A little more to the left please!

Here's a photo from my recent visit to Trieste. On the Piazza Italia, it looks like the main figure in this statue is directing the crane operator. Well, a little bit. My Trieste flickr photos.

Rate My Street

Here's my street in Vienna rated on Rate My Street.

Just found a cool new website called Rate My Street that allows you to rate your street according to several criteria. It was developed in the United Kingdom, but since it uses Google Maps as a base you can rate any street anywhere.

Other great sites that can be used to rate streets and indicate problems that I discuss in my TRB Paper: Web 2.0 Applications for Improving Public Participation in Transport Planning include:

seeclickfix
walkscore.com
cyclopath.org - Twin Cities Minnesota Area

The ultimate goal of my Bus Meister project is to develop a similar application that helps city residents use an internet application to help identify, plan and support public transport priority measures that improve the attractiveness and efficiency of public transport routes they use every day. I'm struggling to finish a proposal right now ... more later!

Vienna Linchpin Meetup - June 14, 2010

MuseumsQuartier Vienna from my flickr photos.

We held our Vienna Linchpin Meetup at the MuseumsQuartier. The highlight was meeting a group of people who wanted to discuss Seth Godin's ideas. On the way home I was amazed to note that three hours had passed, although the fact that they pretty much had to throw us out of the cafe should have been a hint.

We discussed a wide variety of subjects, listed below. We decided to meet again in September to continue our discussion with more people.

Can cleaning people be linchpins? We think that it's possible to bring art to cleaning and cleaners can be an important connection between people working in an office. Our model is not the outsourced cleaning companies, but rather the cleaners who were really part of the organization, like the janitors in our elementary schools in the old days (Mike Mulligan of steam shovel fame). Maybe not forever, but being a linchpin cleaner (to pay the bills) while you are doing some other art at night.


How do you transfer Seth's ideas to old businesses and institutions? An especially important question in cities like Vienna with long traditions.


Can you be a linchpin in a large business or do you need to work for yourself? Of course Seth discusses this, but it was on our minds. We felt that learning to get along in existing structures can provide you with the freedom to implement innovative ideas. But, it's a balancing act.


We should always ask, "Where's the fun?" at work. Work should be a playground where you can fail. Interestingly some organizations allow failure but sweep it under the carpet preferring to ignore it rather than learn from it.


What about colleagues to whom work is simply 8 hours plus a paycheck?


Finally, as a mixed German and English speaking group, we had a lot of fun translating and debating how to interpret Seth's work (starting with "What does linchpin mean?") in another language.

Bus Meister and BRT

Bus Meister will help citizens lobby city hall (this is Vienna) in support of public transport priority (from my flickr photos).

I just returned from a meeting in Udine (Italy) where I spoke about my Bus Meister idea of creating an integrated suite of web applications (game, social network and wiki best practices library) to help educate citizens on how to improve public transport operations (by introducing public transport priority measures) and to empower them to help actually implement these ideas. It's a general approach that I think could be used to solve many urban problems.

Going through my e-mail I was glad to read about Barcelona's new BRT lines which one of my UC Berkeley professors, Carlos Daganzo, is helping plan. The article in the ITS Berkeley News is a very good summary of for the importance of public transport priority and BRT. Daganzo is a brilliant scientist, it's great to see him working on improving public transport!

Web 2.0 for citizen involvement

Schedule information screens on Zurich public transport vehicles, from my flickr photos.

The Infrastructuralist just had an interesting article about IBM's Smart Cities program and some work they are doing in Viet Nam. I added a comment suggesting that a good solution for many urban problems is the use of Web 2.0 techniques to involve the public in planning and operating urban services. Read the article and my comment here.

New broom?

Here's a photo from my visit to the Melk Monastery. A broom standing in front of the garden pavilion (link to photo from my flickr photos). It got me thinking about the need to clean up all that oil in the Gulf of Mexico, Robert Reich has a good article with suggestions.

Rivets are not just for frogs!

One of my civil engineering professors at RPI used to always talk about the 'built up' columns in the New York City subway stations. The "I" beam shape is very strong and efficient, but it was impossible to make "I" beams directly before the 1908 when a man named Henry Grey invented a mill machine that could roll the shape. So steel workers needed to build their own "I" beams in the field by joining steel plates with rivets. I was reminded of my civil engineering studies when I visited Melk last week and used the pedestrian bridge to cross the tracks.

By the way, Grey worked for Bethlehem Steel, my first employer after graduating from RPI. I actually worked in one of the original "Grey" mill facilities in Bethlehem.