Sunday, January 22, 2012

Energy (and Other) Events - January 22, 2012

Energy (and Other) Events is a weekly mailing list published most Sundays covering events around the Cambridge, MA and greater Boston area that catch the editor's eye.

Hubevents http://hubevents.blogspot.com is the web version.

If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Energy (and Other) Events email gmoke@world.std.com

---------------------------------------------------------
************************************************

Reinventing Fire http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/22/1057420/-Reinventing-Fire

---------------------------------------------------------
************************************************

Brookline Climate Action Week
Activities from January 24 to January 29
http://www.climatechangeactionbrookline.org/climateweek2012.html

-----------------------------

New England Clean Energy Transmission Summit

Monday, January 23, 2012
9:00am - 4:30pm

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Connolly Center, Fourth Floor, 600 Atlantic Avenue, Boston, MA

RSVP at sthomas@energyfuturecoalition.org

Congressman Ed Markey
U.S. House of Representatives

Representative Edward J. Markey, a national leader on energy and the environment, is the Ranking Democratic Member of the House Natural Resources Committee and Senior Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. He has served on the Committee since his election to the House of Representatives in 1976. In addition to being a steward of our public lands, national parks, and oceans, Rep.Markey has fought to create new jobs in American clean energy. He also consistently served as consumer champion against rising gas prices and foreign oil.

Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
Commissioner Cheryl A. LaFleur has more than 20 years experience as a leader in the electric and natural gas industry. She retired in 2007 as executive vice president and acting CEO of National Grid USA, responsible for the delivery of electricity to 3.4 million customers in the Northeast. Her previous positions at National Grid USA and its predecessor New England Electric System included chief operating officer, president of the New England distribution companies and general counsel.

New England Clean Energy Transmission Summit on Monday, January 23rd from 9 am to 4:30 pm at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston --a series of keynote addresses and panel discussions intended to forge clean energy solutions drawing on the full range of options, from renewable energy to transmission infrastructure to demand side solutions like energy efficiency.

The event will feature Congressman Ed Markey, FERC Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur, and a video address from environmental advocate Bill McKibben. Attendance at this event is free, and breakfast, lunch, and a reception are included.

------------------------------

Day 1: Leadership in the 21st Century
Monday, January 23, 2012

10:30a–12:30p

MIT, Building E51-149, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge

Understanding what makes a person an effective Leader - "The Art of Becoming"

Speaker: Partha S. Ghosh

Web site: http://web.mit.edu/psgleadership
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Undergraduate Advising and Academic Programming
For more information, contact:
UAAP Staff
253-6771
uaap-www@mit.edu

---------------------------

Cold Fusion 101: Introduction to Excess Power in Fleischmann-Pons Experiments
Mon-Fri, Jan 23-27, 30-31,
11am-12:30pm, 4-145 Mon -Thurs,
MIT, Building 4-149, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Peter Hagelstein

Excess power production in the Fleischmann-Pons experiment; lack of confirmation in early negative experiments; theoretical problems and Huizenga's three miracles; physical chemistry of PdD; electrochemistry of PdD; loading requirements on excess power production; the nuclear ash problem and He-4 observations; approaches to theory; screening in PdD; PdD as an energetic particle detector; constraints on the alpha energy from experiment; overview of theoretical approaches; coherent energy exchange between mismatched quantum systems; coherent x-rays in the Karabut experiment and interpretation; excess power in the NiH system; Piantelli experiment; prospects for a new small scale clean nuclear energy technology.

On 1/30 and 1/31 M. Swartz will discuss results he has obtained from a variety of cold fusion experiments he has done over the years. He has observed excess power in PdD and in NiH experiments; typical energy gains in the range of 2-3 are seen, with a few experiments giving higher energy gain; he has carried out a demonstration of his experiment previously at MIT; and energy produced from cold fusion reactions has been used to drive a Stirling engine.
Contact: Peter Hagelstein, plh@mit.edu
Sponsor: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

-------------------------------

Government and Policy Panel
Monday, January 23, 2012
3:00p–4:00p
MIT, Building 68-181, 31 Ames Street, Cambridge
Gerard Ostheimer, Foreign Agriculture Service International Affairs Specialist, US Department of Agriculture
Jacqueline Ashmore, Director of Projects and Planning, Union of Concerned Scientists

Major decisions are made in Washington, D.C. that affect our research budgets, health care, and foods and drugs. As scientists we can get involved in the federal policymaking process and provide valuable scientific expertise and analysis to some of the biggest questions of our day. Find out what steps to take and what programs are available for Ph.D.s that want to participate in policy decisions.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Biology

--------------------------------

Topics in Bioengineering
Tuesday, Jan 24, 2012
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Harvard, Geological Museum, Room 102, Haller Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge

Speaker: George Church
Founding Core Faculty Member and Platform Leader for Biomaterials Evolution, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Contact information:george.ye@gmail.com

--------------------------------

Hackademia: Leveraging the Conflict Between Expertise and Innovation to Create Disruptive Technologies
Tuesday, January 24, 12:30 pm
Harvard, Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street, second floor, Cambridge
RSVP required for those attending in person at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2012/01/kolko#RSVP
This event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET and archived on our site shortly after at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/webcast

Beth Kolko, University of Washington

This talk describes two projects that tackle the same issue: how and why do nonexperts contribute to innovation? The conflict between expertise and innovation sits uneasily in academia, where the enterprise hinges on doling out official credentials. But a lack of expertise can in fact drive people to create the kind of disruptive technologies that really are game-changers. In this presentation I'll present findings from a book-in-progress based on interviews with hackers and makers tentatively titled "Why Rulebreakers Will Rule the World." That book connects the hacking and making/DIY communities at the point of disruptive technologies, demonstrating how the lack of institutional affiliation and formal credentials within each community opens up the space for creative problem-solving approaches. The presentation will also discuss the results of a two-year experiment I've been running within the university entitled "Hackademia" which is an attempt to infect academic pursuits with a hacker ethos and challenge non-experts to see themselves as potentially significant contributors to innovative technologies. Hackademia is a semi-formal learning group that introduces mostly nontechnical students to basic technical skills and presents them with an open-ended challenge. There have been six iterations of the group so far, and each quarter new students join as we use a participant-observation model to explore how nontechnical adults gain technical skills. Hackademia is driven by a desire to create functional rather than accredited engineers, to position engineering literacy as a skill that's as important to an informed citizenry as science literacy, and to help individuals see themselves as creators rather than consumers.

About Beth
Dr. Beth Kolko is an Associate Professor in the Department of Technical Communication at the University of Washington. She was previously a professor of English at the University of Wyoming and the University of Texas at Arlington with a specialty in rhetoric.

She has been active in the technology and communication areas for nearly two decades. Her work in the early 1990s focused on rhetorical theory and cultural studies with an emphasis on writing as a social act. Studying writers in informal educational settings, both offline and online, sparked her interest in the Internet (which was then text-based) as a writing environment. As the development of new Internet technologies resulted in changes to the kind content online, her research shifted from considering texts to multimedia. Her work on virtual communities at that point began to include visual representations of users in online environments and issues related to community fragmentation online. That work was tied to her long-term interests in how identity and diversity impact people’s use of technology. Her chapter “Erasing @race: Going White in the (Inter)Face” in her co-edited volume Race and Cyberspace framed the argument about diversity and technology in terms of interface design and assumptions about users. She is also the editor of Virtual Publics (Columbia UP, 2003), co-author of Writing in an Electronic World (Longman, 2001), and the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Her current research further develops the idea of diversity and technology by focusing on information and communications technologies in developing countries in order to counteract what could be called a failure of imagination in terms of how devices, software, and services are designed. The possible benefit of ICTs across domains has been documented, but much of the technology currently available does not consider the infrastructure and regulatory challenges of most usage environments, or the multi-lingual, low-literacy, and other elements of users’ context. To that end, her current research project is focused on Design for Digital Inclusion (DDI), which applies theory-based analyses of culture and technology in order to examine how technology is used in diverse settings. One goal of this project is to demonstrate how technologists, social scientists, and humanities scholars can collaborate on technology-related development and implementation projects.

-----------------------------------

Climate Policy and Outcomes from Durban
Tue Jan 24
1-03:00pm
MIT, Building E51-151, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge

Paul Natsuo Kishimoto, Arthur Gueneau

Concerned about climate change, but unsure how our policy options stack up? Come learn enough to hold your own at a cocktail party on current climate policy topics! From the basic economics to the pros and cons and political feasibility of different policy options, this course will be a tour de force of current issues in climate change economics and policy.

In particular, we'll help you decipher the outcomes from Durban in November 2011, and compare the stances of the major players as the world works towards a 2015 agreement to replace the Kyoto protocol.

Web: http://globalchange.mit.edu/news/event-item.php?id=471
Contact: Megan Lickley, E19-411, mlickley@mit.edu
Sponsor: Joint Program/Science and Policy of Global Change
Cosponsor: Center for Global Change Science

-------------------------------------

Too Big to Know
Tuesday, January 24

6:00PM
Harvard Law School
RSVP required for those attending in person: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2012/01/weinberger
Co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library and the Office of the Senior Associate Provost at Harvard University

David Weinberger, Berkman Center and Harvard Law School Library Lab

We used to know how to know. Get some experts, maybe a methodology, add some criteria and credentials, publish the results, and you get knowledge we can all rely on. But as knowledge is absorbed by our new digital medium, it's becoming clear that the fundamentals of knowledge are not properties of knowledge but of its old paper medium. Indeed, the basic strategies of knowledge that emerged in the West addressed a basic problem: skulls don't scale. But the Net does. Now networked knowledge is taking on the properties of its new medium: never being settled, including disagreement within itself, and becoming not a set of stopping points but a web of temptations. Networked knowledge, for all its strengths, has its own set of problems. But, in knowledge's new nature there is perhaps a hint about why the Net has such surprising transformative power.

About David
David Weinberger writes about the effect of technology on ideas.

He is the author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined and Everything Is Miscellaneous, and is the co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto. His book, Too Big to Know, is about the Internet's effect on how and what we know.

Dr. Weinberger is a senior researcher at the Berkman Center. He is also co-director of the Harvard Law School Library Lab, and is a Franklin Fellow at the United States Department of State. He has a doctorate in philosophy.

-----------------------------

"Fuel Your Mind" -- A Primer on Transportation Fuels, Current and Future
Wed Jan 25,
9am-04:00pm
MIT, Building 32-124, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge

William H. Green (MIT Dept. of Chem. Eng.), BP Global Fuels Technology

How is crude oil converted into gasoline and other transportation fuels? Is the gasoline available in Boston the same as what is available in Chicago? What are biofuels and what is driving the demand for these fuels of the future? Which fuel properties matter for performance?

Please join us in this short course offered by engineers from BP and Prof. Green to answer these questions, and to gain a better understanding of transportation fuels, and fuel processing technology.

Experiences so far with E85 (and CNG) illustrate some of the realities which make it very challenging to introduce alternative fuels which are not compatible with existing engines and infrastructure.

Topics to be addressed include:

1. Fuel Performance Criteria
2. Refining
3. Gasoline and Diesel
4. Biofuels, Ethanol & E85

Contact: William Green, 66-350, x3-4580, whgreen@mit.edu
Sponsor: Chemical Engineering

----------------------------
Reversing Global Warming and Desertification with Livestock?

Counter Intuitive Thinking: A Futurists Inquiry

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

12:30-1:45

Tufts, The Fletcher School, Cabot 702, 170 Packard Avenue, Medford

with Seth Itzkan President, Planet-TECH Associates

Global warming and desertification are universally understood to be exacerbated through poor land and livestock management, but can a new practice called Holistic Management use cattle to restore depleted grasslands and sequester carbon? This presentation will investigate the counter intuitive idea that livestock can improve soil health and enhance climate stability, but only when managed in a way that mimics the ungulate herd behavior that grasslands evolved with. This simple change to livestock management, it is argued by its practitioners, could be one of the most important tools we have to address global warming.

Seth Itzkan is a Tufts graduate (E'83) and President of Planet-TECH Associates, a consultancy that looks at trends and innovations. Recently, at the invitation of the Savory Institute, he spent six weeks with the Africa Center for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe. There he saw firsthand the practice of Holistic Planned Grazing, using increased numbers of livestock to reverse desertification, improving both grass cover and water cycle. This is part of a growing trend where land managers move cattle in a fashion that simulates wild herds in the presence of predation - tightly packed and mobile with no overgrazing. Seth will share photos, videos, stories and discuss the history and penetration of this practice. He will also consider its potential impact on land management policies and how we regard ecosystem services, including the role of herbivores in the matrix of climate stabilization. Seth is a member of the World Future Studies Federation (WFSF) and former Co-President of the Boston Chapter of World Future Society. He has consulted on trends and innovations for The Boston Foundation, The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, and The US Census Bureau.

Open to the public. Convened by Professor William Moomaw, Director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy and Professor of International Environmental Policy at Fletcher.

---------------------------

Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy: "What Are the Welfare Costs of Shoreline Loss? Housing Market Evidence from a Discontinuity Matching Design"
WHEN Wed., Jan. 25, 2012, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Littauer-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Lecture, Sustainability
SPEAKER(S) Matthew Ranson
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k82245&pageid=icb.page443881

---------------------------

COOPERATIVE BUSINESSES AND LOW COST COMPUTING

Wed 1/25

7:00 pm

Occuoy Boston RADIO http://www.occupyboston.org/radio/ or http://obr.fm

with Wayne Clark and Marlene Archer of Occupy Newton

Wayne Clark has been involved with cooperative businesses over many years, and will talk about what a cooperative is and is not, and how by organizing production in cooperatives we can build for a non-capitalist future.
Marlene Archer works with a non-profit that acquires old computers, including relatively recent ones being replaced by corporations and rich institutions, and recycles them to make low cost computers available to individuals and smaller non-profits. She will talk about computer recycling, and other ways of accessing computing power on a limited budget.

Occupy Boston Radio is currently available by internet only. You can reach us at http://www.occupyboston.org/radio/ or http://obr.fm, or by going to
http://occupyboston.org and choosing "Radio" from the upper right of the red menu bar at the top of the page. Once on the page, click the "play" arrow on the radio player control app to begin listening. Listener participation is possible via call-in or IRC chat - see phone number and link on the radio page.

FSU-RADIO is an educational series by Occupy Boston's Free School University. Our goal is to form an autonomous zone and share skills needed to maintain that, to entertain educate and enliven Occupiers and the general public. Our purpose is to provide support and space for skill sharing and sharing basic info regarding Occupy Boston and to encourage self-organization, teaching, and learning opportunities.

Our Wednesday program consists of TALK radio featuring educational content such as lectures, panel discussions and interviews.

Host: David Knuttunen (guest hosts from time to time)
Time: WED 7-8pm

To propose a guest for the program, email fsu@occupyboston.org, or call
David Knuttunen 617-558-5853.

NB: Marlene is a co-worker at the public access computing site, Virtually Wired, back in the day and part of the Boston Computer Society Environmental Computing Group.

-------------------------

"Horses and Thunder" - Meeting Energy Needs Through Deepwater Oil Exploration and Production

Thursday, January 26, 2012

9:00a–4:00p

MIT, Building 3-370, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Patrick Cooke and Dr. Adam Ballard (BP) and Prof. Ahmed F. Ghoniem, Mechanical Engineering

This short course will discuss these and other important energy questions, focusing on gaining better understanding of exploring and producing oil and gas in deep water basins.

Open to: MIT community and general public

Sponsor(s): CEPR/RGD Laboratory

For more information, contact:
Lorraine M. Rabb
617-253-2210
lrabb@mit.edu

------------------------------

+ Garden Lab

January 26th

6:30 PM
Brandt Gallery, South Building, Mass Art, Huntington Avenue, Boston

Come and see an evolving group exhibition at the Mass Art Brandt Gallery. The show includes a series of public workshops. One part of the exhibit will develop two garden-based pieces throughout the duration of the exhibition that visualize the future social and botanical ecologies that could emerge as a result of climate change. For more information visit the Garden Lab web site at http://sf.massart.edu/gardenlab/

----------------------------

Data Day: A free one-day conference
Friday, January 27th, 2012
8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m

Curry Student Center, Northeastern University, 346 Huntington Avenue, Boston

Register at http://dataday2012.eventbrite.com/

About Data Day
More data are available today than ever before. In addition, new tools are making it easier to explore trends, craft powerful stories, and spur change. Learn how to access information, meet colleagues from across sectors, and get inspired to apply data to your work, all for free at Data Day 2012!

The goal of Data Day is to help organizations and municipalities expand their capacity to use technology and data in innovative ways to advance their community and organizational goals. This biennial conference is co-sponsored by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, the Boston Indicators Project at The Boston Foundation, andNortheastern University.

----------------------------------

A new theory for designing socio-computational systems

When: Jan 27, 2012
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Where: Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin, MDG125, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge

Mihaela van der Schaar , Professor of Electrical Engineering, UCLA

This talk proposes a new generation of ideas and technologies for designing the interactions between self-interested, learning agents in socio-computational systems. When systems or networks are composed of compliant machines (wireless nodes, sensors, routers, mobile phones etc.), network utility maximization (NUM) and other well-known control and optimization methods can be used to achieve efficient designs. When the communities are composed of intelligent and self-interested agents (as in peer-to-peer networks, social networks, crowdsourcing etc.), such methods are not effective and efficiency is much more difficult to achieve because the interests of the individual agents may be in conflict with that of the system designer. This talk introduces a new theoretical framework for efficiently designing socio-computational systems using a novel class of incentives (rewards and punishments).

Speaker Biography:
Mihaela van der Schaar is Chancellor's Professor of Electrical Engineering at University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include engineering economics and game theory, dynamic multi-user networks and system designs, online learning, multimedia networking, communication, processing, and systems, and multimedia stream mining. She is an IEEE Fellow, a Distinguished Lecturer of the Communications Society for 2011-2012, the Editor in Chief of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia and a member of the Editorial Board of the IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Signal Processing. She received an NSF CAREER Award (2004), the Best Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (2005), the Okawa Foundation Award (2006), the IBM Faculty Award (2005, 2007, 2008), the Most Cited Paper Award from EURASIP: Image Communications Journal (2006), the Gamenets Conference Best Paper Award (2011) and the 2011 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Darlington Award Best Paper Award. She received three ISO awards for her contributions to the MPEG video compression and streaming international standardization activities, and holds 33 granted US patents. For more information about her research visit: http://medianetlab.ee.ucla.edu/

--------------------------------
Let’s Talk About Food Presents An Old Fashioned Teach-In on the 2012 Farm Bill
Sunday, January 29, 2012
2-6 pm with keynote panel at 3:00 p.m.
Cahners Theater, BOSTON MUSEUM OF SCIENCE, 1 Science Park, Boston

National experts on the 2012 Farm Bill Weigh In on Legislature and how it will affect farms
Panel speakers include:
Marion Nestle, PhD, Professor of Nutrition and Public Health at New York University, author of Food Politics and What to Eat
Representative Chellie Pingree (Maine), Member of the House Committee on Agriculture.
Moderator: Let’s Talk About Food Founder Louisa Kasdon.

What do we New Englanders need to know about the Farm Bill? Plenty. Spend the afternoon at the Museum of Science and learn why the Farm Bill should really be called the Food Bill. Most of us know that the Farm Bill is coming up for re-authorization in 2012, but we truly don’t understand why and how much (and is some cases, how little) it matters to each of us. Join an expert group of panelists to help break down what the Farm Bill means to the food and farming industry. The event will take place throughout the Museum of Science and will include keynotes, a working session, panel discussions, as well as a meet-up room for the community to learn what local organizations are doing.

FREE but please register at: http://www.mos.org/events_activities/events&d=5346

-----------------------

Envision Boston's Urban Agriculture

Monday, January 30, 2012
6-8:30 p.m.
Suffolk University, Downtown Boston, 73 Tremont Street, 9th Floor*
* Maximum capacity: 150 persons. Must bring some form of I.D. (Drivers license, credit card) to clear building security; OR, send your full name by January 27 to: john.read.BRA@cityofboston.gov

Brainstorm the future of agriculture in Boston! Learn about Urban Agriculture, taste food samples, and find out how zoning can support farming! Featuring Keynote Speaker Will Allen, Founder and CEO of Growing Power Inc., former pro athlete, and 2008 McArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” recipient for his work on urban farming and sustainable food production. Check out the Urban Agriculture Kickoff & Visioning Flyer here
(http://www.greendorchester.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/UrbanAgriculture-Kickoff-Visioning-Mtg-Flyer-for-1.30.2012.pdf)

Mayor Thomas M. Menino, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), and the Mayor’s Office of Food Initiatives are launching a new project to update the Boston Zoning Code to support Urban Agriculture (UA) city wide. UA is small scale farming that makes healthy, fresh food more accessible and empowers Bostonians by creating economic opportunity. Examples of urban farming include rooftop greenhouse agriculture, aquaponics (fish farming), community farms, farm stands, composting, and other fresh food-producing endeavors.

---------------------

Crowdsortium Boston II
January 30, 2012
6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
The Microsoft New England Research & Development Center (NERD), 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
RSVP at http://crowdsortiummeetup2-esearch.eventbrite.com/?srnk=18

Last year, uTest and Crowdly (formerly Appswell) kicked off the first Crowdsortium Boston meetup. Harvard professor Karim Lakhani and CEOs of the top crowdsourcing companies came together to introduce the current state and coming evolution of the crowdsourcing model.

Due to its great success, this year we’re exploding into 2012 with another event! Thanks to Crowdly, uTest, and our sponsor Article One Parners, Crowdsortium Boston II will be on Monday, January 30 from 6:30-8:30pm again at the Microsoft NERD, Cambridge!

After a brief introduction from Professor at Northeastern Jeff Howe, who coined the term crowdsourcing, a panel of chief community executives from leading crowdsourcing companies will discuss Community Management: Evolving From Mobs To Crowds To Communities and dive deeper into the keys to successfully employing a crowdsourcing model.

Anyone can build a loosely affiliated, unstructured crowd – a mob. The secret to community management is to advance beyond the ‘mob’ to create an engaged, interactive community of diverse and skilled professionals. Panel topics include:
Challenges and opportunities of managing a massive global workforce
Scaling a crowdsourcing business sharply, quickly and profitably
How to get what you want, while giving them what they want
Recruitment and engagement; reputation and compensation systems.

After the panel, we’ll wrap up the meetup with the opportunity to do some networking along with complimentary pizza and beer!

Moderator:
Jeff Howe, Father of Crowdsourcing and Professor at Northeastern University

Confirmed Panelists:
Matt Johnston, CMO at uTest
Gabe Miano, VP of Product at OnForce

About The Crowdsortium
With more than 80 crowdsourcing companies and 200 venture capitalists, researchers and professionals, the Crowdsortium is a group of industry practitioners that have self-organized to advance crowdsourcing models through best practices, education, data collection and public dialog. The Crowdsortium aims to provide each of its constituents with the knowledge to get the most out of participating in crowdsourcing. Find out more about how to become a member at http://www.crowdsortium.org/membership/.

-----------------------------

Nerd Night
Monday January 30, 2012
8pm at Middlesex Lounge, 315 Mass Ave, Cambridge
$5
Featuring Nerd-appropriate tunes by Claude Money

Talk 1. “Frontier Nerd: Going it Alone in Western Montana”
by Mattie Booth

Talk 2. “CA$H FOR YOUR WARHOL: The Evolution of a Prank”
by Geoff Hargadon

For more information about the speakers and the talks

http://boston.nerdnite.com/2012/01/22/nerdnitejan30/


***********
-------------

Upcoming

-------------
***********

Service Smorgasbord: Eats and Opportunities
Tuesday, January 31
noon – 1:30pm
MIT, Building W20-491
RSVP to http://bit.ly/ti9Bhx

------------------------------

Design to Scale – Developing Technologies for Global Impact
Thursday, February 2
3:30 – 5:00pm
MIT, Building 56-114
RSVP to http://bit.ly/vth7Id

------------------------------

Implementing Bold State Energy-Related Environmental Regulations, Policies, & Programs in Massachusetts and Connecticut;
and The Future of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)

Friday, February 17, 2012
9 am to 12:30 pm
Foley Hoag LLP, 155 Seaport Boulevard, 13th Floor, Boston, MA 02210

***Free and open to the public with no advanced registration***

Join us as we kick off the Roundtable's 17th year with a blockbuster Roundtable focusing on bold state and regional energy-related environmental regulations, policies, and programs.

Our first panel features recent important state-level developments in Massachusetts and Connecticut.Massachusetts Department of Environmental ProtectionCommissioner Ken Kimmel will describe the various new activities that DEP and the state are undertaking to insure the successful implementation of Massachusetts' landmark legislation, including the Global Warming Solutions Act and the Green Communities Act.

Connecticut's recently-appointed Deputy Commissioner of Energy Jonathan Schrag will then discuss the plethora of activities Connecticut is undertaking (following the recent consolidation of its energy and environmental agencies under a new Department of Energy and Environmental Protection), all of which aim to reduce energy prices, while enhancing the pursuit of energy efficiency and clean energy technologies.

Our second panel focuses on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the first carbon cap and trade system in the United States, as it completes its third year of operation and begins a three-year review process that could result in changes to RGGI's design and implementation. Yet with New Jersey's recent withdrawal from RGGI and New Hampshire's near-withdrawal, is RGGI's future secure?

The panel begins with Maine PUC Commissioner David Littell (who is also Chairman of RGGI,Inc.)
Commissioner Littell will take stock of RGGI's first phase, laying out the questions that the states will be trying to answer in their review process and describing the review process itself.

Analysis Group Senior Vice President Paul Hibbardwill then present the findings of an in-depth study undertaken by Analysis Group, with funding support from several foundations, on the economic costs and benefits of RGGI's first phase - both regionally and state-by-state. Rounding out the panel and sharing their insights on RGGI's first three years, the Analysis Group study, and their hopes and fears regarding RGGI's future, will be Environment Northeast's Director for Energy/Climate Policy Derek Murrow, and NRG Energy's Senior VP for Sustainability Policy & Strategy Steve Corneli.

12/9/11 Restructuring Roundtable Meeting video at http://www.raabassociates.org/main/roundtable.asp?sel=110


*************
----------------

Opportunity

---------------
*************

*J e s t e r*
**Facebook Profile **¦**
LinkedIn
**
P a r a n o i d Z e n
jes...@paranoidzen.com*
http://www.paranoidzen.com

Hi All,

I am sending this out to a bunch of lists I'm on, so apologies for cross posting effects.

Our new forums are up and running, and they are free for all! We are aiming for this to become a place where Boston area collaborations, discussions and skill shares in audio, video, lighting, programming, hacking, and other various forms of 'making' happen.

Find them here: http://cemmi.org/index.php/forum/index

Since its early, I imagine they will go through some serious evolutions in terms of organization but we hope you will stop by and check them out. The forums even work on most mobile platforms :)

You can sign in using your Gmail, Google app, or Facebook credentials so there is no need to create a new account (we'll be adding a button to make that more obvious soon).

If you have any suggestions or changes, let us know, and if you are up for helping moderate, please reach out!

Many thanks, and I hope to see you there!

------------------------

Young World Inventors Success!

Young World Inventors (http://yinventors.wordpress.com/) finished their Kickstarter campaign (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1036325713/youngworldinventorscom) to fund insider web stories of African and American innovators in collaboration successfully.

New contributions, however, will be accepted.

*********
-----------

Resource

-----------

Massachusetts Attitudes About Climate Change – An opinion survey of Massachusetts residents conducted by MassINC and sponsored by the Barr Foundation found that 77% of respondents believe that global warming has “probably been happening” and 59% of all respondents see see it as being at least partially caused by human pollution. Only 42% of the state’s residents say global warming will have very serious consequences for Massachusetts if left unaddressed. The 18 to 29 age group is more likely to believe global warming is appearing and caused by humans compared to the 60+ age group. African-American (56%) and Latino residents (69%) are more likely than white residents (40%) to believe global warming will be a very serious problem if left unaddressed. The MassINC report, titled The 80 Percent Challenge: What Massachusetts must do to meet targets and make headway on climate change (http://www.massinc.org/Research/The-80-percent-challenge.aspx), contains many other findings.

----------------------------------------------------

The presentations from the recent Affordable Comfort National Home Performance Conference are available online at
http://2011.acinational.org/downloadable_resources

Lots of good information from what some call the best energy conference in the USA on Deep Energy Retrofits to Community Energy Challenges with details on insulation, heat flow, energy metering, ducting, hot water, and many, many other topics. If you are a practical energy wonk, this should make your eyes light up.

--------------------------------------------------

Free Monthly Energy Analysis

CarbonSalon is a free service that every month can automatically track your energy use and compare it to your past energy use (while controlling for how cold the weather is). You get a short friendly email that lets you know how you’re doing in your work to save energy.

https://www.carbonsalon.com/

---------------------------------------

Boston Food System

"The Boston Food System [listserv] provides a forum to post announcements of events, employment opportunities, internships, programs, lectures, and other activities as well as related articles or other publications of a non-commercial nature covering the area's food system - food, nutrition, farming, education, etc. - that take place or focus on or around Greater Boston (broadly delineated)."

The Boston area is one of the most active nationwide in terms of food system activities - projects, services, and events connected to food, farming, nutrition - and often connected to education, public health, environment, arts, social services and other arenas. Hundreds of organizations and enterprises cover our area, but what is going on week-to-week is not always well publicized.

Hence, the new Boston Food System listserv, as the place to let everyone know about these activities. Specifically:
Use of the BFS list will begin soon, once we get a decent base of subscribers. Clarification of what is appropriate to announce and other posting guidelines will be provided as well.

It's easy to subscribe right now at https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/bfs

----------------------

Artisan Asylum http://artisansasylum.com/

Sprout & Co: Community Driven Investigations

Greater Boston Solidarity Economy Mapping Project http://www.transformationcentral.org/solidarity/mapping/mapping.html
a project by Wellesley College students that invites participation, contact jmatthaei@wellesley.edu

------------------------

Bostonsmart.com's Guide to Boston http://www.bostonsmarts.com/BostonGuide/

********************************************
-----------------------------------------------------

Links to events at 60 colleges and universities at Hubevents http://hubevents.blogspot.com

Thanks to

Fred Hapgood's Selected Lectures on Science and Engineering in the Boston Area http://www.BostonScienceLectures.com

Boston Area Computer User Groups http://www.bugc.org/

Arts and Cultural Events List http://aacel.blogspot.com/

http://www.mitenergyclub.org/calendar/mit_events_template

http://sustainability.mit.edu/

http://www.environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/

http://green.harvard.edu/events

http://microsoftcambridge.com/Events/tabid/57/Default.aspx

http://pechakuchaboston.org/blog/

http://boston.nerdnite.com/

http://www.meetup.com/

http://www.eventbrite.com/

No comments: