Global Digital World At Our Fingertips

Digital media have made creating and disseminating text, sound, and images cheap, easy and global. The bulk of publicly available media is now created by people who understand little of the professional standards and practices for media.

Instead, these amateurs produce endless streams of mediocrity, eroding cultural norms about quality and acceptability, and leading to increasingly alarmed predictions of incipient chaos and intellectual collapse.
1.8 billion

Estimated number of Internet users world-wide:  1.8 Billion

But of course, that’s what always happens. Every increase in freedom to create or consume media, from paperback books to YouTube, alarms people accustomed to the restrictions of the old system, convincing them that the new media will make young people stupid. This fear dates back to at least the invention of movable type.

A Little History…

As Gutenberg’s press spread through Europe, the Bible was translated into local languages, enabling direct encounters with the text; this was accompanied by a flood of contemporary literature, most of it mediocre. Vulgar versions of the Bible and distracting secular writings fueled religious unrest and civic confusion, leading to claims that the printing press, if not controlled, would lead to chaos and the dismemberment of European intellectual life.
Journal Community

These claims were, of course, correct. Print fueled the Protestant Reformation, which did indeed destroy the Church’s pan-European hold on intellectual life. What the 16th-century foes of print didn’t imagine—couldn’t imagine—was what followed: We built new norms around newly abundant and contemporary literature. Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all of these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society.

To take a famous example, the essential insight of the scientific revolution was peer review, the idea that science was a collaborative effort that included the feedback and participation of others. Peer review was a cultural institution that took the printing press for granted as a means of distributing research quickly and widely, but added the kind of cultural constraints that made it valuable.

We are living through a similar explosion of publishing capability today, where digital media link over a billion people into the same network. This linking together in turn lets us tap our cognitive surplus, the trillion hours a year of free time the educated population of the planet has to spend doing things they care about. In the 20th century, the bulk of that time was spent watching television, but our cognitive surplus is so enormous that diverting even a tiny fraction of time from consumption to participation can create enormous positive effects.

Wikipedia took the idea of peer review and applied it to volunteers on a global scale, becoming the most important English reference work in less than 10 years. Yet the cumulative time devoted to creating Wikipedia, something like 100 million hours of human thought, is expended by Americans every weekend, just watching ads. It only takes a fractional shift in the direction of participation to create remarkable new educational resources.

Time  Average American Spends Watching Television Per Week:  34.5 Hours

Similarly, open source software, created without managerial control of the workers or ownership of the product, has been critical to the spread of the Web. Searches for everything from supernovae to prime numbers now happen as giant, distributed efforts. Ushahidi, the Kenyan crisis mapping tool invented in 2008, now aggregates citizen reports about crises the world over. PatientsLikeMe, a website designed to accelerate medical research by getting patients to publicly share their health information, has assembled a larger group of sufferers of Lou Gehrig’s disease than any pharmaceutical agency in history, by appealing to the shared sense of seeking medical progress.

Of course, not everything people care about is a high-minded project. Whenever media become more abundant, average quality falls quickly, while new institutional models for quality arise slowly. Today we have The World’s Funniest Home Videos running 24/7 on YouTube, while the potentially world-changing uses of cognitive surplus are still early and special cases.

That always happens too. In the history of print, we got erotic novels 100 years before we got scientific journals, and complaints about distraction have been rampant; no less a beneficiary of the printing press than Martin Luther complained, “The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure of limit to this fever for writing.” Edgar Allan Poe, writing during another surge in publishing, concluded, “The enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age; since it presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information.”

The response to distraction, then as now, was social structure. Reading is an unnatural act; we are no more evolved to read books than we are to use computers. Literate societies become literate by investing extraordinary resources, every year, training children to read. Now it’s our turn to figure out what response we need to shape our use of digital tools.

Does the Internet Make You Dumber?

The cognitive effects are measurable: We’re turning into shallow thinkers, says Nicholas Carr.

The case for digitally-driven stupidity assumes we’ll fail to integrate digital freedoms into society as well as we integrated literacy. This assumption in turn rests on three beliefs: that the recent past was a glorious and irreplaceable high-water mark of intellectual attainment; that the present is only characterized by the silly stuff and not by the noble experiments; and that this generation of young people will fail to invent cultural norms that do for the Internet’s abundance what the intellectuals of the 17th century did for print culture. There are likewise three reasons to think that the Internet will fuel the intellectual achievements of 21st-century society.

First, the rosy past of the pessimists was not, on closer examination, so rosy. The decade the pessimists want to return us to is the 1980s, the last period before society had any significant digital freedoms. Despite frequent genuflection to European novels, we actually spent a lot more time watching “Diff’rent Strokes” than reading Proust, prior to the Internet’s spread. The Net, in fact, restores reading and writing as central activities in our culture.

The present is, as noted, characterized by lots of throwaway cultural artifacts, but the nice thing about throwaway material is that it gets thrown away. This issue isn’t whether there’s lots of dumb stuff online—there is, just as there is lots of dumb stuff in bookstores. The issue is whether there are any ideas so good today that they will survive into the future. Several early uses of our cognitive surplus, like open source software, look like they will pass that test.

The past was not as golden, nor is the present as tawdry, as the pessimists suggest, but the only thing really worth arguing about is the future. It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity. We are now witnessing the rapid stress of older institutions accompanied by the slow and fitful development of cultural alternatives. Just as required education was a response to print, using the Internet well will require new cultural institutions as well, not just new technologies.

It is tempting to want PatientsLikeMe without the dumb videos, just as we might want scientific journals without the erotic novels, but that’s not how media works. Increased freedom to create means increased freedom to create throwaway material, as well as freedom to indulge in the experimentation that eventually makes the good new stuff possible. There is no easy way to get through a media revolution of this magnitude; the task before us now is to experiment with new ways of using a medium that is social, ubiquitous and cheap, a medium that changes the landscape by distributing freedom of the press and freedom of assembly as widely as freedom of speech.
—Clay Shirky’s latest book is “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.”

Going Beyond The Potted Plant

Matthew McGregor-Mento put 400 plants in his vertical garden in Manhattan

GIVEN the chance to accompany a team of botanists on a plant-collecting expedition to South America, most gardeners would probably be satisfied with the experience. They wouldn’t come home and try to recreate the rain forest in Manhattan.

But Michael Riley isn’t like most gardeners. Mr. Riley, a former commodities trader turned plant expert who went on to become assistant director of the Horticultural Society of New York, was eager to move beyond potted plants in a way that hadn’t yet occurred to many others. It took a number of expeditions, a lot of research and more than a decade and a half, but by 2003 he had figured out how to grow a wall of plants inside his Upper West Side apartment.

“In the rain forest, I realized that plants didn’t need to grow in pots with labels,” said Mr. Riley, 64. “I wanted to grow plants in ways that were natural to them.”

With his partner, Francisco Correa, a Spanish teacher who is now 52, Mr. Riley attacked a corner of his living area, stripping the walls of plaster and affixing exterior-grade plywood to new and existing building studs. On top of the plywood went bitumen roofing to protect the walls. Cork bark was then stapled over that, and plants were inserted into pockets in the cork. Sprinklers and lighting were installed overhead, trenches were put in at the base of the walls to catch water that trickled down, and pools were added in the middle of the room to increase humidity.

Vertical Gardens

These days, Mr. Riley’s project isn’t that unusual. Vertical gardens — which began as an experiment in 1988 by Patrick Blanc, a French botanist intent on creating a garden without dirt — are becoming increasingly popular at home. Avid and aspiring gardeners, frustrated with little outdoor space, are taking another look at their walls and noticing something new: more space. And a number of companies are selling ready-made systems and all-in-one kits for gardeners like Mr. Riley who want to do it themselves. (For those who prefer to leave it to the professionals, landscape designers can build vertical gardens for a hefty fee.)

In the last few years, companies that sell green wall supplies have seen a jump in sales. ELT, an Ontario company that specializes in green roofs, began selling living wall systems a little over three years ago and is now one of the biggest suppliers to the United States. Greg Garner, the company’s president, said that its green-wall sales have increased 300 percent since 2008. Four months ago, the company introduced a cheaper, lighter kit to make living walls accessible to the average gardener; prices start at about $40 for a one-square-foot panel.

“We’ve turned living walls into something anyone can do,” Mr. Garner said. “The walls have gone from zero percent of our business leads to 80 percent of our business, and it’s happening all over the place, from the Middle East to North America to Europe.”

Companies Focus In On Living Walls

Another big living-wall company, Gsky Plant Systems in Vancouver, British Columbia, was founded four years ago as a green roof supplier but now focuses almost exclusively on vertical gardens, which it designs, installs and maintains for around $125 a square foot. Hal Thorne, Gsky’s chairman, said the company’s growth in the last year “was phenomenal — we nearly doubled sales.”

Many of the modular systems — essentially plastic trays filled with dirt and attached to a wall, with a sprinkler or drip irrigation system installed above — differ dramatically from Patrick Blanc’s living walls, which can be seen in commercial and institutional buildings around the world, including the Athenaeum hotel in London and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

Mr. Blanc, who was inspired by tropical rain-forest plants he had studied, knew plants could survive on water and fertilizer alone, and developed a system for growing them on walls lined with felt. The living wall was part of his effort to bring greenery into cities. “When you live in towns, you don’t always go into gardens,” he said. “It’s really important to use empty spaces to invite nature into town.”

He is not a fan of the new kits. On a recent visit to San Francisco to begin work on a green wall for a private high school, his largest outdoor vertical garden in North America, Mr. Blanc dismissed them as artificial. Plants may grow vertically on a surface like the face of a cliff, he said, but “in nature, you don’t have vertical dirt.”

Peter Kastan’s 12-by-12-foot green wall in Miami

“It’s like having a large poodle,” said Peter Kastan. “You have to take care of it, feed it, walk it. It’s intensive care for plants.” More Photos »

At a local nursery, he pointed at one modular system: “This is very heavy and a lot of plastic,” he said. “After three to five years, you have no more substrate — the dirt gets compacted.”

Last year, inspired by Mr. Blanc’s work, Matthew McGregor-Mento, 38, an executive creative director at Gyro: HSR, a New York advertising agency, and his wife, Emma, 35, a massage therapist, set out to build a vertical garden in their two-bedroom apartment in the East Village. They attached an 8-by-10-foot aluminum frame to a wall in the entry hall, screwed waterproof sheets of PVC to the frame and tacked on two layers of matting. Then they inserted some 400 plants — philodendrons, ivies and ferns — into holes they cut in the felt.

A trough they installed along the floor collects runoff water from the irrigation system, and a pump with a filtration sponge sends it back up the wall. Timers control the watering, which happens four times a day.

Design Challenges

The design, which they devised with the help of a horticulturalist friend, was based on Mr. Blanc’s system and on research they had done online. The total cost was $3,000, but the result was worth it, Mr. McGregor-Mento said. Most people who visit want a green wall of their own, and the effort involved wasn’t that onerous: “Building a vertical wall is about as difficult as painting a room.”

Others have found it more challenging. Peter Kastan, an unemployed movie location scout in Miami, had never grown anything when he decided to install a vertical garden in a friend’s loft. The apartment, which his friend offered to him as a laboratory since it was vacant and he couldn’t rent it, had abundant light and high ceilings, and Mr. Kastan, after reading about Mr. Blanc’s living gardens online, thought it would be an ideal environment.

He began by contacting living-wall creators around the world for advice, and then drove all over Florida visiting nurseries to find plants. He bought 650, including bromeliads, hoyas, begonias and ferns, favoring those that were local and “the most interesting to look at,” he said. And one weekend last November, he and his wife, Mai Tran, and a friend put up the 12-by-12-foot plant wall.

Like Mr. McGregor-Mento, Mr. Kastan used matting affixed to a metal frame bolted to the wall. He bought most of the materials from local hardware stores or online suppliers. About $10,000 later, he has a large, vibrant green wall. He recently completed a smaller one in the kitchen, with herbs and mini-tomatoes.

But it took a lot of work to get the irrigation, the lighting and the plants right. The first month, he lost several plants near the bottom of the wall, where water was collecting. He realized then that some plants were getting too much water and needed to be moved a different spot on the wall; others he had to get rid of.

“It’s like having a large poodle,” Mr. Kastan said. “You have to take care of it, feed it, walk it. It’s intensive care for plants.”

Even professional gardeners sometimes have trouble with their first living wall. Martha Desbiens, a co-owner of VertNY, a landscape design firm specializing in roof gardens, used sedums in a green wall on a client’s terrace, and they dried out over the winter while the irrigation system was off. In a roof garden, they would have gotten plenty of moisture from snow, she noted, but planted vertically, they didn’t get nearly enough.

“A lot of living walls fail,” Ms. Desbiens said. “There’s a big learning curve.”

Marguerite Wells, a co-owner of Motherplants, a nursery in Ithaca, said she tries to steer people away from them.

“People want green bling,” Ms. Wells said. “People think, ‘It looks beautiful and perfect, and I want something beautiful and perfect in my life.’ ”

But vertical gardens can’t be watered with a hose or ignored for long stretches of time, she noted, and won’t tolerate certain plants. Inevitably, the irrigation stops working, she said, whether the pumps break down, the emitters get clogged (if a dirt system is used) or water gets stuck in one cell of a modular system. And within a few days of any malfunction, plants begin to die.

Overcoming Challenges

Amelia Lima, a landscape designer in San Diego, encountered the most basic problem when she decided to turn the 40-foot wall in her backyard into a vertical garden. At first, she tried hanging plants and art on the wall, which faced the picture windows in her living room and kitchen, but it looked drab. Then she found a landscape architect who had worked with Patrick Blanc on a project in Brazil and hired him to help. But halfway through the project, she realized she had forgotten something essential: a water source.

“People think it’s a green wall,” Ms. Lima said, as in, “you hang a picture on the wall and it’s done.”

But there’s a lot more to it than that, she added: “There’s construction, watering — you’re making a garden.”

Just Another Plant in The Wall

Making your own living wall can be done in one of two ways — as a fully bespoke model or something more off-the-rack. Whichever you choose, there are a few things to keep in mind.

• Vertical gardens are heavy, and not every wall is strong enough to support one. Check with a carpenter or your landlord to make sure the designated wall can handle the load.

• When selecting a spot for your living wall, make sure the area gets plenty of light. The best light is natural, but you will also need to install artificial lighting.

• Custom installations like the ones Patrick Blanc builds require a frame that can be attached to the wall, a waterproof barrier to protect the wall, a surface material like felt or cork to hold the plants in place and an irrigation system with PVC or polyethylene tubing and a submersible pump (the kind found in aquarium shops).

• Ready-made vertical garden kits have small containers angled to hold dirt and can be watered manually. After you plant your cuttings in the dirt, you’ll need to let them grow horizontally for several months so they develop strong roots. Once the roots have taken hold, you can attach the kit to the wall. (Kits are available from a number of sources, including eltlivingwalls.com, sgplants.com and floragrubb.com.)

• Each wall has different requirements, depending on its light and plants (talk to a local nursery or green-roof specialist about the best plants for your wall), but many people water their vertical gardens three times a day for 8 to 10 minutes. You will need to add fertilizer to the water to make sure the plants get necessary nutrients.

via New York Times

Trevor Tondro for The New York Times

Former UI provost begins September 1

The ACT board of directors named Jon Whitmore, former University of Iowa provost who is currently the president of San Jose State University, as ACT’s new chief executive officer. The appointment is effective Sept. 1, the beginning of ACT’s new fiscal year.

“ACT’s directors are very enthusiastic to have Jon Whitmore become our next CEO. We wanted an accomplished leader with notable executive experience and an exemplary track record of success,” ACT Board Lead Director Mark Musick stated in a press release. “We found just the right person in Jon. We’re confident that he will provide outstanding leadership to expand ACT’s role in helping shape state and national education and workforce policy and in helping more people achieve education and workplace success.”

San Jose State University is a major comprehensive research university located in the heart of Silicon Valley. Previously, Mr. Whitmore served as president of Texas Tech University and as provost at the University of Iowa.

“I look forward to carrying on ACT’s upward trajectory, which has been skillfully advanced by Dick Ferguson and ACT’s excellent staff,” Mr. Whitmore stated. “ACT’s reputation for excellence, and its mission of helping people achieve education and workplace success, are needed today more than ever. With President (Barack) Obama’s goal of dramatically increasing the number of citizens who graduate from high school, community colleges and four-year colleges, and with the need to retrain many Americans who have lost jobs or are looking to change professions, ACT has a vital role to play at this critical time in history.”

Mr. Whitmore was selected after a nationwide search by ACT’s board, assisted by the Spencer Stuart executive search firm. Richard Ferguson, ACT’s current CEO and chairman, joined ACT in 1972 and has led the organization for 22 years. Under his leadership, ACT grew into a highly respected international organization offering a broad array of assessment, information and program management solutions in the areas of education and workforce development, with more than 1,500 employees located in offices worldwide.

American Pain Society To Honor UI Physicians

A pair of UI physicians will receive national awards for their contributions to the field of treating pain from the American Pain Society (APS) during the group’s annual meeting May 6-8 in Baltimore, Md.

Timothy Brennan, M.D., Ph.D., the Samir Gergis Professor of Anesthesia and vice chair for research, will receive the Frederick W. L. Kerr Basic Science Research Award. The award recognizes individual excellence and achievement in pain scholarship. Brennan is the first anesthesiologist to receive the award.

Richard Rosenquist, M.D., professor and director of the Center for Pain Medicine and Regional Anesthesia, will receive the Distinguished Service Award. The award recognizes outstanding and dedicated service to the APS. Rosenquist has made significant contributions to developing practice guidelines for pain management.

FIRST US OFFSHORE WIND FARM OFF MASS.

BOSTON — A whole new way of generating electricity in the U.S. drew a big step closer to reality Wednesday, and it could look like this: 130 windmills, 440 feet tall, rising from the ocean a few miles off Cape Cod.

After more than eight years of lawsuits and government reviews, the Obama administration cleared the way for the nation’s first offshore wind farm.

“We are beginning a new direction in our nation’s energy future,” U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declared in announcing his approval of the $2 billion Cape Wind project, which would finally allow the U.S. to join the list of major countries that are producing electricity from sea breezes.

Strong Opposition Possible

The project has faced intense opposition from environmentalists, antwo Indian tribetribes and some environmentalists and residents, including the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who warned that the windmills could mar the ocean view. They would be visible from the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port.

Salazar said the project’s developers can protect local culture and beauty while expanding the nation’s supply of renewable energy.

Salazar said the project’s developers can protect local culture and beauty while expanding the nation’s supply of renewable energy.

Members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Martha’s Vineyard have vowed to go to court, saying the project would interfere with sacred rituals and desecrate long-submerged tribal burial sites. Other groups said they would sue immediately.

“It’s far from over,” Cape Cod resident Audra Parker of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. “Nantucket Sound needs to be off limits to Cape Wind and any other industrial development.”

Salazar said the project had been exhaustively analyzed and added: “This is the final decision of the United States of America. We are very confident we will be able to uphold the decision against legal challenges.”

The windmills would be about five miles off Cape Cod at their closest point to land and 14 miles off Nantucket at the greatest distance. According to simulations done for Cape Wind, on a clear day the turbines would look as if they were about a half-inch tall on the horizon at the nearest point and appear as specks from Nantucket.

Funding For Green Jobs

The costs will be covered with private funding as well as potentially millions in federal stimulus money and tax credits. Cape Wind is negotiating to sell the electricity generated to a local utility.

Cape Wind eventually hopes to supply three-quarters of the power on Cape Cod, which has about 225,000 residents. Cape Wind officials say it will provide green jobs and a reliable domestic energy source.

The announcement came after a pair of deadly disasters earlier this month in West Virginia and the Gulf of Mexico illustrated the risks in extracting oil and coal to meet the country’s energy needs.

Advocates are hoping Cape Wind can jump-start the entire U.S. offshore wind industry.

US Still Lags Behind

America has the world’s largest onshore wind industry but lags behind other countries in offshore electric generation because of high upfront costs, heavy regulation and technological challenges.

Denmark installed the world’s first offshore wind turbine 20 years ago.ago, and there are offshore wind farms around Europe. China has built a commercial wind farm off Shanghai and plans several other projects. The Netherlands also has offshore turbines.

Major U.S. projects are on the drawing board for the waters off New Jersey, Delaware and Texas. The U.S. Department of Energy envisions offshore wind farms accounting for 4 percent of the country’s electric generating capacity by 2030.

Changing Cape Cod’s Landscape

Kennedy, who loved to sail the waters off Cape Cod, fought Cape Wind until the weeks before his death last summer, calling it a special-interest giveaway that could harm the ocean vista. Others say it could interfere with air and sea traffic and endanger birds and other wildlife.

The lead federal agency reviewing the project, the Minerals Management Service, issued a report last year saying the project poses no major environmental problems.

Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., whose district includes Cape Cod, warned that the project will raise the region’s power costs, disrupt an ocean sanctuary and set back the wind-power industry, all to benefit a private developer.

“Cape Wind is the first offshore wind farm to be built in the wrong place, in the wrong way, stimulating the wrong economies,” Delahunt said Wednesday.

Home to some of the best-known beaches in the Northeast, Cape Cod has long been a destination for summer vacations and is famous for its small towns, colonial-era fishing villages and weathered, gray-shingled homes in its namesake architectural style.

Earlier this month, a federal panel, the Advisory Council on Historic Properties urged Salazar to reject the wind farm, saying it would have destructive effects on the view from dozens of historic sites.

Salazar said he worried that if the project were killed for such reasons, then no offshore wind farms would be possible on the Eastern Seaboard.

___
JAY LINDSAY | April 28, 2010 | AP

Associated Press writers Glen Johnson in Washington and Steve LeBlanc in Boston contributed to this report.

Eds: CLARIFIES other European nations have offshore turbines, not just Netherlands. CORRECTS some environmentalists, not all, and 2 Indian tribes, not 1, oppose project. Moving on general news and financial services. AP Video.

Low-Stressed Johnson County

Stable Employers Help County Weather Economy

Few counties across the nation have gone untouched by the economic recession, but according to an Associated Press report, few have weathered it better than Johnson County.

According to the Associated Press’s Economic Stress Index — a formula that combines the effect of unemployment rates, bankruptcies and foreclosures — Johnson County was the 14th least economically “stressed” county in the nation with a population of 25,000 or greater.

Local experts say there are a number of reasons why the county was able to handle the recession better than most, but all point to the stability exhibited by the county’s largest employers, particularly the University of Iowa and the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

“I think there are a number of reasons,” said Joe Raso, president of the Iowa City Area Developers Group. “Probably the one people recognize the most is the stability of the University of Iowa and University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. That provides us a very stable economic base for the market. That can’t be overlooked.”

Charles Whiteman, interim-director of the Institute for Economic Research and professor of economics at UI, said the Iowa City area is unique in that it has one “enormous and very stable employer.” Whiteman said the fact that the county does not rely on many large, diverse employers also helped.

“Light manufacturing was hit hard, housing was hit hard,” Whiteman said. “The economy in Johnson County is not dominated by those industries that were hit so hard.”

That’s not to say some of the area’s largest employers have emerged from the worst of the recession unscathed. Officials with those employers said some belt tightening and restructuring were necessary to survive.

Sue Buckley, vice president of human resources at the University of Iowa, said constant change at the UI was beneficial.

“Different parts of the university often grow and contract at a different pace and time,” Buckley said. “This is actually good. Even with extreme financial challenges, because we are diverse and complex, it allows us to, overall, have a more stable workforce.”

For instance, research enterprise at the university exhibited strong growth in the past year while the hospitals and clinics faced some “severe financial challenges,” Buckley said.

“They have taken a number of actions, including significant expense reduction,” she said. “But the picture at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is really turning around. It’s much more positive than it was a year ago.”

Denice Connell, director of marketing and community relations at Mercy Iowa City, said the county’s other hospital has done well during the economy. Connell said the hospital has seen an increase in the number of applications for positions but a decrease in employee turnover.

“There’s certainly been some belt-tightening,” Connell said. “I feel that we’ve held our own.”

Iowa City Community School District Superintendent Lane Plugge said the district has had to make some staff reductions in the past few years, though most of that has been through attrition and early retirement. Plugge said he doesn’t like having to turn to early retirement as a means to cut costs.

“The reason I don’t like that is it encourages some of our very best teachers and staff members to retire,” Plugge said.

In addition to cutting staff, Plugge said the district has made attempts to make transportation more efficient and has increased class sizes “across the board.”

Iowa City interim City Manager Dale Helling said the city has lost approximately $1.2 million in revenue income from investments. However, he said the loss has been offset by tax revenues from tax increment financing downtown.

“That enabled us to pretty much make up for the lost interest income revenue,” Helling said.

The city also has relied on additional income from the 1 percent utility franchise fee and federal stimulus funding. While the city has made increasing public safety funding a priority, other departments, such as parks and recreation, have had to make do with what they have, Helling said.

“There are a number of areas where we certainly could use more staff, but I can’t say the recession has hit one area harder than the other,” he said.

Whiteman said the economy is expected to rebound and employment is expected to improve in the coming months.

“It’s not a dramatic turnaround, but things are moving in the right direction with respect to income and respect to employment,” he said.

Lee Hermiston • Iowa City Press-Citizen • April 26, 2010

The Iowa City metro area has made the grade again

Forbes Magazine ranks the Iowa City area No. 2 in its annual listing of “Best Small Places for Business and Careers.” Iowa City was edged out from the number one spot by Sioux Falls, SD.

Iowa City Area Development Group President Joe Raso said the ranking is a validation of recent national studies recognizing the Iowa City area’s economy, workforce and other factors important to businesses and professionals.

“It’s always great news when we’re recognized,” Raso said. “It just validates a lot of things we talk to people about when we talk to people about the Iowa City area.”

Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Nancy Quellhorst said Iowa City has a history of being recognized as a place to start a business, so the ranking came as no surprise. She said new businesses are a key component of economic recovery.

“This recognition is well-timed and relevant,” Quellhorst said.

Cost Of Living Still High

The ranking included sub-rankings in categories such as colleges, cost of doing business, cost of living, crime rate and other factors. The Iowa City area was ranked third out of 184 communities in the percent of the population over 25 with a bachelor’s degree or higher, eighth in income growth and 18th in crime rate. Colleges, cost of doing business and job growth ranked in the 30s, as well.

According to the rankings, 95.6 percent of the metro area’s population has a high school diploma, 46.9 percent have a college degree. The median household income is $50,934 and income growth was projected to be 4 percent.

“The subcategories help to define what we tend to hear,” Raso said. “This is kind of a gem within the Midwest…the biggest challenge we have is not enough people know about it. We have the challenge to overcome the mindset of what the Midwest or Iowa is like.”

Iowa City fell short in the cost of living and projected economic growth categories, ranking 103 and 126, respectively. Raso said many employers or professional who come from the coasts or large cities do not notice a dramatic change in the cost of living. However, it’s still an issue that can improve, he said.

“We want to do everything we can to address workforce housing and transportation costs…so that we don’t become a Chicago or other major market where they’re having issues with infrastructure and costs along those lines,” Raso said.

As for economic growth, Raso said the ranking’s projected 1.8 percent job growth for the area is a strength, rather than a weakness. Rather than job growth rates sharply rising and falling, job growth has generally crept steadily higher over the years, Raso said.

“It’s a very steady growth over time,” he said. “What might be tabbed as a concern, I don’t see that.”

via Press Citizen 4/14/10

Model Your Town Competition: Cast your vote!

The first-ever Google Model Your Town Competition has entered the public voting phase. It’s now up to you to help decide which of the five finalist towns should be the overall winner. Cast your vote before May 1.

* Barranco (Lima, Peru)
* Braunschweig (Niedersachsen, Germany)
* Donostia – San Sebastián (Gipuzkoa, Spain)
* Dursley (Gloucestershire, United Kingdom)
* West Palm Beach (Florida, United States)

These five teams used Google SketchUp and Google Building Maker to create beautifully detailed 3D models of their communities — and now they’re viewable in Google Earth by everyone in the world. To see all of the towns who entered the competition, check out the Google 3D Warehouse collection.

The winning town will receive an event hosted by Google in their honor, US $10,000 for their local schools and more. Don’t forget to vote by May 1, and we’ll announce the winning town by May 15.

And if you’re interested in learning how you can model your town, check out our Your World in 3D website for examples and other tools to help you get started.

Posted by Allyson McDuffie, SketchUp for Education Program Manager

via Google Blog

ClickStop, Successful Small Internet Retail Company

A sales representative by trade, Tim Guenther, 32, of Urbana started a small Internet retail company four years ago to help give him a competitive edge selling building products. Little did he know that his company, which had $14,000 in sales in the first year, would explode.

The once one-man company, ClickStop, now has 20 employees and continues to add more despite the recession. It made about $5 million in sales last year and expects to hit $10 million in sales this year.

“We’re going to need an economic tail wind to do it. We’ve had so much head wind. If we’re growing 50 to 60 percent while we’re being pushed down, imagine what we could do if the economy improves,” said Shaun Linderbaum, vice president and chief technology officer for ClickStop and Guenther’s right hand man.

Guenther, president and CEO of ClickStop, lured Linderbaum, 32, who had helped him start his Web site to the company from Deere Co. when business picked up.

“It’s a lot more exciting,” Linderbaum said of his new job. “Every day is an interesting challenge. I’m excited to get up and go to work every day.”

Expert Help From The Entrepreneurial Development Center

While they were able to take the company far, the two knew they needed some skilled help last spring. So they turned to The Entrepreneurial Development Center in Cedar Rapids.

“They’ve really pushed us to think about things we’re not thinking about,” Linderbaum said.

ClickStop’s “ability to build Internet sales engines is really good,” said Curt Nelson, president and CEO of The EDC. “They’ve really got their business scaling at a really fast rate.”

Nelson said The EDC tries to help ClickStop and other companies manage their growth.

“A business can easily grow right into bankruptcy,” he said.

They’ve really helped hold us accountable during that growth, Guenther said of The EDC.

Guenther attributes ClickStop’s success to simply capitalizing on a change in shopping habits that many companies have been slow to grasp — e-commerce. With Web optimization and Web advertising, ClickStop’s e-commerce sites have become the top search results in the products it sells, Guenther said.

“That’s our way of sneaking up on industries,” he said.

New Building For The Spring

The company is getting used to being in transition as it expands its warehouse and office space, but it hopes to start building a new $2 million, 35,000-square-foot building in Urbana’s new economic development park along Interstate 380 this spring.

The four-year-old company sells six e-commerce brands with products ranging from building materials to vitamins to cat furniture.

“We don’t manufacture it. We do private label it,” Guenther said.

That alone has allowed the company to expand rapidly.

The EDC has also helped ClickStop organize its inventory.

“We were carrying too much,” Linderbaum admits.

That’s a problem for a lot of companies, especially when credit is tight, said The EDC’s Nelson.

Too much inventory ties up too much cash that’s not available to reinvest. Companies need to make sure they have a good manufacturing resource planning system to track that, he said.

Most recently, the EDC has been helping the company with its organizational structure.

“When we were just six people we all just did everything,” Guenther said.

When they needed another employee they’d just post a job and told the person to come see that they did to see if it was what they’d like to do, he said.

“We didn’t want to put people into boxes. We wanted them to be able to contribute where they could,” Linderbaum said.

That’s all changed.

“We’re already seeing a value,” Linderbaum said.

“We know now that roles have to be defined,” Guenther said.

Jane Burroughs, vice president of operations at The EDC, said that clearly defined roles leads to reduced duplication, decreased errors and increased production.

“If you focus people in silos, they do the same work over time. That’s what makes them faster,” Burroughs said.

Right People In Right Position Is Key To Success

ClickStop also needed the right people in the right positions to keep growing and the recession has helped in that respect.

“We’ve been able to get a lot of good, really talented, loyal hardworking people. We’re scooping them up as fast as we can,” Linderbaum said.

Nelson said that convincing small start-ups that want to grow that they might need to get rid of or move a person who has been with the company since the start of the company is often a difficult thing for people to do.

“Sometimes you just don’t have all the right people.” Nelson said.

ClickStop hopes to keep their employees by providing a fun environment and competitive benefits.

“We’ve (Guenther and Linderbaum) both worked in larger companies. We’ve never done this before, but it feels good — satisfying — to make a profit and be able to do something nice for your employees,” Guenther said.

Working with the EDC has also given them even more confidence to grow.

Guenther admitted he was tentative about growing by acquiring companies, but consulting with the EDC showed him it was a good strategy, especially since companies can be purchased at a good value right now because of the economy.

“You can spot opportunities in this economy,” Guenther said.

The business:

ClickStop Inc.

2535 Bing Miller Lane

Urbana, IA 52345

www.clickstop.com

1-(800) 383-0592

The consultant:

Curt Nelson

President, CEO

The Entrepreneurial Development Center

230 Second St. SE, Suite 212

Cedar Rapids, IA 52401

www.edcinc.org

(319) 369-4955

By Janet Rorholm, via EdgeBusiness Magazine, kcrg.com