Troy Angrignon - Adventure Capitalist

30 Days of Sustainability 2007 is coming!

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 01:32:00 -0700

30 days of Sustainability is once again happening in Vancouver. This year it runs from April 22 - May 21, 2007. I highly recommend that people go check out the temporary site and sign up for updates. The full site will launch sometime in the next few weeks.

Web 2.0 Summit 2006 - Day 2 / "It's all about the infrastructure" by Debra Chrapaty, Corporate Vice President of Windows Live Operations Group

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 09:44:00 -0800

Day 2 notes from Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, CA:

[my analysis and notes are in these square brackets.]

"It's all about the infrastructure" by Debra Chrapaty, Corporate Vice President of Windows Live Operations

The cloud sounds romantic but it's 1.5 million pounds of batteries, 1 million pounds of steel, 300 miles of cable. Not so romantic. (Image courtesty of Niall Kennedy's Flickr photos)
Opex and Capex are THE KEYS: If your revenue goes up a hockey stick....and your CapEx and OpEx curves go up with it...you haven't succeeded

[finally!! Somebody else is talking about this!! This is super critical in SaaS. It's easy to make a company deliver apps over the web. It's hard to do it in a way that you can serve a lot of people cost effectively and make more profit as you scale.]

Scale: can you scale up to 3.5GB/minute TOMORROW?
Reach: Microsoft is running services in 235 countries around the world
Servers: This is critical

configration optimization: go for standardization / optimization
Density: watts/square foot is important; drive density up by 200% you can drop power costs 40% (!).
Storage costs: There has been an 85% drop in a Terabyte of data THIS YEAR.
Technology evolution: staying on the curve helps you be operationally efficient.

Data center critical success factors. (there are more but she wouldn't share them)

connectivity: critical
location, location, location (close to connectivity and supplies and resources and people)
materials and equipment: (if you buy a million pounds of steel and steel prices go up....you have a $5M bill)
trades and labour: we have waited months for an electrical person
power:

we now count in terms of megawatts not square footage. That is a key metric.
30-40% of your power usage is COOLING!!!! so build green!
looking at solar - it's incredibly important to us
Opening a data center in Quincy Washington that is completeley carbon neutral

Additional useful links:

Why is $10/gallon gas a great thing? And what does it have to do with evolution, adaptation, and local economic growth? Everything.

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 10 May 2006 10:10:00 -0700

I think I have found the magic number. Every fifth article from Mark Morford is so brilliant, insightful, and articulate that I need to post most, if not all, of it here for my readers. Today is the day for another.

In one fell swoop, Mark has managed to hit on a whole bunch of my favourite subjects: the environment, structure driving behaviour, adaptation, complex system effects, social policy, cultural behaviour, global policy....he has hit it all.

The archive of his writings can be found here. The current article is below:

Bring On The $6 Gallon Of Gas
It would revolutionize America. It would make us all better humans. But could you handle it?

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

No wait, not six. To hell with that. Make it 10. Ten bucks a gallon, no matter what the going rate for a barrel of light sweet crude. That would so completely, violently, brilliantly do it. Revolutionize the country. Firebomb our pungent stasis. Change everything. Don't you agree?

Here's what we could do: Give gas discounts to cab drivers (at least initially) and metro transit systems and low-income folks, those who have to drive their busted-up '78 Honda Civics to their jobs scrubbing restaurant toilets and flipping burgers and vacuuming the residual cocaine from the seat cushions of numb SUV owners. Everyone else, 10 bucks a gallon, across the board. Eleven for premium.

It would take some finessing. Maybe also give a price break to some truckers and trucking companies (so vital to the overall economy), but not so much to global delivery companies (FedEx, DSL et al.), because not doing so would force them to raise shipping rates and force you (and me) to reconsider buying everything online and hence will encourage you to shop locally once again, thus reviving a stagnant local economy.

Voilá -- gas crisis, oil crisis, warmongering agenda, pollution issues, road rage, traffic congestion, urban decay, oil profiteering -- all completely almost totally somewhat solved. Or at the very least, dramatically, gloriously shifted toward ... I don't know what. Something better. Something more humane, less greedy, more sustainable. Could it work? How outraged and indignant would you be to have to pay that much for gas? How long would that feeling last?

Take it one logical step further. Set up a national system whereby if you want to buy a vehicle that gets less than 20 mpg in the city, you pay a $1,000 Global Warming Surcharge and that money goes straight to a local organic farm, or school, or environmental think tank. And if it gets under 12 mpg, make it three grand, plus a slap to your face from a small, angry child. Got yourself a shiny new Hummer? You pay five grand extra, you can only buy gas once a month and all the truly beautiful women of the world will shun you like Charlie Sheen (oh wait, that already happens). See? Revolution is easy.

What, too far fetched? Too implausible? Not at all. Sure, 10 bucks a gallon would be extremely painful for a while. Citizens would wail. Commuters would scream and stomp and die. But then we would do what we always do. We would evolve. Adapt. Systems would quickly transform, habits would instantly shift. It would be easier to implement than the goddamn mess that is Medicare reform, far easier than Lots of Children Left Behind, more viable and livable than the toxic existence of Homeland Security and the disgusting Patriot Act.

But of course such an idea is also, right now, absolutely impossible. It will never happen -- not 10 bucks, not six, not even a buck more per gallon -- and not just because no politician anywhere on either side of the aisle has the nerve to come out and suggest that Americans might actually need to drive less and conserve and make a change in their gluttonous habits. This is, of course, absolute death for a politician. Tell Americans what to do? Dare to suggest that they're doing something wrong, or that their behaviors are dangerous and destructive and irresponsible? Are you insane? This is America! We're flawless!

No, the primary reason such reform won't happen is because, simply put, we are the most entitled nation in the world, perhaps in the entire galaxy. Americans are trained from birth to believe we deserve as much as we desire of every exploitable resource on the planet, be it water or natural gas or oil, coal or salmon or steaks, Big Macs or diapers or iPods or bizarre varieties of blue ketchup. It is, in a word, perilous. It is also, in another, slightly more devastating word, our downfall.

Look, I adore cars. I adore driving and I cherish open roads and smooth horsepower and a musical exhaust note and I fully believe most German automotive engineers should be sent gifts of candy and Peet's coffee and porn. I would, like most everyone else, be absolutely loathe to give much of it up.

But you know what? Big freaking deal. I could learn to live without so much. I like to think I would be able to step back and see the bigger picture, realize what is and isn't absolutely essential, what does and does not absolutely define my identity and my life, modify accordingly and laugh/shrug/sigh it off in the process. In other words, I could make it work. And so could you.

Ever been in a citywide blackout? One that lasted for more than a few hours and stretched on into the night? Ever see people suddenly shift gears and become astoundingly helpful and polite and sharing? Happens in a matter of moments. Disasters do it. Katrina did it, on a scale we haven't seen in years. Sept. 11 did it, emotionally speaking, before BushCo whored that tragedy and turned it into the most vile political poker chip in American history. Shocking change brings people together. Brings out the best in humans. Or at least, makes you rethink what's truly important in your life.

Another example: You know what would happen if guns -- all guns, everywhere -- were banned outright tomorrow? Well, right off, nothing much. Criminals would still commit crimes. Lawsuits would skyrocket. The NRA would shoot itself in the face in screaming protest. Crime rates would dance all over the map. It would be a little ugly.

But then something remarkable would happen. Over a short blip of time -- say about 10 or 20 years, as gun manufacturing ceased and the culture of gun violence died down and our favorite death object was less visible in the news and in video games and on TV and in every aspect of modern life, well, guess what? Guns would begin to disappear. From the culture, from the drug dealers, from the streets, from public consciousness. They would turn into a sad relic, like eight-track tapes, like the bubonic plague, like the Miami Sound Machine. Think 20 years is too long? BS. It is but an eyeblink, a twitch, a faint toe spasm in the great long orgasm of time.

This is the unappreciated, under-reported magic of the human animal. We are infinitely adaptable. We can accommodate far more than politicians and pundits and the morally knotted Christian right would ever have you believe.

Ten bucks a gallon. Imagine the mad scramble by carmakers to invent new ultra-gas-sipping, enviro-friendly technologies. Imagine communities coming together for ride-sharing and mass transit. Bike sales would skyrocket. Walking shoes would be the new bling item. We would mourn the loss of cool car culture even as we celebrated the birth of, say, moped culture. Telecommuting would explode. Sure, the superrich would still tool around in their bloated Escalades, oblivious to the world around them, thinkin' the world is their dumb bitch.

So what? The rest of us can simply roll our eyes and laugh, evolve and sharpen and sigh, and wonder what great change we can embark upon next.

Border wars: Plumbers union fights green building because the waterless no-flush urinals will "spread disease". Um, don't you mean they will spread "less work for plumbers?"

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 13:23:00 -0700

I'm intrigued by stories such as this one in the ABC News about the plumbers union in Philadelphia who claim that no-flush green urinals are a health threat. I wonder if the union sees them more as a health threat to the UNION DUES than to the USERS.

Does anybody have any information on negative health effects of waterless urinals??

30 Days of Sustainability: Sustainable Homes

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 06:47:00 -0800

Here are the details on one of the first Sustainability Cafés:

When: Monday, March 6, 6:30 - 8:30 pm
Where: BCIT Campus (CHBA BC, Building NW5), 3700 Willingdon Ave, Burnaby, BC

SUSTAINABLE HOMES

Description: What do you consider a “sustainable” home? What do you need to get there? Where is “there”? An innovative dialogue hosted by the Sustainable Building Centre and the Canadian Home Builders’ Association of BC.

Moderator: Helen Goodland is the Executive Director of the new Sustainable Building Centre on Granville Island and is a LEED accredited architect with over 15 years of experience in green building design, education and construction.

Please visit http://www.sustainablebuildingcentre.com for more information.

The First Annual "30 days of sustainability" has launched in Vancouver!

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 22:13:00 -0800

(If you are looking for the 2007 event information, please click HERE.)

I am very excited about our launch of the 30 Days of Sustainability. For the month of March, Vancouver will host a cornucopia of events and activities, all focused around bringing sustainability to our lives and our city.

One key component of the 30 Days of Sustainability is a dynamic, interactive website, which also launched on March 2nd, 2006. To learn more about the 30 Days, check out http://www.30daysofsustainability.com.

Special features of the website include:

a comprehensive event calendar, listing the dozens of workshops, sustainability cafes, speakers, and so much more taking place through the 30 Days;
a collection of photographs that will be taken by attendees at events all month;
A What's New section that lists all of the news updates;
an interactive 30 Questions section, where a new question will be posted each day, and the public will have the chance, along with our panel of sustainability experts, to discuss actionable things we can do to advance sustainability.

This website is our primary tool for getting the word out about all the exciting events taking place this month. Please take a minute to forward it far and wide to your sustainability / environmental / social change networks, and encourage others to do the same.

Thanks so much!

19th Annual Angel Forum (Vancouver, Canada) comes to a close

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:22:00 -0800

The 19th Annual Angel Forum came to a successful close this afternoon. Thirty-six companies in the software, manufacturing, communications, internet, and medical device sectors presented to 70+ investors over the course of a full day of sessions.

Each presenting company was given 10 minutes to pitch their company, market, team, market problem, solution, and investment needs to a group of prospective investors. Then the investors had a Q&A period with the entrepreneurs.

In addition, we had some excellent presentations:

* Bull Housser Tupper spoke on Intellectual property protection, employment issues, and term sheet negotiation;
* PriceWaterhouseCoopers spoke on Top 10 tax issues for startups
* The TSX Venture Exchange spoke on how to go public

Thanks everybody for a great day and we look forward to seeing you all back here in Fall!

I really should just syndicate Morford's column straight into my blog: Mark comments on the insanely huge progress we have made in fuel efficient vehicles this past 30 years

Troy Angrignon — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 10:44:00 -0700

Here are some of the gems from this week's excellent article:

My mother, she had this car. It was ...

Skipping photovoltaic cells and converting solar power directly into hydrogen will be another path to alternative energy

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:28:00 -0800

Here is an interesting article from Wired Magazine about a company called Hydrogen Solar that can convert solar energy to hydrogen at about 8% efficiency. They are currently undergoing trials in Guildford, England.

Build your building like a termite mound for lower capital cost, lower running costs and therefore lower rents

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 24 Oct 2004 12:11:00 -0700

Andrew Zolli (again) points out a fantastic project known as the Eastgate building in Harare, Zimbabwe that was modelled on the termite mound (see biomimicry) and that resulted in 10% lower up front capital costs, lower ongoing running costs, and 20% lower rents for its inhabitants compared with the building next door built with a normal HVAC system. (That last bit is an assumption - the article does not explicitly state the next door building's heating cooling system mechanism.)

Farming for gold: Using plant crops to remediate soil, remove contaminants, harvest gold, and keep ex-miners employed (UPDATED)

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 24 Oct 2004 11:47:00 -0700

I love stories like this one at the Christian Science Monitor about Chris Anderson, a New Zealand scientist using crops to clean up contaminated mines. (Thanks Z+Partners for the link.)

In one fell swoop, he has come up with a process to improve the environment (both by having plants around and by having the plants decontaminate the soil), make money (enough to pay for the process AND make a profit), and also keep small artisan miners in business, although now they are watching over crops instead of pouring chemicals into the old mines.

UPDATE: Closer to home, Matt brought my attention to a successful joint effort between Teck-Cominco, Western Bioresources Consulting, and Celgar Pulp Mill. Thanks Matt!

These are great examples of triple-bottom-line thinking.

Massive Change - the future of global design

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 20:32:00 -0700

This is an extremely long post on Massive Change, the multi-media exhibition that is intended to be the starting point for a global discussion on the role of design in creating our world. Here is a bit from their website that gives you a sense of the goals of the project.

20% of U.S. cars will be hybrids by 2010....and 80% by 2015. Now if we can just make them bio-diesel/hybrids, I'll get really excited.

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 01:39:00 -0700

Wired talks about the demand outstripping supply for both diesel vehicles and hybrid vehicles in the U.S. and how that will likely lead to diesel/hybrid vehicles. The problem is that diesel is still fossil-fuel based, stinky, sooty, and toxic.

VW has also publicly declared that they are reversing their stand on hybrid cars and will be releasing a hybrid very soon although they are unsure if it will be gas or diesel based.

And a Booz Allen Hamilton report claims that 20 percent of U.S. buyers may convert to hybrids by 2010...and 80 percent by 2015.

Hopefully, we will put bio-diesel into those diesel/hybrid cars (something that you can do without modifying the engines.) Sure, bio-diesel costs a few cents more but if your car is getting 85mpg (like the SMART car), who cares?

buzzword alerts: bioreactors and microbial fuel cells

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 07:16:00 -0700

I am extremely interested in this field of bio-energy and am excited by all the possibilities of using microbes to convert solar power into useable hydrogen as well as to store energy similar to traditional batteries.

Here is a great Wired Magazine article on some of the upcoming possibilities.

Dilbert's Ultimate House

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 23:00:00 -0700

If you have a love of architecture, green homes, virtual reality, and Dilbert, and you have a good half hour to waste spend, I recommend that you visit Scott Adam's new Virtual home tour at http://www.dilbert.com/duh and be prepared to be blown away. The house design was the result of thousands of Dilbert readers collaborating with Adam's to create Dilbert's Ultimate House. I think the results are stunning. I hope to build a house one day that is as well-suited to my needs as this house is to Dilbert's.

The Smart Car comes to Canada - 85mpg on the highway, 6-speed automatic, traction control, rear-engine, rear-drive. WOW. I love this thing

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 11:09:00 -0700

I saw one of these Smart cars down at the Concord Festival on the weekend and had the chance to sit in it. It was incredibly roomy up front for the two passengers. I totally fell in love with this car. There is not much room in the back. Less in fact than I had behind the back seat in my old Jeep TJ. But the car is just so damned cute. I wonder if you can mount bike racks on it at the back???

It has an inline 3 cylinder rear-engine turbo diesel that gets 85mpg (hwy) / 65mpg (city), uses a clutchless automatic 6-speed, and comes in several different models ranging from $16,500 to $22,000 in Canada. They are being sold through the Mercedes network across Canada.

I hope they sell millions of these things to Vancouverites. Wouldn't it be great if we were all driving these tiny little things around town?

Then, wouldn't it be even better if we were filling them with bio-diesel for zero-toxicity, clear, clean emissions?

Want more information? Visit www.thesmart.ca.

What happens if you put corn-based bio-diesel into your sweet-potato-based Toyota?

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 11:54:00 -0700

I thought that corn being turned into bio-diesel was cool but Toyota is experimenting with using sweet-potato-derived materials for some parts of new cars. The biomaterial is strong, light, and totally biodegradable.

Maybe when we're done with our cars, we'll be able to break them into parts and toss them into the farmer's fields...

Toronto pulls freezing cold water from the bottom of the lake to cool buildings, lower carbon emissions, save on power costs, and source drinking water

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 18 Aug 2004 07:49:00 -0700

This looks like an interesting energy project being opened in Toronto. Enwave Systems has built a three pipe system that pulls low-temperature water from the bottom of the lake Ontario, extracts the coldness from the water (the process is not mentioned), and then puts the water into the drinking supply.

I would be interested to know the net effects of this system since they obviously still have to have a large pumping station running anyway in order to pull the water in. Some of the benefits that are listed on the Enwave site are:

▪ Uses 75% less energy than conventional chillers

▪     Eliminates more than 59 megawatts from Ontario's electricity grid
▪     Removes 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air - equivalent to taking 8000 cars off the road
▪     Reduces ozone depleting refrigerants (CFC's and HCFC's) [by how much???]

It's an interesting project. I look forward to reading more on the actual implementation and real-world results.

There is a photo gallery of the construction process here.

Buzzword of the month: Renewable energy

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 13:36:00 -0700

It's Deja vu all over again. Renewable energy seems to be the topic of the day.

Some odd combination of forces are driving interest in renewable energies (many of the things that I discussed in my previous posting on bioproducts).

The web is cluttered with noise about bioproducts, solar energy, and other non-petroleum based energy sources.

Here is an article from SiliconValley.com discussing how VCs are now funding solar companies that they would not touch previously.

I like this article for several reasons:

Nanotech driving down solar costs: it talks about how solar power really needs to be a quantum leap more efficient before it will be widely useable, and how this may be achieved with nano-scale means. I would add that there may be some biological alternatives on the horizon as well if Craig Venter's Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives manages to develop anything from their research.

It also quotes Sunil Paul, founder of Brightmail commenting that go "beyond just making money" - a favourite topic of mine.

I wrote a research paper back at UVic on Alternative energy sources, and had as my instructor, Dr. Fred Knelman, a major thorn in the side of the global nuclear establishment. I learned a lot from him and from that class. The biggest thing I learned was that renewable and non-petroleum, non-coal power was only capable of creating 5% of the global power that was required (and that was ten years ago). I probably have that number wrong but the point was that the energy density of these alternatives was not very high in comparison to oil, coal, and nuclear. And that was one of the primary reasons that they had not gone anywhere. The costs were relatively exorbitant to create the same amount of power. Until the economics become reasonable, there still exists very little reason for the global energy economy to shift dramatically.

I am looking forward to getting back into reading about these technologies to see what the past ten years has brought us and what new biotechnologies and nanotechnologies may yet bring us in this field.

Timing is everything: Will Bioproducts (biomaterials, biochemicals, and biofuels) finally get their own association in British Columbia?

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 00:35:00 -0700

Everything old is new again. It's all about timing. These are only two of a few choice phrases that may describe something that is afoot here in British Columbia. Some major global, national, and provincial forces are in play that are driving the development of a new (to us) association that may be created in order to "advance and promote" BC Bioproducts to the world.

Daily, we are pummelled with news of global warming, the leaching of petroleum based chemicals into the environment, and energy dependency security problems. Simultaneously the global agricultural producers are taking a beating as their crops are either commodified driving the prices down, or their crop-seed stocks are enclosed by patent and the wide varieties of natural genetic stock supplies are cut back, leading to crop failures due to massive consolidation of seed-stock into fewer and fewer genetic strains. It seems like nothing but bad news.

But there are many, many people currently working on these issues in the international arena: energy security, climate change, and sustainable development to name some key ones. And they are making some real progress.

Nationally, here in Canada, we have some things happening that are contributing some energy to these areas: our signature on the Kyoto Agreement; a movement towards alternate energy sources; a focus on sustainable development; and a desire to find a way to let rural agrarian Canada share in the spoils of the new biotech riches.

Provincially, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Fisheries is taking the lead in attempting to form an association dedicated to the advancement and promotion of a BC Bioproducts-based industry. They are currently doing some research with the Innovation and Science Council of BC to lay the foundation for a potential new body.

All of these forces - international, national, and provincial - are conspiring to create a renaissance of sorts. I say renaissance because bioproducts have been since Mankind started burning wood for heat and light. But now we have the beginnings of genetic understanding (I say beginnings because we have a LONG way to go before we REALLY understand things.)

So, what are Bioproducts anyway? Well, there are lots of definitions but a broad one would be: any commercial or industrial product composed in whole or in significant part of biological products or renewable domestic plant, animal, marine, or forestry-based material, that generally does not contain synthetics, toxins, or environmentally damaging substances. (I used this definition by merging two other definitions that I have recently read. It is not a formal definition by any means.)

In short, you take bio source materials such as barley, corn, wheat, soybeans, wood wastes, aquaculture wastes, animal rendering wastes, or municipal wastes, and then through a series of bioprocesses convert it into either biomaterials (including cosmetics, cells, high-value molecules), biochemicals, or biofuels (such as ethanol, biodiesel, or hydrogen.)

By using industrial waste outputs as inputs into other products and services, we lower the total waste, lower our Carbon emissions, develop new bioprocesses (which we can resell), and increase our ability to build sustainable and environmentally sane communities, cities, and countries.

Examples would be converting animal rendering plant wastes or lumber mill wastes into energy; or converting corn into biodiesel, which has extremely positive benefits such as no black filthy smoke, many fewer toxins, and better mileage. Another great example would be using corn-based products to create wood-like substances that can be used to build furniture that has no detectable chemical emissions and which will readily biodegrade.

Like all emerging sectors, in order for our province to seriously develop it, a concerted effort will be required to connect policy development, markets, environmental groups, manufacturers, crop farmers, funders, and researchers.

I look forward to seeing how this initiative develops here in British Columbia. I will write more about it here as things develop.

Craig Venter's new new thing: Sequencing entire eco-systems

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 28 Jul 2004 07:16:00 -0700

I love Craig Venter for his long view, his burning curiousity, and his adventurous spirit. And probably because he pisses so many people off in the scientific community for being a dilletante. And yet, he has done more for the development of the various *omics (genomics, proteomics) than almost all others to date. This article discusses his current adventure: circumnavigating the world and capturing volumes of sea-water and then sequencing ALL of the genetic material in it at once. His expectation is that he will find 10-20 million new genes in upwards of 100,000 new species.

Richard Smalley's proposal: 5 cents from every gallon of fossil fuel = $10B towards nano-tech and grid power to serve our future power requirements

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 08:27:00 -0700

Richard Smalley recently testified to the U.S. Senate on how how nanotechnologies and distributed power grids are the future of power.

Business models, disposable household cleaners, and marketing gone awry

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 28 May 2004 14:30:00 -0700

I have been seeing a lot more of these inane new products arriving on the market. You know the ones, disposable dish washing pads (my old cloths have been working fine for YEARS), and now disposable toilet cleaning units. Clean it once and then toss it into the landfill. This was really starting to grate me but it turns out that it grated Mark Morford even more so he wrote another of his brilliantly ascerbic and dead-on diatribes against this new development.

QUOTE:

See? Life is easier already. Who knew you needed a new toilet brush to replace that tough metal one you had that lasted years? No one, that's who! What was wrong with the old, sturdy kind? Nothing, that's what! Hail marketing!

Dear sweet Jesus in sterilized heaven, why have we all been washing dishes using those positively archaic reusable scrub pads? Won't someone please invent a single-use, pretreated disposable scrubber that looks like a large feminine sanitary pad and is made of some frightening paper/plastic compound and coated in thick gobs of foaming chemicals and mysterious toxins that you use once on your lasagna pan and then throw away so you have to buy a new box of the damnable things every week?

UNQUOTE

From the persepective of an environmentalist, I understand the desire to really think about these things and to hope against hope that this past twenty years of awareness raising has had some effect.

From the persepective of a business man, I also understand what these companies are thinking. They look jealously across the aisle at the razor blade section and think,

"Man, those guys really nailed it. Sell the razor once and then the blades for life. Each customer is worth at least a kajillion dollars."

You can just picture the marketing meeting when somebody said, "Hey wait a minute! Let's make crappier cheaper handles for all of our devices and then sell them brushes and scrubber units and then we'll also make a kajillion dollars per customer and flatten out our revenue spikes!!!" Brilliant. Except that many people, myself included have learned that life is a series of trade-offs and priorities and that not all ideas that are great business ideas, should be implemented because they conflict with other priorities such as not needlessly filling the landfill with crap.

Sustainable housing development projects: One in California, one in BC

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 11 May 2004 13:58:00 -0700

Check out this cool house design from an architect in San Francisco. I love the simplicity of the design. The architect and her husband wanted to buy a place in SF but the prices were too high. So they decided to build but it was going to cost too much. So she designed a simple, eco-friendly house for themselves, and soon lots more people wanted one. So it became a pre-fab one. Great story. Don't forget to click on the first of the four pictures at the top of the story so that it takes you to the photo gallery.

And this is the story of the new Sea Bird Island development built as a partnership between the Government of Canada, through Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) and the Seabird Island First Nation. They managed to build long-house style houses that hold up to 30 people each with completely flexible space dividers for rearranging the spaces/rooms, passive ventilation systems, and geothermal, solar, and wind-power in addition to the base power supply.

Big Questions, Long Views, and the Intersection of Technology and Society (UPDATED Oct 30/05)

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 06 May 2004 00:44:00 -0700

The Universe is 14 billion years old and will either either re-collapse into itself, expand into a completely diluted state, or rip apart in its 36th billion year in a runaway expansion so violent that galaxies and planets will be torn asunder in a fraction of a second. How do we manage the polarity inherent in knowing that our influence on the universe at that scale is essentially zero balanced against the fact that here in our own very small sphere of influence, we can have an effect on things around us that only exist in this little slice of time?

The Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. 2 billion years ago, our first ancestors were microbes. It took 1.5 billion years before those microbes turned into something resembing fish, another 400m years for those fish to turn into mice-like creatures, another 90m years for those mice to evolve to apes, 9 m years for the apes to turn into proto humans and then we evolved from there. No matter what religion you are, you have to look at that in awe and wonder.

Now for the bad news. The sun in our solar system is expanding and it is expected that it will eventually absorb Mercury, Venus, and Earth, causing life here to only last for another half billion years. I am pretty sure that the last life forms left will be single-celled bacterium, cockroaches, and spammers. So the window of opportunity for life to develop here and then migrate throughout the rest of the solar system and Universe is about a billion years. Given that we didn't invent space travel until the first half billion were over, that window is now a half billion to get off the planet and out into the Universe. Given that we only have another half a billion years, shouldn't we all just get along, enjoy the sunset while it's that far away, and figure out how to get the hell off this planet? Of course, while we're here, we should do as much mountain biking, trail-running, paddling, travelling and exploring as we can.

By the time the Earth has hit 8 billion years, long after we are gone, the oceans will have vaporised and at the 12 billion year mark, Earth will have folded entirely into the sun. If the planet is going to be gone, does that mean I think that we should use up the precious natural resources pollute our biosphere while we are here? Of course not, that would be asinine and short-sighted. But then again, humans are not the best at extending their time-scales, nor at empathizing enough with future generations. Although that does seem to be changing in some small but important ways with the spread of the sustainable development movement. I may be a bit of an odd realist/pragmatist in the sustainability movement in that I'm not sure I believe in the implicit value of resources, plants, and animals on earth for their own sake. If they're all going to be gone anyway, that seems moot. But since these things took tens and hundreds of millions of years to develop, I do believe that we should learn from them (biology), design things based on them (biomimicry and nanotechnology), be efficient in our use of them so that we do not mortgage our children's future (sustainability), and learn how to build efficient systems so that we can spread out into the universe and live in harsher, resource constrained regions as we do so.

Of course, we're not good at passing along our knowledge on long time lines, and we're quite adaptable in the moment so maybe it is just the way of our species that we will consume all available resources where ever we go but that we will conserve it when we are pressed to do so. Sort of future-blind, but highly adaptable, with very little long-term memory. Which leads me to think that maybe Mr. Kurzweil's great leap forward really will be the best way for our species to spread itself.

Ray Kurzweil has calculated that by 2040, we will hit the inflection point of the technology development curve of mankind, known as the Singularity , an event horizon beyond which we can not possibly see with our tiny little massively parallel chemical-processing brains. By around 2040, $1000USD of computing power will be the equivalent of all human brain processing capacity on the earth combined (about 12 billion brains worth). He posits that in order for the technology development curve to be maintained, our inefficient genetic mutations will not be able to keep up, meaning that humans will essentially pass the "smart creature" torch to the robots and computers which will have the same brain processing capacity as us, but with MUCH faster substrate (silicon or otherwise, raher than our slow massively parallel chemical brains).

What is really great about this is that in a few more decades we may get to really explore questions around whether consciousness is something spiritual/other-worldly, or simply an emergent property of going beyond a particular threshold of neuronal capacity or simply a self-referential program that is convincing enough to appear conscious. I can't wait. Really.

Given Kurzweil's supposition about the double exponential rate of expansion of technology, that means there is a heck of a lot of stuff that will need to be brought to market in the next 35 years. Hence my interest in venture capital, angel investing, technology cycles and trends, and the tricky process of nurturing technology from idea to plan to funding to company to production, and eventually to some sort of exit. Hence I will be writing a lot on business and technology development.

Some of the most fascinating events are transpiring in the border wars between business, technology, society, and our natural environment. Bio-ethics - how will we use cloning? Nanotechnology - will it create autonomous gray-goo that will devour us and the earth? Bio-IT convergence - will we really build the Ceylons? What about the ability to project power and wage war - on a budget? According to Lord William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson in "The Sovereign Individual", that is one of the key factors that contributes to massive historical inflection points. As technology changes the power equation, power-structures and economies follow suit. Consider: Osama Bin Laden, a multi-millionaire (who was supported by the U.S.), is now the enemy of the American goverment. They have for the first time in history chosen to target an individual rather than a nation-state. Primarily because of the alleged threat of relatively massive power (bio-weaponry) for minimal cost. I will rant, question, and point to interesting discussions in this area as they develop.

Finally, I have some more mundane, smaller-view areas that I am very interested in as well. They include but are not limited to: Complex Systems, Emergence theory, Health & Wellness, Environmental issues, Renewable Energy, Ethics, Fitness and sport, Humour, Interesting People, Nanotechnology, Philanthropy, Privacy/Security, Sustainable Development, and World Affairs.

I wish I could remember the author who said, "I do not write what I know, I write so that I may know myself." That was very wise. That is also a goal of this blog. Thanks for reading.

What is an adventure capitalist?

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 04 May 2004 16:33:00 -0700

I made up the term for myself because I like adventures, following angel and venture finance trends, building businesses, social entrepreneurship, and environmentally sustainable capitalism.

But currently there is no word for capitalists who are socially and environmentally aware and who want to use capitalism as a force for good in the world. Pan-capitalism? Omni-capitalism? New-capitalism?

Then I realized about a year later that Jim Rodgers had written a book with the same title. I loved Jim's book and think he is a great example of an Adventure Capitalist. I aspire to have the kinds of adventure AND capital that Jim has!

As a side note, the origin of the term "venture capital" was "adventure capital" or the capital that was put up in order for explorers to go on adventures with the expectation that they would return with a vessel filled with riches from lands far away.

For all of these reasons, I chose to call this blog Adventure Capitalist.