September 2007 Archives

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September 29, 2007

India Shining to be shown in Business School

I received the email below from Chander Dhawan about the "India Shining" youtube video (below), which now been watched almost 4,000 times. Thank you Chander Dhawan and best of luck with your trip to India!

I enjoyed your video "India Shining" that you put up on Youtube after your visit to India. It was very realistic and captured quite succinctly the key characteristics of India today from a western MBA graduate's point of view.

In fact, I am going to use your video in a presentation that I have been asked to give to the students and alumni of Rotman School of Business, University of Toronto. I felt that your video will portray a perspective that is not biased like mine because I was born in India, graduated from the IIT system, moved to Toronto in 1968 and have lived here since then.

By the way, I am returning to India this winter, though temporarily, to help set up a collaborative Industry-Academic Partnership in Wireless and Mobile Computing - we would set up eight Centers of Excellence in collaboration with MIT, Stanford, UCLA, UBC,CMU (Carnegie Melon)and IITs. I want to ensure that the West does not sleep but helps India succeed in demonstrating that progress through free economic reforms in a democratic pluralistic society is the best hope for many countries who are still strugling to figure out a strategy for their people. In this, the world will succeed. You can find out more about me from my website .

Thanks and cheers

Chander Dhawan

Posted by Colin | Permalink | Comments ()

September 26, 2007

Zero Footprint Calculator - Next Step: Using Implicit Green Data

Like many people right now, I've been trying to merge my interest in improving the impact on the climate (reducing my CO2 emissions, etc.) with my interest in the evolution of digital culture.

I have been looking for (and willing to help build) an opt-in service for customers of big food and home products companies that helps measure our impact and gives us recommendations for how to improve.

Finally, today I found the Zero Footprint Calculator, which has the right tools (but not yet the community) for measuring and improving your lifestyle (check out the Kids version, which is even better).

Unfortunately it took me about 20 minutes to fill out the information and the graph wasn't so visually compelling to get me interested in playing further with the site. This is why I actually think the user interface of the Kids version is stronger.

However, the more important step we all need to make is to use implicit data instead of asking people to fill out more forms. In 2007, the data for our Travel, Home, and Food choices exists in private databases like those of Orbitz (travel), Con Edison / EDF (Home), and Target / Whole Foods / Tesco (food). Why not request that those databases of information get mashed up with the ecological footprint databases?

That way, we can see the impact of our actual choices, not the ones we think we make, and also see the improvement over time, both individually and socially. Imagine being able to challenge your Facebook friends to certain lifestyle goals in the same way that users do it for running with Nike Plus?

Posted by Colin | Permalink | Comments ()