Doctor Noize Rockz On!

Fellow Los Altan Cory Cullinan rockz on as Doctor Noize! In his live shows, Doctor Noize...

gives a super high-octane interactive show encouraging kids to explore their creativity. Kids leave thinking everybuddy has some creative genius and that they can play an instrument, sing, dance, and even write and record their own songs. During the show The Doctor sings and plays a bunch of instruments and arranges and records a song live on the spot with crowd participation and wowza cool technology.

Absolutely lovely stuff from a kindred spirit. I've known Cory and his Mom and Dad since being friends with older brother Tracey in Junior High. It is a total joy to see Cory thriving!

Paul Collier on How to Tackle Africa's Challenges

I just found this 2006 Royal Economic Society lecture by Oxford's Paul Collier on the top problems Africa faces and what the most effective solutions might be (strictly speaking, Collier "argues that the key distinction is not Africa/non-Africa, but between around 60 fragile, low-income countries and the rest")... Collier, who is the director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford, subsequently published his book, The Bottom Billion, which he discusses in further lectures, for instance... The Bottom Billion has won several awards and was especially spotlighted by the FT's Economist Martin Wolf in a review entitled How the bottom billion are trapped. Collier covers four less well-appreciated traps:

• the Conflict Trap
• the Natural Resources Trap
• the Landlocked Country with Bad Neighbors Trap, and
• the Bad Governance in a Small Country Trap

Finally, Collier argues for three top recommendations for how to tackle these traps:

• Security Assistance through Military Intervention
• Improved Governance through Transparency Laws and Standards & Codes
• Economic Recovery through Trade Preferences

(Btw, not everyone's a fan of Collier's analysis, for instance, see William Easterly's review in The Lancet). Just this past week Collier also makes some excellent comments on Martin Wolf's recent FT article entitled Food crisis is a chance to reform global agriculture.

Within Trillion Dollar Sectors are Billion Dollar Opportunities...

I had the delightful good fortune just now of running into MIT Professor Larry Sass -- Director of the Digital Design Fabrication Group -- in his architecture fab lab. He and students are in the middle of the latest incarnation of their snap-to-fit full-scale building initiative. I first witnessed this effort in real-time as they built their first "plywood cabin" out of field-cut rapid-printed plywood parts right behind the MIT Museum on Mass Ave... This fast-fab effort alone is hugely compelling and will, no doubt, transform construction approaches in rich and developing countries alike.

As I walked Larry to his bus stop, we chatted about how his own broad body of work is a key element of the emergent revolution in the enormous arena of architecture + building technologies + construction + development + real estate finance. Economic and practical considerations are driving real innovations in energy efficiency, assembly methods, construction processes, materials uses, lifecycle accountability, total-system financing, and more! As he boarded the bus I told him why this is so fantastically exciting to me: in trillion dollar economic sectors there are multiple billion dollar opportunities awaiting those who are inventive and entrepreneurial enough to grasp them!

Planning Harvard ~ From 2020 to 2050 & Beyond

Given our interest at the Institute in thinking about what MIT 2020 might look like -- or rather, ought to be like -- it's good to see what our wealthy up-river "rival" has formally proposed to the powers-that-be in Boston. In the multi-decade master plan framework for Allston, Harvard University proposes a sustainable, interdisciplinary campus. The overview rendering of Harvard in 2050 has several compelling features, including tunneling the riverside roadways thus creating true pedestrian parks along the Charles. That's what we need in front of MIT -- to create Memorial Park by depressing Mem Drive underneath! Our own Little Big-Dig, only much cheaper and more effective!

David Danielson ~ Rising Energy Rockstar VC

Mass High Tech profiled Rising energy star Danielson [who] seeks 'Earth-changing ideas' in their VC Tech Turks column today! Not merely content with the average ho-hum billion-dollar idea...

David Danielson is looking for that trillion-dollar idea to fix the global energy crisis, and is confident that he will find one here in New England.

Good thing he went to The Innovation Institute where he was a "minor Muddy legend" according to Xconomy.com! Indeed...

Danielson's interest in the renewable energy market -- as well as the surrounding politics, technologies and policy issues -- grew exponentially while at MIT, where many other students were also engaged in the topic. He started a discussion group at MIT to share ideas about energy issues and the overall energy market. The group met in a small local pub every week and grew into what is now the 700-member MIT Energy Club, which encourages renewable energy initiatives.

I had the great fortune of working with Dave behind the scenes on several of these activities and it's excellent to see him thriving now in the investment arena!

My MIT Developmental Entrepreneurship Student Teams win in IDEAS Competition!

An excellent line-up of winners in the MIT IDEAS Competition this year! I'm especially proud of two student teams from my Developmental Entrepreneurship class last semester doing well: both Ghonsla and AssuredLabor (photo above) won $5,000 Prizes!

Time Warp ~ Discovery Show w/ Jeff Lieberman

Great new show Time Warp hosted by MIT's Jeff Lieberman where time is a variable due to the miracles of high-speed photomagic...

MIT IDEAS Competition ~ Finale TONIGHT Thurs 5/1!

MIT IDEAS Competition awards ceremony and reception is tonight, Thursday May 1, 7:30pm on the MIT Stata Center Student Street and 32-123. Featuring Keynote speaker Dr Bill Rodriguez, Program leader at the Partners AIDS Research Center focused on developing point-of-care devices for HIV, TB, and malaria and Former Senior HIV Advisor and Director of HIV operations for the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative, and more. Plus, of course, the winners of the various IDEAS Prizes & Awards!

ABB Pick-and-Place Uberbot!

Fantastic ABB industrial robot picking & placing croissants! More videos at HackedGadget!

Harmonix Rocks On!

Great to see MIT Entrepreneurship Competition alumnus company Harmonix featured in a Newsweek article entitled Rock-and-Roll Fantasy: Harmonix, creator of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, is changing videogames. The article profiles Media Lab collaborators Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos who created the business back in 1995 when yours truly was the Lead Organizer of the Competition! While it was tough going in the first few years -- lots of cool ideas and core technologies, but very difficult to hone in on profitable products -- they hit a series of homeruns with video games Guitar Hero and more recently Rock Band. MTV acquired them in 2006 and they continue to rock on!

Internet Domains Worldwide

Caliendo Impressionifies !-)

Priceless!

IdeaStream 2008 ~ MIT Deshpande Center Celebration of Innovation

Very interesting to be at MIT's IdeaStream 2008, the Deshpande Center annual conference. (An event I helped create with Bob Metcalfe and Mark Gorenberg back in 2001, it turns out). It was nice to see both Desh and Jaishree Deshpande as well, since it was their vision and generosity which made things possible.

Several excellent morning speakers, including industrial electrochemistry rockstar Professor Don Sadoway who discussed his building-sized battery ideas -- basically learning-lessons from aluminum smelting and looking at less popular parts of the periodic table! Solar manufacturing rockstar Professor Ely Sachs discussed his new 1366 startup company dedicated to making solar competitive with coal. (I finally now understand that 1366 is the solar constant, the number of watts per square meter incident on Earth!) Finally, MIT alumnus entrepreneur Kailas Narendran gave a progress report on his neurorobotics stroke-rehab venture Myomo, born of Deshpande-financed research back in the first year, 2002.

Deshpande Executive Director Leon Sandler put the shout out to Stan Reiss of Matrix, Lori Pressman with Harris & Harris, and Jamie Goldstein of NorthBridge as representative members of our entrepreneurship ecosystem. The panel discussion was kind of a waste of time, too much high-level pontification about either obvious things or stuff we can't change easily. The innovation showcase was great, on the other hand, featuring both Deshpande-funded projects and emergent ventures from the greater MIT-landscape, including my Developmental Entrepreneurship class spinout company ClickDiagnostics!

The finale keynote by astronaut superwoman Suni Williams was rockin cool. Turns out she and Jim Matheson from Flagship has been Annapolis plebes back in the day. Anyways, Suni shared with us some of the fantastic experiences she's had in space and exposed us to some of the unique technical challenges we need to overcome.

In the reception afterwards -- in a dungeon-esque venue, alas, nothing like the Spinnaker Room at the old Hyatt venue -- I had a nice chat with Aleks Franz co-founder of Lilliputian and Matt Trevithick from Venrock. Turns out I knew Matt at a distance from his co-founding Flash Communications in mid-1990's. We discussed several things, including my Howtoons and educating kids generally, as well as venture opportunities in the hybrid-electric vehicle sector.

Floating Urban Accomodations ~ NYC Housing!-)

I showed my MIT MOT alumnus classmate Dave Perko the Floating Power Plant link and he got very excited, writing me...

It has me wondering about other potential offshore development opportunities. One thought in the article particularly struck me: it was the comment about augmenting land-scarce cities like NY with services they need. Why not build condos -- even communities -- near-shore? Or office buildings? People love the water, the view and proximity to the city. This is a viable solution to a real estate crunch. Think South East Asia. Plus, there is already ferry service in the Boston Harbor, in NYC, and SF. People vaction on house boats, take cruises, and travel to islands ... why not live there!

Indeed, said I, pointing out that the powers that be -- brighter minds than ours -- are already on it! Check out these multi-million dollar accomodations moored off New York City. Hundreds of people already live there... Seriously, though, this is a damn great idea. Floatable stuff is fast: fast to install, fast to change, fast to improve, fast to remove. All excellent qualities, worldwide.

Sovereign Wealth Flows

Nice article in the NYT on sovereign wealth flows entitled Follow the Money plus extra-cool graphic...

Racy Doodles or Innocent Images ?-)

First impressions are often deceptive (Courtesy some lovely Brazilians and DestroyMyArt)!

US & Global Mega-Region Analyses

Here's a couple papers on both US Mega-Regions -- specifically the Northeast from the Regional Plan Association / America 2050 -- entitled Toward an Action Agenda in the Northeast Megaregion. (More generally, there's an interesting America 2050 Prospectus.) And here's an analytic piece by Florida et al entitled The Rise of the Mega-Region. And finally, a piece pushing the new term Megapolitan.

Arab-Persian Gulf Economies ~ Boom Cities!

In a nice article entitled Gulf economies: How to spend it, the Economist surveys both the emergence of Gulf boom cities and the ailments of wealth. Among items discussed are the boom in Diabetes, the prospect for Saudi economic cities, the challenges of migrant labor, and emergent innovation institutions like the Masdar Institute of Science & Technology.

More About US Mega-Regions

In a piece entitled Economic Development Opportunities For U.S. Mega-Regions, Katie Bullard, Project Manager with AngelouEconomics writes about...

"large networks of metropolitan regions that are linked by environmental systems and geography, infrastructure systems, economic linkages, settlement patterns, and shared culture and history." The U.S.'s primary mega-regions are highlighted with blue boundary lines on the map below.

U.S. mega-regions will account for 50% of the nation's population growth and 66% of its economic growth over the next 45 years. Given those projections, it's clear that considerable investment will pour into these regions. This article describes the major U.S. mega-regions, evaluates their relative position of strength for sustaining economic growth, and outlines emerging areas of collaborative opportunities within the mega-region framework.

Robotic Bike Storage in Japan!

MIT's Frank Hebbert pointed fellow DUSP folks to this Japanese video of an amazing robotic bike storage system in Toyko! Frank says the system is: "$1 per day or $18 per month. Seems like you pay with a pre-loaded card when you pick up but this is apparently not made totally clear in the video. There are 36 of these systems at this one station, each one is 7m wide and 15m deep." Such systems will radically boost the density of storage and viability of cycling in ultra-populous urban settings.