what a pleasure an airport lounge can be. its simplicity and variety of spaces true to 'scan-design' form. free wireless with great bandwidth [at 0600] and furniture that is both functional and comfortable. this is the way a lounge should really be.

http://www.millennium-project.org/

http://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/Search.html

these are awesome maps and representations of data!
http://maps.maplecroft.com/
some of the best that i have seen....

http://sos.noaa.gov/index.html

wow!

this is a must watch for anyone who has kids or is thinking about it......she gets it sooo right!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsSuvUveUWo

a good resource fo rus to take a look at
http://www.unep.org/geo/geo4/media/

This is a really interesting article which was passed on to me from a participant at the Outlook Event in Washington. It is worth a read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html?_r=1&incamp=article_popular&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1193412783-V5RHRZd5hDkLDap1s6qrLw&pagewanted=all

a day of discussions about the year ahead for the construction industry. the speakers were:
David Wyss, Chief Economist, Standard & Poor, who was awesome. he gave a very stark overview of the housing market and its impact in the US. he anticipates that the housing market will bottom out over the next year [maybe] and then not recover.

CHL made a new talk on future trends around STEEP.

Then, Howard Mager, Sr VP, McGraw Hil, opened a panel with a group of manufacturers.
Mark Johnson, Whirlpool. [http://www.whirlpool.com/home.jsp]
now using sketch-up to create a repository of product. one worry is that as we head into a tougher economy our products could be commoditized. his concern is that free-trade will be challenged by new president. this guy likes to throw numbers around without any real understanding of the context. he needs to get a passport and take a trip around the world.

Susan Kennedy, Sloan Valve Co [http://www.sloanvalve.com/]
they purchase renewable credits to cover their energy costs. biggest challenge will be cost of metals and global competition

Brad Haeberle, VP Siemens Buildig Technologies [https://www.buildingtechnologies.siemens.com/]
great opportunities for new wireless. biggest challenge is to get skilled labour. a good marketing person.

John Mothersole talked about materials pricing. he feels that there will be a 2% rise in overall price. he continued to give a bunch of numbers about the coming year. he believes that prieces will be fairly steady due to overall glob al demand icreasig. he also points ot that non-residential markets will look good.

spent the afternoon being shuttled from one group to another within the National Geogrpahic Society here in Washington DC. This was all courtesy of Susan Reeves who is in Charge of Missions and Special projects an di met at PopTech. I met with really great folks who deeply believe in the new mission of helping to enhance pubil literacy on the state of the globes natural treasures. it was a great afternoon.

arrived at 0200 after a very long delay on the flight from Chicago. the security guard at the entrance simply pointed to the right. not a word of welcome. got to the desk and had to yell 'anybody here?' after waiting for about three or four minutes. [which is an eternity at 0200!]. my ears were still compacted from the decent - a gift from the cold i developed while in Maine at Poptech - so i could not here the gentleman very well. niceties done. room? smoking was reserved. he asked if i wanted the smoking room. of course not, it is in my HiltonHonors profile? yes it is in your profile. i don't know why a smoking room was reserved for you. well, we don't have any more non-smoking rooms. oh really? well, there is one. ok, thanks. well, you can move to a different one tomorrow, we are all sold out tonight. no thanks. room is ok. view to nothing, really. just to office buildings with their lights on at 0250 in the morning. no wonder the country has used up all its oil. the desk is too high for a laptop. the chair has arms that would be considered wonderfully worn if this was a retirement home. the bathroom has a hook in the shower where i can hang my shirts to unwrinkle which is clever. instead of the standard coffeemaker there is a direct in the dual mug coffeemate that is pretty cool as well. wireless seems to work ok......

But, Hilton has really a lot of work to do..... do they not use their data for those who are frequent travelers? why should we bother to give them the marketing database if they don't have the courtesy to use the data for their guests? or, perhaps it is really ONLY a marketing ploy. in any case, they certainly need to try harder. this is the second bad experience.

spent the last 36 hours with a group of really amazing people. they are all part of what is called the Monitor Network [http://www.themonitornetworks.com/]. this group can be found at [http://www.monitortalent.com/]. it was really great to connect with Ethan Zuckerman [http://ethanzuckerman.com/] whose blog [http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/] is really a must read!

i also met
sherry turkle [http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/] who was incredibly insightful.
Margo Strom - who helps us look at the past in new ways
Jim Bower - who seems to question everything in a good way
John Kao - who just finished a book on Innovation in America...soon to be a must read for everyone!
Dean Esserman - police chief from Rhode Island who believes the future lies in our streets
Stewart Brand - who sits back and listens alot
Paul van Riper - retired Maine Corps general who is incredibly wise and UNDERSTANDS complexity.

it is really wonderful to be in a room where everyone else is smarter!

on the internal lake of the city. view out onto the nice body of water was interrupted by a set of high-tension electric lines. very bizzare! food in the restaurant was excellent. rooms really fine. working table a bit small, but all the cords and bits were there. service was superb.

i would proably look for a place that was not so pricey next time in Austin.

i like it. new building. too hermetically sealed, but that was about it. everything else is included in the price. breakfast buffet on each floor. decent coffee and rolls. only drawback is no lobby at all to sit in.

i would stay again.

http://www.fringehog.com/
a very interesting website with podcasts about the future. worth a view periodically

56 countries in which Islam is the major religion.

from springfield, ohio. worked at boston consulting for thre years before coming back to music. he played a piece that was beautiful. he talked about some of his efforts to create the 'showme' campaign. he then played his song....'show me'
and then a song titled 'ordiary people'

http://www.johnlegend.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Legend
http://www.showmecampaign.org/index1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Keasling
https://keaslinglab.lbl.gov/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

she created a non-profit global drug company. to take health care affordable for the lowest casts of India. she called them the line at the base of the pyramid. the diesese that they wanted to erradicate was kala-azar. it was an incredible job. bill and melindaa gates have commited to erradicating malaria and she is part of this effort.

some of the greatest obsticles has been human intervention and/or lack of action. she also pointed out that HOW you do your work is even more important than the what. the HOW will really determine the true magnitude of the impact.

poor people have no voince in this industry. there are so many diseases in the world that are killing hundres of thousands of individuals who are at the base of the pyramid and the global drug companies are not working on these. the reason is simple - no profit in this area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Hale
http://www.oneworldhealth.org/about/our_team.php

four legged style of movement.

action specialist. asking questions abot the invention and presentation of action events. which is all about the NOW. looking a the mystery of movement. the explorer is the person who is lost.'

she quoted evil kenival 'i never had any problem with the take-off'. really interesting use of frictionless surfaces on stage. and taking surfaces and manipulatig their perpendiularity. really really intense. she using time as an emergent principle. she showed a piece with concrete blockes moving across the stagle like pendulums.

shoot an arrow in the sky and draw a bullseye where it lands.

http://www.strebusa.org/

the body reconsidered.
talked abot the human skin and its incredible complexity.' the sensory homunculus' represents the proportional sensitivity. she showed quite a bit about grooming and touching and its tole in social interaction. humans are self-decorating apes. cosmetics and tatoos are both ancient. in our skin is our humanity. stripped of the skin, we really are alike. she reminded us all that we have come from a world of touching. 40 million years of evolution developed our sensitity. do not turn our backs on it.

http://www.anthro.psu.edu/faculty_staff/Jablonski.shtml

fisherman's ecological knowledge and managing fisheries.
he spoke about the local fisheries situation. the third collapse in his lifetime is underway. he talked about some of the efforts to understand what has happened by lookig at historical data. and, about his plans to continue to get them back up to productive capacity.

[http://www.nationalgeographic.com/emerging/esala.html]
a passionate person who focuses on the ocean.
he has been going to pristine coral reefs to get a better understanding of their function.
Christmas Island is the largest coral island. when captiain cook discovered the lagoon, there were thousends of sharks and today there are none. the coral reef is covered with algae and is essntially dead.
he went on to show three others that were better condition. endig with Kingman Reef

in a pristine reef, the food chain is inverted. the top predators make up most of the biomass and herbavoirs the least.

how have we killed coral reefs?
1. removed everything big and reduced biomass
2. inverted the biomass
3. replacing corals with seaweed
4. enhancing microbial explosions
5. reduced resilience

another wow.

this is so distrubing that i had to go to David Suzuki's webiste to show what this is.....from http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Oceans/Sust_fisheries/Trawling/

A large percentage of fish captured in global fisheries and in Canadian waters is caught using a bottom trawl or dragger. Bottom trawling involves pulling large nets along the ocean floor. All gear types that contact the ocean bottom have the potential to disrupt seafloor habitat. Bottom trawling, however, has been acknowledged as the most destructive form of fishing commercially practised.

The impacts from bottom trawling on seafloor habitats and species have been globally and scientifically recognized, and can be broadly categorized into habitat and species impacts.

Of immediate concern is the practice of deep-sea bottom trawling on the high seas. The deep-sea trawl fishery is relatively new and has emerged thanks to both gear modifications and technological advances (GPS and imaging, for example). Nets can now be dropped into areas where substrate conditions, or uncertainty of those conditions, used to bring too high a risk of net damage. Areas of the ocean that were once safe from direct physical impacts of human activities are now exposed to new, destructive threats. Species living in deep-sea habitats have several unique characteristics: they tend to be long-lived, slow-moving, slow to mature and reproduce, and unaccustomed to disturbance. Trawling over their habitat causes immense damage to both the habitat and the species assemblages.

Canada must take a leadership role in reforming the practices of bottom trawling in both international and national waters. Until very recently, the Canadian Government has largely ignored the impacts of trawling on the seabed.

taking a look at the oceans. the oceans represent about 99% of the planets surface area. we have sampled about 0.5% of the surface, which is about the since of alaska. so, the point is, what will we do about the deep ocean? she is a freelance writer and film director.
http://www.thedeepbook.org/nouvian_author.html
she showed the most amazing images of creatures from the deep sea. then went on to talk about the threats.
deep-sea mining
dep-see dumping
CO2 sequestration
ocean acidification
methane and oil exploitation
bottom trawling is currently active and a huge problem [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_trawling]
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Oceans/Sust_fisheries/Trawling/

unfathomable that we can rape the planet in this way.

check out www.searoundus.org

amazing performace of various percussion elements and mobile phones.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200707/200707300011.html

http://www.borayoon.com/

she asked the entire audience to turn on their phones and then played 'clinko'.

it was fabulous. icredible what one can do with a processor and a beautiful voice.

90% of global AIDs patients are in sub-saharan africa. the crisis is unbelievable. in ZZN, South Africa, 200 babies are born with HIV every day which is equiv to all of those born in the US in a year. the life expectancy of a person has dropped to about 44.

the statistics are simply devestating.

ithemba
http://www.ithemba.org.uk/
http://www.ithembafilmproject.org/

http://www.wiretapmag.org/stories/20087/

did a piece right before the second session that got a wonderful standing ovation.

freedom is....

what a voice. it was like being in an airplane when the pilot pushes the throttle down to full and doesn't let up. she is awesome.

storytelling. and the power of storys. he went on to talk about the wale hunt. [http://www.thewhalehunt.com/] he talked about the photgraphic heartbeat of the entire experience between 1 and 9 may in 2007. talked about overlappig threads of narrative and how to map this. incredible
http://www.number27.org/

he now has a new application which scans the blogshere for feelings. and thn you can browse thru it.

UNBELIEVEABLE - http://www.wefeelfine.org

MUST VISIT - incredible data visualization.

We seem to be obsessed with speed….but not sure where we are heading. He talked about how he got to found the slow movement. The Epiphany came when he was so excited to find a 60second night time story to read to his son…..and he know that this was not good.

Slow food [http://www.slowfood.com/] started first and now there are SLOW CITIES [http://www.matogmer.no/slow_cities__citta_slow.htm] There are now 90 of them.

Dining Al Desko – when we eat at our desk.

We need relearn the art of shifting gears.

He talked about how - I AM HAPPIER.

now snow white has seven dwarfs again.

http://www.inpraiseofslow.com/slow/index.php

‘It’s the end of the world as we know it’
a new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial until finally, it becomes what everybody knows. William James, 1879

when you hold your fate in your hands, why do we make a fist? We respond to so many threats so why are we not responding to global warming. Our brain responds to specific threats with astonishing speed. However, these threats have four features:
1. a face. We are highly social mammals. The brain has special neural networks that are dedicated to processing information about people. It is the need to think of other people that drove the development of our brain millennia ago. One could say, that our brains are hyperobsessive to identify people.
2. Doesn’t violate our moral sensibilities. This is because it does not confront us with things or acts that we can see. [Ie food and sex] are ancient rules of behaviour.
3. We see it as a threat to our future, but not to us in the present. Our brain is an exquisitely designed ‘get out of the way’ driver. Thus, it developed a capacity to project danger. The size of the brain that deals with future is tiny compared to the reactive present
4. The brain is sensitive to relative changes not to absolue changes. Thus, when the rate of change of stimulus is slow enough. We do not recognize slow changes but do fast changes. One day at a time we have transfored the world into a place that our grandparents would not have dreamed of.

global warming does not have this. Global warming is not a 'real threat' that can be identified because it need to have:

we respond to PAIN – personal, abrupt, immoral and NOW

global warming is a threat, and a global threat, only because it is not happening fast engouth.

ASWESOME

Carbon sequestration project in Brazil. Ecologica Institute. They run three research centres locally. SOCIAL CARBON [http://www.socialcarbon.com/]. He presented their work in the various forests in the counry. They encourage the switch from destruction of native forest to sawdust and bamboo and coconut waste for energy. The reductions are quite significant. They are planting Eucalyptus and bamboo. [is his really appropriate for Brazil?]

her talk was about a project on PORTABLE LIGHT. [www.portablelight.org]
a physicist calculated that it would take solar cell array the size of about south Dakota would supply the usa with all its power needs. [hard to imagine that it would have the energy density required]

she talked about growing up on the east coast and fireflys. And began to think about the smallest light source needed. What would it need to be? Simple, durable, lightweight, adaptable and self-contained. She then asked the question ‘what can we do RIGHT NOW with what we already have?’

she, and her students, went around looking for existing technologies from various other bits of technology. she dramaticaly hammered a silicon solar cell into bits and showed how a flexible polymer solar cell is all but indestructable.

the best part was how some of the Mexican Indians took the flxible cells and wove them into some bags that they made.

afternoon musical inerlude by a cellist named zoe
WOW!!!!!! it was amazing. very digital. very traditional. very modern. beautiful.

check her out!

http://zoekeating.com/

The creative concept
I have a blog that I doodle on.
she did a great word play diagram that you can see at her blog.

if you learn one thing, you can apply to it.......check it out!

http://indexed.blogspot.com/

Talking about wireless power. How to harvest the energy from the air from existing sources. This has been around for about one hundred years. The problem then was that the devices then used lots of energy on both ends of the send-receive chain. Today devices are far more efficient and it is now possible to reconsider.

Today we can harvest the ambient energy. There are three considerations: what is doable, what is safe and what makes sense. there are some devices that make sense. he believs that one day devices will be able to harvest energy as we walk down the street. these would be small devices. VERY COOL. the wireless revolution is not complete. within 30 years, wireless will REALLY be wireless.

amazing demonstration of a christmas tree that has lights totally powered by RF

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_energy_transfer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6129460.stm
his company is called powercast. [http://www.powercastco.com/]

he was the creater of the furbie.
the name of his company is giving toys.
he showed a video of a series of toys that he has create over time. he is into Art and Science surrounded by business as a mantle around it.

he showed how the furby evolved. [little robot on acid]. they made 40 million units.

Pleo Evolution....'we are going to try to replicate a real baby dinasaur'
humans need empathy and we need more of it. so he wants to make a new type of life-form. they went thru alot of design to make this out of plastic.

imagination today id the reality of tomorrow.
you go become = ugobe

pretty funky,

sheryl is the head of Global Trends and Futuring Manager at Ford. we met at TED 2007 and had a great conversation about the DoC work. She told me that she loves the cards and apologized for not getting in touch.

Our talk hinged around the future of mobility and the challenges that a legacy company like Ford faces. in chattig, she pointed out that ford is over one hundered years old and has a very large, real moral responsibility to its long-term workforce. in addition, they are not able to simply retool due to long-term concessional contracts with the unions. fascinating!

http://www.ford.com/aboutford/microsites/sustainability-report-2006-07/voicesSherylConnelly.htm

very cool woman who is trying to revolutionize the NGO world's use of mobile technology. ran a popular workshop on the use of mobiles for activisim before the coference began.

http://mobileactive.org/
http://techstrategy.org/wordpress/index.php

author of 'a whole new mind' in which he argues that the right-brainers will rule the future. he opened with a short thin about the best of speeches. they are:
brevity
levity
repetition

'a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures'

abundance: he argues that the material standard of living in the developed world is stunning. it is phenominal how those in the advanced economies live. take automobiles. today there are more automobiles than liscened drivers. take a look at self-storage world. $21 billion industry. there is a GAP between rising levels of prosperity and happiness/satisfaction. the ddveloped economy is focused on self-acutalization.

asia: offshoring. way overhyped. the number of jobs lost to offshoring is way overhyped in the short term. but far underplayed in the long run.

automation: missed this part.

hard to outsource, hard to automate and must be unique. this is the way to survive.

http://www.danpink.com/

the evolution of Altruism.
READ Darwin's Evolution of Species.
he made a very academic presentation.....a guy named Haldan said 'i would jump into a river to save two brothers, but not for one'. this is essentially about the relationshipp between gentic closeness and altruism. then went on to talk about the moden theory of Altruism by WB Hamilton. he created a 'formula' which explains it. it has three components r, b and c. missed what they are....he gave the examples of honey bees and naked mole rats and ground squirrels.... it was interesting and the bottom line is that people who are blood-kin tend to take care of each other more.

author of the book 'the female brain'.
'in 1971 i entered as an architect at Berkley. i decided that i wanted to take a look at designing spaces from the inside out. i then joined the feminist movement..... in 1984 she had a son...

she presented the develoment of the male and female brains. fascinating how different they are.

http://www.ucsf.edu/brizlab/
http://louannbrizendine.com/

talked about moral dilemmas and how people interact with each other. i am pretty sure that i have heard it at TED.

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/

co-founder of FOUND magazine. REALLY cool!
davy did a piece of perfromance art.
GREAT!!!!

www.foundmagazine.com

one of the oldes technologies that we have manipulated has been breeding.

he went on to talk about how we, as humans, also have similar relationships to the been with flowers.

15 billion chicken on the earth. you have to realize that we have a symbiotic relationship with them.

suppose we made a machine that could replicate almost all of its own parts. and if it could exist symbiotically with people....this is the RepRap project. Replication Rapid prototyping.

this is really ffused deposition modelling that is computer controlled. his goal was to make a machine that is affordable for anyone. fascinating, but not sure how it will go, really. see the Darwin image

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

affordability is an enginering and design problem. design is a
1. go to where the action is
2. talk to the people who have the problem and listen to them
3. learn everythin there is to know about the specific context

'affordability isn't everything - its the only thing'

the don't bother trilogy:
1. if you have not had conversations with at least 25 of the poor
2. if it will not pay for itself in the first year
3. if you canot sell at least a million of them
then don't bother to start. you must have done the three and it must be market, not freebies.

three key feature of the needed deisngn
1. affordable
2. divisibility - able to be split into small pieces or parts.
3. expandability - this is a bit like a lego set.

the three great povety eradication myths.
1. we can donae people out of poverty
2. we can end povderty through national economic growth - because poverty is local and economic growth is typically national
multi-nationals as they are now will end poverty

he has started a new organization called D-Rev. a platform to create a business to serve poor customers.

http://www.irc.nl/page/7490
www.ide-international.org/news/index.php

innovation from the bottom up ....KIVA.org
great way in which normal people can give micro-credit loans to others aournd the world. most of those who recieve the credits are women and most are repaid. loans are normally repaid within nine months.

half the world lives on less thatn $2.00/day

http://www.kiva.org/

chris jordan
christian noli

both awesome!

i will do a better job saving from now on.

talked about cities. he started with 'we don't know what cities are.' the city of london only have enough food for three days.

participatory sensory mapping
he took sixth form students and blind-folded them and put on ear muffs. he then recorded their emotive responses. then documented a certain path. then translated this to emotive maps.

Biomapping Device measures your physical response to the envornement. he connects this to a GPS and reads their feelings. he sends them out for a walk and then makes a VERY VERY COOL map from this.

he has made an incredible map of the emotive responses of San Francisco. the emotive maps reveal the hidden treasures of a place.

http://www.softhook.com/

finally made it after a really miserable travel day.
plane delayed out of Austin. arrived in cincinnati. watched shuttle bus leave in front of me. waited five minutes for next one. ran to gate...three minutes late. no chance to move the delta agent at all. as far as she was concerned, i should have considered myself lucky to be standing on the holy ground in front of her. next flight in four hours.
finally got to go. arrived after bumpy flight in a tiny plane siting next to a VERY big man.

picked up at the airport in a new hybrid lexus that gets a whopping 26 mpg on the highway....the driver go lost so i did not get to the bed and breakast until after 0100. he refused to use the GPS. said that the car was from new york and the gps hadn;t figured out where it was yet. go figure.
no one at the desk. couldnt find the room.
note in the guest book tells you that there is laundrymat 2 miles down the road. so i will have no clean clothes.
no telephone reception.
wireless bugs out about every half hour
this place is out of town and way too far to walk to anything.
ichat does not work with the lame wireless

not a good start.

it is now 0314.

every once in a while there is a little piece that is a must watch. this is one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDsIFspVzfI

after you finish. take a deep breath.

Session 05
David Adamson, who was the head of writing the rules for procurement of the built environment for the UK Treasury. He Talked about the transformation of the UK gov’t procurement from a cheapest total capital cost to the best whole life cost as it is. It is a fundamental move to the Quality Agenda. There has been a Mandate for Focus on Whole Life Value at national, regional and local levels.

‘I knew more about this building before we started before most buildings when we are finished.’ quote from a contractor.

Ratio between capital costs and long-time value was articulated....
.1 design
1 building
3 running premises
20-30 cost all university activities

There is now a new ISO 15686 which lists what one does and does not include for whole-life costing.

Common-sense context for definitions
'The Best' is the enemy of the Good Enough

For healthcare the most important is the position of fenestration and the second most is the position of the power points; better architecture means reduced pain drug intake at hospital.

Every project over £2 million is now required to have a post-occupancy evaluation with the design team after two to three years. This is/has been crucial to the success of the new whole-life method.

We find that undergraduates are calling the shots as far as sustainability is concerned.

We know that there must be both a ‘carrot and stick approach’

Session 1
Scott Simpson opened by asking each of the panellists to review what has happened in their company over the past year. Reponses were as follows:

Beck Group. It is the younger staff that is driving the issues within the firm…a real bottom up approach has evolved that is fully supported by the owner of the company. We have a checklist that has three aspects – issues that are project based, issues that are technology add-ons and the last is a list for LEAD certification. We also have a program that allows us to take a look at both early cost impacts of our design decisions and impacts on longer-term energy use. We are also working on getting more out into the political arena as far as influencing new decisions.

Gensler. We see that this is incredibly challenging to get sustainability innovation into the mainstream.

Four tiers of sustainability: we are hearing more and more from clients that we want to be ‘beyond platinum’. We most importantly took this last year as an opportunity to look at our own footprint. We are seeing an increasing desire for performance metrics for energy and water and finding it very difficult to find consultants who are interested in stepping up to the plate. We are also going to be measuring all of our projects even if our clients are not interested so that WE know what is going on.

Durrant. We have just about completed the accreditation of our professionals to get them LEAD accredited. We are also aware that this is different at different offices around the Durrant family. From a NCARB perspective, we are working with the other sister organizations to rewrite the criteria for accreditation of programs to incorporate sustainable design to a much higher degree. We can see there is a real convergence amoungst NGOs. Interesting issue is how to bring sustainable design BACK into mainstream of both education and pro-actice. How long till the next ‘THING’ will come.

Its not about technology – its about collaboration.
Survey – 7% of voters know about greenhouse gases. 40% of voters think that it cars and trucks are the largest contributors. Buildings produce 48% of greenhouse gasses;
Buildings consumer 71% of energy produced at power plants.

Education and evangelism on these issues is SOOOO important.

MAGIC WAND QUESTION
Gordy – now that the politicization of climate change has been achieved we have an enormous opportunity for the reintroduction of regional planning. With my want, I would reinstitute the regionalization of our thought process.
Rives – I want to have a way in which every action has an immediate feedback consequence. It has to effect cable TV.
Betsy – I want to see regional groups to get together the issues of transit and mixed use development.
Phil – professional silos are just bullshit. I feel that we suffer deeply from silo mentality and the only way we can move forward is to break these silos. [BUT I sure want to have great specialists!!!!]
Scott – I am going to share about my meeting with Jack Warnikie – he noted that we all have to go to the bathroom. We have to use our power as designers to focus on our humanity.

The Design Futures Council has held its sixth leadership summit. this one was in Austin, Texas. The 115 participants included a new group of young leaders and students. the other delegates represented the entire supply chain. the program was designed by Jim Cramer, of Greenway Consulting, with his team in Atlanta. the presentations ranged from the master plan for the Beijing olympics to integration of technology in facades. the participants were really wonderful. I hosted the event and gave a talk after dinner at the end of the first full day.

more will come on the specific sessions.

I think that the session needs to renamed to MEN CORNERED. There were so many individuals who wanted to attend that the session was moved to a break-out room that was fille do t standing-room only capacity. The moderator opened with the two important questions….
Why is it important to improve on the gender diversity front?
Why is this not a gender issue, but a business issue?

The facts of the panel:
Carlos Ghosen, CEO Renault – 18 board of directors – 2 female
Group executive made up of 7, 0 female
Management Committee – 25 members, 3 female
Nissan – 22 on the board with none are women.

Frank Brown, Dean, INSEAD - 132 resident faculty – can’t find number of women.
Jean-Pascal Tricoire, CEO Schneider Electric – 15 board members – 1 woman [Director HR]

JPT started with a description of some of their initiatives of the past three to five
years.
CG – it is not just a question of being convinced that gender parity is a good thing, it is a question of the business case. One must combine both values and business cases. He talked about the time when he went to Nissan when it is was in trouble. He turned to those who did not have a voice since those who had the voice had failed; this was the younger members of staff and the females.
FB – at INSEAD we now have 28% of the MBA students are female and it is improvement.

JPT – we start with the recruitment by helping specifically female recruits to succeed throughout the program. They also look to ensure economic parity after maternity leave.
CG – we have very specific targets that we put forward. We try to get a good balance between targets and capabilities. It is really important to make sure that those who are promoted are supported thru their progression. To make sure that each move is really one forward that sticks, not one forward and half back. We find that there are plenty of women who put themselves forward. The people who have talent who have never had the coaching nor mentoring are those who are slipping thru. Even though we only have 0 members on the board of Nissan, my job is to prepare others to be able to move into the board position.
FB – I find that male dominated business tend not to put women from within the firm forward for Board positions. It is really important that there is a road of preparation.

CG - the most important thing for me is that my children consider me a good father, not the CEO of Renault/Nissan.

It was another interesting session. There was a vey high interest by the participants.

B Giussani
S Kish
A Lange
M Cattaui
D Mehta
J-L Constanza

The session was packed. It was opened by the facilitator by allowing each panel member to make a comment. They are as follows:

BG Second life is a platform that socializes the interaction with information.
AL – Facebook.com and similar sites are not really about extending ones circle of friendships; rather it is about building new types of relationships. These networks are really for generation Y, they are the first group to really utilize this to its fullest potential. 60% of all teenagers are a part of a social network, 80% of all 18-20 year olds are on Social networks.
SK - the reality of all human interaction is networking. The real question is what is the role of networking for the enterprise. Today we are potentially at a new point of inflection as far as the relationship between transaction cost and implementation cost. How this will play itself will play out will be very interesting.
MC [Moderator] – what is the relationship between trust and authenticity? This will be an important issue for us to talk about.
DM - I wish to share a bit of my Tsunami experience. When it hit, we started to take up SMS messages and posting them onto our blog. This was really helpful as all telephone lines were down, but not the wireless. We were able to broker international assistance. The blog was not enough and we had to migrate to a WIKI. During the Tsunami Skype did not work. During Katrina, Skype worked and we were able to use it; we essentially manned the ‘skypephonelines’ for a month during the fiasco..
JLC - we now see that internet time has surpassed TV time. This is really incredible.
BG –Pointed out that the issue of secod life and linear life are irrelevant. To prove his point, he asked how many had checked their phones or blackberrys while listening….this is a manifestation of the combination of virtual and linear.

Comment from Bloomberg.com. – this new disaggregation is coming at a cost. How can newsgathering continue to be free? At some point someone must pay as we need to have the means to live.

BG noted that Bloomberg understands the difference between content and
distribution.

AL said that she does not want to change society. Machine connectivity is only going to increase. How will we be able to domesticate the machine?

Comment – my son told me that I need to think like a computer….

Question – is it easier to make a social network in a certain continent? What will our kids do with this?

Lets come back to the questions of trust, confidence and social networks…..
BG – the internet is continuing to grow exponentially and will most likely continue to do so. We have to think about this and how it will impact all of us. He told us about the ‘hole in the wall’ project that has taken place around the world. This was a project where a screen was built into a wall and the kids learned thru it. They learned English etc….the point was that this was a deep domestication of mature technology.
AL – we do advise our customers to create social networks. She also noted that the closer the network is to the individual’s interest, the more effective and strong the network will be.
SK bill of right – own your own information. You should be able to control with whom you share it with. You should be able to dictate with whom the information is shared externally.
BG pointed out that the trust is an important issue. You can get a good idea about the ‘trustworthyness’ of an individual is easy to check out by the references on the web….ie facebook friends, google etc.

Great session.

How increasing women's integration is changing the competitiveness picture

The most interesting thing for me from this session was the statement that when will finally have to make the case for non-diversity rather than diversity? When will we see a film about the need for men at all?’ a bit provocative, but the constant issue of rationalizing the case FOR diversity is tiring. IT seems soooo obvious that i canot imagine that anyone does not see this.

Liswood continued with making an observation that there is no such thing as a glass ceiling, it is just a thick layer of men. The sooner we recognize this and then strategize how to get thru this layer, the sooner the layer will thin out.

She continued with a description of the Ark and what is known as cognitive diversity.

She challenged the notion that only having women in a company makes it better. She suggested that the real underlying notion is that those firms which have more women have better processes as a whole and are fundamentally better run, so therefore there is more diversity anyway. I find this one of the most compelling statements so far. If we think about running a company well, then the other bits that SHOULD be, will be.

I wonder why Arup, which has an average of 30% female staff, does not have 30% senior leaders as well.

the main plenary room was set with 65 tables. i slid over to a table on the left side which had a few participants already siting and asked if i could join. no objections, no invitations. introduced myself to the other three. I was siting next to the editor-in-chief of a fashion magazsine who writes about beauty and hair. She was from Paris. On the other side a young executive from ABN AMRO from Brazil sat down. We had a really interesting discussion about the role of HR and sustainability, which is one of the things that she was responsible for. We also talked about how differnt companies deal with 'trailing spouses' issues. And, how cultures clash or resonate. good food as well.

Princess Astrid of Belgium spoke about her experiences as the head of the Red Cross of Belgium.

‘What should women expect from political leadership restore trust in our government systems?’

Democratic fatigue seems to be setting into those countries that have had it for a bit of time. This is balanced by an increasing expectation of the potential of represenational government in those societies that have NOT it. This is really interesting! if we take a look at the US or other so called democracies, the fundamental question is 'are they representative?' is i possible or them to conintue as they are? will we not have to move to another system as the global resource crisis hits us hard?

The panel indicated that we are in a period in which we must reshape our governments. This is a deep challenge since most believe that national governments cannot deal with the challenges of climate change and the new world order. This begs the question.....what will be next?

Comment from floor: We need to look at not just the institutions, but also the family and the way in which we are playing out a role. To what extent are we prepared to trust others? To what extent would be able to trust. To what extent are WE trustworthy?

Comment from floor: I am a politician. I need to balance decisions all the time and often I cannot realize some of the things that I promised. Why are we not able to admit and explain this in public? Why do we so often hide?

Comment from the floor: For the first time since WWII young people in Europe and the US do not believe that their future will not be better than their parents. This is fundamental when we talk about building trust and considering a future that will incorporate trust.

‘Why Women Mean Business’
Opened by one fo the two authors of the book with the title of the session. Why do half the market; 80% of all consumer products purchases decisions; a fundamental economic clout; over half the talent in universities; 60% of graduates in Europe are female.

Why do we see so few women in leadership positions?
Companies are much better at attracting females, but cannot hold onto them. Every gender initiative that they know is about teaching them how to behave more like men, rather than to create new ways of working. this is a really interesting issue. how can the structures of business change to be more gender neutral? is this perhaps an issue which can be best obdserved by goig to Finland or Copenhagen where i believe that gender neutrality is more the way.

Philippe Lagayette, [JP MORGAN] commented on the difference between views in the public sector and the private sector to parity for women. In the public sector, there are more general programs, the private can have very specific program. he also noted that his board had strong gender representation [a quick run to the internet showed that they have 2 of 30 which does not seem very strong to me]. he talked alot abot how great their programs are, but not about the failings.

Jean-Michel Donner, CEO, Lenovo, spoke about KPIs at both his former firm [IBM] and at Lenovo. he was almost impossible to hear, so i can't really say much more about what he had to say. he indicated that the majority of their programs were focused on the Chinese side, not the rest of the world.

the facilitator suggested that one way to enhance gender parity would be to have bonuses dependent upon gender/diversity improvements. this would not mean much for our company as our bonuses are not based on individual performance.

this whole thing is soooo Franco focused.

The conference opened with a lovely musical interlude by Vera Tsu, a violinist from the Beijing National Symphony. What a different way to begin. The room was full of tables with six or seven chairs per table placed on one side so that the stage could be seen. After the interlude, the Chair of the Women’s Forum, Aude Zieseniss de Thuin, officially opened the event. She noted that this year there are over 1200 participants from over 70 countries with 15% men. Her goal is 30% male, but it is fine as it is. She noted that this year they have moved to a new business model that now allows for long-term partnerships and thus the founding of six specific projects aimed at women. These ranged from a global award for business entrepreneurship to schoolgirl educational programs. Her focus was on the role of TRUST in all of our social systems that are the basis of social institutions.

Long Jiang Wen, General Director of the All-China Women’s Federation, was inited to speak. She had a nice slide show in which everyone was smling about the Chinese voyage over the past fifty years which included some very trying times for women in China. The most fascinating thing that she spoke about was that the migration of male workers to the cities for construction has left women in the primary role in much of the countryside. This is an incredibly interesting issue when we look ahead. AND it brings up the response to my question of another one of the Chinese delegation about the one-child policy and its impact on the nation’s demographic profile. She responded that the policy as an important part of the nation getting into its position and said with total confidence that the one-child policy will be changed in 2010. I am not sure exactly who she was, but the response was striking.

The first person to take the theme was Anne Lauvergeon, Chairman of the Executive Board of Areva. She spoke about the relationship between the shareholder and the Board of a company. She indicated that this relationship is an important one. And often difficult unless there is a high degree of transparency; both in good and bad times.

Ayo Obe, chair, Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy from Nigeria spoke on the role of trust in African nations. She pointed out that there is a critical role of the citizen to make discerning choices. And, that this power of choice is not just in the way that officials are chosen, but in the way one lead’s their lives. She gave some examples from the current situation in Nigeria.

Q Is there a difference between popularity and trust?
Laura Liswood, Senior Advisor at Goldman Sachs NYC, response started with a short rhetorical dialogue regarding the CEO of Arriva who had opened the panel…
Do I trust her because I agree with her, or do I agree with her and therefore I trust her. Does it matter? She continued, noting that surveys show that there is a fundamental decrease in trust in government and other institutions today. This is across the board. There is an increase in trust of NGOs; even an increase in trust in certain armed forces in some parts of the world. There is a slight increase in trust of business….although this is a mystery to her. Part of the challenge today is the incredible amount of information. It has become too darn hard to discern between the ‘facts’ from the chaff. It has become so complex that one ‘throws up their hands’ and says ‘I like the colour of that guy’s tie, so I will vote for him’. And this is why representational governments in the older democracies is beginning to fail

It seems like democracy has a fundamental problem. As a system of representation it expects that there is transparency, and then as the individuals who are elected do not meet aall the expectations across ALL categories, then they loose their trust totally. IT takes years to build trust and just moments to loose it. She talked about what she calls her Crumbling Cliff Theory – when all else fails, when the cliff is crumbling beneath us, then a women is often shoved forward since nothing else has seemed to have worked. This is happening more and more and women are succeeding to keep the cliffs from collapsing.

She went on to talk about the issue of trust of institutions. It seems that women trust institutions more because they feel that they need the institution to provide them with a safety net. Men have the perception that they can be more self-reliant and create their own wealth. Women do not have the same feeling, in general, and this must change.

Q is the question of trust right for this conference???
Ayo – yes. It is really more about how we project ourselves.
Someone who has confidence must also have self-doubt. There is paradox. To take risks with both feet on the ground. You need to be able to look at yourself from outside. If you think about the 1960’s, there as an imposed political system. There is a totally different world today. Now, we need to make sure that we are able to ask ourselves very hard questions with honesty…perhaps this is the yin-yang of being able to push and pull.
Liswood – it is a combination of the two views. We need to be able to trust ourselves. ‘men feel that they are fully confident to make a decision when they have 25% of the knowledge, women feel that they can make decisions when they have 75% of the information.’

The summary : a few issues have come up
Self-doubt vs self-confidence. Risk vs consensus. And, a real big issues with the concept of openness in leadership by the few and the needs for transparency of the many.

The moderator concluded by stating:

We have to learn to love and embrace complexity.

Do you have any idea where Deauville, France is? I had no idea until today. It is on the 'Northern' coast of Normandy, France just south of Le Havre. It is essentially a well known beach resort that built a convention centre a while ago to house the American Film festival in Europe. Most of the centre of town is shuttered up since the properties are really summer holiday residences. It is a bit spooky actually. That being said, it is very Normandy. Lots of half-timber and highly articulated expressive architecture.

I am staying in the Barriere Royal Hotel. It is one of those timeless edifices built around the turn of the century [this one actually in 1912...and considering what happened in the area immediately after it is amazing that it is still here]. I think James Bond could have strolled around and felt very much at home....my room is tiny, but has a corner view of the ocean. Thankfully shutters will block out the all-nightfacade lighting. It has an ginger-bread-like top two floors which sits upon a great piano nobile with fivefloors of room stacked between them. Great wooden revolving doors whisk you in and out.

I was picked up at the airport by a woman who is a 'gazelle' - which is a group of women who have been doing rally's in Morocco for the past 18 years - in a great big Renault Transit. [A bit of a beast of a 'car']. We struggled a bit at first with our mutual understanding of Franglish, but the two hour drive dissipated rapidly. Catherine now lives in a small town in south west France after too many years in Paris and this is her annual regeneration of all things global. Good on her for doing this and choosing her lifestyle. I was dropped off at the hotel, checked in and scooted off to the evening's reception.

The reception this evening was everything that I had expected. It was held at wonderful local 'residence' which is used for such events. It was very and well appointed in every way; Great decoration, nibbles and drinks. AND, no one was remotely interested in speaking to me. I was like I was a see-thru alien. Fortunatly I met the Gazelle women again and was able to stroll around the room with them until they had to head back to Paris to pick up more participants. The mayors wife chatted with me only because I had made my way back to the entrance and was standing there a bit like a stranded fish [I think she took pity on me]. Turned out that she is an interior designer and very interested in the future of cities as was her husband. She pulled him over from the pictures routine with the Chinese delegation and we chatted about his frustrations in delivering change in his town. It ended up being a fascinating conversation....and still have not yet met any of the delegates. I wonder if this is the way women are treated when they attend conferences which are mostly male dominated? Are they ignored?

I think my experience at the lift at the hotel summes up my first impression. I was waiting for the lift to arrive with two other participants. one turned to me and aggressively asked 'So, What are you doing here?' I replied, "I was invited to come and speak about the future of cities'. That seemed to be OK with her. Silence as the lift came and deposited me at my room.

end of day naught.

It is midnight here. The amber glow of the city lights mask the stars which would be shining. Lights twinkle on the second Bosporus bridge over to my left. The Hagia Sophia seems to hover on the distant horizon to the right.
The Golden horn is straight ahead. The Tokapi palace holding it to the west like a continental bookend. Caterpillars seem to crawl at various speeds across the black expanse below me. The deep channel which has bee the East-West divide for centuries. The bridge is now glowing a bright purple; strange and beautiful at the same time. The steady sound of the traffic makes its way to me here. The headlights and tailights seem to merge into one never-ending cambered line. The far bank has a series of old palaces that are neo-classical boxes that are all lit up.

This has been the capital of two of the world's greatest empires. Everything changes with time.

Fogetting your credit cards is a good test of humanity. I had everythig in my little roller excpet my credit cards. Easy to sort out, one would think... Well, no credit card, no cash. Nothing seems to work now without the chip and pin plastic rectangle. I arrived at Heathrow on my way to Istanbul to give a talk to a global assemblage of deans of engineering schools. All was well until I went to the cash machine to take out the requisite £10 for the Turkish entry visa. A rapid pocket pat-down revealed that I my little Muji case was missing. A short moment later it was confirmed that the silver container was indeed sitting next to the door at home. That was a good thing. But, how to source the £10 for the Visa?

Well, I thought, I fly a ridiculous amount of miles with British Airways and have been a very loyal customer, one of the lounge ladies [they were all female] would certainly loan me the cash for 24 hours. I asked in the lounge and the FIRST thing that the gatekeeper did was say - " you know, we get fined £2000 if a passenger arrives with improper documentation. Let me call my duty manager to see if you can fly" I just about fell off my chair. She was essentially threatening to hold me in London. This was a new definition of customer service that was beginning to leave a very bad taste. She spoke to her duty manager and ascertained that BA would not be held accountable for my lack of £10 cash so I would indeed be able to board.

I went up to the two branches of the cash exchange booths to plead my situation. After expaling, I inquired that given that I had my credit card number and my passport, would it be possible to get an advance on the card.
Both answers were the same, 'the system will not allow it'. Foiled by the inflexible fool-proof system....and it never occurred to either lady to lend me the tener. Back to the BA lounge. The gate keeper looked up with a slight bit of interest. I asked her if it would be possible for her to lend me the money. She looked up and said that she would, but did not have any money. She then called the back room to ask 'would anyone lend ten pounds to a stranded passenger?' to which I could hear the laughter and negative reply.

The gatekeeper looked at me and commented on how calm I was. I told that I believed in humanity and that it would work out. She simply stared at me. I called my friend Hamdi, who heads up our office in Istanbul. He was at his farm in the country, I explained what had happened and he said 'leave it with me, I will see what we can do'. So, not knowing what was to happen, but trusting that it would work out, I made my way to gate 26 to board the plane.

I worked on the plane, preparing my talk and chating with my seatmate. He was a nice guy who was on his way to Istanbul for the first time on business. We talked quite a bit about South Africa, where he hailed from, interenational travel and just stuff. Towards the end of the flight we got around to our arrival. I described my situatoin and without hesitation he offered to give me the £10 to get the visa. I told that that I thought that I was going to be met by someone and would most likely not need to take him up on the offer, but that I really appreciated it. It was really generous of him and I told him so...his reply was 'I would hope that if I was in your situation, someone would lend me the £10'. So true. I borrowed the £10 from him and as I was walking thru immigration, my driver came up holding a sign with my name. He too had been let thru by the police to lend me the £ten to get the visa. It was a double confirmation that a belief in the kindness of humanity is well placed.

What is important about this? Why blog it? So much of life, and our future, comes down to a belief in the positive power of people. It more of us, [ie the lounge lizards in london] would actually look at how to make things work rather that at the reasons why they should not work, then more would work.
The same goes for so much of corporate, urban and every part of life.