Joseph Fuller and Michael C. Jensen are suggesting that managers begin discussing their business’ strategy and get out of the earnings guidance game.  In their recent paper, Just Say No to Wall Street: Putting A Stop to the Earnings Game, they tell managers to stay away from earnings guidance and provide information about strategic goals, main value drivers, the risks associated with these drivers and how management intends to address these risks.

They see earnings guidance often results in a no-win game, with expectations met only by abandoning long-term strategy and destroying value in search of short term EPS goals set by folks outside the corporate halls.

I just received my GRI G3 reporting certification from the course I took last week.  The course was delivered in Colorado for the first time due to the efforts of CORE with support from Deloitte.  Lead, out of Canada, provided the training based on materials from the Global Reporting Initiative.

The instructor was well informed, as were the 26 attendees. Lively discussion, along with some good and some not so good exercises provided us all with a great understanding of the G3 framework and the processes companies should put in place to engage stakeholders, prioritize initiatives, disclose results, share goals and increase sustainability through management processes and transparency.

Global Reporting Initiative
The Sustainability Reporting Framework – of which the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines are the cornerstone – provides guidance for organizations to disclose their sustainability performance. It is applicable to organizations of any size or type, and from any sector or geographic region, and has been used by thousands of organizations worldwide as the basis for their sustainability reporting.

The Daily Camera reports the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus has received another green designation. The Sustainable Endowments Institute, a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors gave CU the highest grade awarded on its 2010 report card. And for the second year in a row, CU was named an Overall College Sustainability Leader.

CU this fall was ranked by Sierra magazine as the No. 1 green university in the nation.

The rating was based on an independent review by the Sustainable Endowments Institute and responses by CU-Boulder officials to 120 questions assessing sustainability in the categories of administration, climate change and energy, food and recycling, green building, transportation, student involvement, endowment transparency and shareholder engagement and investment priorities.

Wow! What a powerful story!

William Kamkwamba, a boy in rural city in Malawi, Africa, is forced to drop out of school after the deadly 2001 drought nearly killed him and his family and destroyed the little value they had created farming corn and tobacco.  Without the $80 to pay tuition, William turned to the library, where he became fascinated with windmills.

Determined to prevent his family from experiencing the drought driven hunger again, William decided he would produce the electric power needed to pump water to irrigate their fields.

With no money to buy parts, William used materials from a junkyard and his imagination to build this windmill.   Improvising an old bicycle with flattened PVC pipe for blades and a bicycle generator to produce the electricity, William was able to light his room and tell his story to the world.

Some important Brain Functions Improve with Age according to findings presented in HBR’s Conversation blog.

In areas as diverse as vocabulary and inductive reasoning, our brains function better than they did in our 20s. As we age, we more easily get the “gist” of arguments. Even our judgment of others improves. Often, we simply “know” if someone — or some idea — is to be trusted. We also get better at knowing what to ignore and when to hold our tongues.

It’s important to understand your strengths and the strengths of those around you.  I find it encouraging that not only do reasoning and therefore decision making skills getting better, the all important ability to determine the people with the right skills to compliment your own abilities grows as well.  But just like the 40 year old quarterback who thinks he’s still in his prime – Oh, that’s right, he had a record breaking year, didn’t he?  Well, there are always exceptions, right? -, we have to know when it’s time to pass the torch for some activities to others.  Here is how one manager does it:

When gathered to discuss a problem, he keeps his “mouth shut” and listens. Even though — more often than not — he has a good solution, he waits. He does not speak.

“I find it works best if I let the younger workers talk first, wrestle with the problem in their own way,” he told me. “Then after a while, I say what I think might work. I’m not sure why, but this seems to work best and to help us all learn and solve the problem better.”

In fact, though he did not realize it, the executive was using the best parts of his calmer and more experienced middle-aged brain to help him manage his situation — and get better results.

It’s true that by midlife our brains can show some fraying. Brain processing speed slows down. Faced with new information, we often cannot master it as quickly as our younger peers. And there’s little question that our short-term memories suffer.

We’ve all seen it where lots of information compiled to make a decision did little to suggest an obvious course.  And that was 20 years ago, when it took leg work to gather that information, not just a few keystrokes in your browser.  Getting stuck in analysis was a problem thousands of years ago and Stibel’s article in the Harvard Business Review blog – The Conversation reminds us to avoid it.

I have to admit, when I read the head line I chuckled thinking, “Wow, I’ve worked with some really wise people and I bet when they see this they’ll think the same about me”.

Seth Levine has posted Marion Jenkins’ detailed rebuttal to HB 1192.  Mr. Jenkins suggests this tax legislation should be opposed due to a wide range of problems, including it being a new tax which should go before all voters to the complexity in determining when a lump of software code is deemed “standard” and subject to these new taxes versus custom code that is not to be taxed.

The bottom line is really about jobs in Colorado.  And with this bill, the jobs which are easily moved to more business friendly states will start that migration. The Sixty-sixth General Assembly can choose to address the issues with the state budget directly and bring the issues to the people, or they can choose to tear down the reasons businesses choose to be in Colorado.

Some things are worthy of a second look.  Check out this educational advertisement for the water millions walk miles to taste.

L’DESH FRESH

Growing up in the South, you don’t have a lot of opportunities to test out your winter gittin’ around skills.  And with a big snowstorm about to him my hometown area, here are a few hard learned lessons about moving around in the white stuff.

Cowboy boots and ice don’t mix.

Always wipe the snow off the top of the car door before you open it.  Or just wear your rain pants everywhere.

Drive like you’re in your bass boat.  Look way out front and pretend you got little or no brakes.

Them big ‘ol four wheel drives are great at getting ya’ going, but ain’t no help at all when it comes to stopping.

And the number one thing to remember:  It’s not all about how well you can drive in the snow, it’s more about how the folks around you drive in the snow.

Now that I really think about it, you may want to stay home if you can.

Most of us like to name drop, at least a little.  And so it is with great interest that we follow the careers of former colleagues.  Here is Chad Evans, taking one deep at the iPad launch.  Watch him here.

It appears Starbucks customers in New York are able to make intelligent decisions when provided with the information about the calorie content of food on the menu.

A new study by Stanford released Jan. 6 examined consumer behavior before and after calorie counts were posted, and determined that when restaurants post calories on menu boards, there is a reduction in calories per transaction.  Based on transaction data provided by Starbucks, researchers from the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that calorie-posting in New York City in 2008 led to a 6%  reduction in calories per transaction.

I suspect this surprises few of us.  Yet, opponents of posting this information claim it is available elsewhere and therefore not needed in the cafe.

Studies continue to reveal this is just not the case.  Information available in real time makes a difference in our buying decisions.  The same is true for energy conservation efforts.  Just presenting people with details about the energy they are using while they are using it, changes behaviors that on average reduce energy consumption by 3-5%.  Give folks simple ideas to reduce consumption further and the vast majority of us will do so.  That’s why we are working with companies to make energy usage information (and comparisons across companies, departments and work areas) available to employees.

In a move clearly designed to keep up the pressure on the US to take strong action on climate change, UN climate chief Yfo de Boer stated, “Whatever route is taken, the president of the United States committed to a 17 percent emissions reduction in Copenhagen.  The president of the United States committed to more ambitious emissions reductions for 2030 and 2050. And it is those statements to which the international community will hold the government of the United States accountable.”

via U.S. Bound by Obama\’s Copenhagen Emissions Pledge — U.N. Official – NYTimes.com.

The term “smart grid” is shorthand for a number of technologies intended to automate and digitize management of electrical power. By computerizing the 20th century electrical system, utilities and others in the power industryhope to manage and control electrical output more efficiently and reliably. Though smart grid sounds like it’s a single system, it’s more an array of different tools and technologies, from smart meters to solar power, all designed to reduce costs, waste less energy, and provide better networking and communications between homes and utilities.

Smart-grid spending to hit $200 billion by 2015 | Green Tech – CNET News.

The U.N.\'s leading panel on climate change has apologized for misleading data published in a 2007 report that warned Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.  In a statement released Wednesday, U.N. climate chiefs apologize for glacier error – CNN.com the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said estimates relating to the rate of recession of the Himalayan glaciers in its Fourth Assessment Report were “poorly substantiated” adding that “well-established standards of evidence were not applied properly.”

In an attempt to put the proper spin on this, IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri admitted errors and according to Agence France-Presse, stated, “Theoretically, let’s say we slipped up on one number, I don’t think it takes anything away from the overwhelming scientific evidence of what’s happening with the climate of this earth,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse.

Errors and mistakes happen in science research as in all other areas of human involvement.  And when they do, it is best to own up to them quickly and with humility.  This seems to be as important for climate science, maybe even more important, because predictions are so difficult, hindsight is always 20/20 and there are so many groups wanting to poke holes in the research and predictions.  Some may even claim that early predictions were intentionally exaggerated in order to gain more attention.

In any event, those wanting to really understand the issue are no more likely to take this error and believe all the science is suspect, than they would take the worst case prediction and ignore everything else.

The first ever Yellowstone BioBlitz took place in August and uncovered more than 1200 species in a two-square mile area of northern Yellowstone, including several species not previously known to exist in the park. While Yellowstone’s wolves, bison, bears, and elk typically receive the most attention-both from scientists and tourists-the focus of the BioBlitz was on decidedly smaller and lesser-known creatures. Yet to scientists and park officials the findings were no less exciting. Findings included microscopic worms, mushrooms, a bluish-green lichen, a slender grass, and a colorful tiger beetle. 373 plant species

86 mushroom types
46 kinds of bees
5 kinds of bats (I know a 9 year old who would love to see these)
24 butterflies
Over 300 kinds of other insects 

This rich biodiversity provides the ecological building blocks upon which the larger, more charismatic mammals depend for survival. The BioBlitz results will help park management better understand ecosystem dynamics and potential threats to ecosystem stability. You can read more about the BioBlitz at the Greater Yellowstone Science Learning Center.

From the Yellowstone Association’s Dec. ‘09 E-Newsletter

The 45th Annual Event Sponsored by the Business Research Division in the Leeds School of Business and BBVA Compass
The annual forecast of the state’s economy includes snapshots from specific counties and regions around the state, as well as updates on international trade, population, labor force and personal income growth, and a general outlook on the national economy.
December 7
Grand Hyatt Hotel, 1750 Welton Street, Denver
1:00 p.m. Welcome by Leeds School and BBVA Compass
1:15 p.m. Colorado economic outlook for 2010
         Richard Wobbekind, Economist, Leeds School of Business
         John Lymberopoulos, Professor Emeritus, Leeds School of Business
2:00 p.m. Question and answer panel session
2:30 p.m. Keynote address: Nathaniel Karp, Chief U.S. Economist, BBVA Compass
3:15 p.m. Concurrent discussion sessions:
         The Future of Uranium, Renewables, and Coal–Impacts on Colorado’s Economy
         Moderator and Speaker: Vince Matthews–Colorado Geological Survey
         Panel: Jim Burnell–Colorado Geological Survey
                    Bob Burnham–Wood Mackenzie
                     Jeff Lyng–Governor’s Energy Office
4:45 p.m. Networking reception
There is no charge for this event. No RSVP is necessary. Download printable postcard invitation.
More info:

During the third quarter of 2009, a total of 35 energy and environmental companies received $421 million in new venture capital financing, representing an 8% decrease in the number of companies being funded and an 8% decrease in the total amount funded to the four sectors of Alternative Energy, Clean Tech, Energy and Environmental.

Alternative Energy companies showed the only deal funding volume percentage increase of the four categories, with a 20 % increase quarter over quarter. The Clean Tech sector showed a sharp decrease in activity, with an 86% decrease in amounts funded. Energy funding amounts were also down, with an 18% funding decrease and the number of companies funded decreasing by 27%.

During the quarter, Software company fundings represented the second largest sector, raising $610 million between 97 companies. This activity represented an increase of 10% in total funding amount and a decrease of 22% in the number of companies funded.
The average financing round size reversed its previous decline and rose sharply, from $4.7 million in Q2 09 to $6.3 million in the current quarter.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will provide up to $338 million in funding for the exploration and development of new geothermal fields and research into advanced geothermal technologies.

These grants are directed toward identifying and developing new geothermal fields and reducing the upfront risk associated with geothermal development through exploration and drilling projects and data development and collection.

In total, 123 projects in 39 states will receive funding from these grants.

President Obama set to be in Copenhagen on Dec. 9th with an offer to cut US GHG emissions in the range of 17% from 2005 levels by 2020. 

The DOE is investing up to $1.18 million for a project in Boulder, Colo. to upgrade the 100-year-old Boulder Canyon Hydroelectric Project by replacing two older turbines with a single unit. The new turbine is expected to operate at a wider range of flows and higher efficiency ranges, resulting in an increase in annual generation of 11,000 MWh (30% increase).

Along with 6 other projects the DOE is investing $30.6 million to create an additional 187,000 MWh/year, while replacing turbines that are as much as 90 and 100 years old.  Clean (cutting 110,00o tons of CO2 emissions/year), cheap (adding generation at less than 4 cents per kWh) and lowering operating and maintenance costs.  

In Massachusetts, a proposed wind farm called Cape Wind was dealt a blow last Friday that will delay what would be the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. The Massachusetts Historical Commission agreed with local Indian tribes who claim that the location for the wind farm should be considered for listing in the National Historic Register because the Wampanoags’ history and culture are “inextricably linked to Nantucket Sound,” according to the opinion.

“If the tribes are successful, that would have a severe chilling effect (on the entire wind industry) because tribes up and down the coast could make the same claim,” said Mark Rodgers, the communications director for Cape Wind. “Never before has an open ocean been caught up in this kind of declaration.”

Then again, never before has a rare combination of private and government investment pumped so much into alternative energy projects. As these projects grow in frequency and scale, a new breed of NIMBY (not in my backyard) is emerging: Opponents of wind or solar installations who generally support renewable energy, just as long as they are built somewhere else. Coal and nuclear plants, it turns out, aren’t the only energy facilities people don’t want built in their backyards…or coastlines.

The Cape Wind fight, in particular, has brought together a testy combination of excellent wind conditions, opposition from well heeled local residents including members of the Kennedy clan, and a surprising assertion of Native American rights.

via .

Head over to the EPA’s Fuel Economy website and learn ways to get the last few miles out of every drop.  You’ll learn how to drive more efficiently, like taking the golf clubs out of the trunk when snow’s on the ground and slowing down just a bit.  And ways to not only make the gallon go farther, but also your tires and car with a few regular maintenance actions.

The University of Mississippi is using data from SmartSynch’s smart meters and passing it to dashboards for campus operations personnel to monitor, analyze and act via RSS and social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook.  As a part of the university’s Red, Blue and Green initiative, students and faculty can register with the school’s Green Initiative website and get real time view and comparisons of energy usage around the campus.

NIST released a draft report on the SmartGrid interoperability standards yesterday.  The roughly 80 initial standards and 14 priority action plans are available for public review and comment for 30 days.  Following this comment period the first phase of NIST’s 3 phase approach will be completed with the final release of the NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, Release 1.0.

It appears that people don’t only wish to keep up with their neighbors with bigger homes and wider if flatter TVs.   This seems to be true with energy efficiency as well. 

From hotels to neighborhoods, the power of influence work by Dr. Robert Cialdini is being put to the test with positive results.  Looks like water may be next.

McKinsey and Company’s central conclusion from their U.S. Energy Efficiency report says much about the energy efficiency opportunity in the US:

Energy efficiency offers a vast, low-cost energy resource for the U.S. economy – but only if the nation can craft a comprehensive and innovative approach to unlock it.  Significant and persistent barriers will need to be addresses at multiple levels to stimulate demand for energy efficiency and manage its delivery across more than 100 million buildings and literally billions of devices.  If executed at scale, a holistic approach would yield gross energy savings worth more than $1.2 trillion, well above the $520 billion needed through 2020 for upfront investment in efficiency measures (not including program costs).  Such a program is estimated to reduce end-use energy consumption in 2020 by 9.1 quadrillion BTUs, roughly 23 percent of projected demand, potentially abating up to 1.1 gigatons of green house gases annually.

Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy – McKinsey and Company

2008 proved to be a year of extremes for both the economy and energy around the world.  Not surprising since fuel prices are so closely tied to world economic growth and in 2008 one of the longest periods of sustained economic growth can crashing to a halt.  This sent record oil prices of $140 per barrel plummeting by more than 70%.  See the details in BP Statistical Review of World Energy – June 2009.

Department of Energy Secretary Chu announces $93 million from the Recover Act to support the development of additional wind energy in the United States. The money will support R&D and testing for wind turbine drivetrains, support university and industry consortia focusing on critical wind energy challenges, advanced technology development in the private sector and a National Wind Technology Center in Colorado.

Chu also announced the National Renewable Energy Laboratory will receive $100 million for infrastructure projects. The largest is the development of an energy efficient LEED Platinum certified office, constructed at the same cost as that of a low efficiency commercial office building. The others are to use solar and other green energy sources to reduce the labs carbon use and to upgrade the integrated bio-refinery research facility used to develop commercial scale cellulose to ethanol technologies.

During his visit to the Golden, CO facility Chu stated that $26 billion of the more than $100 billion in the Recover Act for renewable energy projects had already been authorized with the goal of 70% being authorized by early September. He also discussed streamlining the DOE loan approval process with the goal of reducing the time to getting a loan application approved to a few months. It has been known to take years under the current process.

It is great to see some of this huge spending bill is being directed to innovation and more importantly that this is being coordinated with private industry. There continues to be a gap in funding for the commercialization of proven technologies. Until this gap is filled, the great innovation from the labs and universities will be delayed in helping solve our energy issues.

Claiming typical savings in the 20-40% range with aggressive strategies able to save over 50%, the DOE has put out a report on how data centers can use the tools from the Save Energy Now program.

Not surprisingly, the key to generating these savings is to reduce the amount of energy used to support and cool the servers.  Typical practice shows the majority of energy is used for things other than the IT equipment.  Best practices enable up to 85% of total energy used to be used directly by IT devices.

Bob Metcalfe, using the history of the Internet as a guide, provided his list of things to look for and look out for in the changing energy sector.

Metcalfe gave an optimistic view of the environmental challenge suggesting not only are we in a Global Warming Bubble but that cheap, clean energy will be so abundant, it will easily be squandered.

He suggested the best place for research is in the research universities and not in government labs which are “nothing more than local earmarks”. In this model, professors along with their graduate students, will commercialize innovation with the help of entrepreneurs and venture capital.

Metcalfe warned that energy and environment are two overlapping issues and they should be viewed as two things. Otherwise, we may solve energy without solving the environment or vice-versa. Oh, and he offered a new color for clean energy, blue.

McKinsey’s Matt Hirschland interviews three European leaders about a global climate agreement this year.

McKinsey

Economists Nicholas Stern and Michael Grubb, along with European Commissioner Janez Poto?nik, agree that the United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009, marks a critical juncture for addressing climate concerns. And they all agree the United States must take serious action to back up the serious language currently coming out of Washington, D.C.

McKinsey’s Matt Hirschland interviewed economist Nicholas Stern in Brussels this past January. You can read the transcript here or click below to watch the video.

It is likely that the energy to power your car came from the Sun hundreds of millions of years ago and was converted by algae into simple sugars that eventually was pumped out of the ground as crude oil. Is it possible to shorten this cycle into a few weeks or even days and power our economy by cultivating algae today? Many people are betting that we will, as more and more investments are made in algal biofuel companies.

Why the interest in algae? The primary reasons is it grows fast, very fast. In fact, with ample sunlight, CO2 and the right nutrients, algae can double it’s mass in a few hours. And under the right conditions, algae can also be coaxed into producing a large percentage of its mass into fuel rich lipids. With no need to reach toward the sky algae spends little to no energy building the complex cellulosic structures found in land plants. This means a higher percentage of the plant can be converted to fuel. Some companies are focusing on genetically altering fast growing strains to directly produce hydrocarbons, in effect, eliminating the refining step.

Today companies are able to produce biofuel from algae for somewhere between $9 and $36 per gallon. Not barrel, per dollar. Huh? Yes, algal biofuel science still has some work to do. Algae grown in ponds get a free source of energy from the sun, but require a lot of water and the associated energy costs of moving it around and filtering the final product. These open ponds also have to be protected from natural strains which do not produce the desired lipids. Closed bioreactors are great at controlling the environment and preventing contamination, but require a lot of energy either via artificial light or in the case of GreenFuel, sugar.

Algae has advantages in addition to its ability to grow quickly. Acre per acre, algae outperforms any other biofuel source around. Compared to 60 gallons of diesel per acre from soybeans or 600 gallons per acre from oil palms, algae can produce 1850 gallons per acre and some experts are claiming 5,000 gallons per acre is feasible.

Algae also consumes a vast amount of CO2 and produces lots of oxygen. Three quarters of the oxygen in our atmosphere is produce by algae. Experimental sites are often located at coal fired utility plants in order to use the vast amounts of CO2 produces by burning coal to feed the algae. While this certainly does not sequester the CO2, it lowers the total emissions by recycling the CO2 and gaining energy from it twice.

There are forms of algae that grow in lots of types of water that we would find difficulty using for ourselves or our food supplies. This allows algae farms to use water that will not impact scarce water sources. These add up to a crop that can be grown on land not used for food, using water that would not be used for human consumption or food crops and suck up a lot of CO2 in the process. We simply have to find ways to do it more cheaply.

Trading activity picks up for carbon financial instruments (CFIs) after the release of President Obama’s budget. Even though the budget does not include revenue from carbon allowances until 2012, future contracts prior to this date moved higher. Some people believe these instruments can be used as early action credits in a federal cap and trade system.

Between 2012 and 2020, nearly $645 billion could be raised from the sale of emission allowances, the budget outline says.

According to Point Carbon (subscription) estimates, that would assume around 80 per cent of the economy would face caps on their greenhouse gas output starting 2012 at 2005 levels, or roughly 7.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

This means the budget is banking on carbon prices of nearly $13.70 per tonne by 2012.With the cap declining around 2 per cent per year after 2012, Point Carbon estimates the price of carbon in 2020 would go up to $16.5 per allowance.

So just what is a cap and trade system and how does it work? MSNBC has a Frequently Asked Questions page that answers this question. While President Obama signaled his desires in his budget, congress is required to pass the legislation and the details. Many experts are suggesting legislation is unlikely this, however “Powerful Democrats such as House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., have said they would work hard to get legislation passed by this summer.”

Earlier this week, the White House stated a climate bill passed in 2010 would be fine as long as it included the critical components President Obama included in his campaign promises. This is consistent with President Obama’s budget which includes revenue for carbon cap and trade allowances of $658 billion in total for the years 2012 through 2019. $150 billion of this will be committed to invest in clean energy along with tax credits.

2008 was a bumper year for wind energy investment. The US added 8,300 megawatts (MW) of wind energy to lead the world with 25,170 MW. 42% of the country’s new power-producing capacity came from wind. The 50% increase in wind power generation also created 35,000 jobs bringing the total employee bast to 85,000.

Worldwide over 27 gigawatts (GW) of wind capacity was added. China doubled capacity to 12.2 GW and is on tract to double capacity again in 2009 and may reach its goal of 30 (GW) by 2010, ten years ahead of plan. All of Asia added about 8.3 GW with Europe and North America adding 8.9 GW each.

In the US, the financial crisis hit the wind industry and orders for turbines and components has slowed to a trickle. This needs to be reversed quickly if the US is to stay ahead of schedule to reach 300 GW of wind capacity, or 20% of our electricity needs, by 2030.

Three prominent weather forecasting companies took advantage of their podium positions to request laboratory support to help them provide better information to renewable energy projects, namely wind projects. The monthly Sustainable Energy and Atmospheric Sciences seminar series kicked off the new year January 21st at the National Institute of Standards (NIST) in Boulder, CO. Pascal Storck of 3Tier, Bruce Bailey of AWS Truewind, and Mark Ahlstrom of WindLogics spoke about the weather/wind forecasting process in the US and requested help in these areas:

1) Increased number of observation points to improve accuracy.
2) Independent evaluation of low profile observation instruments, such as LIDAR and SODAR, to increase adoption by the industry
3) High quality global and regional forecasts
4) Improved mathematical prediction models

It was the clear consensus that the US Labs are critical to providing the data needed to help wind projects successfully plan and use wind energy AND that the US Labs could do a lot more to help the forecasts being provided to the project operators. Today the European forecasts are often better at predicting weather over the western states than the forecast generated here. To insure the US meets the predicted increase in Wind Capacity from about 20 GW today to more than 300 GW by 2030, better information about the weather is critical.

“America, in the face of our common dangers; in this winter of our hardship let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brace once more the icy currents. An endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s chirdren, that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end. That we did not turn back nor did we falter and with eyes fixed on the horizon and god’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”

Larry Kazmerski, from the National Research Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden, CO was the keynote speaker at this month’s Night with a Futurist put on by The DaVinci Institute. Kazmerski entertained the largest crowd to attend a Night with a Futurist event throughout his lecture while hitting on these 5 key points:

• Solar is real – now
• Investment in Policy and R&D are priorities
• Cutting time from lab to manufacturing is key
• Significant increase in science and technical workforce is needed
• Balancing near and longterm R&D must be maintained

The highlight of the evening was a story from Kazmerski’s early days at NREL. A local newspaper reporter seemed uninterested in his description of the energy conversion properties of some of the PV cells they were testing. When the talk turned to the government officials visiting from Saudi Arabia, Kazmerski convinced the reporter the Saudi’s were investing heavily in solar energy and that they planned to sell the US sand for silicon production at $40 per barrel. This appeared in the the paper the following week and Kazmerski claims he still holds the record for fewest seconds between arrival at NREL and a summons to the director’s office.

So, how many Google searches produce the equivalent CO2 emissions as boiling a cup of water?   

A confusing question unless you been following the stream of posts generated by the Sunday Times of London quoting (or misquoting) Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross‘ study on the energy used by view webpages. IN the story, the Times reporters stated “Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.” This seems to equate to about 7 grams of CO2.

Google immediately responded in a blog post stating “we have designed and built the most energy efficient data centers in the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimal suggesting the number is closer to 0.02 grams per search.” And went on to state the energy used by the PC performing the search is greater than the search itself.

Meanwhile according to Tech News World, Wissner-Gross claims neither he nor the study mentioned Google or had anything to do with Google and certainly not with tea kettles. “They did that. I have no idea where they got those statistics,” Wissner-Gross said.

And in response to these back and forth discussions, more than a few bloggers have decided to weigh in:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece

http://www.livescience.com/technology/090112-carbon-internet.html

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/seven-grams-per-google-search.php

So what do you think? How much water could you boil while searching for the amount of CO2 emitted from a Google Search? or something like that?

Wind Power installations to triple between 2007 and 2012 accroding to a brief history of wind power as reported in The Economist.

Globally, wind power installations are expected to triple from 94GW at the end of 2007 to nearly 290GW in 2012, according to BTM Consult, a Danish market-research firm. They will then account for 2.7% of world electricity generation, the company predicts, and by 2017 their share could be nearly 6%.

Well behind much of Europe in percentage of electricity generated from the wind, the US has 18% of worldwide wind power production following a year which saw an increase of 45% in wind power capacity.

British scientists at Novacem have developed a cement from magnesium silicate which absorbs more carbon dioxide while hardening than is emitted during production. The high heat cooking required for conventional or Portland cement production emits about .8 tons of CO2 for every ton of cement. When mixed with water cement absorbs about half of this amount of CO2. The net production of .4 tons of CO2 per ton of cement produces about 5% of the world’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Novacem’s cement emits only .5 tons of CO2 while the curing process absorbs more than twice this amount, 1.1 tons. Many years of testing remain and much will have to change to use this in more than a few applications. Converting even a small portion of the 2 billion tons of cement production from contributing .4 tons of GHGs to removing .6 tons is a good thing. Technology that turns a major CO2 emissions problem into a substantial abatement process are exactly what is needed to help solve Global Warming.

President elect Barack Obama added John Holdren, a clean coal and nuclear energy proponent, as his next Assistant to the President for Science and Technology.   The head of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Science, Technology, Public Policy Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Holdren will expand Obama’s clean energy team with his ideas on using nuclear energy and clean coal technologies to reduce global warming while reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

Idaho State energy czar Paul Kjellander sees BTUs where other see Cow $#!+ and he hopes to get others to see it his way.  As head of Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otters Office of Energy Resources, Kjellander is pushing a package of income tax credits, property tax waivers and other incentives in the 2009 Legislature starting Jan. 12 to transform Idahos southern heartland into a methane Mecca.

That odor wafting from 550,000 cows that make up Idaho's growing dairy herd smells like energy independence and economic development to state energy czar Paul Kjellander.

 With over half a million cows and ranking 3rd in dairy production, there is definitely a lot of manure.  This contributes greatly to agriculture being the third largest producer of methane in the US.  Methane by volume has 25 times the greenhouse effect as CO2 on climate and is second to CO2 in greenhouse gas contribution to global climate change.

Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc. soon aims to sell electricity from its $8.5 million, 2.25 megawatt digester and generator facility at the 10,000-cow Bettencourt Dairy in Hansen to Idaho Power Co., the state’s largest utility.

This is the agricultural conglomerate’s first such project, but Cargill has another southern Idaho plant due to open in 2009. It’s also exploring similar endeavors in neighboring Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, California, Texas, New York and Indiana, said Craig Maetzold, Cargill Environmental Finance’s operations manager.

“We believe the credits in renewable energy are only going to increase in value in the future,” Maetzold said.

Andy Grove has a plan to test the viability of retrofitting US autos into plug-in hybrids fashioned along the lines of GM’s Volt design. He suggest testing this on 1 million cars at a cost of about $10 billion mainly due to the continued high cost for batteries ($10,000 per car). He is also pushing Intel to get back into the battery business, suggesting he sees this idea as more than just idle speculation.

Grove wants to focus on retrofitting a few high volume, low mileage models to test the theory. His goal is to reduce the dependency of our transportation system on petroleum and therefore foreign interests by moving more of our transportation miles to rely on electricity. Arguing that electricity is generated using a variety of fuel sources and a higher carbon productivity rate, this will also reduce GHGs emissions.

His article received a significant amount of feedback encouraging him to prepare a response only a few days after the original was posted. Primary concerns of those writing in were:

Electricity Generation

Electrical Grid Capacity

Small Impact of 1 million Cars

Getting Political Support

and one reader who suggested he stick to his knitting and leave energy to others.

The European Parliament has approved a deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the 27-member bloc. The package will obligate EU nations to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. The package also seeks a 20 percent energy savings and increasing the use of renewable energy sources up to 20 percent of the total. Lawmakers in Strasbourg also agreed measures to cut CO2 emissions from new cars by 18 percent by 2015.

President-elect Obama has followed up on his campaign climate commitments in selecting his “Green Team” for environment, energy and new coordinating positions. His picks confirm the Obama administration intends for the US to make an about-face on energy and environmental issues. His selections are experienced in alternative energy and cap-and-trade systems. In several cases choosing science and engineering over legal and political experience, Obama is clearly indicating the climate debates in his administration will include significant scientific evidence.

Steven Chu, the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a 1997 corecipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, is Obama’s pick for secretary of energy. Lisa Jackson, a former commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection who was trained as a chemical engineer, is nominated for the post as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. And Carol Browner, former EPA chief in the Clinton administration, has been asked to serve as a “high-level coordinator” on energy issues—and perhaps something of a “czar” on climate change.

Department of Energy – Steven Chu
At Berkeley, Chu has strongly advocated research into solar power and advanced biomass, in particular biofuels made from grasses that won’t compete for space with farmland. At a talk this summer in Nevada, Chu said, “In the first eight months of a new research program, we have developed ways to separate out cellulose, and we have already made a yeast [that] makes a gasolinelike fuel. Already within eight months, we are working on diesel and jet replacement fuels. We need to work with making this really scalable so it will outperform the yeast we have to today.” (One potential disagreement with Obama: Chu has criticized corn-based ethanol, which Obama has strongly supported in the Senate and in the campaign.)

Administrator of the EPA – Lisa Jackson
Ms. Jackson had been the head of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection since 2006, and in October, Gov. Jon S. Corzine announced that she would become his chief of staff starting on December. She presently serves as Vice President of the Executive Board of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a program organized by northeast states to develop a regional cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy producers. She has a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Princeton and spent 16 years at the federal E.P.A. as a top enforcement officer in Washington and New York. She has led the Obama transition team at E.P.A. and knows the agency inside and out, according to associates.

Coordinator of Energy and Environmental Policy
Browner will work closely with Obama, who pledged his “personal engagement” in these issues, and coordinate the work of the DOE, EPA, as well as the federal, state and local governments. Obamo pointed out that Browner will bring her experience from the EPA of establishing the NOx and SO2 emissions trading programme. On the international stage, she was behind drafting the US’ submission to the Kyoto protocol in 1997, which he said was the “the best framework for carbon policy that has ever been developed.”

Ms. Browner, an acolyte of former Vice President Al Gore, will have forceful support in the new Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, who will be the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who is returning as chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Opposing their efforts will be many Republicans and some Democrats, as well as manufacturers, utilities, oil companies and coal producers who will bear the brunt of the costs of any steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the main culprit in global warming.

The nominees have a record of supporting high levels of federal involvement in energy and environmental issues, both in terms of money invested and regulatory oversight. During the early 1990s, Browner earned a reputation for attempting to uphold water and air regulations in the face of opposition from congressional Republicans. Jackson, likewise, at a congressional hearing last May on mercury emissions, told lawmakers, “Implementing the real maximum achievable protections is simply the only moral and ethical choice available if we are to meet our responsibility as public officials.”

Citing lower forecasts in 2009 output along with an increase in the number of firms announcing temporary shutdowns, analysts are scaling back their forecasts for carbon emissions and the price for allowances for those emissions. Societe Generale has cut their forecast for EUAs a third to 17 euros a ton. They went on to say prices could rise to 20 euros by 2012, sharply down from estimates earlier this year that prices would reach 37 euros during this timeframe.

Deutsche Bank believes EU emissions in 2009 could be 10% below 2007 levels. This would push emissions below allowances for 2009. The excess allowances for 2009 can be “banked” for use through 2012 and the forecasted emissions for 2009-2012 remain slightly above the EU carbon allowances. As a result of reduced emissions and smaller shortfall, UN-approved Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) which EU industry can import from developing nations to meet compliance, may be able to meet the entire shortfall. Price estimates for EUAs and CERs clearly indicate analysts believe CERs will set the pricing for EUAs for the next few years.

The good news is EU will be able to meet the allowances under phase 2 with a small “carbon price” in this recessionary period. This is also the bad news, as the lower price reduces the investment per ton of CO₂ available for carbon abatement projects. The net is by 2012, the European Union will have done less and perhaps much less to lower the Green House Gases (GHG) they produce per unit of energy they consume than anticipated when the allowance allocations were set.

Packing up his campaign talk of tackling global climate change head-on, President-elect Obama has selected Nobel physics laureate Steven Chu to head up the department of energy.

Chu heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, stamping his imprint on the lab with an aggressive focus on developing new alternative energy technology. “If I were emperor of the world, I would put the pedal to the floor on energy efficiency and conservation for the next decade,” Chu stated in an interview last year.

Chu’s experience in advanced technology and renewable energy and lack of background in fossil fuels signals Obama expects the energy department to concentrate on new fuels, experts said.

“I believe that the selection of Steve Chu suggests that President-elect Obama is quite serious about reordering the energy sector and executing his vision of a green economy,” said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at Cato Institute.

The 2008-2009 economic recession has had a major impact on energy prices and price estimates for 2009. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates petroleum products consumption in 2008 will fall 5.8% from the 2007 average and another 1% in 2009. Electricity consumption in 2008 is expected to be flat with 2007 and to decline in 2009. With spot fuel prices down from summer 2008 highs, residential electricity rates are predicted to rise 6% in 2008 and 5% in 2009.

The good news is that carbon based energy will be lower as petroleum consumption and electricity demand decrease. And with an increase in wind, nuclear, natural gas and petroleum fueled electricity generation, electricity produced by burning coal should fall 0.2% in 2009. Unfortunately, these changes do little to alter the GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions forecast from the “Business as Usual” scenario (See Increasing Carbon Productivity Tenfold).

According to the The Carbon Productivity Challenge published by McKinsey & Company, the world has 50 years to increase carbon productivity from $7,300 GDP per ton of CO₂e to $740 GDP per ton of CO₂e. Some big steps are needed with a cost for GHG emissions via a cap and trade system at the top of the list.

Big Think shares the views of Van Jones president of profiting from a Green Economy.

Van is correct that the Green Economy can provide opportunities for a people of all walks of life.  And that we have to move and move quickly.  The need to conserve, use renewables and offset Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) will create many jobs where there have been few.  (i.e. Building Nuclear and Wind power stations.)  There will be many jobs that come from the need to reduce GHGs throughout the rest of the economy starting with our own actions to conserve energy.  And while the US does need to move toward better family balance sheets, the picture painted here is overly bleak.

All Americans can be proud that the country we love has taken a giant leap forward with the election of Barak Obama.  And African Americans should truly rejoice with his victory.  Not that victory in the civil rights movement is at hand, but that the ultimate glass ceiling has been broken.  Not everyone will agree with all of his policies, but no one will argue that his story is indeed one than can happen no where else in the world.

General session audience, originally uploaded by Alex Dunne.

The inaugural Cloud Summit held in Mtn. View, CA, was well attended with attendees representing many of the California technology companies and their suppliers of money and advice.

David Pogue interviews E.O. Wilson, founder / father of the Encyclopedia of Life and learns about mushrooms and ants. Predicting we have identified less than 12% and maybe as little as 1% of the species on the planet there are big hopes for this collaborative experienment.

This video is worth a few minutes of your time.

The Generation WE movement is the largest generation in history, they are independant – politically, socially, and philosophically – and are spearheading a period of sweeping change in America and around the world. Check it out.

Is a white roof in your future? Reflective Roofing may in fact be most cost effective geo-engineering option for fighting Global Climate Change. Roof and pavement surfaces with a higher albedo, or ability to reflect the Sun’s energy back into space, may prove to be a critical factor in buying us enough time to lower Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. The Heat Island Group at Lawrence Berkeley Labs suggest reflective roof and pavement in 100 of the largest cities could offset the climate change impact of 44 GT CO₂. That’s more than the world emits today. Doesn’t solve the longterm problem, but lowers the impact while CO₂ emissions are reduced.

With allowances exceeding current emission’s forecast the first auction of allowances in a mandatory US system brought little new information. Keith Johnson at Environmental Capital put it this way:
“But don’t get too excited. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or ”RGGI,“ is more likely to start with a whimper than a bang. Prices for the carbon permits are likely to be low, and that will probably undermine the scheme’s plan to force utilities to generate cleaner power.”

US GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions are estimated to rise to 9.7 gigatons of Carbon Dioxide equivalents (CO₂e) up from 7.2 gigatons CO₂e in 2005. Coupled with a gradual decrease in cabon sinks’ absorption many experts and legislation currently before the US Congress places the 2030 target at 3.5 to 5.2 gigatons of CO₂e.

All of this is from McKinsey & Company in a report on how the US can cut GHG emissions by 3.0 to 4.5 gigatons at a marginal cost below $50 per ton using tested approaches and high-potential emerging technologies.

Key findings are both encouraging and at the same time, highlight the effort facing the US and the world in dramatically cutting GHG emissions.

• Carbon abatement opportunities are highly fragmented and widely spread across the economy.
• Almost 40% of abatement can be achieved with a positive ROI.
• Abatement costs, potential and mix vary across regions of the country.

Investments of about $50 billion annually through 2030 are needed to cut 3.0 gigatons of emissions. These investments are highly concentrated in the power and transportation sectors. This number will increase if the nation chooses to mandate higher-cost options and/or if some energy efficiency gains do not materialize.

Five abatement potential sectors from least to highest average cost:

• Improve building and appliances efficiency – 710 to 870 megatons
• Increase fuel efficience in vehicles – 340 to 660 megatons
• Industrial sector – 620 to 770 megatons
• Cargon sinks – 440 to 590 megatons
• Reduce carbon intensity of electricity generation – .8 to 1.57 gigatons

Across all sectors, greater energy productivity can reduce the need for abatement investment and in many instances provide net economic gains. Energy efficiency in buildings, appliances and industrial uses could offset up to 85% of incremental electricity needs cutting most if not all of the incremental coal-fired power plants used in the baseline.

Bottom line is things need to start soon around these themes:

1. Stimulate action through strong, coordinated policies to capture GHG reductions effiently across all sectors and geographies.
2. Quickly pursue energy efficiency and positive ROI options.
3. Accelerate low-carbon energy infrastructure development.

Acting soon, we can reach these goals at an acceptable impact to lifestyle and quality of life. Delay will increase the cost greatly and is likely to lead to significantly larger impact to those least able to absorb it.

In The Carbon Productivity Challenge, McKinsey & Company focuses on two objectives — stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) and maintaining economic growth — and proposes the world has 50 years to increase the GDP per unit of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) tenfold. A task the authors equate to the productivity improvement delivered during the 100 years of the industrial revolution.

A daunting task for sure, yet the study highlights that current technology allows us to get there provided investments, significant investments, begin soon.

Is the world smaller? Maybe so or maybe good ideas stick regardless of the time and distance they travel to their location. In any event, you can find the latest business thinking in far away places. If you follow Robert Cialdini, then you will want to read this story about a rug business in Turkey using the powers of influence.

No doubt health care costs continue to reduce the bottom line of many small businesses. Even after pushing vendors hard and changine plans every few years, costs continue to climb and health outcomes measured by employee absenteeism and chronic ailments are stagnant or falling.
Like it or not, businesses will continue to be in the business of providing healthcare plans to employees for some time to come. Therefore, businesses need to look at different ways to “get their money’s worth” when it comes to healthcare.
Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School professor, suggests it is time for employers to think in terms of value and focus on better outcomes.

Porter suggests employers adopt four principles for providing healthcare to employees:
First, the best way truly to reduce health care cost is to improve its quality. Quality, defined in terms of outcomes, is the secret to success in health care.

Second, high-value care is delivered by integrated practice units including all the needed specialties that care for the patient’s medical condition over the full cycle of care.

Third, prevention and screening can dramatically improve value, as does ongoing disease management to prevent recurrences and setbacks.

Fourth, the only way truly to drive value is to measure patient outcomes for each medical condition.

The folks at Pragmatic Marketing have put together a great book describing their process for creating products and services that customers want and more importantly will buy.
Tuned In is a quick read and should prove to be a valuable reference guide as you turn to your potential customers to define the products and services someone is most likely to buy.

So the Apple world has yet to come up with a blogging tool to satisfy the desires of those familiar with Live Writer. I’m testing blogo, and it may work for some of you. Here is a screen shot from their site.

Screenshot

What a relief. After 15 months of avoiding surgery to repair an increasing hierniation in my neck last week, Boulder Neurosurgery Association performed an Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion.

The outpatient procedure provided immediately relief to pain and numbness down my right arm into my thumb and forefinger.

Websense announced in February that Google’s CAPTCHA busted in recent spammer tactic. This came right on the heels of bots breaking the Live Hotmail CATTCHA system. With my gmail account compromised a few weeks ago, I began looking into the likely ways this was done and and I believe there was a good chance it was via a bot attack. I have found no evidence of spyware on any of the machines I use. Change your passwords and check into your mail accounts often. You may also want to keep notes on when you opened the account and the email address you gave as a backup. These are things Google will use to return access to the account to you.

Tags: technology

Today at 3:22 PM, I received the first phone call and would later discover that the first email also arrived then. Apparently, another form of Nigerian embezzlement was underway with a message from my hacked gmail account being sent to my contacts.

Subject: “Very Important, Please Read ASAP.”

I want you to read carefully and please kindly get back to you asap; it’s very urgent and important. I am currently out of states for a personal business trip in London. Unfortunately, I misplaced both my wallet & my ATM card, maybe at the hotel where i lodged or somewhere else I can’t really say exactly.

You can read the rest of their message below along with a few responses to me and the fake reply to email address.

I’ll write in a later post what I think the ramifications of this may be for both those whose contact data was stolen and me. I’ll include in that any additional lessons I discover regarding this. And if I discover it the gmail bot detection system has been tricked, I’ll let you know that too. But for now here is the rest of the message and my favorite response.

Right now I’m totally confused, as I don’t know what to do, I went to the US Embassy to report the issue and also seek for their financial assistance for me to get back home and also pay the hotel bills but unfortunately me nothing could be done to assist me financially at the Us Embassy, I didn’t have my phone here since my traveling was outside the country, I would have prefer discussing this with you over the phone, but since I have no access to phone I decided to contact you by email because its the only avenue I can use to send you this urgent notice..

I’m totally stranded and have no dime with me here, can you please do me a favor? I need a loan worth of $2000 from you so that I could pay the hotel bills and also book a return ticket back home. Will you be able to get me the loan and how soon, cos I will need it ASAP? I promise to pay you as soon as I get home. I need to pay up the hotel bills so that I could be free to pack my luggage and leave to board a flight back home without further delaying. The hotel management here is not taking it easy with me, just because I’ve not been able to pay their bills since I’ve lodged in. I have been restricted from using so many facilities of the hotel including the uses of the telephone services.

Write back to me ASAP and let me know how you could assist me with the loan, then I can give you further instruction on how to send it to me. Please keep this confidentially, as I wouldn’t want anyone to know about this since I never told anyone about the trip because all my plans was that its going to be a successful one and I will be back without any cause for alarm.

Thanks.

Here is my favorite response to the perpetrator:

I am very kindly getting back to you asap. I’m very so sorry for your urgent need of monies. How so sad that you may lost your wallet and your ATM card. You should be looking where you lodged and then may find it there.

I’m sure the embassy would not want to give you many monies like $2000 US dollars. Maybe you can be asking them for a loan on behalf of the tax rebate from our esteemed President Mr. Bush.

Good luck with your problem, I’m sure as you are so smart you will find many good ways to be making enough monies to come back. And GOOD NEWS! If you are earning British Pounds you will only need 1000 instead of 2000, this is being a good deal for you.

Here are some messages sent to me:

Hi Dwayne -
I got this email message today (text below). Either you’ve been hacked, or you’re having a very difficult trip…
Cheers, Andy

OK – what bogus web site have you been frequenting?

Check this out. I just received it. weird huh?

Looks like we are all getting strange emails from you.

Dwayne: Don’t you love the electronic age?

Looks like someone has got hold of your Gmail address…. That and his grammar is really bad.

The McCain – Clinton Gas Tax Holiday is a farce and voters are beginning to realize this. Of course, Obama has been correctly outlining the problems all along. There are numerous problems with this approach even if the money would trickle into the hands of the consumers who most need it and therefore spend it on other items. At 18.4 cents per gallon, the family burning two gallons per day would receive a savings of $11 dollars per month or 5% of the cost of gasoline at the current $3.61 per gallon.

And of course, it is a proposal that few in Congress support and President Bush will veto. So, it’s a non-starter and perhaps in the eyes of two candidates a safe proposal aimed to win voter favor without having all the downsides. And there are several.

First of all, the tax generates revenue to pay for roads and bridge maintenance, which if anything is too small for our aging infrastructure. Of the three ways to pay for this, Clinton suggests taxing the windfall profits on Oil Companies while McCain says cut other spending. Let’s start with McCain. Congress has shown little appetite for cutting spending and the Whitehouse seems to agree that deficits matter not to voters. So, he is really offering the third option of borrowing to pay for this when we need to do the opposite.

Clinton wants to tax the Oil companies with a Windfall Profit tax which would do two things. First of all, it would diminish the expected returns on oil production and over the long term would decrease supply. It would in the short term put higher price pressure on Oil and with more demand coming during the summer driving season, it is more likely this added tax expense would be passed on to consumers.

If you want to help consumers and the retailers they visit, there are better ways to insure the money get to the right people. The stimulus package aims (many would argue aims poorly) to get $600 to those who need it most and are most likely to use it. The gas tax suspension would do no such thing.

And now here is the real catch. The realities of market economics cannot be suspended. Demand will increase to a point where it meets supply. Fiddling with the gas tax will not change this and the US Fuel Retail system has very little slack capacity. Therefore, supply is relatively inelastic and prices will move with demand. Bottom line, the gas tax will be eaten by the Gasoline Value Chain and consumers will be left with little in their pocket other than a higher debt and nothing done to solve the longer term energy issues. It’s bad policy, bad economics and it is time for us to show politicians, that pandering for votes is bad politics.

Every now and again, you meet someone and immediately know they are making a real difference for a lot of people. Robyn Johnson is such a person. For much of the last ten years, she has provided many Colorado teens with guidance, education and experiences they would likely have never seen without her hard work and determination.

She is now leaving her position as co-executive director of the Colorado Youth Program to pursue her career in counseling. But we all know that the organization is stronger and better able to continue the goal of connecting kids with their community and the environment because of her leadership.

Thank you for all that you have done, Robyn!

Here are a few excerpts from a letter I received from Robyn yesterday.

My final day at Colorado Youth Program has arrived!

I joined the Colorado Youth Program staff in 1999 as a part-time program coordinator. I had found my ideal job at an organization that combined working with underserved youth and teaching about the environment and volunteerism, all while playing in the outdoors.

While I am now leaving CYP to pursue a career in counseling, I will stay connected to the Colorado Youth Program as a volunteer and donor. The Colorado Youth Program occupies a unique space in our community, making summer camp an affordable option for all families and providing free after-school and weekend programs that teach children to understand, respect and enjoy nature.My time at the Colorado Youth Program has been beautiful. I have worked with delightful children and teens, loving parents and families, visionary community members and leaders, dedicated volunteers and staff…I have enjoyed working with each and every one of you!

]]> http://dwaynenesmith.com/blog/archives/2008/05/thank-you-robyn/feed/ 0 http://dwaynenesmith.com/blog/archives/2008/05/apple-making-it-easy-im-not-so-sure/ http://dwaynenesmith.com/blog/archives/2008/05/apple-making-it-easy-im-not-so-sure/#comments Sat, 03 May 2008 18:46:45 +0000 admin http://dwaynenesmith.com/?p=108

I recently decided to purchase the January 2008 iPod Touch upgrade. I thinking about getting an iPhone and have decided I’m willing to part with the 20 bucks to test out the email app so there is no need for me to repeat what others have said about this already. Great products overcome bad decisions in other areas. A few bad decisions anyway.

Back to my attempt to purchase this upgrade. Two days ago I decided to get the upgrade and quickly found the place where current iPod touch owners were directed. Up pops a nice little advertisement within the iTunes store inside iTunes and confirming I have met the requirements for software versions and iTunes store account I try to click the Upgrade for $19.99 big bold blue letters. It’s not a link, ok, so I go to the bottom and click the OK button.

This takes me to the iTunes store home page filled with all sorts of music, movies, games, TV shows, podcast, audio books, all sort of content. But no upgrade, in fact no software. So I look and I look and I know I must just be missing it, so I look some more.

Now, two days later, I have emailed a support person 3 times, tried to chat with Wanda who disappeared once I asked my question and spoke on the phone with Benjamin. I’ve been given links to articles about verifying your upgrade installation and how to contact customer support. I’m currently waiting (15 minutes and counting) for an email which he claims has the correct link (the one on the Apple Store website has not worked for a few weeks, I was told.)

I still waiting for the highly praised Apple support, I’ve heard so much about. Oh, and I’m still waiting for that email.

Somewhat Frank TV tours the Boulder, CO offices of Lijit.

The New York Times reports that Venture Capitalist invest in 922 deals in the first quarter of 2008, compared to 861 in the same period last year. The total amount invested was down 5% causing the times to lead with the headline Venture Capitalists Invest Less In First Quarter – New York Times.

“We do not expect to see significant declines in investment levels in the coming year,” said NVCA President Mark Heesen.

Is this additional evidence that media outlets lean toward a doom and gloom outlook or are they just following the current sentiment of their readership? Just be sure to read past the headlines.

Now you can generate energy and pump clean water by just being a kid.

Developed by Daniel Sheridan, now a British student at Coventry University, the Springwise: See-saw power for schools generates electricity while kids play on it. Brilliant!

“Why do people feel pressure to have an answer for every question?” Even when they don’t know Jack, they make it up on the fly. Ten years ago our training courses included a short video clip of college students at some of the more prestigious universities speaking at length with great confidence about a subject which they obviously knew very little. One episode had students suggesting summer’s were warmer because the Earth had moved significantly closer to the Sun. This video claimed we have been programmed from a very early age to know the answer or make it up. Apparently, some people take to this training better than others. If you really want to know the cause, you’ll need to ask someone else, because I simply do not know.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has set the rules for the first allowance auctions to take place on September 10, 2008 and December 17, 2008. This is the first mandatory CO2 emissions reduction program auction in the United States. Quarterly auctions will take place after these first two. These companies have won the right to work with RGGI on aspects of the program: World Energy Solutions, Inc., Perrin Quarles Associates, Inc., ICF International, and the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute.

The basic design of the auction has received some criticism. Mike Giberson at Knowledge Problem wrote about this last November and believes the issues may easily be corrected. He cites Peter Cramton’s report on behalf of North East power markets that recommends a simultaneous ascending clock auction design.

Technorati Tags: carbon credits, energy, environment, auction, RGGI

The state of Colorado is looking for managers for its newly formed Colorado Carbon Fund. This fund aims to aggregate Voluntary Emission Reduction (VER) offsets in an effort to help the state cut its GHG emissions by funding proven carbon abatement project in Colorado. This is in support of Colorado’s climate action plan which aims to reduce GHG emissions in-state 20% by 2020. Gov. Bill Ritter (D) is a big supporter of renewable energy, helping the state to become one of the leaders in wind energy generation in the US. Colorado emits over 120 million tones of CO₂e per year, of which 48 million tons comes from electricity consumption. In tandem with these goals, the State’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) mandates that 20% of that electricity will come from renewable resources by 2020. The Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) aims to have the carbon fund launched by the early summer.

For the second year in a row, Forbes names Boulder ‘smartest city’ in U.S.  While a more accurate name would be the most educated city in the U.S., I can easily support the argument that the place is full of people with impressive intellectual power.  Come visit us and see.

No, it’s Conviction and Discipline according to Fred Wilson, “Conviction and discipline are two sides of the same coin.” I like the view.  Similar to a great strategy with weak execution, conviction without discipline will often lead you into the ditch and will never get you to the mountaintop.

VF’s list of America’s 50 Richest Paydays is worth a glance.  However, I could not overlook Peter Newcomb editorial comments regarding the largest two “winfalls”.  Regarding Bill Gates’ take last year, Newcomb wrote, “Throw in a few hundred million dollars in dividend income and his impending retirement will be all the more comfortable.” Newcomb then added this comment regarding Pete Peterson‘s take from the Blackston IPO, “He intends to give a substantial portion of the proceeds to charity.”

Like or dislike Mr. Gates and Microsoft, I find it difficult to reason that any wealth he accumulates at this point will go anywhere other than in support of the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  And while it is always important to point out staunch philanthropists like Mr. Peterson, it is disingenuous to suggest anything less from Bill Gates.

Berkshire Hathaway’s Shareholder Letter

is a must read and this one is no exception.  Continuing last year’s scolding of the sub-prime mortgage banking industr, my favorite lines included these:

John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, aptly dissected the recent behavior of many lenders: “It is interesting that the industry has invented few ways to lose money when the old ways seemed to work just fine.”

You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out – and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight.

Another high profile company going public has decided to maintain control while selling a majority of the economic stakes in the company to the public.   This time it is Al Gore as a founder of  Current Media.

I certainly agree, the company’s shareholders have a right to decide the control structure they want to have after a public offering.  At the end of the day, people can always choose not to be a party to it.  And the average investor (not the same as the average dollar invested) has little voice in the actions of a company.  But I still don’t like it.  I guess it comes down to creating value for all shareholders and when you remove options – and putting control in the hands of a few reduced options – you lower the value to the group as a whole.

In this case the interesting thing will be how Gore is viewed in this debate (not that I’m trying to pull Barak and Hillary into this).   In Al Gores Convenient IPO the comparision with Google focused on Gore’s holding public office and being a voice for many of the institutions who are currently fighting against these type of control structures.  I don’t think we should hold Gore or any other ex-public official to any higher standard than we hold each other.  And he should not try to tell us to do what he thinks is better for others unless he is willing to do that or more himself.

Steven Spielberg’s Ghost Town suggests the social networking theme will take, or at a minimum test, the boundaries of segmentation. In this case not market segmentation, but segmentation of social circles. The main question I raise is “Do I want a lot of distributed social network tools?” Of course, I am in a lot of different networks, many of which have zero or close to zero overlap. And I would like to control this overlap with social networking tools. Perhaps a product like SocialThing, which allows me to participate in a lot of different social networks through one site provides the necessary control.

Chris Anderson’s at Wired discusses where, why and how free products make sense today and will make make even more sense (and cents) in the future.  Starting with the story of Gillette and bringing us to the plummeting cost of computing and networking, Anderson argues that the traditional cross-subsidy model is not required when incremental costs approach zero.  This opens the way for numerous value creation models when a product is given away and allows companies to avoid the “penny gap” or the difference between cheap and free as coined by Josh Kopelman.

“People think demand is elastic and that volume falls in a straight line as price rises, but the truth is that zero is one market and any other price is another. In many cases, that’s the difference between a great market and none at all.

“The huge psychological gap between “almost zero” and “zero” is why micropayments failed. It’s why Google doesn’t show up on your credit card. It’s why modern Web companies don’t charge their users anything. And it’s why Yahoo gives away disk drive space. The question of infinite storage was not if but when. The winners made their stuff free first.”

Foggy Sunrise, originally uploaded by Dwayne Nesmith.

Running to a breakfast meeting, I was forces to pull to the side of the road and snap a few shots of this mornings brilliant sunrise behind a foggy frosted field.

This week’s Sunday news programs were chock full of election experts sharing some interesting comments and many that were less so. My favorite was Dan Rather’s depiction of Hillary Clinton’s closing comments at the Tuesday night Austin debate as the best statements of the campaign. Surprisingly, earlier in the day, Meet the Press demonstrated that these statements included almost word for word the same lines as one uttered by Bill Clinton sixteen years ago and another used by John Edwards in an earlier debate during this campaign. Interesting…

Looking at campaign tactics, The Clinton Campaign has Increased the Attacks on Obama which you can judge for yourself via the video here.

Speaking of the TXU purchase, Mr. Bonderman said the company was adept at running a profitable company and equally bad at politics from price increases to ecology to labor relations. These shortcomings lead tothe opportunity which focused on addressing these public concerns.Opportunities for private equity include exploiting public investorsfocus on short term focus, their dislike for debt or leverage, fixingbroken companies and putting companies together that changes thecompetitive landscape.His advice to students wondering which classes to take for a career inprivate equity, which job to take this summer, which classes to takenext year is to “Just relax”.In looking at the public policy of the US, Bonderman says ourlawmakers are thinking like it is 1975 when the US represented 50% ofthe world’s GDP. Now that we are less than 30% and falling the rest ofthe world has choices and will not play by any US tax code.Best run companies are those which build value over long periods oftime. However, fund managers often are looking for short term gains.This makes creating proper incentives for publicly traded companies’managers sub optimal if not downright harmful.

PlayPumps International has a goal to help 10 million people in 4,000 African villages by 2010 by installing merry-go-rounds in the villages. What’s the catch?

Each turn pumps clean drinking water into a tank increasing the health of everyone in the village.  The time and effort for water carrying, mostly done by young girls, is greatly reduced, allowing for more time in school.  Talk about your good ideas…

If your in the mood for a smile (and if not, perhaps you need to check this out even more) then head over to VC Wear to see the t-shirts these guys have cooked up. 

Be a part of the Boulder tech scene and register today for the Tech Cocktail March 6th event.  Colorado Startups has the details.

Interested in helping kids connect with their community? Want children to be exposed to giving back at an early age? Desire for middle school kids to appreciate the environment. Then please consider a financial contribution to Colorado Youth Program. This Boulder County organization provides a free after school program, Adventure Club, engaging middle school children in community service projects at the Humane Society, Community Food Shares, and cleaning up the Boulder Creek and other hiking trails.

Colorado Youth Program also offers a ten day summer camp in the Mountains near Ward focused on environmental education. Most campers would not be able to enjoy a summer camp experience with the generous scholarships made available by contributors. Check out this great group.

Attended my first Boulder Open Coffee Club this morning at The Cub on Pearl near 16th. I was dropped in after the planetarium trip with my son’s first grade class was postponed due to snow and cold (we were scheduled to walk past the CU solar system model to the show).   As I arrived they were discussing the best places to find professional support such as legal, accounting, etc. And quickly finished promoting a new source for collaborative support the Boulder Tech Bootstrap site. The site will contain both a wiki and a discussion forum for entrepreneurs to help each other just git it done.

MDN_1679

Originally uploaded by Dwayne Nesmith

Another brutal cold winter has hit the Front Range. Mother Nature has used her powers to create some frosty items or great beauty.

The 4 hour work week is an interesting and educational book, even for those who would not choose to work only half a day each week.  It pushes you to think about different ways to get your job done and to think differently about which activities you keep inside and which you push to others.  And at the same time think differently about careers, yours and that of other workers in your company.

Tim Ferris asks you to consider these questions as he recommends helping to make the world a better place through access to books in LitLiberation: How to Travel the World–and Get a Personal Assistant–for Free
Envision the 5 books that have most impacted your life. How would your life be different if you’d never read them?

Where might you be today if you’d never met the most influential teachers in your life, past and present?

How would your options be affected if you could never again read a book, menu, or sign?

Check out LitLiberation: Scalable Education Revolution

Technorati Profile

Day two included another round of interesting speakers.  We began with a horse of a different color as Paul Orfalea, Founder of Kinkos, shared his store, advice and leadership style (close the door and let the kids run the store). Then we moved on to customer satisfaction and the Net Promoter Score as described by Fred Reichheld, auther of The Ultimate Question.  That question being. “Would you enthusiastically recommend our company to a friend?”  That’s it.  Get them to rate this on a scale of 1 to 10 and if you get a 7 or lower ask them if it is ok for someone to call them.  Kaihan Krippendorf, auther of The Art of the Advantage then walked us all through the famous 36 Strategems of eastern warfare. The key to using these is to master the patterns in order to quickly apply the appropriate strategem as you confront different competitive and negotiation situations in your business and personal life.  The day concluded with a magical addition to the schedule.  Literally, we were entertained by a magician who suggested we should not forget to enjoy the ride and remember the kid in all of us. 

The annual Gazelles Growth Summit began today in Las Vegas with a host of interesting speakes. Robert Bloom was first at the podium to discuss his new book Inside Advantage. It is a good read and I will write a separate post on it soon. Bloom is full of real life examples from his long career at several ad agencies including CEO of Publis Group.

Using real life examples including Sothwest Airlines, Zales Jewelers, Juicy Juice () and Curves, Bloom describes his process for creating and defending a sustainable market position. In short define your customer as one individual person, create an uncommon offering for this person, describe how you will define your uncommon offering to your customer and then Own It through a series of Imaginative Acts.

Geoffrey Moore followed with a discussion of some new models for defining where shareholder value can best be improved. Moore began with a discussion of Net Free Cash Flow and suggested the best way for early stage companies to increase valuation is to improve the long term prospects by focusing on increasing “Power” where you can get the biggest bang for the buck.

Moore talked about five types of Power and described how these match to marketing activities as shown in this table:

He went on to suggest small companies should focus on Product Marketing which leads to Offer Power.

Then we were employed to maximize the ethical influencial power afforded us through the laws of human nature as studied and described by Robert Cialdini. He outlined six primary areas that afford us influence:
Reciprocation – I scratch your back; you scratch mine
Consensus – What everyone else is doing
Authority – Trusted, knowledgable source

Gazelles Growth Summit highlighted by Geoffrey Moore.   Sponsored by Forbes Small Business, Verizon and Range Rover, the program run by Gazelles will also showcase influence expert, Dr. Robert Cialdini, and a host of others.

Highlights from the 2007 Massachusetts Clean Energy Industry Census
• Jobs: Massachusetts’ clean energy cluster supports
14,400 jobs and is poised to be 10th largest cluster in
the state.
• Growth Rate: Surveyed executives expect 30% job
growth in renewable energy firms and 25% for energy
efficiency firms over the next year. Weighting by
existing employment, growth is still predicted to be
20%. This would be more than 3 times greater than the
next fastest growing cluster in the state grew over the
past year.
• Fastest Growing Sector: Renewable energy
companies are the youngest and fastest growing firms.
• Largest Job Sector: Energy efficiency and demand
response firms supply almost 6,300 jobs, or 44% of the
total 14,400 jobs.
• Company Size: Massachusetts is an incubator for
clean energy firms, with 68% of the firms operating
below $10 million in annual revenues, and 41% below
$1 million.
• State Competitor: Surveyed companies rate
California as the most supportive region for building a
clean energy cluster.
• Survey Size: 302 entities (companies, government
agencies, and university research centers) responded to
the census survey.
• Jobs Database Size: 556 entities, including the 302
that responded to the survey, were included in the jobs
estimate.

A panel of software providers (SixApart, NewsGator, SocialText and SpikeSource) listed the same issues around security, compliance and control confronting Enterprise 2.0 implementations seen in the past. Even so, a few companies are beginning to move forward with implementations and some have found creative ways to use these tools.

Adoption is driven less from personal passion and more from significant corporate pain points. Others are looking to provide internal tools for employees that provide the means of communication found in the student/consumer markets.

Stowe Boyd, author of /Message, presenting today at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference identified a model for designing Web 2.0 applications. Build for the individual first, then for groups of like minded people and then focus on the money making activity for a “market”.

Stowe claims the Internet is increasingly becoming the Third Space, our primary place for discovery and third behind home and work for our favorite place to go. There we find people which is a means to help us find ourselves “at the still point of the turning world”.

The biggest issue for providers raised in the session was building the need for users to create content for enterprise purposes. Using social networking for business connections provides an easy to use profile creator, while generating little if any valuable information beyond the profile. Incorporating the content creation from the normal business activity is critical to succes with these tools.

Stowe is an early and continuing user of Basecamp. He describes it as a very good web app, while not necessarily a good Web 2.0 application. The inability to aggregate projects under one user name limits it’s use as a networking tool. Tying the id to a project is a poor design principle.

Meeting the fast growing energy needs of the world just may be the most daunting task mankind has faced to date.  No doubt many things must be done to address this issue before fossil fuels are depleted and without destroying economic progress or the environment.  McKinsey and Company has produced a paper on Energy Productivity which they claim is the key to curbing global energy demand growth.

Even though the most likely outcome for a successful technology company is via an acquisition, I have never liked the idea of planning for it.  Plans and actions then often go away from what will help our customers and help us succeed in the market to what would ABC Inc. like to see in an acquisition target.  Rarely do the two line up and even then the focus goes away from key items required to build long term sustainable value.

Guest blogger Will Price offered a sound plan for building value in a post on Ask The VC.  Responding to a question regarding how to prepare for an acquisition exit, Will provided details around these three items.

1) Plan for Independence

"The company’s operating plan, technology road map, and executive team should not focus on unnatural acts, in the hopes of attracting a buyer, but rather on building a company with the potential for independence. Companies built to "flip" often flop."

2) Be prepared for acquisition

"…acquirers tend to believe that successful partners make the best acquisition targets. "

3) Keep the house in order

"good record keeping makes for good diligence and good diligence makes for expedited outcomes."

Maximize your "best alternative to a negotiated agreement" (BATNA) and your will be well on your way to delivering value to all your stakeholders.

Want to spend a few joyful moments playing around with an eye-popping online toy.  Head over to dtoy_vs_byokal  and let your creative juices flow. Maybe I will find a way to place a dtoy widget on this site.

Ran across a few places to have some fun late one night last week and thought others would find some joy in this as well.

Pikipimp is a good place to start and this may get your attention.

Another example is Dave Cohen who was the target of 5280Angel.

Why is it so hard to change, even when the evidence for doing so is overwhelming? This article from Scientific American, answers the question Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes, yet there are only 24 hours in a day?

It is interesting, if not surprising, that these measurements were passed down from other uses and definitions that date to the earliest points in civilization. Pardon the pun… Time and time again we’ve had the opportunity to change the system to one which would be much more comfortable, that is to use a decimal system.

And of course we could ask the same about the US sticking to our short history of the English measurement system when our British brethren were able to kick that habit quite easily.

Are our schools prepared for the challenges our kids will face this century?  This decade?  Alvin Toffler suggest our schools were built to prepare the rural American child for the industrial revolution.  Get to work on time, enjoy repetitive tasks and essentially fall in line.  Agree?  Perhaps we have advanced somewhat since the late 1800′s and this seems all too familar to much of the work I recall from oh so many years ago.

Today, when I see our dedicated, hardworking teachers struggle to escape from the bonds of top down driven curriculm, I think there must be a better way.   Here is one alternative.
Future School
You’re talking about customizing the educational experience.

“Exactly. Any form of diversity that we can introduce into the schools is a plus. Today, we have a big controversy about all the charter schools that are springing up. The school system people hate them because they’re taking money from them. I say we should radically multiply charter schools, because they begin to provide a degree of diversity in the system that has not been present. Diversify the system.

In our book Revolutionary Wealth, we play a game. We say, imagine that you’re a policeman, and you’ve got a radar gun, and you’re measuring the speed of cars going by. Each car represents an American institution. The first one car is going by at 100 miles an hour. It’s called business. Businesses have to change at 100 miles an hour because if they don’t, they die. Competition just puts them out of the game. So they’re traveling very, very fast. Then comes another car. And it’s going at 10 miles an hour. That’s the public education system. Schools are supposed to be preparing kids for the business world of tomorrow, to take jobs, to make our economy functional. The schools are changing, if anything, at 10 miles an hour. So, how do you match an economy that requires 100 miles an hour with an institution like public education? A system that changes, if at all, at 10 miles an hour?”

5 Satellites To Launch On One Rocket
The first camp holds that the substorms are triggered about 50,000 miles above Earth’s equator, about a sixth of the way to the moon, when electromagnetic turbulence disrupts the flow of intense space currents.

The other theory is that the substorms start about 100,000 miles above the equator with the spontaneous conversion of magnetic energy into heat. Particle acceleration then triggers the substorm energy.

To test each theory, two satellites will be lined up a sixth of the way to the moon, and two others will placed respectively about a third and halfway to the moon. The fifth satellite will be on hand “to replace a brother or sister if they get into trouble,” said Angelopoulos.

Buzzmeister’s beware!  The Valleywag buzzmeter shows Web 2.0 hits saturation.   That’s so 2006.  How should a capital hungry business owner create excitement among the technology captains of capital?

I’ve been playing around with Yahoo Pipes and I like it.  Still not sure where to type the “|” symbol and I expect we will all get beyond that pretty quickly.

Once you get past the somewhat confusing configuration boxes and understand the tool does a very good job of parsing urls whether feeds, news or others, it is quite simple to collect a group of sources, sort, order, eliminate duplicates and publish them.  Publishing comes complete with a standard set of feeds and your own your way.  My next step will be to check out some of the more interesting mash-up concepts.

I haven’t found it, but I’m sure if it hasn’t already been done, someone will analyze this advertising campaign in terms of publicity vs. cost. They may well find that the additional publicity from the disruption of business in Boston was well worth the $500 to $600 thousand the company will pay Boston for damages.

Let’s hope this does not set-off a series of copycat advertisers. I can envision groups in conference rooms all along Madison Avenue trying to find a way to imitate the program in a way that leads no one to believe they are in danger. I prefer the way New York treated the campaign. Just grab the blinking thing and toss it.

A question I rarely ask, “Why do I live in Colorado?” is regularly answered in ways like it was today. Driving from Denver to Boulder I interrupted my cell phone caller with “There is a bald eagle in that tree right there.” – Don’t worry Mom, I wasn’t driving. -

It is these regular, yet surprising scenes of our wonderful state that reminds me, long before I forget, what brought me here in the first place.

This is Pinewood Derby Week for Pack 377 and my first derby since the early ’70s. The wheels are wider and the block of wood does not have a cockpit pre-cut but the rest seems to be the same. My first car I built with my dad a little more than a year before he died. It is one of the few scouting memories of him I retain and building this year’s car collection has brought some fond memories forward.

Today, we painted the cars in preparation for Wednesday’s weigh-in and Friday’s Derby. We cut them Thanksgiving week and sanded them in early December. Since then we’ve been waiting for some warmer weather so we could finish them in the garage. Yesterday, we decided we would have to risk the kitchen and hope the enamel paint did not get applied to anything that mattered. Other than hands and pajamas, only a few spots on the chairs have been painted so far. Oh, and the cars. It seems Lightening McQueen is this year’s favorite model as we have two red speedsters to go along with a black caddy and a blue and orange rocket.

I took our holiday decorations down today. Or rather I should say I dug them out of the frozen snow. Always afraid of being compared to the Griswalds, we pride ourselves in having our Christmas decorations pack away by New Year’s Day. Our indoor decorations were packed weeks ago, while our outside decorations were stuck under the forty plus inches of snow we got between December 20th and 27th.

So, today it was time to get it done. Only about 8 inches of snow remains in our front yard, but it was the two inches of frozen snow / ice which held firmly to the electical cords. Each had to literally be dug down to the grass and pried out of the snow pack. The extension cords remain buried under the snow while my neighbors can now rejoice that our lighted deer will no longer meet them morning, noon and night.

Tom Evslin’s post Web 2.0 – Greater Initial Investments Required suggests that early Web 2.0 companies seized the advantage of low cost technical infrastructure and low cost marketing to gain cost advantages.  These companies were able to get big cheaper and faster than the first generation internet companies.  While he agrees with Fred Willson that the technology cost will remain low, he suggest the lower promotion expense is now behind us.  The low cost of technology results in a lower cost of entry and will in fact increase promotional spending and the need for capital.

In any event, both men are suggesting there will be capital required to grow these companies going forward.  Those who are putting their business plans together without consideration for this cost increase will at least have some tough funding questions or worse some serious costs overruns. 

Why are private boards putting more value on the efforts of top managers than comparable public companies?  With no doubt there have been compensation structures for CEOs that were neither aligned with the interest of the shareholders or other stakeholders in the corporation.  However, the comparison between the pay at the top of the organization and that at lower levels really misses the mark.  This comparison just happens to be simple to calculate, easily understood and highly contentious.

The true value of a CEO is her ability to improve the value of the company.  The best way to measure this is to compare the value increase to other similar companies in order to remove the value increase or decrease that impacted all companies in the sector.

The cost of the CEO should be market driven with significant portions based on performance.  What is the market rate for a CEO with these skills and necessary experience?  Just as the top performers in movies or baseball games are paid many multiples the salary enjoyed by their peers due to the short supply of “stars”, CEOs are short in supply as well.

What is surprising here is that private companies with active investors on their boards are offering higher compensation for these talents than the generally less active boards of public companies?  I would suggest that the backlash of the “compensation scandals” have the compensation committee of public companies swinging too far in the conservative direction. The swing was needed, let’s hope it does not continue so that public companies become the minor league training camps for CEO destined to play in the private company major leagues.
Public CEOs take to private firms in order to get top dollar as shown in Private Firms Lure Chief Executives With Top Pay – New York Times

Stephen Hawking suggest space colonization is required to prevent the extinction of mankind.  It does not take much imagination to believe this premise only a very long time horizon.  The question seems to be are we willing to invest in multi-generational projects without an imminent crisis.

Back to Hawking: He stated he was eager to get into space himself as he described how the 50,000 year trip at today’s speeds could be achieved in a human lifetime.
“Science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination,” he said. “Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light.” However, by using “matter/antimatter annihilation”, velocities just below the speed of light could be reached, making it possible to reach the next star in about six years. “It wouldn’t seem so long for those on board,” he said.
Where do I sign?

A candid interview with Seagate’s CEO reveals his success cookbook.  The secret to managing a board of directors: “You never ask board members what they think. You tell them what you’re going to do.”

Are you sure you have the right board members?

MercuryNews.com | 08/16/2006 | VC Deals: Hercules allows investment in pre-IPO start-ups“Hercules invests primarily in high-tech companies, usually through “mezzanine” debt financings coupled with an equity component such as stock warrants or options, in private companies previously funded by leading venture capital firms. The loans are typically secured by some or all of the assets of the portfolio company, according to Hercules’ regulatory filings.As a “registered investment company,” Hercules receives certain tax breaks so long as it distributes to shareholders at least 90 percent of its net ordinary income and any net short-term capital gains it realizes that are greater than its long-term capital losses. During the first six months of 2006 it paid out $6 million in dividends.Because Hercules distributes most of its income to stockholders it needs additional capital to finance growth. It raised $34 million in April, selling 3.4 million more shares at $10.55 each less than a year after its IPO.”

Ta-Da! Cheaper Stock Options! Are stock Betas, volatility, really going down as fast as stock option valuations suggest. This article suggest they are not.

Look, the only reason any investor wished companies to expense options is to reduce the number of options granted. An appropriate goal, perhaps, I question the approach.

There is limited value to investors by adding another non-cash item to earnings. Especially, one so difficult to value or in other words so easy to manipulate. Future cash flow per share is the metric investors desire and the information needed is how many options will vest over time and what is the dilutive impact on cash flow per share. Oh, and make sure you are getting our money’s worth when you grant future cash flows to employees via stock option grants.

The excellent series on the History Channel, 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America, continues to be very educational and quite entertaining. Watching these 10 events, I feel compelled to add and question if perhaps other unexpected events would be in my top 10. Their events are:

• Massacre at Mystic
• Shays’ Rebellion: America’s First Civil War
• Gold Rush
• Antietam
• The Homestead Strike
• Murder at the Fair: The Assassination of President McKinley
• Scopes: The Battle over America’s Soul
• Einstein’s Letter
• When America Was Rocked
• Freedom Summer

After reading the list, I could not help notice the lack of inclusion of events drawing the US into a war. The sinking of the Lusitania, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin. While all of these lead to war and perhaps one could predict it, the total cost and impact to the country could not have been known by anyone.

Nothing on this list leads to the US declaring its independence from England. I’m not sure I can point to a single day that led the founding fathers to make that decision and the country to make the required sacrifice. The events that come to mind fill today’s elementary school books. The Shot Heard Round the World, seems to fit the bill. However, this was in volatile New England and may have meant little to a New Yorker or Georgian. Bunker Hill (Breed’s Hill) is another event following the Boston Massacre that could have set the country on a direction of succession.

Economic events include The Federal Reserve, going off the gold starndard and, my favorite, the invention of the semiconductor which has to rank very high in terms of impact to the US and the world.

or overstepping the boundaries of government? Which of these best describes the recent “Healthcare for All” bill supported by an overwhelming majority of the Massachusetts Legislature (154 to 2 in the House and 37 to 0 in the Senate) and Govenor Mitt Romney? The plan’s objective is one shared by all concerned about the unisured, responsible quality healthcare for all. It differs from many other universal plans in several ways.

The bill requires individuals to provide personal coverage, just like the state’s laws on auto coverage. Massachusetts is the first state requiring individuals to have health insurance or prove they can self-insure.

In addition, the bill provides funds to make sure those eligible for Medicare and Medicaid are enrolled. It subsidies healthcare insurance for those who don’t qualify for government programs and can’t afford insurance. The state expects to pay for the subsidies out of a $1 billion fund set aside for providing healthcare for those who can’t afford it.

The bill currently requires employers to pay $295 per unisured employee. “That’s likely to be adjusted by me,” stated Governor Romney. Will he wield the line-item veto pen?

Joe Klein at Time Magazine describes the Romney Healthcare plan this way:

Massachusetts now spends about $1 billion a year to provide emergency health care for at least 500,000 uninsured citizens. About 200,000 of those are young people, predominantly male, who are making enough money to buy health insurance but figure they don’t need it. They would be required to buy a relatively inexpensive health insurance policy, with higher deductibles and co-pays—that’s where the “mandate” comes in. Another 100,000 are extremely poor people who are eligible for Medicaid; a concerted effort would be made to bring them into the system. The remaining 200,000 are the people who have been most neglected by the system in the past: the working poor, people who have low-end service jobs or work part time for employers who don’t offer health coverage.

According to USA Today, Mass. Gov. Romney’s health care plan says everyone pays , other healthcare proposals have focused on expanding government healtcare coverage for the poor and have largely failed. Romney put distance between his proposal and the Clinton plan, saying “we don’t need Hillary-care.”

In an article by The Washington Post, Mass. Bill Requires Health Coverage, the plan goes much farther than any other state but is by no means finalized. It leaves the task of determining exactly how much some low-income residents will pay for their new, more affordable policies to a new agency that would serve as a liaison between the government, policyholders and private insurance companies.

Because of that uncertainty, some still worry that the residents required to buy insurance would not be able to.

In any event, a creative approach which does not unduly burden employers or tax payers. As long as it does not place too great a burden on the poor, then it is a very good start.

Kleiner Perkins sets aside $100 million to invest in “Green Technologies”, Top Venture Investor Goes Green – Los Angeles Times.� Does this mean the tides will now turn in favor of investing in this critical area?� Oil at almost $69 a barrel today still does not by itself support most of the acclaimed alternative energy sources.� So does this predict oil prices continuing to rise or government stepping in to i) invest more in alternaive sources, ii) increase energy taxes or iii) mandate higher environmental regulations?

GlaxoSmithKline to invest in Myogen
Westminster-based Myogen Inc. said Monday it will receive as much as $100 million from GlaxoSmithKline, as the drugmakers work together on two medicines that treat a lung condition.

Both drugs target pulmonary arterial hypertension, which affects about 200,000 people and, when untreated, can lead to heart failure.

During the next few years, western countries will face a more intense labor shortage than last felt in the first two years of this century. Very few companies are prepared for this with hardly any looking to utilize the aging workforce to fill this shortage. Initially, offshore workers will be able to handle some of the shortage. However, India and China are only a few decades from reaching a neutral or negative growth in trained workers.

A survey in America last month by Ernst & Young found that “although corporate America foresees a significant workforce shortage as boomers retire, it is not dealing with the issue.” Almost three-quarters of the 1,400 global companies questioned by Deloitte last year said they expected a shortage of salaried staff over the next three to five years. Yet few of them are looking to older workers to fill that shortage; and even fewer are looking to them to fill another gap that has already appeared. Many firms in Europe and America complain that they struggle to find qualified directors for their boards—this when the pool of retired talent from those very same firms is growing by leaps and bounds.

Why are firms not working harder to keep old employees?

In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn’t know what he is doing.
William Wordsworth

Lawrence Kudlow calls the concerns over a United Arab Emirates company winning the bid to manage six America ports as nothing other than bigotry. His name for this, Islamaphobia, will not likely be added to our daily lexicon. The actions it describes are simply wrong headed.

Does ice melt due to weight and/or friction of a boot, skate or tire creating a thin layer of water? Experiements are unable to prove this leading some to suggest special qualities of H2O in it’s “solid” form. You can find more in The New York Times article, Explaining Ice: The Answers Are Slippery. Free registration may be required.

The pressure-melting explanation also fails to explain why someone wearing flat-bottom shoes, with a much greater surface area that exerts even less pressure on the ice, can also slip on ice.

Two alternative explanations have arisen to take the pressure argument’s place. One, now more widely accepted, invokes friction: the rubbing of a skate blade or a shoe bottom over ice, according to this view, heats the ice and melts it, creating a slippery layer.

The other, which emerged a decade ago, rests on the idea that perhaps the surface of ice is simply slippery. This argument holds that water molecules at the ice surface vibrate more, because there are no molecules above them to help hold them in place, and they thus remain an unfrozen liquid even at temperatures far below freezing.

In 2002, Dr. Salmeron and colleagues performed an experiment. They dragged the tip of an atomic force microscope, resembling a tiny phonograph needle, across the surface of ice.

“We found the friction of ice to be very high,” Dr. Salmeron said. That is, ice is not really that slippery, after all.

Going private. Hotshot managers are fleeing public companies for the money, freedom, and glamour of private equity.

“It isn’t only CEOs who are making the move to private-equity firms. Fast-rising midcareer folks are lining up, too. ‘The interest has really gone through the roof,’ says Anthony Lando, partner and director of Benchmark Search Group, a financial-executive recruiter in Stamford, Conn. Newly minted MBAs are joining them. Back in the 1980s most B-school students wanted to be investment bankers. In the 1990s it was tech-related venture capital and dot-coms. Now, private equity is hot.”

Chad Dickerson puts it simply and directly. Tactical execution is critical in today’s business environment.

I’m not saying that strategy isn’t important, just that strategy directly combined with tactical skill is the real killer combo. “Strategy” in the absense of tactical engagement is a loser’s game. If you’re a manager who gets down in the muck to make things happen (not to be confused with “micromanagement”), take heart: tactical is the new strategic.

In Web start-ups snub the big money, the International Herald Tribune suggests web start-ups will continue to use less capital. This is a trend that should be expected to continue for a few if not spread to many companies in the space.”By then, Meebo was being courted by venture capitalists, but it decided to take a modest $100,000 from three angel investors, people who typically contribute small amounts and make few demands.

“We had a bunch of VCs talking to us about potentially putting more money in,” Sternberg said. “We said no. A lot of things happen when you raise a VC round, and they really slow you down.”

Eventually, Meebo did raise money from venture investors – about $3.5 million from Sequoia Capital. But that was after the company was well on its way to showing that its service was a hit with consumers. At the time, Meebo had about 200,000 daily log-ins.”

- Original Nov. 2006 post updated
Is the recent news of tech and media startups needing less capital a trend or a passing fad? There have been some noteworthy articles in recent weeks suggesting it is a combination of the two. I recommend reading both Tom Evslin’s Web 2.0 – Greater Initial Investments Required and Fred Willson’s that the technology cost will remain low, both covered in the Random Connections Web 2.0 – A Bubble, Hype, for the Lucky Few?

The Economists in The proper study of mankind writes:

SEVEN hundred and forty centuries ago, give or take a few, the skies darkened and the Earth caught a cold. Toba, a volcano in Sumatra, had exploded with the sort of eruptive force that convulses the planet only once every few million years. The skies stayed dark for six years, so much dust did the eruption throw into the atmosphere. It was a dismal time to be alive and, if Stanley Ambrose of the University of Illinois is right, the chances were you would be dead soon. In particular, the population of one species, known to modern science as Homo sapiens, plummeted to perhaps 2,000 individuals.

The proverbial Martian, looking at that darkened Earth, would probably have given long odds against these peculiar apes making much impact on the future. True, they had mastered the art of tool-making, but so had several of their contemporaries. True, too, their curious grunts allowed them to collaborate in surprisingly sophisticated ways. But those advantages came at a huge price, for their brains were voracious consumers of energy—a mere 2% of the body’s tissue absorbing 20% of its food intake. An interesting evolutionary experiment, then, but surely a blind alley.

The McKinsey Quarterly: Intensive care for Medicaid:

“Every US policy maker knows that Medicaid presents vexing budget challenges, but a new analysis suggests that its costs are becoming truly unsustainable. McKinsey estimates that even after economic growth returns to a steady pace, this government health insurance program, which primarily serves the poor, will consume more than 75 percent of all new state revenues in 10 states, including Georgia, Indiana, and Oregon, by 2009. Medicaid will cost 11 other states, including Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania, from half to 75 percent of their incremental revenues (Exhibit 1). In an additional 22 states, this one program will consume 25 to 50 cents of each new tax dollar.”

Economist.com | Biotechnology

THE computing industry has been transformed by open-source software, threatening business models while creating lucrative opportunities for some firms. Might the same happen in biotechnology? In a paper published in Nature on February 10th, a group of researchers describe a way to transfer genes into plants that bypasses the now most commonly used technique, agrobacterium transformation, which is protected by hundreds of patents. The new process may provide an alternative method of modifying certain types of crops in order to, say, improve harvests. But what makes the invention particularly notable is that the authors, affiliated with CAMBIA, a non-profit biotech research group in Australia, have made the procedure free for use under a novel “open-source” licence.

This licence allows people to commercialise products based on the procedure. All that is required is that improvements to the technique itself be shared, to the benefit of all users. This should make it easier for companies and researchers in poor countries to use agricultural gene-transfer technology, which today’s patent-licensing approach impedes.

‘The idea is to try to craft a system so that we have a different way to do business,’ says Richard Jefferson, the head of CAMBIA and a co-author of the paper. ‘This is a demonstration of a way forward for an innovation business model,’ he says, which could help unleash creativity in poorer countries. This week, the group also unveiled a website, BioForge.net, to help biotech researchers to collaborate, much as SourceForge.net is a nexus for open-source software development.

Although open-source approaches have already been used in biotech-related computing (called bioinformatics) and database sharing, CAMBIA’s licence represents an actual technique being provided in an open-source form. It is part of a broader push towards open practices in the life sciences. For example, Science Commons, an offshoot of Creative Commons (which provides less restrictive copyright licences to authors), is preparing to develop open licences later this year. “

Economist.com |Is the MBA responsible for moral turpitude at the top? :

“SEVERAL of the corporate scandals that took place in the early years of this decade are currently being replayed in courtrooms from New York to Alabama. The trials of top executives at HealthSouth, Tyco International and WorldCom are reminding the public how unethical was the behaviour of some of the nation’s top managers only a few short years ago.

The finger of blame for this behaviour is sometimes pointed at the MBA, the degree offered by business schools from Harvard to Hawaii. Perhaps this is not as odd as it sounds. After all, MBAs lay as thick on the ground at Enron as managerial hubris, and disinterested outsiders are not alone in asking whether there might have been some connection.”

Do we really think the primary place for social and moral teachings is in the management schools teaching twenty and thirty year olds the latest theory on business and economics? Yes, these schools can and are exposing future manager to difficult situations. But, no, it is not the primary responsibility of these institutions to instill the core values of ethical and legal decision making. Here is an article on the issue worthy of a read.

Fastcompany suggests there are few career moments as exciting — and these days, as perilous — as taking over the top job at a company, business unit, or department. But what exactly do you do once you’re in charge? This online guide provides 18 tactics – and case studies — to help you take the reigns running.

1. Begin your transition before you start the job.
   
2. Travel widely within your organization, listen carefully, and look for patterns in everything you see and hear.
   
3. As you ask questions, look for the rising stars whom you want as part of your team.
   
4. Identify the kind of people who will flourish in the environment you want to establish.
   
5. After you’ve identified the ideal individual, identify the ideal group.
6. Acknowledge what you don’t know. Identify those around you who are the experts and don’t be afraid to lean on them.
   
7. Don’t be afraid to listen to people who disagree.
8. But clean house if you have to.
   
9. Establish a way to communicate with — and listen to — your entire team.
   
10. Don’t trash your predecessor, but don’t be shy about promoting your own agenda.
    
11. Settle on a few major priorities. You can’t fix everything at once.
    
12. Meet the customers. Balance the big picture vision with-front line views.
    
13. Target a few early wins. Momentum counts, and nothing succeeds like success.
    
14. Keep an eye on the clock. Faster is almost always better.
    
15. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes but be sure to fix them faster than you make them.
    
16. Be wary of reckless re-engineering.
    
17. Don’t be afraid to look for ideas in unusual places.
    
18. Finally, ask yourself who do you really want to prevail, you or your organization?