Author: BrianR

Green Business in Orange County

I’ve just added a few posts to this blog about Green Business. I’m espcially interested in seeing it grow in Orange County, North Carolina. (That includes Chapel Hill and Carrboro.) So you’ll see on the top right of this blog a link to all the posts in the Green Business category. I hope this becomes a resource for others.

I define Green Business as socially and environmentally sustainable economic activity. Wikipedia defines Sustainable Business as:

A business is sustainable if it has adapted its practices for the use of renewable resources and holds itself accountable for the environmental and human rights impacts of its activities. This includes businesses that operate in a socially responsible manner and protect the environment.

I’m really just learning about this and trying to fit my business into this mold as much as I can.

Create Green-Collar Jobs in Orange County

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of seeing Van Jones speak. He co-founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and is founder and president of Green For All. He spoke convincingly of a future of increased equality and how one of the roads to this future is green jobs. Green-collar jobs are employment in the environmental or agricultural sectors of the economy. [Source: Wikipedia] But they also include any work that will help transform our society into a more environmentally sustainable one.

One way our local government leaders could participate in this national movement is to sign the Green Jobs Pledge. Its goal is to "rebuild American competitiveness and environmental leadership by growing a green economy that fights global warming, pollution and poverty at the same time." Here are the five steps this pledge asks our leaders to agree to:

  1. Commit to Action
  2. Create a Green-collar Jobs Taskforce
  3. Identify Goals and Assess Opportunities
  4. Create a Local Action Plan
  5. Evaluate, Leverage and Grow

So far the the U.S. Conference of Mayors has agreed with Green For All that this pledge is good idea. Mayor Martin Chávez of Albuquerque, New Mexico and County Executive Ron Sims of King County, Washington have put there name on it. You can download the Green Jobs Pledge Packet here. [PDF]

Let’s discuss ways we can build a green economy from the ground up, and see if we can get our elected officials to take the pledge.

This post was first published on OrangePolitics.org.

Atomic Age Architecture Symposium in Chapel Hill

Atomic Age Architiecture: A Symposium of Modernist Buildings, August 2, 2008 Saturday August 2, at the Chapel Hill Museum from 9am to 4pm there will be a very cool sounding discussion about Modern Architecture in Chapel Hill. Sponsored by The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill.

I have to say that new Preservation Society Director Ernest Dollar is sure making old stuff exciting. Even to this jaded hipster! (I am a bit of history nerd actually…)

Thanks for the heads up Sally! via GreeneSpace

Atomic Age Architecture Symposium. Explore Chapel Hill’s modernist architecture of the 1950s-1970s. The sleepy college town became a center for avant garde designers creating a collection of radically different homes. Dail Dixon, George Smart, and Cathleen Turner will discuss modernism in Chapel Hill and what can be done to preserve these treasures. Tickets are $15 and symposium will be held in the Chapel Hill Museum. Call 942-7818 to reserve tickets.

Carrboro Coworking gets a new Website

My business Carrboro Creative Coworking is about to pick up speed. Back in June the Board of Alderman at the Town of Carrboro approved a loan. Now we’re at the lease negotiation stage. Very soon I’ll be announcing a location. Its been a long journey. Almost two years ago I started this business in earnest. Ahead is the hard work setting up the space.

Yesterday I launched a new website that will be the online home to Carrboro Creative Coworking. It’s where I will reveal the location of the space, share rates of various coworker packages, blog about the business, accept your information if you’re interested in using the space, answer your questions, and much more.

Another feature of this site will be weekly video updates. I’m going to try and put up a short video once a week. (Its a true testament of how easy and quick that is that I’ll have the time to do such a thing.) It’ll start off as a interview, ala web cam style, of me telling you where I’m at.

CCC also has a twitter account, a Facebook page, and a Google Group. Three great ways to keep up with this journey that is a small business coworking space.

Is all reading important?

I love to read. Thanks to my Mother I’ve been around books most of my life. So to this day I love being engrossed in a real paper book or periodical that I can hold in my hands.

Today’s New York Times has a article called Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?. Ironically I found it on my iPhone. There’s a new New York Times iPhone app that helps me browse and discover. So I read the entire article on my iPhone. Something I’m only now getting used too. Further weirdness is that I have a hardbound paper book next to me waiting to be read. I woke up this morning determined to stay away from my laptop for a few hours. But the call to create and share online was stronger. I’ll get to the book I promise.

The short version of my feelings about online reading vs paper reading is this: ITS ALL GOOD. That would be modern parlance for, ‘Both online and traditional reading of books is a good idea’. I grew up with both. I love both. But I’ll admit that its getting harder and harder for me to read some books all the way through. My difficulty in finishing certain reading, online or offline, is determined by writing style. Not the medium with which the knowledge reaches my brain. If the author’s words don’t grab me and force me like an obsession to continue turning pages often times I can’t. This isn’t a hard and fast rule though. I slog thorough all kinds of stuff.

Authors who’s books I wasn’t able to put down: William Gibson, Philip K. Dick, J.K. Rowling, and the graphic novels of Allan Moore. There is a thread there. They’re all fiction writers.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to read biography and non-fiction political books. Philosophy often engages me. Yes I’m a geek and I read computer manuals and how-to books. But less so as time goes on. Much of that info is at my finger tips via web browser. Should I blame the Internet? Sure. But I just don’t find it a bad thing. Its an evolution of our minds.

So excuse me I gota find a book on how to use Quickbooks business software.

PePe aka Second Hand Clothing

Check out this cool documentary about clothing called Secondhand (Pepe). Its by Hanna Rose Shell and Vanessa Bertozzi.

Secondhand (Pepe) is a 24min tri-lingual documentary about the role of used clothing in diaspora cultures. Filmmakers Shell & Bertozzi weave two narratives into a visual and sonic journey. The historical memoir of a Jewish immigrant rag picker intertwines with the present-day story of “pepe” – secondhand clothing that flows from the United States to Haiti. Secondhand (Pepe) animates the materiality of recycled clothes: their secret afterlives and the unspoken connections among people in an era of globalization.

RTP Startup Weekend is Tomorrow

Looking forward to attending the RTP Startup Weekend in Raleigh’s Edge Office tomorrow. Friday evening appears to be a kickoff to narrow down ideas. The real head down work and hardcore fun begins Saturday.

Wondering what a Startup Weekend is? Here’s the low down. People call it “Jazz for entrepreneurs”. Bascially we’re going to make some sort of web app company in two and half days. Nuts sounding I know. 🙂

Today I found an interview with Jess Martin, one of the local organizers of RTP Startup Weekend. Its on the North Carolina Startups Blog. (Thanks for link @waynesutton!) Interesting questions and answers. I too wana see our disparate tech communities work together. Most importantly party together!

I hoping we make a iPhone app this weekend. Hopefully something that leverages existing public domain data and puts it in peoples hands via mobile networks. But I’m also still looking for the killer app for Peer-2-Peer mobile social networks. I’d like to see a way for us to share media we make with each other bypassing other networks all together. Ad hoc data sharing via wifi devices. Its robust, hyper-hyper-local, and will scale like crazy.

Bottom line is it has to be SIMPLE. Less is More. 140 characters is enough. Ya know Zen code Jazz baby!