nuance intelligence

Set aside for a moment the vagueness of “green,” and let’s ask a different question.  In an era where travel is being replaced by virtual conferencing, shopping by eCommerce, and partying by Second Life, what is the carbon cost of all of our time online?

I wrote a piece over at eCo Times which ran last week that looks into the carbon footprint of data centers.  Here’s an excerpt:

According to The Economist, which quotes tier one researchers McKinsey And Company and the Uptime Institute, the data centers that host and serve the world’s registered web services, accounted for 1.2% of the world’s electricity in 2005. This amount of electricity was emitting more carbon dioxide than Argentina or The Netherlands, and this was before many of the biggest web services came online.

At the end of 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report that details the impact of data centers on the environment. Like any complex report, varying conclusions can be drawn, so feel free to check it out and draw your own. Nonetheless, these analysts, who project data center growth and related carbon emissions, predict that data centers could become worse polluters than the airline transportation industry by 2020. That’s just 12 years from now. Wow.

The truth — or at least my perspective on what the truth may be — is that technology will evolve, and get more efficient faster than air travel will.  Here’s what’s happening on the evolutionary front:

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Everyone likes lists, right? RIGHT?!?

Here’s one I picked up at Google I/O, which ultimately traces back to Jaiku co-founder Jyri Englestrom:

1. What is the object? Social networks need to be about something beyond the connection of people. At Flickr, the object is a photo, at LinkedIn, it’s a job (writ large to include consulting, full-time job, sales lead, strategic connection, etc.).
2. What are the verbs? This is the occam’s razor version of what is going to happen on the site.  At eBay, the verbs are ‘buy’ and ‘sell’.
3. How can you share? Be clear on how people will share the object; early examples are permalinks for blogs and widgets in social network profile pages.
4. What is the gift in the invitation? You’ve got to put some benefit in front of a request for participation. If you anticipate organic (don’t call it viral) growth, what are your users able to offer their friends and colleagues?
5. Are you charging the providers or the spectators? This is the heart of the business model. The zeitgest du jour is the “freemium” model, wherein basic services are provided for free, and you charge people to custom-publish their info. Jyri believes you charge the publisher, not the spectator.

Where’s the nuance?

With the explosion of vertical social networks, monetization and design are elusive to people who have a simple notion of providing social networking tools to their community. This provides a challenging framework which helps to guide intrepid social networking entrepreneurs to a higher likliehood of success.

News junkies, commodity traders and climate change scientists are all tracking last week’s midwest flooding, noting the confluence of impacts, including global commodity prices, US food costs, regional property damage, ethanol futures.  All of this is, of course, written in the context of the upcoming US election, and all the subterfuge within.

Over at AWhere (more here, here and here), they spent the week putting together a pretty cool package that allows individuals to make maps specific to any frame of reference.  Rather than relying on the media or on other mapmakers to tell you how to think about the flooding, you can interact with the map, ask it questions, and determine for yourself the impact on your business, life, community or other perspective.

What’s the nuance?

Data visualization is one of the most important frameworks for gaining insight.  But professional mapmakers have owned a near-monopoly over the frame of reference since mapping began.  Now the power is in your hands.  Google Maps, Google Earth and Virtual Earth have set the stage for interacting with maps.  AWhere takes this evolution to the next step, and lets you plot your data (as many layers as you can generate) on to a map, creating your own view of things.

If you don’t know Freakonomics, drop everything and go buy that book (preferably at your locally owned bookstore — walk right in, they’re friendly!). Written by Steven Dubner and Stephen Leavitt, two of the leaders of a new breed of economist, the book seeks to dispel common myths and investigate the difference between correlation and causation. For people who like to “think different,” it’s mandatory.

They now blog for the New York Times. And have gotten pretty good at it.

Steven Dubner recently decided to take on local food growing, or as people at the heart of the movement call themselves, locavores. Dubner’s position is an interesting one, that essentially the costs (measured economically and in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions) of growing ones’ own food are much higher on the individual scale. They cite that only 11% of the GHG emissions for food are related to transportation, and suggest that specialization is better for a reason.

What’s the nuance?

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I know this is a bit off the beat (or is it?), but I couldn’t resist.  What these guys can do with computers is pretty damn cool.   IBM announced they have a new computer that can consistently perform petaflops.

From senior IBM genius Irving Wladawsky Berger’s post on AlwaysOn:

A petaflop is a million billion calculations per second, that is, a 1 followed by fifteen zeros.

That is how many calculations per second Roadrunner can perform.  When talking about petaflops, the numbers are so large that it is hard to comprehend what they mean.  We are almost into numbers of astronomical dimensions.

The IBM press release used a few analogies to describe the power of Roadrunner, such as “The combined computing power of 100,000 of today’s fastest laptop computers”;  and, “It would take the entire population of the earth, – about six billion – each of us working a handheld calculator at the rate of one second per calculation, more than 46 years to do what Roadrunner can do in one day.”

As we laid out last month, entrepreneurial activity in Colorado is in the middle of a renaissance. While the national corporate recession hits the headlines and gas and food prices reach for the sky, our local startup scene is rocking.

David Cohen, one of Boulder’s celebrity VCs, announces two new fundings today at his blog, ColoradoStartups.com:

Symplified recently raised $6M from Granite Ventures and Allegis Capital.

Rally Software just raised $16.8M from Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV) and existing investors Vista Ventures, Boulder Ventures, and Mobius Venture Capital.

I was at Rally today, talking with their CTO, Ryan Martens, about how smaller companies (the core of the Colorado economy) measure (and ultimately improve) their operations to become more sustainable. He talks in software terms, about ‘expanding the scope’ of business operations to include externalities and bring more costs and benefits on the balance sheet.Our discussion crossed a wide range of topics, and landed on an interesting observation. Ryan pointed out, “most sustainability consultants can’t help us. Unless you know how computer hardware is built, how firmware works, and how software is developed, you can’t help me reduce my emissions any better than a junior at CU (Jack, who happened to be sitting in the room).”

What’s the nuance?

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During our recent partnership retreat with Innovation Network for Communities (INC), we had many rich side conversations, ranging from discussions about climate change adaptation, urban transportation design and location intelligence.

We took a hike in Boulder’s ever-present flatirons, and got to talking about the unique evolutions of the mindset around ‘green’ and ‘eco’ culture that seem to be emerging. This discussion continued when my Business Catapult partners and I co-hosted last week’s Sustainability Salon, where 25 dynamic thought leaders in our community came together for the first what hopes to be a series of social gatherings of people living in a more evolved world where sustainable business is the baseline, not the goal. It turns out that our friends at eConscious Market (where I blog), share a taste for steamed paradox, and we dug in with our chopsticks.

While it’s becoming more and more hip and culturally relevant to be seen as having a concern for the planet, sustainability and consciousness, the movement is naturally splitting into two factions, the eco-luxury movement, and the simplicity movement.

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I feel really lucky. Since February, when I started Chapter 17 of what my good friend calls a ‘curious lifestyle’, I have attracted a unique group of people into the nuance orbit. This has been a rewarding and interesting path, one I have chronicled here with a modicum of success.

The most recent group on the radar is our newest client, Innovation Network for Communities (INC). Founded by partners John Cleveland and Pete Plastrik, INC has been designing and implmenting social systems for more than 20 years, in partnership with the leading industrial foundations of the midwest, including Ford, Carnegie, Kellogg, and many others, I’m sure. Their work has touched schools, urban transportation design, climate change, entrepreneurism and much more.

Their practice is rooted in the study of the emerging patters being unveiled in disciplines like complex systems theory, which begin to give us better models for social systems.

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Please take a second to review our revised clients page.  We’ve reorganized it, added some exciting new projects, and updated the descriptions of some of our partnerships, which have evolved in recent months.

Let us know how we can help you connect to these interesting opportunities.