Last month, Encore.org and She Writes ran a story competition. The challenge: in 250-words-or-less, answer these questions: “Did you reinvent yourself in midlife? Have you had an “encore” career, as a writer or in some other form? What is your story of rebirth?” The inspiration: a new book by Civic Ventures founder Marc Freedman titledRead… Read more »
by Ross Nugent, BR2011 People are often viewed as the most important resource that any organization has. This is true, especially as you climb the levels of an organization. It’s becoming more commonplace for businesses to provide workforce development opportunities. It makes sense: employees remain with the company for long enough to qualify for furtherRead… Read more »
by Luke Fuller (SF2011) I visited Sacramento four months ago with my Fellowship cohort to meet with policy makers and political specialists, and to ask some uncomfortable questions about the state of the State. A $26B budget deficit, political gridlock, a frumpy economy, a mess of jurisdictional mishaps and dozens of uncoordinated populist initiatives seeminglyRead… Read more »
This post is part one of a special two-part series by SF2011 Fellow Whitney Ramos Whitney served her Fellowship in the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. by Whitney Ramos, SF2011 I’m a big fan of distributed generation (DG), specifically when it’s renewable. DG (also called localized generation) refers to generation units that are interconnected toRead… Read more »
This post is part 1 of a 3-part series by recently-graduated SF2011 Fellow Marielle Earwood, reflecting on her Fellowship year. The best thing about being a Fellow…. is that you feel like you are VIP wherever you go. During the first three weeks of my Fellowship year, we went all around the city and wereRead… Read more »
Having been playing with Google+ for a while, I’m starting to get to grips with things. I’m seeing it as a place to talk geeky stuff, where I won’t bore the large group of people I am friends with on Facebook who aren’t obsessed by the internet. Twitter remains my default place to share stuffRead… Read more »
With so much focus these days on optimizing Service Levels to match realistic budgets, here is a series of cautionary tales of regulation run amok. Let’s think about the consequences of over-regulation, not only on expenditures, but also on culture and community values. This excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book on bureaucracy is a “must read”Read… Read more »
I’m confident that somewhere in Canada, some resource strapped innovative small town has abandoned desktop software and uses a cloud based service but so far no city of any real size has even publicly said they were considering the possibility. That is, until today. Looks like Edmonton’s IT group – which is not just oneRead… Read more »
Things which caught my eye elsewhere on the web USENIX 2011 Keynote: Network Security in the Medium Term, 2061-2561 AD – Charlie’s Diary It’s nearly impossible to underestimate the political significance of information security on the internet of the future. Rather than our credentials and secrets being at risk – our credit card accounts andRead… Read more »
Day 14 This morning we started out handling a concern from a resident whose driveway was poured last week as part of the road project. The contractor was supposed to have taken off the barricades yesterday. But for some reason, they never got over there to open up the drive. So we had to callRead… Read more »