Last Saturday, British Columbia held municipal elections. Here in Victoria and the other 12 surrounding municipalities that together comprise the CRD (Capital Regional District), we too voted. There’s a problem, though: the turnout is low, low, low. The City of Victoria managed to get just under 22% of eligible voters to cast a ballot; Saanich: […]
Les Leyne had an interesting article in today’s local paper, Cement industry fears carbon tax squeeze, which prompted me to write a letter to the editor in response. It seems to me that this problem offers an opportunity for some disruptive creative thinking, which could create a win-win situation for municipalities and industry. Some key […]
I can’t believe that DemoCampVictoria02 is just two “sleeps” away…! For me, time has been flying at warp speed. Keeping my attention in tatters are 1. new work projects, 2. a municipal election, 3. community volunteer adjudicating responsibilities, and 4. another article due (which admittedly is nothing, compared to the fact that some people have […]
Technology Review: 3-D Printing for the Masses From p.2 of this article: QUOTE “Ultimately, I think people will have these [3-D rapid prototyping] printers at home,” says Lipson. The idea is that people will pay a nominal amount for blueprints and then download them, in much the same way that music is shared over the […]
I bought a copy of Douglas Magazine yesterday — it’s a slim publication, but full of interesting articles relating to Victoria’s economy. Too bad it’s not online, but maybe one day? The current July/August issue includes a useful article by Dan Gunn, “Growing the tech talent pool,” which made me want to write a letter […]
Prefab-ulous: New Development in England Goes Up Green — and Fast Brief article by Andrew Blum about Oxley Woods, a development of “90 eco-friendly homes, with 55 more planned to fill its seven acres.” The key aspect? They’re all pre-fab, relatively cheap to build, can be built quickly, and have in-built green features. If Canada […]
Transmaterial 2: To Redefine Our Physical Environment – PingMag – The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” – Annotated PingMag interview with Blaine Brownell, architect and sustainable materials researcher, whose focus is on green building. “From repurposed materials that act as surrogates, to recombinant ones that fuse several materials into a hybrid, making them […]
I started reading Fred Wilson back in January when one of outside.in’s blog posts referenced Wilson’s entry, Rethinking The Local Paper. Wilson is a NYC-based venture capitalist/ investor who funds start-ups related to new media, social networking, online technologies, …that sort of thing. He’s also quite brilliant, blogs (A VC – Musings of a VC […]
Mark Lise posted a pointer on his blog today, and then spun out some thoughts: This morning I read a post from David Crow on “Community Platforms“. It got me thinking about our local community, that being Victoria and Vancouver. I have always been a supporter of community platforms and open source, but I’d like […]