Light Bulb Moments podcasts available here! June 11, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Economy, Education, Media, social media.Tags: Barry Broome, GPEC, Jim Blasingame, P. J. Haarsma
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Follow up to yesterday’s post about uploading to iTunes.
From today, you can listen to our podcasts here. Check the Media Page.
I particularly like these two –an inside look at two events held here last week. It captures how versatile an interactive decision-making space like this could be.
Wiki-Wire: A podcast about the creative use of a learning space. How one professor (details about this event) used the immersive environment of the Drum to promote young adult fiction. He connected a student-created wiki and a larger online community with a science-fiction author.
Economic Summit: A podcast that takes you inside the planning and execution of an economic summit. The Greater Phoenix Economic Council (GPEC) hosted a multi-media interactive event (details about event) that reached out to four audiences –two of which were online.
Brainstorming energy and design issues May 20, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Arizona State University, Collaboration, Design, Economy, Education, Energy & Climate, Events, sustainability.Tags: PSI, Think Tank
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So we’re into the second day of the workshop on design-meets-engineering for improving built environments, and the group has moved into the brainstorming mode. I just snuck into the control room and got this picture.
What you see is the collaborative Think Tank exercise, where each participant gets to come up with ideas and solutions –this takes place anonymously as each one interacts with the group via a wireless laptop. The ideas are immediately displayed on one of the seven screens.
Today’s topics are “integrating areas of scholarship discipline with feasibility study” and “energy conservation in the context of the community.”
Obama holds up ASU as model for entire country May 13, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Arizona State University, Economy, Education, Media.add a comment
Taken at the beginning of Obama’s speech
Read the Associated Press story that was just posted.
Right through the afternoon, the Decision Theater has been covering the event using this blog, Twitter and Flickr photos. Podcasts, featuring perspectives from students and members of the social team, will be published next week.
How do you turn a live event interactive? May 12, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Collaboration, Economy, Events.1 comment so far
Today’s GPEC economic summit, hosted by the Decision Theater proved to be truly interactive, in more ways than one.
This was happening on several levels. On the expected level, before during and after the event, reporters could be seen pulling aside a speaker or an audience member to get immediate feedback, as did audience members who engaged each other.
But while all this was happening, the camera that you see here was live streaming video made available to a web audience. We used BitGravity for this. The BitgGavity feed was embedded in a dedicated web page. At one time we tracked more than 600 people on that site. This extended audience got to interact with the speakers through an embedded chat program, and via a polling tool.
The questions arising in the chat room were immediately sent to the speaker. How? In an adjacent conference room –call it the social media hub– in between watching the live web stream, someone from the GPEC communications team would forward the questions to the Drum via Blackberry. All this, as we tweeted and blogged the event.
One more thing. Photos taken during the event were immediately uploaded to Flickr -you can see them on the right of this page- and TwitPic.
Greater Phoenix economic summit in progress May 12, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Collaboration, Economy, Media, sustainability.Tags: Barry Broome, Elliott Pollack, GPEC, Michael Bidwell
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An economic summit, convened by the Greater Phoenix Economic Commission is happening this morning at the Decision Theater.
Topics include job gains, wealth creation and personal income, growth, tax policy and looking at the competitiveness of Phoenix, with questions being posed online.
The speakers are:
- Michael Bidwell, chairman GPEC
- Tom Rex, Associate Director, Center for Competitiveness and prosperity Research at the W. P. Carey School of Business
- Elliott Pollack, CEO Elliott D. Pollack and Co
- Barry Broome, president/CEO of GPEC
Watch a live feed here from a dedicated site that includes a way to ask questions and vote on issues being raised.
Green infrastructure sandbox gets crowded, fast March 19, 2009
Posted by decisionlab1 in Design, Economy, Energy & Climate, Watchlist.add a comment
It’s interesting to see how fast Green Infrastructure has moved in to be front and center in the national agenda. A Wikipedia entry for it is still considered ’start class’ –meaning it is ‘an article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and, most notably, lacks adequate reliable sources.’
Of the 787.2 billion Economic Stimulus package, $71 billion is targeted at energy and environmental initiatives; $20 billion is for green tax incentives. Which explains the surge of interest in these areas:
- The EPA has listed a ‘catalog of training opportunities‘
- IBM is getting into the infrastructure sandbox, intending to offer services to include water, traffic and power grids even health care and finance.
- NPR reported that every $1 billion the federal government commits to roads, bridges etc helps to support some 35,000 jobs.
- NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is holding a 3-day course in June to teach students how to apply GIS tools, methodologies, and analyses using a Green Infrastructure’ approach
- AT&T is partnering with SmartSync, to provide smart metering
- The Department of Energy’s web site has a section devoted to Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. It lists financial opportunities for business, industry, and universities, inventors, states and tribes…
Whether you call it green infrastructure or clean tech there is plenty of design and planning at stake. Before any solar, hydo-thermal or transportation system is put into place, cities and counties need expertise to plan and manage these projects. We’ve got plenty of it here at ASU and the Decision Theater.
New Podast on ‘Solar Economy’ March 3, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Alternative Futures, Arizona State University, Economy, Energy & Climate.Tags: Arizona, clean technology, George Basile, solar
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In keeping with the goals of Lightbulb Moments, to give you an inside look at the thinking behind decision-making, we have launched podcasts on the same theme. These short podcasts –no longer than 8 minutes– capture the energy and ideas going on here.
This one is a look at the ‘Solar Economy, with Dr. George Basile speaking of the relevance and timing of a new set of decisions for Arizona. Click here to listen to the podcast.
Find more podcasts by clicking on the MEDIA tab of this blog.
Visualizing Obama’s speech January 20, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Economy, Events, Visualization.Tags: inauguration, Obama, speech
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Of course we did watch the inauguration in the office. We did what most people did on this eventful day –pulled up some chairs, turned all screens to the live coverage, blogged, tweeted and exchanged text messages with others.
I was struck by these words in Obama’s speech, that issues a clear call to action: to
“the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things”
Specifically, to those who would have to”build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines.”
As the above illustration of the tag cloud from his speech illustrates, the emphasis on some words drives home the point about pulling up our bootstraps and moving forward.
The economy will soon ’soak up the sun’ January 7, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Arizona State University, Economy, Energy & Climate.Tags: Arizona, PV cells, solar
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You’ve heard plenty about photovoltaic breakthroughs, solar farms and greentech movement ad nauseam. OK, we hear about them a lot, being in the sustainability space.
But lately we’ve been discussing sustainability in terms of the solar economy. It’s part of a series of ideastorms we are having here at the Decision Theater.
As the economy begins to (pardon the pun) thaw, and the new energy czars /decision makers look into investing in smart grids and infrastructure, Arizona is going to be in their line of sight.
Here’s a sneak peak at our soon-be-published thinking on this, and how ASU is poised to be part of the solution.
“When you think about Arizona, you often think of the sun. But what’s interesting about the sun –what many people really don’t think about– is that it’s the sun that’s the engine underneath the economy; the thing that pays the bills is the sun. The cool thing about it in Arizona is that we’re building an economy –a solar economy –that only runs out when the sun runs out. We’re talking about building an economy that can’t be exported to other places.”
Brickyard, Tempe: the challenge of private and public space January 5, 2009
Posted by Angelo in Alternative Futures, Arizona State University, Economy.add a comment
I just came out of a workshop on ideas for a mixed use of space in the Brickyard, the area North West of Mill Avenue and 7th Street in Tempe, Arizona.
In designing a public space like this, the reality that this is a “privately owned public space” or a ’schizophrenic area” as attendees remarked.
The challenge for architects and business developers is that it must serve three publics:
- Business tenants — Around Mill Ave , including us at the Decision Theater, and DCDC
- Residents — who occupy lofts at Orchid House
- Students — from ASU’s school of Engineering, College of Design etc
We broke up into two groups, and used two tools.
The first from the UK, is called Spaceshaper. It was developed by The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) which is into architecture, urban design and public space.
The second, PlaceGame is from the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) a non-profit organization dealing with urban geography, environmental psychology and arts administration among other things.
Among the ideas we generated was creating destinations out of the spaces to draw people and encourage ‘events’ in the area. Yes, we face a chicken-and-egg situation. We need an appealing business environment to draw people and vice versa.
With attendees from the city, the university, tenants and property management, these will be turned into a report shortly.
