situation in Iraq depends upon your frame of reference; the security situation varies depending on which area in Iraq is being discussed. __________ indicate that since the initial invasion of Iraq, the troops have gone from fighting a ground war to dealing with an insurgency.) Page 3 Record of interview 5. Which contractors participate with the PCO’s ROC? See above response to question 1. Can we have a list of participants? I do not maintain an attendance roster but am confident that 80 to 90% of the PSC community and all of the Primes and DBs are participating m ROC activities. Movement Coordination 1. Does Aegis help plan contractor movements? Yes, by its participation in the ROC. How does __________ oordinate movement across Iraq? Via the ROC and its close relationship with the LMCC. For example, doe __________ oordinate movement by contacting Regional Operation Center’s across Iraq? __________ and the RROCs are but two elements in movement coordination in Iraq, which features the LMCC and its Tapestry system, the ROC and its information, intelligence, coordination and operations services. (** Analyst Note: __________ ROC works with the LMCC, regional ROC’s, and the tapestry to plan movements. The LMCC takes the lead in movement planning and has visibility to MNFI. In order to plan and coordinate movement, LMCC has utilized transponders. Per their design-build contracts, contractors were originally required to supply all security and medical support for their projects. However, the continued combat situation in Iraq has made furnishment of this level of support financially unfeasible for contractors, so a mutually agreeable (with the ROC) system of registering movements and using transponders has developed. In spring 2004, the LMCC encouraged participating contractors to purchase their own transponders and participate in the LMCC’s operating system. The idea was for these contractors to purchase their own transponders but require these to have a common operating system among all contractors as well as a system that was compatible with the existing military transponder system. Contract modifications would have made these transponders government-furnished equipment (GFE). However, due to issues of oversight and interoperability problems, LMCC instead decided to purchase the transponders internally and distribute them to design-build contractors. The LMCC allocates one transponder for personnel movement and two transponders for convoy movement. After the LMCC originally decided to provide transponders for design-build contractors, 200 lower quality transponders were purchased due to the urgency and quick turn-over of the order. Thus, the military’s 20-25K transponders did not have an emergency button system that can be alerted when under attack. The LMCC has since purchased nearly 400 new transponders that have emergency buttons.) 2. How are handoffs between divisions boundaries handled? Are their any overall DOD/CENTCOM policies guiding handoffs between divisions? Movements are coordinated through the LMCC which registers the movements with the theater movement control cell (TMCC). Usually there are no movement coordination measures required crossing the boundary of one MSC to another. When a convoy approaches a checkpoint, regardless of the AOR (area of responsibility), the March Credit document suffices to allow passage. If, however, coordination is required for a strategic move (i.e., large generator w/ military escorts), coordination measures are established in an OPORD (Operation Order) Page 4 Record of interview issued through the ROC (Regional Operation Center) to MNFI SOC (Security Operations Center) for MNCI execution. (** Analyst Note: The LMCC registers movements with the TMCC. Currently, there are two systems for tracking movement in Iraq: (1) the March Credit system and (2) Tapestry. The March Credit system is a contractual obligation for passage between divisions. March Credit orders are issued by the control battalions. Once a contractor has applied for a March Credit order, they are then assigned an alphanumeric code. This code is validation that the military has received the movement order request and have notified all relevant parties on the route of movement that the contractor would be traveling in their AOR. Transponders under the Tapestry system allow for positive 1-2 minute updates on movements and validate March Credit order movements. In addition, a Fragmentary order (FRAGO) has been drafted that would require MNF (I) commanders to provide life support for certain contractors, including PSCs.) 3. Does the PCO inform division commanders of private security contractors moving into their AOR? Yes, if they are part of registered convoys or through the Tapestry system. (** Analyst note: Division commanders are informed of the registered convoy via the tapestry system.) 4. Have there been any “blue on blue” or friendly fire incidents due to the military being unaware of private security contractors in their sector? There are many Blue on Blue incidents, but not because the military was not aware that PSCs were in their sector. 5. Can you site any situations in which the military has fired upon a private security contractor or contractor or vice versa? YES. What conditions led to this situation? Conditions range from poor fire discipline on the part of soldiers to deep anxiety and nervousness borne of many SVBIED (Suicide Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Device) attacks. How does the PCO’s ROC prevent friendly fire? The ROC documents cases of blue on blue and engages MNFI over them. It has proposed improvements to facilitate better coordination between PSCs and the military. It has provided PSCs with recommended TTPs for avoiding such incidents. Through the LMCC, it has enabled the military to have visibility on whom is in their AO. (** Analyst note: March Credit document ave seen a rise in blue-on-blue incidents in the past 2.5 months __________o send a copy of TTP’s regarding approaching the military.” __________ ndicated that he had given a briefing regarding blue-on-blue incidents in December 2004. To nowledge, there had been only one incident in which a PSC shot at the military.) Communication and Intelligence Sharing 1. To what extent can and are threat information shared between US military forces, the PCO, and other US government agencies? Limited. Could always be better. Growing. Foreign disclosure a problem. Page 5 Record of Interview 2. How does the PCO get intelligence/information from the military? FDO Pass-through. Is this information shared with PSCs? Yes. How is this intelligence shared with PSCs? In daily reports and spot reports or on an as requested basis. (** Analyst Note: __________ ndicated that the informal intelligence fusion from contractors and private security companies was typically much better than the information than the information that he received from the military about road conditions, etc. in certain areas of Iraq __________ does not believe that there have been any problems bringing intelligence down to the classified level for contractors. __________ ndicated that he utilized the Private ‘Security Company Association of Iraq (PSCAI) as a means to coordinate intelligence among private security contractors. For example, __________ indicated that he would often issue request for information (RP’1) through PSCAI’s email list to participating contractors. __________ would then share any information that he received with other private security contractor. __________ believes that the ROC helps to support the PSCAI’s communication and information sharing efforts. __________ indicated that the ROC was having a hard time getting SIPR or CENTRIX access at the PCO. The PCO has requested the appropriate authorities for access to SIPR. The PCO also has problems with phone accessibility; DSN access has been difficult as well.) 3. In our previous phone conversation with __________, we learned that __________ operates a password protected website. What type of information is found on this website? Ops/Int Who has access to this website? Registered & approved individuals. What is the process for achieving access to the website? Go to brief.aegisiraq.com Can we have access to the website? Yes. (** Analyst Note: __________ ____________________ __________ ____________________ 4. What is the PCO’s relationship with the Overseas Advisory Council (OSAC)? Limited. OSAC is not very active and is limited to Americans–a small part of the PSC community. Does the PCOC use OSAC as a means of communication with private security contractors and contractors in Iraq? No. 5. How have you communicated the PCO’s ROC mission with contractors and PSCs? Through the PSCAI, and word of mouth. How do contractors learn about the PCO’s ROC and its resources? Well, the contractors ask questions, the ROC advertises its capabilities to whoever wants to listen. 6. Are there procedures that contractors must follow when contacting the PCO? Who are they contacting in the PCO? How do private security contractors and the PCO communicate? Email, phone and face to face. Can private security contractors contact the PCO directly or do they contact the PCO via, their CO? PSCs typically do not have COs, they have country managers or project managers. Normally, who conducts Page 6 Record of Interview relations between PSCs and the PCO and ROC is determined by what needs to be discussed and who within the PSC is most appropriate to do so. (** ANALYST NOTE: __________ indicated that there were no set procedures for contacting the PCO and contractors can contact the PCO directly.) 7. How does the PCO handle emergency situations? It notifies appropriate MNFI authorities. Can the PCO dispatch quick response teams? NO, there are no QRFs assigned to the PCO, they are to the military. (** ANALYST NOTE: In addition to the PCO, there is also a tactical operation center at the American Embassy in Baghdad. The PCO does not send out quick response teams; the PCO is merely the platform for communication.) 8. Does the PCO have any arrangements with Multinational Forces Iraq and military units throughout Iraq to request quick reaction forces and emergency medical and medical evacuation support to private security contractors that come under attack and to deconflict/facilitate movement of private security details and convoys with military unit movements? On a not-to-interfere basis and as forces are available, MNFI has agreed to respond. (** ANALYST NOTE: The PCO has responded to every situation of which they were informed.) 9. Do these arrangements differ depending on who lets the contract? Are contractors working for the PCO given priority over non-PCO contractors and subcontractors? Which particular contract the PSC is supporting at time of difficulty is not part of the decision matrix. 10. Does the PCO interact with __________ s Security Management Center? Not directly. (** ANALYST NOTE: __________ indicated that __________ scope had a very limited scope supporting DOS. In addition, __________ ed that many of the PSCs have their own operation centers. The PSCs have tried to cobble together the intelligence centers from the various PSCs, but have run into problems with funding. PSCs have different budgets for their spending on intelligence gathering and, thus, it would be difficult to determine an appropriate fee for participating in a PSC-administered communication center. The PSCAI tried to address this gap and the PCO has further improved communications among PSCs.) 11. How do contractors and military units convey their location to the PCO? Contractors through beacon (transponder) system. Military does not. How do contractors contact the PCO while in movement? Sat phone or via beacon. (** ANALYST NOTE: The LMCC maintains display software that allows the military to see all PCO participating contractor movements.) Page 7 Record of Interview 12. To what extent is the PCO’s communications equipment interoperable with military communications equipment? VERY Limited. PCO does not share military comms. Do have cell phones and land line numbers. (** ANALYST NOTE: __________ indicated that the PCO is currently using an MCI system that allows them to call out of theatre location from a remote line in the United States. The absence of shared VHF is a major concern for __________ also added that the military is reluctant to give contractors the full range of communications due to security concerns.) 13. Can the communication system between PSCs and the PCO’s ROC be improved? How so? Yes. Common equipment. Costs many $$ (**ANALYST NOTE: __________ sked __________ which kinds of communication systems we would need to improve communications in Iraq. __________ ndicated that Thuraya phone systems, HF comms and VHF comms would improve communication. __________ ndicated that the use of Regional ROC’s also helps to improve communication because RROC’s can communicate directly with each other when persons traveling in their AOR are unable to communicate.) 14. Does the PCO’s ROC write after-action reports? The PSCs write the after action reports. In which types of situations have these reports been written? When contact occurs. Do private security contractors participating in the PCO’s ROC movement coordination relay any after-action or after-incident reports? Yes. 15. Does the PCO’s ROC maintain a database of contractors working in Iraq? No. If so, how does the PCO collect this information on contractors? Which contractors are included in the database? Are subcontractors and non-DOD contractors included in the database? If this data is not currently being collected by the PCO’s ROC, is any DOD organization collecting this information? Are there plans to implement the creation of a contractor database? The ROC does not have the manpower to establish and maintain a data base. Since every contractor coming into Iraq requires a CAC card (technically), I’ve asked one of staff to use this as a start point. I believe this is a function of IRMO and not the ROC, at least as we are currently configured. Bottom line, this is currently not being performed but we are working on establishing a start point. (** ANALYST NOTE: __________ ndicated that the PCO does keep list of contractors on an ad hoc basis. The ROC does not have the manpower to maintain a working database of contractors. The PCO has used CAC card applications as a way to gauge the number of contractors working in Iraq. __________ ieves that the maintenance of a database of contractors should be an IRMO responsibility. __________ndicated that until July 2004, there was not even an automated database of contracts in Iraq. The PCO is still trying to get a list of Iraqi contracts and authorized dates of service. There are a number of reasons that a database would be helpful, including knowledge of the constant movement of contractors, personnel recovery issues. Without a database of contractors, it would be difficult to gauge the “damage done when contractors fall into the wrong hands.”) Page 8 Record of Interview 16. Does the PCO track casualties or incidents involving private security contractors or contractors? I don’t think so. Does the PCO track casualties or incidents involving the military? No. ( ** ANALYST NOTE: The GRD does maintain metrics on those incidents (KIA’s and WIA’s) that affect their ability to meet delivery and destination goals.) 17. We have heard from several contractors that there is concern that __________ [Aegis] not sufficiently fulfilling their contract and that they are wary of sharing information with a peer. Many contractors believe that communication function performed under the___________ contract is an innately governmental position and should be performed by a DOD entity. Because of these concerns, several contractors have stated that they will utilize the PCO’s resources but do not place much faith in the program? Engaging in firefights with terrorists is also an innately governmental position, but unless the government chooses to provide manpower far above current levels, we must rely on contractors to provide shooters, communicators and other experts fulfilling critical roles. “As for not sufficiently fulfilling their contract”, it’s true that __________ got off to a rocky start last summer __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ heir performance has improved markedly and they were recently provided by the Contracting Officer with a (nonbinding) notice of intent to exercise its option. Some of these rumors can be attributed to a lingering perception from these early days of the contract. Others may be based in the competitive reluctance of other PSCs to deal with __________ fear of losing a client to __________ Has the PCO heard these rumors and what steps have been taken to address these concerns? We’ve heard them, although in diminishing intensity over the past several weeks. PCO and the ROC operate in a transparent fashion which should alleviate such concerns. We oversee __________ performance on a continual basis. We will seek continued process improvement. Weapons 1. What type of weapons do __________ ersonnel use while protecting PCO personnel? M4, NIPS and AK 47 rifles, Glock 17 and 19 and CZ 75 pistols and Minimi as team weapon. 2. The Draft Interagency Memorandum indicates that the PCO would be responsible for maintaining a list of weapons and ammunition that are approved by the USG for issuance. Does the PCO o__________ ently maintain this list? __________ not responsible for maintaining the list. The weapon procurement was approved by COR, PCO and DOS. That list has been superseded by a law signed by Ambassador Bremer just prior to his departure which authorizes PSCs to carry military-level weapons. 3. Under Memorandum 17, Iraq’s Ministry of Interior (MO!) is supposed to issue weapons cards. Is the MOI administering Weapons Cards? Yes, to registered PSCs. Page 9 Record of Interview If not, why not and who is administering these cards? If MoI does not do it, it isn’t done. 4. Have you heard of any contractors that have encountered difficulties in obtaining weapons? YES. ( ** ANALYST NOTE: __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ ____________________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ Chain of Command 1. What authority does the PCO’s ROC have over private security contractors? No authority, but collegial suggestions. 2. What authority does the combatant commander have over __________ employees? Coalition military runs Iraq security, what MNF1 says, goes. Contracting Issues I. Does the PCO have any lessons learned with regard to contracting for security providers and/or security related equipment, such as armored vehicles, body armor, and communication devices? What actions are you taking to incorporate these lessons in new procurements? Similarly, what approach are you taking to share or disseminate your solutions to other agencies or departments? Because of the nature of __________ costs-plus contract, PCO Security reviews all requests for purchase of equipment. It may accept, reject, modify or send such requests back to __________ or further information. The Contracting Officer then reviews and decides whether to authorize purchase by __________ As to lessons learned by __________ ey state as follows: __________ Training Wing includes our operational research function. It collates feedback from our own Page 10 Record of Interview organization, selected other companies and special operations units where possible. This is then factored in to our reviews of: Training, SOPS and Equipment Procurement. Our external feedback goes routinely to the RSO and PCO and specifically (e.g. in the case of our vehicle escort policy note) to Dir PCO and widely within and without the organization.” 2. From your perspective, does the PCO have sufficient visibility over security providers and security related costs? What management controls or tools are in place that assists you in these areas? Does the PCO have new initiatives or plans that would improve control or visibility over security providers and security-related costs? See our response to Contracting Issues Question One, above. 3. The __________ ntract indicates that the military is responsible for threats above Level I. Who determines the threat level and is there a set chain of command for events entailing threat levels above level I? The military generally determines the threat level. However, the Embassy also determines threat response for COM personnel and may, for example, bar PCO personnel from traveling certain routes even when, as with Route Irish, MNFI has said it’s okay. PCO must answer to both chains of command. Does __________ ve a military contact for times of immediate need or are all requests for military assistance sent through the Contracting Officer? Requests for military assistance are sent either through the ROCs/RROCs or the Security Directorate, not the Contracting Officer. 4. The original contract with __________ equired that the contractor comply with DOD regulations, directives, instructions, general orders, policies, procedures and in particular Army Regulation 715-9 and Field Manual 3-100.21. Did the PCO provide __________ ith a comprehensive list of guiding documents and, if so, what are these documents? No. 5. Can we have contact information for __________ Yes. Please contact its ______________________________________________________________________

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Sheila Shayon: Digital Democracy: Scytl, MySociety Secure Funding

July 14, 2010

We may never again have to suffer “pregnant chads,” “swinging chads” and other questionable voting protocols in an election thanks to the likes of Scytl, which calls itself a “worldwide leader in the development of secure solutions for electoral modernization.” Scytl, which started in 1994 from a PhD thesis on electronic voting before creating a company to develop online voting technology, just landed $9.2 million investment funding. The Barcelona-based company has run the gauntlet of 13 national tests of electronic public voting, including the U.S., France, Norway, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Australia. Scytl supplies the tools for two types of electronic voting: remote e-voting, casting of votes through any device (PC, mobile phone, PDA, etc.) with an Internet connection; and poll-site e-voting, which entails casting of votes from touch-screen electronic voting terminals located in polling stations. According to Scytl, the main advantages of electronic voting include: – Speed and accuracy in the vote counting process, – Accessibility for blind and visually impaired voters, – Flexibility in the design and modification of the ballots, – Prevention of involuntary voting errors (e.g., “over-voting” and “under-voting” errors), – Ease-of-use for voters, – Support of multiple languages, etc. – Furthermore, in the case of Internet voting, there is the additional advantage of voters’ mobility and convenience which generally leads to higher turnout rates. Further details about security and voter privacy are outlined on the Scytl website. In a related vein, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network recently gave digital startup MySociety $575,000. MySociety has dual missions: a non-profit arm which builds websites that promote civic and community goals; and to teach the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to use the internet most efficiently to improve lives. Perhaps e-voting and digital tools that ensure accuracy and fair representation are finally becoming sustainable and investable businesses. Originally published on Brand Channel .

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Patricia J. Beattie: Safer Chemicals Policy Reform Needs to Advance Supply Chain Transparency

July 14, 2010

It seems that a week rarely passes by without news of yet another toxic chemical being found in a consumer product. Whether it’s cadmium on a drinking glass, lead in a toy or bisphenol A in a baby bottle, I would think that consumers would be wondering “Why is this happening? What are manufacturers thinking, putting these substances in their products?” Surprisingly many manufacturers simply don’t know the chemicals in their products. Product manufacturers — especially of products like computers, building products and automobiles — often don’t know the chemicals contained in the materials they use in their products. Extracting chemical ingredient information from complex supply chains is a challenging task that few companies dare to undertake. Government support for addressing this problem is absent: no state or federal regulation requires disclosing chemical ingredients in products we commonly buy and use everyday (with the notable exception of products regulated by the Food and Drug Administration). The federal law that is supposed to manage the nation’s industrial chemicals has not been updated in 34 years, leaving manufacturers unaware of the potential hazards posed by many of the chemicals they rely on. Since the mid-1980′s, chemical producers have been required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to provide Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) to their customers on chemical-intensive products to protect workers from the adverse effects of exposure to these substances. MSDSs provide chemical ingredient and health and safety information for the hazardous ingredients. But once these chemicals are incorporated into an article (such as a solid material like plastic), the flow of information stops. This disconnect is due to the thinking that once a chemical is incorporated into a product or bound into a matrix, there is no longer potential for exposure. In many cases, this may be true, but often the manufacturer may not know how the product will be used by the final consumer or how the product will be disposed of at the end of its useful life. With Congress prepared to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976, we now have a chance to address chemical ingredient transparency across the supply chain. Over the past 30 years, the science available to evaluate the health and environmental impacts of chemicals has advanced greatly along with consumer expectations for safer chemicals and products. The proposals moving through Congress require a minimum data set on all new and existing chemicals and would have the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determine safe levels based on hazard, exposure and use information. But how will the EPA make these determinations if the downstream users of chemicals and article manufacturers don’t have information on the chemicals in their products? And how can manufacturers of articles, consumer products and retailers make informed decisions on the appropriateness of a particular chemical in their product if there is no requirement for them to have this information? This sharing of chemical information through the supply chain is not new — any company doing business in the European Union is required to communicate chemical information up and down the supply chain and similar requirements are being considered in many other countries. Business-to-business communication of chemical-level information down the supply chain through to article and end-product manufacturers is critical for making informed decisions on the health and environmental impacts of the products used by Americans. Having this information during the design stage of the product allows the manufacturer to thoroughly understand and evaluate the full cost of doing business and strategically manage those costs, taking into consideration potential substance restrictions around the world and costs for regulatory compliance, liability and risks. With this information, manufacturers of articles and consumer products would then have the ability to inform consumers if their products contain particular chemicals of concern. Improving supply chain communication and chemical information sharing will allow for businesses to make informed and cost-effective decisions about the chemicals incorporated into their products, which, will then allow for communication to consumers and end product users. Dr. Patricia Beattie is a board-certified toxicologist with extensive experience managing chemicals in complex supply chains. She is now Vice President at SciVera, Inc., and also Principal at the independent consulting firm, Arcalis Scientific, LLC.

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Video: Dyson Says Apple Product Demand Spurred by Sleek Design: Video

July 9, 2010

July 9 (Bloomberg) — Esther Dyson, head of EDventure Holdings, and Scott Galloway of the New York University Stern School of Business, talk about the the design of Apple Inc.’s products.¶ They speak with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television’s “Taking Stock.” (Source: Bloomberg)

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