Thanks to Matthias Kretschmann for publishing a nice tutorial for configuring a file server. And thanks to the Ubuntu community for sharing tips in the forums.

Sure this may seem like tinkering, but it represents an attitude that I want my kids to embrace as they grow up – one that I need to practice again. I want them to look beyond brands and see the physical materials that they can turn into anything. A 1.5MHz chip, a 32GB hard drive and 500Mb of RAM, all objects that might have been considered “so 2001″, were resurrected into a stellar utility for the home. It’s tough for a brand to do that. And, it’s nowhere near as satisfying as crafting something with your own hands.

Business-to-business social media will be extremely valuable in the next couple of years, as more people become comfortable with conducting non-core business in public. Because so many of today’s businesses ventures are built on strong relationships and niche experience, we will need sources of real information on our colleagues, partners, customers and vendors. A resume will not be enough. A web page won’t provide the right information. We’re going to need data, over time, that gives a little insights into someone’s thought process. Blogs, profiles, twitterstreams, I think, do just that. They prove that an individual is thinking, processing, editing, developing, etc. These media may not always have the polish of a presentation piece, but they show the character of individuals, which is more than a resume or purchase order ever could.

Other takeaways from panelists:

• Don’t be a shameless self-promoter
• Share just enough non-professional information to remind people that you’re a human, full of thought and not under the control of some PR machine
• Share your experiences. You never know who else could benefit, or be inspired by you. And, when someone gets to the point of soliciting business, you could be top of mind.
• Go and experiment.

If you’re spelling my name phonetically, here are some of the ways you might have spelled it:

Kluskevitch

Kluskevich

Cluskevich

Cluskevitch

Cluskiewicz

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

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.

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

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.

Open Source » Blog Archive » The Limits of Crowds

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.