Energy
Backbone Magazine has just published a great overview of the cleantech sector in Canada that contains quotes from a number of notable people in the space including Kirk Washington (Yaletown Venture Partners), Victoria Smith (BC Hydro), Rick Whittaker (Sustainable Development Technology Canada), Raul Pacheco-Vega (UBC), Helen Goodland (Lighthouse Sustainable Building Centre) and me. Thanks to [...]
This year started off with a bang with Deloitte heralding 1Q10 as a “record quarter” in terms of deals done (180 vs the previous high of 165 in 4Q09). But only $35M of the $1.9B raised was by Canadian companies. That’s a shockingly small amount of finance for such a burgeoning sector. With that as [...]
I was asked recently what I had learned from my informal survey of the local BC cleantech sector. This was my response and I was encouraged to share it more widely. I’d love your own thoughts on the following. Dear (Friend): You asked about my view on the cleantech sector after I took some time [...]
Watch these in this order. They’re like peanut butter and jam. Perfect. Kevin Kelly tells the epic story of technology from the birth of the universe until now. Then Bill Gates asks for his one big wish for humanity’s technological development: an energy miracle to help the poorest 2 billion people on the planet thrive.
Jamie Oliver pleads with us to stop killing our kids with crappy food: www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html Blaise Aguera y Arcas will blow your mind with the next generation of augmented reality mapping tools. Makes Google Maps look like crayons and paper. www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera.html Running more effective board meetings. Not rocket science but good basic article. www.cloudave.com/link/running-more-effective-board-meetings-at-startups It turns [...]
(EDIT: I said Milton Friedman who is of course, no longer with us, may he rest in peace. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.) Thomas L. Friedman wrote an excellent post over here at the NY Times pleading with the climate folks to go on offense with a simple 50 page grade six [...]
Check out the newly launched Climate Action Plan Indicators tool from the City of Berkeley that is based on Vancouver’s own Visible Strategies‘ “See-It” application. It allows all of the stakeholders to have a dashboard that lets them input their goals, and then track their progress towards those goals. Congrats VS team and City of [...]
Cool looking little commuter concept car from Rinspeed. Cute! It’s like a pug. Imagine owning a pug dog and a Rinspeed? They’d be the perfect Yaletown accoutrements. Rinspeed UC: Want to Get More Miles Out of Your Electric Car? Take It on a Train | Technomix | Fast Company.
Have you seen this new 100mpg Hummer H3? Holy crap. It accelerates 0-60 faster than its gas counterpart and gets 4-5x the mileage. Rasertech and FEV, an established auto design and manufacturing company has built a hybrid vehicle platform that can be used in most larger SUV type vehicles up to and including their test [...]
Okay, since I’m on the techno lust track today, here is the new Tesla S coupe that has been announced. Hmmm, toss up between this and the Range Rover. Is it just me or is there a significant overlap between “green” and “good design”?
Check out the concept Range Rover that is aiming for 60mpg courtesy of this article over at Fast Company by Ariel Schwartz. Wow. This thing can get 60mpg??? I’ll believe it when I see it. But I have to say that it triggers some deep techno-lust for this geek.
Under the Radar Round 2 Calls! As many of you know, I am extremely fortunate to be assisting the Dealmaker Media team as co-chair of the upcoming Under the Radar event on April 24, 2009 in San Francisco. This is round 2 of our call for companies in the cloud computing, virtualization, software as a [...]
(This post is being cross-posted here but the original post is at http://www.undertheradar.com/blog) This April 24, 2009, I’m fortunate to be working with Dealmaker Media who will be hosting the 13th Under the Radar conference. In one day we will present a full roster of innovative startups, tech thought leaders, and REAL enterprise & big [...]
This site contains my general blogging, published articles, and information on speaking dates where I discuss how business, technology, and finance can be used to create an open, healthy, and environmentally and economically vibrant society. Please feel free to contact me at troy at troyangrignon dot com to rant, discuss, or have me speak at [...]
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. [...]
Day 2 notes from Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, CA: [my analysis and notes are in these square brackets.]A Conversation with Jeff Bezos, Amazon S3 and EC2 are storage and processing. They should not be very interesting. So why are people so excited? Because the time from concept to delivery has been collapsed. We [...]
This car rocks. I’m a big fan of this type of vehicle design where the drivetrain, rather than using one engine that transfers power to the four wheels, simply uses one power source at the core that transfers electrical power to an electric motor at EACH wheel. Thanks to Justin Thomas for his nice blog [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Space Elevator illustration by Kenn Brown and Chris Wren from Mondolithic (Vancouver’s own brilliant illustrators with a global fan base!) I recently had the pleasure of meeting Steven Jones, the leader of the UBC Snowstar team – a team of UBC students who are entering the NASA Beam Power and Tether Strength Challenges – two [...]
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 [...]
(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 [...]
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 [...]
I attended the Ready to Rocket 2006 session this morning, which was sponsored by Rocketbuilders , a Vancouver based market strategy and consulting firm that helps technology companies capitalize on market opportunities. The presentation started with an overview of the successes from 2005. Next, Geoff Hansen presented an IT Outlook for 2006. This was followed by [...]
I just spent two days at the IT Financing Forum and will likely be putting up some notes soon. But the quick summary is that it was a great two days with many wonderful conversations, a good overall mood, some fantastic learning, and I met quite a few new people from Vancouver as well as [...]
Here are some of the gems from this week’s excellent article:
My mother, she had this car. It was …
Many of you know that one of my favourite columnists is Mark Morford, who writes for the San Francisco Gate news. This is this weeks rant on Canada’s policies versus those of his own government. It’s a fantastic read and nice to see that at least one American is aware of what is going on [...]
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.
It is a known fact that VCs “herd” – they all follow trends and all invest en masse in industries and trends. I have never heard so much alternative energy buzz in my life, not even when I attended the Environmental Studies program at UVic many years ago. Look for increasing energy related deals to [...]
http://www.eetimes.com/at/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=53700939&pgno=1. Interesting article. I don’t know enough to dispute or add to the article. I do know that the Insititute for Biological Energy Alternatives (Craig Venter’s new project) is looking at sea-life to find more efficient methods for solar conversion than is currently available through standard photosynthesis and that they are hoping to find solar [...]
