HOME TO INTELLIGENT CIVL DIALOGUE CALLING FOR ACTION & KNOWN THE WORLD OVER

Providence (and Rhode Island) is becoming home to a number of events which serve three distinct purposes–

1. Coalescing positive elements (and by elements I mean people, who have created pockets of positive ecosystems here). Being positive in a place where cynicism has ruled the roost for so many years takes a lot of energy, time and commitment. Positive individuals NEED to have outlets to be around similarly positive people to gain support, recharge their psychic batteries and share their ideas and thoughts on improving our local community, and the world as a whole;
2. Having events which engage and welcome our student community is extremely important as we look for more of them to stay here upon graduation; and
3. TEDx Providence is now part of a growing list of exciting events which attract not only locals but which are also attracting individuals from around the world to come to Rhode Island (e.g., A Better World by Design, BIF Summit on Collaborative Innovation, MakerFaireRI, Social Venture Partners-Rhode Island SEEED Summit, our state’s eight film festivals, the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals, Bryant University’s World Trade Day, etc.) to learn, network and dream big! Why is that important? Engaging with the world means just that, but first starts with welcoming individuals here. Not to sell them on our locale, but rather to show them them the talent that resides here and how we can help them achieve great success with our talent pool (and vice versa); that is the very essence of what engagement means.

Kipp Bradford

ACKNOWLEDGING, HIGHLIGHTING AND LEVERAGING OUR WORLD CLASS TALENT IS ESSENTIAL

If you look at who presented at the inaugural TEDx Providence event…..I mean look at them–their life experiences, professional achievements and the impact they have had on the community….I can assure you of this–any community in the WORLD would love to have these individuals residing and working there. They represent the tip of the iceberg, but what sort of talent resides here! Professors who are great mentors; entrepreneurs who have contributed beyond the launch of their own ventures and work far beyond our borders; new arrivals to the state; new ideas being implemented that other communities around the world can learn from; and artists who exemplify innovation!

So, continue to watch out for such activities right here in your own backyard and get engaged!

TedxProvidence co-founders, Tino Chow (left) and Peter Haas (right).

Tedx is coming to Providence on April 15. I recently met with one of its co-founders, Peter Haas, to discuss the upcoming event.

What is TEDX?

TEDx is an independently organized TED style event operated under a license from TED.  According to TED:

“TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading.” The program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.  At TEDx events, a screening of TEDTalks videos — or a combination of live presenters and TEDTalks videos — sparks deep conversation and connections. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis.”

What impact will having TEDXProvidence have? What do you hope to achieve by bringing it here?

The first TEDXProvidence event is scheduled for April 15, 2012 and has been sold-out for weeks. Providence already has a few fantastic ideas conferences, such as: Business Innovation Factory’s Summit on Collaboration (now in its 8th season; aka, BIF-8), the Brown and RISD student-led conference on socially conscious design, A Better World by Design (celebrating it’s 5th year in 2012), and the recently sold-out SEEED, a national summit on building and strengthening social enterprise ecosystems and communities; and TEDXProvidence will allow us to explore in depth the great work that is going on, specifically, in this city. TEDxProvidence aims to highlight the fantastic and inspirational stories coming out of Providence. We want to be the local ideas festival for the city, and builds on our city’s reputation as a global leader for being able to coalesce student and professional populations in order to both celebrate and create real change.

Like all of the other conferences previously mentioned, TEDXProvidence plans on serving as a platform for bringing students, academics and professionals from the private and public sectors together.

Please check out our web site, www.tedxprovidence.com. And follow us on Twitter at @TEDxProvidence or through our Twitter hashtag to follow the stream of dialogue coming out of the upcoming conference at #tedxpvd.

Who are the other players involved in TEDXProvidence?

The organizers are myself, Tino Chow, Caroline Mailloux, and Catherine Laine. We have a number of volunteers. We’ve gotten a lot of the support from our community from local food trucks (e.g., Fancheezical, Rocket Fine Streetfood and Mijos Tacos); Twobolt our printing sponsor; Providence Monthly our advertising sponsor; and VideoZ Corporate Film & Video Productions is doing our filming.

How did you get involved in the TED Movement?

I am a TED Senior Fellow, so I have been going to TED for several years on that fellowship. TED fellows have specific projects they are doing to make the world a better place. For example, my senior fellowship project has been training masons how to build earthquake resistant construction in Haiti. To date we’ve trained over 4000 masons.

Here’s more:

“Get Made Monthly!” Drinks and demos meet-up for Rhode Island Makers who design and build for fun or profit.

Monday, April 2nd
7pm-10pm
Lucie Way, Providence RI
Free!

Featured demo from local open hardware manufacturer, kippkitts, LLC “Making Disco Lights for the Superman building!” using Arduino & xBee, plus Q&A from 7:30pm-8:00pm

That’s why, tonight, March 12^th, at 6:30 PM, I will be hosting a discussion on Online Safety at Nathan Bishop Middle School in Providence.  At this event, you will hear directly from Facebook employees about the tools and resources available to stop cyberbullying.  Full details for this event are as follows:

Discussion on Online Safety
Nathan Bishop Middle School, Auditorium
101 Sessions Street
Providence, RI
Monday, March 12, 2012 at 6:30 PM

If you have any questions or would like additional information, please contact my office at 729-5600.  I look forward to seeing you tonight.

–David

But even I have my limits.

To be sure, I’ll let you know when I get to the part that’s got me cheesed. All the other stuff that precedes it is de rigueur, par for the course. To wit…

Prelude: Johnny Is a Bad Boy

Last Tuesday, I spent a full day on a relatively simple task – renewing my extra-expired registration. If I were a good boy, it all could have been much easier. But I’m very naughty, indeed, as you shall see.

I let the notice that I needed to renew sit on my desk for many weeks. I’d look at it every time I went through the bills, but I never felt like it was the priority. (As I said, naughty.)

When I finally did jump online, I found out that I owed state taxes from 2008. I knew that I hadn’t paid, and, like the registration, it was “on the list”. What I didn’t know is that I hadn’t even filed! (Very naughty, indeed.) Someday, I’ll write a confessional about my 2008 taxes, but for now, suffice it to say that if you’re a 1099er, 1) don’t have a very good year followed by a very bad year and 2) pay your quarterlies!

Well, I got that sorted out with the state and went to register online and, guess what… I owed taxes! This time it was the excise to Pawtucket, where I hadn’t lived for some time. So, I got that paid off and went to register and, guess what… The 90 day grace period had expired. (Have I mentioned that I’m a bit naughty?)

There was nothing for it; I had to go to the actual DMV.

Reset – Naughty Johnny is To Blame

I think it’s perfectly reasonable for the state to use these mechanisms to enforce payment of taxes. I owed, and I knew that I owed. That I found out about these issues online rather than after an hours-long wait at the DMV is, frankly, a benefit to me.

So good on the state for having this in place, and good on the state and the municipalities for coordinating.

My Day at the DMV

Last Tuesday, I underwent the pilgrimage. It was the next-to-last day of the month, so the parking lot was full, the place was crowded and the waits were long. Really long. Three-and-a-half hours long.

That’s really a long wait for a DMV counter, but it is what it is. If I had paid my taxes, I wouldn’t have been in this mess. So I waited, getting a little work done on the laptop, so it wasn’t a total waste.

My number came up, and I thought I’d be done in a few minutes. WRONG!

‘Cuz, guess what… I owed taxes in Pawtucket! Only, I didn’t owe taxes in Pawtucket. I had paid those taxes some six weeks earlier. SIX WEEKS! Surely that’s enough time for the notice to find its way from Pawtucket to the DMV.

Or not. According to my research, forever and a day is not enough time for the coordinated systems to update. They NEVER update.

It’s a one-way street. The city of Pawtucket can put a hold on your registration, but they can’t take it off again. Instead – and it’s like this is some horrible trick they’re playing on you – you’d never know about this until you waited at the DMV.

The DMV clerk suggested that I call Pawtucket to fax the paperwork. She had all the phone numbers on a card. Apparently, this is so common that everybody knows the work-around.

I was hungry and opted to go home, grab a bite, confirm my payment and head up to The Bucket. I said to the tax collections clerk there, “DMV says I have a tax hold…” and she cut me off saying, “…buy you already paid.” She was already reaching for the forms.

“We’re not connected to their systems,” she said. But that’s factually incorrect. They’re only partly connected to the DMVs systems – connected in the way that serves them, but not in the way that serves the rest of us.

This is where I draw the line. If you’re going to play in this space, you have to complete the loop – your system has to be a complete thought.

The DMV should insist – INSIST – that any structure that can curtail one of their processes must – MUST – include the removal of that curtailment. (And, no, waiting until you get a DMV clerk to tell you to telephone the curtailer to fax the curtailment removal paperwork does not count.)

A Fully-Assed DMV System

Never serve rancid meat to the health inspector; never present a half-assed computer system to a computer jockey. For computer systems to deliver the efficiency benefits they promise, they must be fully-assed.

Since it’s clear that nobody involved has ever thought this through, here’s the way the DMV should be set up.

All the paper goes away, as does the waiting area. If there’s a line, it should be a line to get on a computer terminal, of which there are many. This approach requires far fewer clerks, so those people can be repurposed into coaching people who aren’t that great with computers fill out the forms ON THE COMPUTER.

Here’s why. When you fill out the paper form, the DMV clerk just re-enters all that information into a database. The database that ALREADY EXISTS is so thorough that the clerk knew the gross vehicle weight of my van…but she had to push the paper form back to me so I could write it in. (Do you have any idea how insane that is?)

The sad fact is that I have an account in the DMV database, but I can only access it from a remote computer and can only access it in a very limited way. Literally, I couldn’t even access my account from the DMV because there is no Wi-Fi service there!

The Saddest Part

I actually know the people who put together the DMV’s web services. The people at RI.gov  are technically a company called RI Interactive, a specially-missioned group that can only do work for government entities. They prefer to be self-funded. That is, they don’t charge the government entity anything; they make money on those little fees we pay for using the web services.

They do spectacular work, and every service that they develop is fully-assed. But, because of their mission, they are prohibited from working on the “back end systems” like the DMV database and its interface.

I’m not saying that RI.gov should run the DMV IT program. (Okay, I _am_ saying that, but I understand why that can’t happen.) I’m saying that EVERY SINGLE GOVERNMENT IT GROUP should model its work on what RI.gov does.

It’s not rocket surgery. It’s basic usability. It’s basic work-flow development. It’s basic government services.

RI DMV: use your whole ass! Ask RI.gov; they’ll show you how.

Wednesday, January 18th, 2011, 5:30 – 8pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)
RSVP at Facebook

Tonight, Providence based StudyEgg…

With educational costs soaring and performance…ummm…not, e-learning is heating up to become what many believe will be a trillion (yes, with a T) dollar worldwide industry. Providence-based StudyEgg is gearing up to take a bite of that apple.

StudyEgg aims to replace 18th century pedagogy with personalized, interactive learning tools – think study guides on steroids.

At the January Geek Dinner, Co-Founder & CEO Josh Silverman – backed up by Co-Founders Jason Urton (CTO) and Bill DeRusha (CMO) – will give an overview of StudyEgg including its short, but interesting history to date (pivots!), and the first public look at its new product (already producing revenue!)

I’m dead-set on the fact that we should all become more familiar with the bill number system, in order that we can better track them as informed citizens. So, S.968 – A bill whose ‘short title’ is described as the “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011” or the “PROTECT IP Act of 2011” (PIPA), is indeed the companion bill to the H.R.3261 – “The Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA), but it’s obvious that the members of the House had first choice when it came to bill names.

However, there’s more to the differences than just a name. PIPA would make the streaming of illegally obtained intellectual property a felony, subject to significant jail terms. It would also destroy the so-called ‘safe harbor’ provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which currently gives websites the opportunity to avoid legal action by taking down any offending intellectual property with proper notice.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has said that PIPA and SOPA would both do “lasting damage” to the Internet, and that “The at-all-cost approaches that these bills take to protecting intellectual property sacrifices cybersecurity while restricting free speech and innovation.” In fact, Senator Wyden has promised a filibuster of PIPA on the Senate Floor, and indeed was the Senator who blocked a quorum call on a movement for cloture back on 12/17/2011, thus further delaying a floor vote on the bill.

In contrast, Rhode Island’s own Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse not only sits on the Judiciary Committee that unanimously voted to recommend the bill to the full Senate for a floor vote, but is also a primary co-sponsor of the legislation as well. Now I’ve got to ask myself why a senator who prides himself on his progressive bonafides would support such a bill… and I think you should too.

Sen. Whitehouse has little to hide from us. After all, we do have opensecrets.org working in our favor. Unsurprisingly, the majority of lobbyists for both PIPA and SOPA are in the TV/Music/Movies industry – and just as unsurprisingly, they rank #4 collectively as an industry group on Mr. Whitehouse’s list of campaign and leadership PAC donors. Some of his top corporate donors include DISH Network (#4 overall), Sony Corp (#6), and Time Warner (Rounding out at #10).

Intellectual property theft is in fact a real problem for commerce and innovation in our country and in the world. Why make something new if you are afraid it will just be stolen without consequence? For every example of a large corporation buying up patents and ‘sitting on them’ to prevent competition in the market, there are a legion of examples of small artists, musicians, and filmmakers who actual rely on sales to keep a roof over their heads and food in their kids’ bellies. This is an important issue that must be addressed, but not through the draconian measures described above. This false black-and-white, all-or-nothing choice we’ve been provided with must be challenged, and some legislators are already ahead of the game in that regard.

There are already alternatives to bills like SOPA and PIPA. In fact, a bipartisan compromise bill has been offered by Senator Wyden and Republican Representative Darrell Issa, another vocal opponent of Internet censorship and continued Internet commerce. The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act would empower the International Trade Commission (ITC) to issue ‘cease and desist’ orders to websites found to provide access to illegally obtained intellectual property. Websites and their owners would have the chance to take that information down within a reasonable period of time before more strict measures would be enforced. Fines would be assessed on non-compliant sites, and further lawsuits would be filed in international courts against offenders outside of the jurisdiction of the United States – all without requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to snoop on American citizens, and all with a significant system of checks-and-balances, requiring warrants as provided for within the U.S. Constitution.

Now if it isn’t all about money Mr. Whitehouse, why would you support a bill that strips away our personal freedoms, has the potential to destroy the innovative American spirit harnessed by the Internet, and otherwise does nothing good but help line the pockets of your corporate campaign contributors? Why not support a bill (like OPEN) that protects intellectual property without throwing innocent people in jail based upon ISP records? I don’t personally like the idea of yet another ‘progressive champion’ falling victim to corruption and the same old equation that Money =  Power = Politics.

I’m glad we have Mr. Wyden, all the way out here in my current state of Oregon (although Rhody will always be my home), taking notice that this is NOT a bill progressives should support, let alone co-sponsor.