Prepared minds. I like that.

I love finding insightful articles. There is one today  From Knowledge Jolt with Jack on how breakthroughs happen .
 
Jack offers a review of Andrew Hargadon’s How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate , and this excerpt really hit home (clipped; bolding mine).
“Hargadon spends the first half of the book… to explain his thesis that breakthroughs happen via networks.  The biggest aspect of this is getting “prepared minds” to interact the right way to develop the next breakthrough.”
Prepared minds. I like that.
 
If you’re participating in the world around you and open to ideas, it’s amazing how things start to link up. If you live and work in a silo, it will never happen. Focus too much for too long and all that results is the same old, same old.
 
Blogs are good for preparing minds. So are all the various opportunities in every community to meet and interact with the people around you. Share what you can. Be interested. It will come back to you in spades.
 
At least that’s what I’m finding.
 
 
 
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What’s local produce?

You’ve got to wonder about this piece on seafood processing from Gristmill  . It links to an article in the Seattle Times.
 
Globalization in action: Some locally-caught seafood is now being shipped to China for processing and then back to the Northwest for sale. This saves on labor costs — labor is a fifth to a tenth as costly in China as it is here — but massively increases the amount of energy consumed.
 
I’m reminded about the article in Tyee  this week, about vegans looking to buy their food within a 100 miles of Vancouver. And it begs the question: Just what is “local produce”?
 
Surely there’s a better way…
 
 
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Offers to change internet connections? Dontwannathinkaboutit.

I just got a call from Telus. Apparently they have a special deal for new high-speed internet subscribers and they offered it just to me. All I had to do was change over to @telus.
 
It was one of those calls that ring, and when you answer it, there is a dead space for a few seconds until someone on the other end realizes that you’ve answered the phone…you know what I mean?
 
Once I heard the initial pitch, I said that I had too much invested in the email address I have with my current provider. I didn’t want to change just now, but thanks for the offer.
 
Not to be put off by that lame excuse, the caller responded that if I change service now, I get free notification of up to 10 family members about my new email address. And as an aside she asked, “what do you use the internet for now?”  Like what’s the problem, eh? How much of an issue should it be?
 
I’m afraid I let her have it:
“personal email, banking, newsgroups, blogging, RSS feeds, newsletters, business contacts, purchasing software and books, browsing the news and technology sites, finding out about personal and business events, taking courses, looking for work, distributing work….I probably have my address in a thousand places and I’m just not prepared to change my coordinates for all of that right now, thank you very much”.
 
I’m calmer now and a bit embarassed.
 
I’m not really concerned about the marketing by Telus.  It’s good to know that there is some competition out there.  However, it’s scary just thinking about all the connections to one email address. I really should get a domain and a permanent address. My last change was 3 or 4 years ago, from @rogers to @shaw, and that was painful enough. I’ve got much more tied up in it now. I’ve got an @gmail address just recently, but that’s not going to cut it for business purposes.
 
Note to self: look into a domain.
 
 
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Visits, conferences and nuts

I spent the beginning of the week over on Vancouver Island. My sister invited me over to go to the folk festival on Sunday, and I attended an industry meeting between Monday and Wednesday. I spent the rest of the week catching up on all the blogs, emails, and newsgroups that I subscribe to. Whew. Gotta get a life. And soon!

Oh, and I met with a potential client (that didn’t pan out).

Anyhoo…I enjoyed the visit with sister and family. We BBQ’d some lunch and headed off to the FolkFest, but gave up, came back, and watched some of the Pink Panther series on DVD. A different kind of day than what we expected.

The FolkFest was a bust for much of the audience, and the organizers seemed to notice some *issues*. But they put an optimistic spin on it:

Record Crowds Help FolkFest Weather Rainy Days (sorry, link is dead)

Planning Underway for FolkFest 2006

VICTORIA, BC, July 13, 2005—The 32nd annual ICA Folk Fest (July 1-10) attracted record crowds to performances by South Africa’s Ladysmith Black Mambazo (July 10) and k-os (July 4). “FolkFest hit its capacity for the first time ever,” said Executive Producer, Tyl van Toorn. “Word has gotten out that FolkFest is a dynamic event with high-calibre acts. We were already looking at what we could do to accommodate higher audience numbers in 2006. Our foresight was fully confirmed by this year’s success.”

The viewing area for the stage was so limited that performances filled up hours before they started. All the surrounding access was fenced and blocked off with curtains so you couldn’t see anything – even if you had paid admission – and you couldn’t hear anything outside the performance area. We made the most of it by having a bite to eat and browsing the various booths for about and hour before we left, disappointed.

They should really move that event to a bigger venue. They held it on the Victoria promenade in front of the Empress Hotel, down by the seaplane terminal. Sooo constricted. The Saanich Fairgrounds would provide much more room. Or, they could devote more area to the performances and move the booths  further along the promenade.  Simpler still, they could open up the curtains once the venues were filled – what better way to attract people for next year.

So many options. I hope they do something. There were a lot of disappointed people that I heard muttering….not nice things.

It was great to catch up with people at the conference later in the week. I hadn’t seem some of them for about a year. There was a talk about cashews by a plant breeder and I learned that the nut of a cashew is actually outside the apple.  Neat. Didn’t know that before.

 

One way, two way, overlap, blended

I found this post today through Doc Searls blog.  It’s by Nellie Lide at Newpersuasion and talks about "A blended future", where it’s hard to tell where company/customer boundaries are and the two work together as one. Interesting stuff, and it was a surprising coincidence.

While writing an introduction for myself, I described my past work as an extension specialist:

I trained formally as a biologist and after a few years of research, started specializing in science extension. If you’ve never heard of extension, think marketing and communication with a twist. Rather than the typical one-way push of messages in marketing, the point of extension is to develop two-way conversations between the producers and consumers of information; the activities of one driving the other.

In science and elsewhere (JOE), an extension specialist provides guidance and resources to help start and maintain those conversations. The great thing about extension is that it gets the science research out of the science publications and into the hands of those that can use it to do better work. Extension also helps clarify where research has missed the boat. Client feedback is like that.

In a sense, our goal was to blend the science with operations. However, we always struggled to get past step 2, "The conversation". Just like business, science still communicates mostly outwards. That’s logical, I guess. Scientists are paid for being experts, and the way they become experts and get more pay is to publish. Until that happens, they usually remain in ‘stealth mode’ with their information. Old news doesn’t rate publication.

Still, there’s lots of room for collaboration and sharing. ‘Someone important’ once said that they didn’t mind sharing last years technology with the competition. I think there is lots to be said for that. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people suggesting something for research, and the answer from researchers has been ‘it’s been done’.

Sure it’s been done, but it’s squirreled away in a science journal somewhere, not in a place or form that ordinary people can find and use. Science needs to spend more time re-crafting their information for a wider audience. Hopefully some of the funding agencies will stand up to the task and demand it as one of the ‘deliverables’.

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The browser is 11 years old…

PRBlog reports that the browers is 11 years old this year. That’s probably old news to most, but I’d forgotten. Hard to believe it’s only been 11 years.

The first time I used a browser stands out for me like the death of JFK does. I was sitting in my living room with the computer against a south facing wall. I remember signing into to my service provider (Mindlink), reading the discussion boards, and finding out about a new program called Mosaic. The buzz in the ‘boards’ at the time was that this would change the world. Hmmm..2400 baud modems, Trumpet winsock, Mosaic…it’s all starting to come back to me.

I nervously downloaded the program and installed it. When I saw the first page come alive on my screen I believed all that I’d heard. This would change the world. I couldn’t stop talking about it, and within a few weeks had circumvented the bureaucracy at work to give my workgroup a dialup account with Mindlink. I even came up with an instruction sheet for staff explaining the internet, trumpet winsock, the dialler, eudora, and the world wide web. I actually ran across that document a few months ago. It was funny to read it.

Heh, look at us now. Still learning to use the world wide web. It teaches us something new every day….

By the way, I think I’ll leave the Qumana ad in for a while. I like the program, so I’ll promote it. After all, it’s free.

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Ships a-ground

The Queen of Oak Bay ran aground this morning.  The B.C. Ferries news release is available here and the CBC report is here. At this point, it sounds like no one is hurt, but several boats were destroyed. The the ferry lost power during a turn into the dock and had to coast into shore.
 
I saw the report on the noon news. After my initial shock and awe, I got to thinking. Where would I have pointed the ferry in if I’d been captain at the time (and if I could have pointed the ferry without power, of course)?
 
If memory serves, there is a solid wall of rock on the east side of the dock. Would I go in there? Would I take on the dock itself? Or would I aim for the shore near the marina, like the captain obviously did?
 
Well, assuming I had time to think about it……
 
If I ran into the rocky bank under the highway, several hundred passengers and a similar number of cars on board would have been launched foward violently by the sudden stop. Same would hold if I hit the dock. Full speed to dead stop tends to do that.  The cost would have been tremendous in terms of personal injury and property damage, as everything landed in a heap at the front of the boat.
 
That leaves the marina. Heading in there would damage a few boats, but the sloping shore might let the ferry grind to a halt. More slowly, and perhaps with much less force than a head on crash.
 
Time will tell. We don’t know the whole story yet, but it sounds like our good captain made the right decision.

Outdoor concerts coming to Surrey via Central City Brewing

Central City Brewing Co. (More info here.) is hosting some outdoor concerts this summer. Tickets at Central City or Ticketmaster ($35 – $38.50). Also posted in the Surrey Leader newspaper
 
  • June 24: Everclear, Carnival Divine, and Surrey guitar sensation Danny Sveinson.
  • June 25: Gin Blossoms with Holly McNarland and other special guests in a show hosted by Mr. Lahey and Randy from the Showcase television series Trailer Park Boys 
    July 29: MerQury, The Almost Hip.
  • July 30: Kim Mitchell and David Wilcox
    Aug. 26: a secret until June 24.
    Aug. 27: The Machine

Good stuff. Even if I don’t know anything about the bands, it’s refreshing to see some of this happening in the old home town.
 
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Biogas fuels

Enviroblogs writes about a new train in Sweden that runs on biogas:

Biogas refers to methane produced by the anaerobic digestion of biomass waste. (Aerobic decomposition, or composting, requires large amounts of oxygen and produces heat.)

Biogas produced in anaerobic digesters consists of methane (50%-80%), carbon dioxide (20%-50%), and trace levels of other gases such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen sulfide.

Now, if we could only figure out what to do with the 20%-50% carbon dioxide, CO, and H2S, this could be a moving solution to some of the waste we create.

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