CEDX

Riverhead's Near Future - Phil Cardinale comes to LIMBA

The Town Supervisor of Riverhead, Phil Cardinale came to LIMBA this past friday to give us a peek into the near future and recent past of the town.  Opening his talk with a twist on George Bernard Shaw, he said, "We cannot continue to see Riverhead as it is and ask why, we must begin to see Riverhead as it could be, and ask, why not?"  An engaging, intense man, he reviewed the big projects going on in his burg, EPCAL, Downtown Revitalization, and congestion mitigation on Route 58.  Dry subjects to some, but Phil's encyclopedic knowledge of the details of each project kept us engaged.  Riverhead's population has grown from 22,000 to 33,000 in the last twelve years, and the recently enacted master plan for the town caps that growth at around 43,000 in large part through upzoning.

Let's Put on a Show

We'll be doing the wi-fi for Carson System's Future Of Online Advertising conference, at Gotham Hall, June 7th and 8th. Event wi-fi and wired networks are becoming specialties, since we had such a great time at Podcampnyc.

clipped from www.futureofonlineadvertising.com Future of Online Advertising NYC, June 7 - 8. Do great things Login Contact Past Events Home Book Seats Speakers Schedule Press & PR Travel Blog

The Start of Something Big

Yesterday, I was in the Pulver.tv studios as a member of the first studio audience for Jeff Pulver and Chris Brogan's live show, being fed by ustream.tv  A loose, freeform talk show, similar to a call-in radio show, Jeff and Chris took questions and comments from a world-wide Skype, email, cellphone, and live audience.  The questions were mostly about the power of the technology for internet tv and its future direction.  I was thrilled to be at the studio, for the beginning of a powerful new phase in communication.  I plan to play a part in its expansion and maturity.

Helping out where we can

The International Rescue Committee is holding a week-long planning and design workshop for a major regional education program that they are rolling out. The 6-year regional initiative is funded by the NoVo Foundation. Cambria Hamburg of the Child & Youth Protection and Development unit, is bringing in their Education staff from West Africa (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, and Guinea) for  the workshop. She called us last week looking for  the locations of reliable hotspots around the hotel that the conference is at, and how much access would cost.  After talking to her and looking around at the IRC's website, we decided that the right thing to do was to donate access to the conference's participants, and send them to the venues that host our spots. If you have a deserving non-profit holding a conference in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island, or New Jersey, and need to offer your participants wi-fi, drop us a line,  and we'll try to help you out.

LIMBA - Phil Nolan, Islip Town Supervisor

Phil Nolan, the recently ( November 2006 ) elected Supervisor of the Town of Islip, came to speak at LIMBA this morning, introducing himself and talking about his experiences to date.  Islip is a town of about 330,000 people, with many challenges and bumps in the road, some of which were discussed today.  Phil is a super busy fellow handling the day to day issues of government in a progressive town.  Rather than a standard stump speech, the session was conducted mostly as a Q and A session.  He brought some key people in his administration to help him address some of the questions posed today.  The most frequent ones were prompted by the largest asset that the town has, MacArthur Airport.  There are two developments regarding the airport, the resolution of the concrete apron problems at the new terminal, and the west side redevelopment project. 

Rich Air - Shu Lea Cheang

In September of 2002, I worked with Shu Lea Cheng and  Creative Time on an art project where we kind of turned the money exchange system inside out, where the physical form of currency was organically grown garlic, carried in a mobile central bank/money exchange.  People built up electronic credit for the garlic via a web app that is long gone.  The original URL for the project, www.rich-air.com has been taken over by a sinkhole of ads for Laser Hair Removal.  I've cobbled together some links that recall some of the flavor of the project, yuk, yuk.  The website seems to be preserved in some form here: http://garlic02.worldofprojects.info/ In the flickr photoset is a scan of a piece on the project by Andrea Gunn in Time Out New York.

www.flickr.com plunkman's Rich-Air photoset

Having been a system manager for Citibank's Funds Transfer Network, it was a fun experience, and I got to meet the Reverend Billy, too, which was a real trip.  I was the tech liaison for the rolling central bank, using nycwireless hotspots and in DUMBO, I setup a temporary hotspot using a DSL line installed in a stable that had been converted to an art gallery. One of the guys that worked on the project, Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn, made a short movie about the project, unbeknownst to me until I started digging around for content for this story.  You can see the summary here.  I'm using this post as a jumping-off point to think about the creative ways that wi-fi, location, presence, and networked apps can be used to interact with people.

Keyspan Environmental Initiatives at LIMBA

Today at LIMBA we had the opportunity to hear about what is going on with Keyspan Energy's Emissions and Air Quality initiatives.  Bob Teetz, Directory of Environmental Engineering and Compliance for Keyspan, gave a broad and deep presentation of where our electricity comes from, what fuels are used to generate it, and what is being done to make the on island power generation cleaner.  An overview of the external interconnects for power importation, Keyspan's own plants and third party plants was the first part of the presentation.  Keyspan doesn't use any coal to fuel their plants, only #6 fuel oil, Jet Fuel, and Natural Gas are used.  These more expensive, cleaner fuels, contribute to our higher rates here.  The imported power is generated in several ways, including nuclear and coal.  Lower priced imported power is projected to serve a larger percentage of demand as the Neptune project comes online.  Most of Keyspan's larger plants are dual-fuel, switching between Natural Gas and #6 low-sulfur oil.

Bringing Wi-Fi to Podcampnyc

UrbanHotSpots will be providing the wi-fi network for Podcampnyc on Saturday April 7th, at the New Yorker Hotel.  We are pleased as punch to be able to help the campers out, and looking forward to making lots of new friends.  Conference attendees will get online by using a prepaid code that is good for the day's conference and the following week at any UrbanHotSpots location.  To get your code, stop by the UrbanHotspots table at the conference and pick it up.