David Kluskiewicz

Public Farm One proves that urban landscapes are not completely unfarmable. In fact, with just recycled materials and some solar panels, the Work Architecture Company has created a sustainable farm with 51 varieties of plants. Oh, and it’s in Long Island City (Queens, NY).

The constant rise in food prices is proving that suburban living is unsustainable. With the average piece of food travelling 1,500 miles to get to our plate, alternatives like this are going to sprout up everywhere.

Source: Cool Hunting

What can our state do with unprecedented capacity to transfer data?

Connecticut has one of the world’s fastest fiber optic networks. With speeds of 10 gigabits per second, the Connecticut Education Network boasts upload and download times 1,000 times faster than the average home broadband network. Provided a user’s computer has the processing power, this can provide access to high-resolution media and…. not sure.
The $40 million installation brought capacity to the state, but the plans for utilizing it are still unclear. Access is available only to public education institutions in the state, many of which don’t have the infrastructure to connect to it. To date, no major curriculum initiatives are underway either.
What could we do with our network? A lot. A contest held in 2000 by the National Laboratory for Applied Networks (now defunct) recognized the work of several engineering teams who pushed the 1 Gigabit/sec limit. Their work centered on access to large data sets, especially ones that included high resolution images. Other entrants suggested that very fast networks permitted grid computing, harnessing the power of multiple machines simultaneously to perform extremely complex calculations. Whether these demanding applications would be useful in Connecticut’s public school’s remains to be seen.

State supported early-stage funding is tough. Even though the payoff could net new jobs (and new income tax revenue) many states find it hard to take the risk. After all, they’re gambling with taxpayer money.

Kentucky has found a good way to mitigate some of this risk and still stay in the game to attract and retain its young innovators. They follow the Fed and assume that if a company qualifies for a Small Business Loan, it won’t burn the state’s cash.
Technology & Innovation - Funding| The Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development

This Wednesday, members of the Glastonbury, CT Chamber of Commerce explored blogging. Yes, even in the land of steady habits, traditional businesses are asking smart questions about new technologies.

In my part of the presentation, I floated the idea that blogs were brands based on behavior. Unlike logos and taglines that evoke a feeling, blogs are a way to differentiate your business based on your behavior - how you react to challenges and opportunities, how insightful your opinions are, and how well you empathize with industry problems. Based on the nodding heads, I think its safe to assume that this resonated.

Blogging is small and medium-sized businesses’ access to branding by action. In Connecticut, where relationships often trump sizzle, there is tremendous potential for blogging to differentiate niche businesses in the global marketplace. Someone in CT might be the next global microbrand.

Visual decision making is on the rise. A recently debuted application called Mindjet has capitalized on the demand for unstructured brainstorm data. Now, even without a whiteboard, workers everywhere can produce complex pictures of ideas that they are not prepared to explain.
Will imagery and visual presentation enable us to share ideas previously too difficult to simply write and talk about?

Radio Open Source’s debate between Jaren Lanier and David Weinberger makes us aware of the impact of anonymity online. Would the internet be a greater source of information if identity were known? As I see countless social computing applications - digg, del.icio.us, essembly, pandora - the one component that creates a great experience is the knowledge that a real person with an evolving intellect is on the other end. As soon as anonymity plagues a section, the quality of the content begins to decline.

Open Source » Blog Archive » The Limits of Crowds

In the information age, we need to treat every action as if it were being recorded. To many, this can seem terrifying - the knowledge that anything you say can be turned against you. But, there is a positive side as well. Individuals are once again building up personal histories.

In a recent speech she gave in Hartford, Doris Kearns Goodwin described the way in which Lincoln and his peers wrote detailed letters (some never sent) throughout their lives. The focus required to chronicle thoughts and ideas the way Lincoln did is rare today. We barely have the time to write complete sentences in our emails. But, this trend toward sloppy communication is reversing. Slowly, we are becoming aware that what we do today needs to be structured in such a way that it can be used for a very long-time.

A major integrated marketing communications project that my colleagues and I worked on for Springfield Technical Community College, was awarded the Gold Mercury award and the Best In Show award by the The Public Relations Society of America - Connecticut Valley Chapter, on Thursday night. Many people don’t give awards much credit. (Have you ever read the criteria that magazines uses to create “Top Tens”? How can you blame them?) But, in this case, our work was judged by our peers and the talent of the other entrants was staggering. More than anything else this awards reminds me what a great team we had.

We put such faith in the reliability of search results. In a conversation with David Weinberger, Seth Finkelstein explains how search is riddled with popularity contests.

While, on the one hand, search gives us tremendous access to knowledge, we have to be conscious that people are gaming its system. Why aren’t we practicing the same healthy skepticism with search that we have with printed material?

An inalienable right is on the chopping block. HR5252 could enable the major ISPs to control what we are permitted to view on the web. What is truly disturbing is the possibility that an entity with commercial interests could regulate how we communicate, shop, and gather information. The economic impact of this bill is clearly detrimental to our economy.
Bloggers and major corporations alike are appealing to individuals to take action to protect their rights. That combination of intelligent campaigning from passionate individuals and major companies is a refreshing turn from politics as usual. It actually inspires participation in the democratic process. There are plenty of ways to get involved.