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Some link love from the folks at Long Island Business News

Henry over at Long Island Business News is helping spread the word about the St. Baldrick's Day foundation participants by linking to my blog entry on St. Baldrick's.  That's what I call working the web. I'll be having my head shaved by the barbers of Rockabilly Barbers at Napper Tandy's in Northport on March the 10th, so there's still time to donate!

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I don't know why Britney did it, but I know why I'm doing it

I'm not sure why Britney Spears shaved her head, I'm doing it to raise money for and awareness of the St. Baldrick's Foundation to cure childhood cancers. I did this two years ago, when I had long hair, which I got really tired of taking care of after a particularly trying summer running our network on Fire Island. It was kind of a novelty at the time, and I thought it was a good way to get extra good out of something I was going to do anyway.  So the hair got donated to Locks of Love, and I raised about $2000.00 for the St. Baldrick's Foundation.  This year, there's just a normal amount of hair on my head, but I wanted to do it again, because recently some of my family and neighbors have been touched again by this disease, and I can help in this way, publicizing it through the web and hopefully making a good contribution towards research to defeat the spectre of childhood cancers.  Please help the cause by making a donation here.  "Who loves you baby?"

Brookhaven National Laboratory's Director comes to LIMBA

Dr. Sam Aronson, Laboratory Director, played to a full house at LIMBA this morning, where he gave us an overview of what's going on at the lab, it's mission, and what's coming down the pike.  His Powerpoint presentation is available here:LIMBA

The audience was fully engaged, peppering  the Director with mostly energy related questions, regarding alternative fuels and nanotechnology. Henry Powderly of LIBN was in attendance, and also blogged about the meeting, and he had audio, too!  The lab's efforts around generating alcohol based fuels from biomass are centered around using cellulose as a feedstock, rather than sugar.  Corn based ethanol production is a loser, because it consumes more energy in the production of the feedstock than it produces in fuel.  Moving to an alcohol based fuel economy or an electric distribution system is also a herculean task, which the good doctor and the audience also discussed.  Tom Evslin has blogged about this issue recently, and posted some good "back of the envelope" calculations.

My particular question was about the applied science mission of the lab, and what technology coming out of the lab could do the the most to revive manufacturing on Long Island.  Dr. Aronson's response was the nanostructure research being done, where targeted drug delivery by nanomaterials is the most likely candidate to help pharmaceutical manufacturers based here develop new therapies.

The Oracle of Lefsetz

I find Bob Lefsetz an amazing guy, he must walk around bowlegged from the size of his stones.  In business, or at least in my business, you try not to offend, because it may cost you customers, so you censor yourself, say the politically correct thing, even when you know that's the wrong thing to do.  This guy doesn't give a crap about not blowing bridges, he is a mad bomber!  That's why I love reading him, and because his analysis of the music ( and by extension, online media) business and market is dead on.  His post about the death of the album, is the latest in a long line of work that I have found valuable, and I send my thanks to him.

The Morgan Center's 4th Annual Fundraiser

Nancy and Rod Zuch founded The Morgan Center 5 years ago. It's hard to believe so much time has gone by so quickly and to see what the center has accomplished in its short history.   The Morgan Center is a preschool for kids undergoing chemotherapy, a great service to these kids who would otherwise lose academic ground while fighting their illnesses.  Each year, they have a terrific fundraiser called The Great Chefs.  A lovely event, a very hot ticket for a great cause. Please join me at this year's event, on March 30th at The Southward Ho country club.  Visit The Morgan Center's website for more details about the center and its mission.  You schmooze with the nicest folks, eat and drink the best food and wine around, and have a great time supporting this noble school.
The center is named for Nancy and Rod's daughter, the lovely Morgan, who is now 8, cancer-free, and evidently, a chip off the old block, a closer like her old man.  If you see Rod, ask him about Morgan's fundraising prowess, and prepare to be wowed for a half-hour, a prouder pop, you won't see.

Update to more transparency needed in the Long Island Wi-Fi proposal

Mea culpa, mea culpa.  No sooner did Glenn Fleishman link to my rant about Newsday not sufficiently covering the story, and my complaining that the scope and powers of the Wi-Fi LDC was done in the dark, I came across this article in Suffolk Life, the consistently underrated free paper in these parts.  Evidently Chris Mascaro of the Suffolk Life covered the resolution creating the LDC, but I think the folks that created this new entity need to explain exactly why this new corporation is needed, and the backpedaling by the politicians on the cost of the network and who it will be borne by.  This paragraph is most telling:

"Levy believes that the LDC will serve as the perfect barometer at this juncture in the wireless process. “Creating an LDC is the next step before the Request for Proposals,” he said. “We will be able to determine how vast our network can be.” He continued to say that the LDC will also have to determine whether the network will be free or provided at a nominal charge, but insisted that they would try their best not to increase taxes."

If public money is used to create this infrastructure, it needs to be an open, vendor-neutral, wholesale model, where competition can truly flourish, and innovative, customer-responsive small businesses can return to the playing field.  If it is a giveaway to a single entity, it becomes a boondoggle.

Why would there have to be any tax increase if the taxpayers aren't supposed to be paying for the construction and operation of this network?  Shame on us all for not following up on what Suffolk Life reported plainly six months ago.

I also found an article in LIBN from October of 2006, by Henry E. Powderly, describing the LDC as the vehicle for generating the revenues, similar to the Suffolk County Water Authority.   Here's a transcript of the Suffolk Legislature's committee meeting in October, where the co-chairs of the committee discuss the development of the LDC.  Here's a link to the law itself passed by the legislature.

Newsday should back up its editorial position with the journalistic resources it has

Newsday came out with an editorial on the 5th of February, calling for the bi-county wireless effort to be "done right"  where there is a free tier of access and a significant portion of the revenues allocated to the counties.  With this pronouncement, Newsday should follow up on its interest by informing the public about the development of the program, which has largely evolved in the dark, without any outreach by the committee to the existing wireless providers in the two counties.

The engagement of Civitium to consult for the committee has resulted in the expenditure of taxpayer dollars, and the creation of a local development corporation foreshadows the issuance of bonds to finance something, which means more taxpayer funded debt service.  The actions of the County Executive and committee run counter to their public pronouncements of "We're not paying for it", "The county executive has said, and so have I, that this is at no cost to the taxpayers".  None of the information contained on the county's website mentions the creation of this new entity and what its structure and powers will be.  It would be interesting to see just how much Civitium is getting paid to advise the committee.  The first time I heard about all this was during the public reading of the questions submitted to the committee on the 8th of February.  It became obvious that the RFP was produced from Chicago boilerplate by the poor proofreading job done.  Mentions of Illinois and contact phone numbers in the 312 area code were still present in the public version of the RFP.  For an effort that Esme Vos says is more significant than San Francisco's project, this kind of a mistake is an embarassment.  Its significance is confirmed by a partial list of some of the heavy-hitting attendees of the conference: Earthlink, Metro-fi, ARINC, IBM, Cisco, Motorola, Nortel, Cablevision, and Verizon.  Even Berge Ayvazian of the Yankee Group was there.  All of them see the project worth at least a look see, if not something to go after.  Locally, some of the integration firms were in attendance, along with one of our competitors on Fire Island, Barrier Communications.

Local Food Evangelism - Forest Pork Store

I just came from my semi-regular pilgrimage to the local German butcher shop, Forest Pork Store.  This is one of those businesses that has a rabid cult following, drawing customers from all over Long Island, especially on a Saturday, one of those "Take-a-number" days.  The staff is friendly, German-English bilingual, most of them, and the meats are fantastic.  Fabulous beef cuts, real bacon, not that supermarket stuff, and they make their own wursts and other sausages.  Some German toiletries and periodicals are also available.  They also have their original ( I think ) location in Ridgewood, Queens.  Here's a link to the history of German Butcher Shops in Ridgewood with a nice photo essay.

When the kids come in, they get handed the little hotdogs, and they make this stuff there, that I've never seen anywhere else.  It may be my limited exposure to foods of the world, but you can get Leberkase here.  The best thing is when you get a warm slice handed to you that has that delicious brown crust on top.  I know I'm doing it no justice, but it's like warm bologna with a nice crispy outside.  Definitely not a place for vegetarians, or folks watching their cholesterol.

I often think how you can use the internet to help small, local, boutique businesses like these grow and thrive.  There are two other local gems, a bakery, and an organic poultry farm that I've spoken to.  Each of the owners wants to stay the size that they are, and not become massive operations, handling the new flow of orders from the net.  I think that most of us in the blogosphere forget to talk to folks like this, we assume that everybody wants to grow their business to the size of Starbucks.  Sometimes its best for a small business to stay small.  I still think there's a place for local content on the web that will help business like these develop a more loyal local following without necessarily drowning them in business.  Just not sure what it is yet.