My friends are my estate

John Spencer on the Seattle Sounders - Rivalry Builds

2011-05-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

Seattle has the best atmosphere in MLS with amazing fans that have created the closest thing to the European soccer atmosphere in the league. They are probably my favorite team after my hometown Rapids, but I have to admit I agree with (and love) John Spencer's comments here. Probably because he is a Colorado Rapids Gallery of Honor member for his playing days there.

Bemused Spencer blasts Sounders as full of excuses | MLSsoccer.com

Here is a tribute to his time in Colorado.

Bicycle Dreams Trailer

2011-04-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

"There is no way these people are normal. They are the seekers of the new realm, or plane."

Nike Better World

2011-04-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

Love it!

http://www.nikebetterworld.com/

A History of the World in 100 Seconds on Vimeo

2011-03-31T09:38:00.000-07:00

The images in the video are based on Wikipedia articles that have both dates and coordinates. Amazing visualization.

A History of the World in 100 Seconds on Vimeo

A History of the World in 100 Seconds from Gareth Lloyd on Vimeo.

Civil Religion in Jordan - a Wordle of my Senior Paper

2011-03-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

I found a copy of my Senior Paper, so I wordled it. I applied Robert Bellah's concept of Civil Religion to Habitat for Humanity Jordan, and their work building bridges (and homes) between Muslim and Christian communities there.

Philip, who was the executive director of Habitat then, was also the person I worked with at EGT on the R3 Recycling program.

Como Tu

2011-03-14T23:30:00.000-07:00

Like You

By Roque Dalton
(Translated by Jack Hirschman)

Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-
blue landscape of January days.

And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.

in the original Spanish

Como Tú

Por Roque Dalton

Yo como tú
amo el amor,
la vida,
el dulce encanto de las cosas
el paisaje celeste de los días de enero.

También mi sangre bulle
y río por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lágrimas.
Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesía es como el pan,
de todos.

Y que mis venas no terminan en mí,
sino en la sangre unánime
de los que luchan por la vida,
el amor,
las cosas,
el paisaje y el pan,
la poesía de todos.

This poem is by Roque Dalton, I copied this text from kasamaproject.org after finding them via a Google search.

OBUGs, Literacy for Environmental Justice, and Hands On Bay Area

2011-01-02T20:49:00.000-08:00

I have been spending time volunteering for a variety of organizations over the last few months through a volunteer aggregator called Hands On Bay Area. I have two goals, to get a (brief) experience of many different organizations offering a variety of services and ultimately to focus on one and take on more substantive volunteer projects. Below are pictures from two recent projects:

Literacy for Environmental Justice:
LEJ work with youth to educate them on habitat restoration and sustainable food production. They have a full scale nursery where they prepare plants to be transplanted in areas like the one we were working on below. They collect the seeds for these plants locally and use them to push back invasive species like fennel.

The youth are teaching us about the grasses and shrubs we will be planting. The area we were working in is one of the more established sites, the native plants have started to take hold again.

Some local municipalities have started to contract with LEJ to provide local plants for open space projects, allowing them to hire some of the students who come through their program.

Oakland Builds Urban Gardens:

OBUGs works with middle schools in Oakland to convert part of their parking lot or pavement into garden space which they incorporate into the school's curriculum. Much of the produce from the garden goes to the cafeteria. OBUGs teaches kids about how fresh food and activity are part of a healthy lifestyle.

OBUGs staff staff teach students how to care for the garden. Volunteers also do a lot of garden maintenance on the weekends, including building new beds.

Tom and Preston building individual boxes so students can decide what they want to grow. It's hard work, you have to rest too :)

You can't do much better than spending the morning working in the garden on a nice day. We also trimmed down a big Rosemary bush and we some home. It was spilling out of my backpack which made us very popular and we traded Rosemary for cookies and pie at lunch!

The parking lot is converted to a growing space by covering the ground with bark mulch and then building raised beds.

World Cup 2022 - Fifa has failed us

2010-12-02T10:15:00.000-08:00

Fifa made a massive mistake today in selecting Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup (I was hoping for Belgium/Netherlands for 2018, but I can accept the choice of Russia). Already this year FIFA have shown that they are out of touch with fans and players. Refusing to implement goal line technology because if they did the game "wouldn't be the same at all levels" is one example, no one believes or expects the game to be the same at all levels. Choosing Qatar shows that they have no idea what the World Cup means to fans. The World Cup is not just about the games themselves or grand air-conditioned stadiums. The World Cup is the world's greatest grassroots event. It is about impromtu parties in the streets and meeting people from around the world in local pubs. It is about cheap hotels and saving up for airline tickets. None of that will be possible in Qatar. A place known for glamour, opulence and wealth is not an appropriate host for the world's game. Many fans have additional cause to be uncomfortable as homosexuality is illegal in Qatar (when asked about this issue FIFA head Blatter stated that homosexuals should refrain from sexual activity if they attend the World Cup) and women have the same constrained role they have in the rest of the Arab world. Not to mention it is 115 degrees in Qatar in July, who knows what effect that will have on the players and fans. Anyone who feels cheated because the two countries selected, Russia and Qatar, are the only two who had billionaire oil barrons in their delegation is right to feel that way.

Trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani - This is how we win the War on Terror

2010-11-17T23:35:00.000-08:00

This trial, in a civilian court, is a very important step for the United States in fighting the War on Terror. I believe that if we are to win this war we must establish rules and methods for fighting it that are rooted in the principles on which this nation was founded. Principles spelled out in the constitution upheld by our courts and laws.

That is exactly what the Obama administration was trying to do when it pushed for the trial to be held in a civilian court, and that is exactly what Judge Kaplan was doing when he ruled the testimony of a witness for the prosecution inadmissible on the grounds that the witness was only discovered when Ghailani named him after being tortured in a secret CIA detention facility.

"The court has not reached this conclusion lightly," Kaplan wrote, barring the testimony. "It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world we live in. But the constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not only when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction." (Quote taken from WaPo article)

The War on Terror does not exempt us from our duty to uphold human rights and human dignity. Nothing gives us the right to torture a person, under any circumstances, and Judge Kaplan was right to disallow the testimony. I certainly wish that the witness had been discovered through a fair legal process and was allowed to testify, but that that was not the case. I admire the courage to disallow the testimony given the circumstances. But despite the fact that the unfortunate actions that occurred in the interrogation of Ghailani made the witness inadmissable, we did get a conviction.

"Conspiracy to blow up an embassy is a serious conviction," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch. "I hope the conclusion people draw from this is that this is the way to get swift and sure justice."He added: "The original sin here is torture. It would have haunted a military trial, too, with likely the same result. The only difference is that in this courtroom, Ghailani was convicted with legitimacy and finality." (Quote taken from WaPo article)

I agree with these statements wholeheartedly. The "legitimacy and finality" of the trial will be felt all around the world. Citizen of every nation can throw their support behind this process. While Guantanamo and everything it represents isolates us, this trial gains the United States allies in the War on Terror. There were many very important precedents set by this trial. If we can hold to the course of action we have begun we will turn the tide in this war.

Judge Kaplan issued two major pretrial rulings that allowed Mr. Ghailani’s prosecution to go forward and could ease the way for future detainees, like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the professed 9/11 mastermind, to be tried in federal court. In May, the judge rejected a motion by Mr. Ghailani’s lawyers seeking dismissal of charges on grounds that his torture while in C.I.A. custody was outrageous government misconduct. And in the summer, the judge ruled that Mr. Ghailani’s years of detention before being brought into the civilian system had not violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial. (Quote taken from NYT article)

We can take this case and build on it. Not only using the precedents set in this trial to try and convict other Guantanamo detainees, but also to develop a code of conduct for how to handle newly captured terrorists. This sentiment was articulated well by the wife of one of the men killed in the bombing Khailani helped perpetrate.

“I can’t help but feel that the evidence in the case would have been stronger had Ghailani been brought to trial when he was captured in 2004.” (Quote taken from NYT article)

Had we been more committed to a fair and transparent system of justice (without torture) when Ghailani was first captured, it is likely that evidence could have been used to get additional convictions. I am proud to be an American, a citizen of a country with legal system capable of carry out such a complicated and heavy legal maneuver as this trial. I believe we are headed in the right direction, and I hope we stay the course.

Post Script:

The Washington Post chose to lead with the line below in the opening paragraph, which is indicative of a disturbing and all too common ploy for many news outlets recently.

The outcome, a surprise, seriously undermines - and could doom - the Obama administration's plans to put other Guantanamo detainees on trial in U.S. civilian courts.

This statement is inflammatory, contributes nothing to the understanding of the events that they are reporting, and is based purely on the opinion of the author. The article goes on to provide lots of good information, from which I draw the opposite conclusion. So why lead with that sentiment? I found the doomsday headlines and news stories after the November 2nd elections equally inaccurate and unhelpful. We, as readers, would be very happy with your article if you simply remove this ridiculous editorial from the reporting of news. End of rant.

Voter Protection - Well done CO Dems

2010-10-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

There is a funny disconnect that happens sometimes for people who volunteer for elections, you can get so focused on getting other people to vote you forget to make sure you cast your own ballot. I solve this issue by signing up for permanent mail-in ballot, which is very common in Colorado, and I love it. It wasn't until I had made a couple rounds of calls to people reminding them to send in their ballots that I realized that mine hadn't come yet.

Fortunately the Colorado Secretary of State has a website where you can check your voter registration status and the status of your ballot. I checked on Friday and saw that my ballot is marked "undeliverable." I called the Secretary of State and the Douglas County Clerk and Recorder but they had both gone home for the weekend (a little lame, at 6:00pm less than two weeks before the election). Here is the good part.

Saturday morning I got a call (pre-recorded) from the Election Protection Director of the Colorado Democratic Party letting me know that they had also noticed my ballot was marked "undeliverable." The message told me what my options were and where to go for information. Impressive!

It is great to see this kind of organized response, Voter Protection is unfortunately critical in Colorado elections. In 2008 we had issues with County Sheriffs following and intimidating our poll runners, and Mike Coffman (then SOS, now embarrassingly my Congressman in CD6) tried to purge groups of voters from the rolls. I am certainly suspicious when my ballot is "undeliverable" but both of my parents' ballots arrived safely at the exact same address. I am not accusing Jack Arrowsmith and the Douglas County Clerk and Recorder's office of election fraud. But I am glad that the state Democratic party is on top of it.

Election protection is one of many volunteer needs. Get involved with OFA in Colorado, or if you have skills specific to Election Protection, there is a volunteer sign up here.

Julie's Thesis, seen through Wordle

2010-10-11T20:38:00.000-07:00

I was playing with Wordle and trying to think of what to test it on, so I used Julie's 100+ page under-grad thesis and her 100+ page MPhil thesis. Great visuals!

Justice Administration in Meheba Refugee Settlement (Oxford Mphil Thesis)

The Impact of Elections on Peace Duration and Quality of Democracy in Post-Civil War Countries (Stanford Honors Thesis, program in Democracy Development, and the Rule of Law)

And the two combined...

Voter Access Network on the iPhone

2010-08-18T23:33:00.000-07:00

VAN (Voter Access Network) was the center piece of my life for many months. Anyone who has worked in the Field Office for a democratic political campaign has probably used it. It is a powerful tool that enables very detailed and large scale outreach of various types along with very granular targeting. However, many of the processes around the VAN in a Field campaign create extra work. Creating lists, printing them, using those paper lists for voter contact, doing the data entry, and then properly disposing of the lists is one of the most time consuming aspect of Field effort. If this digital solution to that process existed then it might have been able to save me 2-3 hours each day (that is a lot when you are only getting 3-5 hours of sleep per day). It would probably have saved my volunteer team about 10-15 total hours each day as well.

Obama taught an army of followers how to talk to their neighbors, how to tell their stories, and how to take control of the election process. We were able to do this through sheer numbers and brute force, but as tools like this one make it easier to conduct meaningful outreach that is well tracked and targetted I hope we will see even more political engagement at the neighborhood level. I am sure there is a learning curve, but I am hopeful.

http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/its-van-mini

Influential Writing

2010-08-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

I have read a few Paul Graham articles here and there but was always rushing through and never really gave them my full attention. But after a discussion with some friends over whether Yahoo is still a top level player I went back and read this essay. That essay linked to this one, a definition/celebration of hacker culture. I was really impressed by the persuasiveness of his writing (good thing I was using him to support my case on the yahoo argument). The hacker article made me launch straight into some MySQL practice I had been putting off! I think I will be setting aside some serious weekend time to dig into old essays.

Steve Blank Presentation at Start Up Lessons Learned Conference

2010-08-07T22:34:00.001-07:00

After working for a start up that didn't get off the ground, and now one that is kicking butt, I still have trouble describing what it is that I love about the atmosphere in an early stage company. Steve Blank's clear and precise style offered some help recently. I love the search, more like a quest, to create value for your customers and then define and replicate the value you are creating. Once it is identified and everything is lining up to make it repeatable it is still challenging and exciting, but it isn't as magical. I find slides 47-51 ("why start ups aren't run by accountants") especially clear. I identify very strongly with the first set of characteristics, and less so with the second and especially the third.

Why accountants don’t run startups sllc

View more presentations from steve blank.

World Cup Round Up

2010-06-27T23:26:00.000-07:00

We didn't end up updating much during the trip, I guess that shows we were having a good time. The pictures tell the story, with an assit from the video I made on the flight home. Enjoy, trip take-aways below.

Photos on in my picasa album.

People told us that Cape Town would remind us of San Francisco, and it does. The coastline is probably even better, even more beautiful than Big Sur. We could easily have just stayed there and been very happy :)

Kalk Bay is the place to stay for an extended visit in Cape Town, it is a beautiful and lively harbor town where you can easily spend relaxing mornings and nights when going in to the city for all the sights. I highly recommend both Kalk Bay Guesthouse and the Chartfield Guest house. Both are run by wonderful people who added a great deal to our trip.

The World Cup is everything you can imagine it to be and more. People from all around the world arrive to celebrate and love on each other. It is unbridled joy like I have never experienced. Julie likes to joke with me that I found my dance there, and the truth is I just needed to party with thousands of people who I know are soccer fans! You will find me in Brazil in 2014, I guarantee it.

USA vs England and Some Driving w Jane and Joe

2010-06-14T02:20:00.000-07:00

Julie and I went into town for the USA vs England match and watched it at the fan fest. Basically a fan fest is a giant screen and a mass of people, pretty much the perfect way to watch a match.

The US fans were doing all sorts of cheers, but by far the most awesome were the cheers from the Obama campaign! "YES WE CAN" is the new patriotism, which I think is very awesome.

There was live music before the match, and lots of great dancing before and after. There aint no party like a soccer hooligan party.

That is Taylor Ahlgren, also a Stanford Soccer alum. He works with Grassroots Soccer in Cape Town.

USA! USA! USA!

That is Simon's Town from the cliffs above town. Simons town is two towns south of Kalk Bay.

Simon's town is a Navy Base, and there is an old battery on the cliff.

Joe swam in that water, but just going up to the shins was enough for me :)

South Africa World Cup 2010

2010-06-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

Julie and I are here! We are staying in Kalk Bay, a perfect quiet little town an hour train ride outside of the center of Cape Town to the South. Our guest house is beautiful, with a balcony overlooking the sea (picture below). We arrived late Thursday evening (Joe and Jane were sooo kind and picked us up at the airport). On Friday we jumped right in, watching the opening match (SA vs Mexico) in the center of town and then we went to our first World Cup match, France vs Uruguay. The match itself was average, a 0-0 draw, but the stadium and atmosphere were perfect. Julie was one of many who wore earplugs to prevent long term damage, but I would allow no barriers between me and the madness of the vuvuzelas :) Tonight is USA vs England, we will head back in to town to meet up with Taylor Ahlgren and watch a classic US victory! Select photos below, I am uploading them all here. Youtube is blocked on our network, so I am uploading videos to facebook. Check them out there, they are awesome. I will upload to youtube and post them here when I get back.

The view from our balcony.

You need this kind of focus for face painting like that.

Paaaaarty! This was the impromptu party/parade in Green Market Square before the SA-Mexico match.

Julie is a natural on the vuvunzela of course.

Amazing stadium! We rep'ed France for the match. We will be sure to covered in yellow for future pictures (except tonight when we will have on red white and blue!).

Save The Day

2010-03-27T20:19:00.001-07:00

I like to listen to This American Life while ridding my bike on the weekends. My usual ride is from our house in Noe Valley to Ocean Beach to fly my kite. Last weekend I decided to ride the Marin Headlands. It was a beautiful day, and I don't need any excuse to cross the Golden Gate Bridge on a bike. The episode of TAL that I listened to was called "Save the Day" and is by far my favorite so far.

I especially enjoyed the second chapter, the life raft game. If you are like me and majored in the humanities at a liberal arts school, and like me you feel this was incredibly valuable and worth while, you may also feel the occasional angst that the life raft game is designed to address. The game is sponsored by a liberal arts college, and each year a member of the various academic departments argues to the student body that if the students were on a life raft, the only survivors on the planet, with one seat left, it should go to a member of their department and no other. There is also a devil's advocate, who argues that none of the departments should receive a seat, and the students should go it alone. Each of the departments used humor and silliness to attempt to win the contest through popularity, while the devils advocate offers a passionate defense of the liberal arts more generally. You will have to listen to see how the students vote.

Best Ad Ever - Would you miss Milan-Real Madrid?

2010-03-20T21:19:00.001-07:00

Granted, I could not be more the target audience, but I honestly have gotten goosebumps three times in a row from watching it. I will get a Heineken next time I go out.

My parents in Guatemala with Faith In Practice

2010-03-07T21:53:00.000-08:00

They rocked it! Check out the email from my mom when they got home.

Hi, guys,
Just a quick note to let you know we are back home after 2 very busy but good weeks.
We saw 1665 ambulatory patients in the villages, drawn to 2 central locations from about 24 surrounding smaller villages. The 3 dentists pulled 995 teeth in 4 days- yikes!
We made 224 referrals for surgery and other medical problems that need follow-up.
During the second week, we did 65 surgeries, among them hernia repairs, gall bladder removal, a variety of cysts in various areas, many different GYN procedures, and about 14 cleft lip and palate repairs.
We also had a very nice visit with Erick and his family, and continue to work with them to make a habitable home for them.
All in all, a good 2 weeks. We both head back to work tomorrow.
Love to all,
Mom & Dad

Kites

2010-02-20T14:15:00.001-08:00

I am starting to get into kite flying again, now that I am in a place with good regular wind. Check out this awesome kite I saw at ocean beach a couple of weeks ago.

This is what I aspire to!

Wanna fly with me sometime? I fly the Quantum, a great kite to learn on!

First Round Capital Exchange Fund

2010-01-31T16:34:00.001-08:00

First Round is one of the investors in VigLink (Google Ventures is another), so I have started watching them. Oliver, our CEO, was at the CEO/Founder summit last week, which sounded amazing. I was especially excited by this announcement of their new exchange fund. Josh Kopelman describes the benefits well,

"When I was an entrepreneur, I remember the feeling of having all my eggs in one basket -- and it is our hope that this fund will remove some of that stress. Now our entrepreneurs can get the same diversified portfolio that our limited partners get (with better economic terms) and receive a financial benefit when other First Round Companies exit (even if their own company is still years away from an exit)."

I agree that mediating risk with this diversification removes a barrier to founding a company, but the thing that is most exciting to me about the exchange fund is the sense of community it must facilitate among the participating entrepreneurs. I have heard many blogs describe the process of starting a company as lonely and stressful, which it is. But for a carefully selected community of founders, which First Round's portfolio is, I imagine the potential for personal and professional synergy and coordination is massive!

See coverage here and here.

VigLink

2010-01-29T16:35:00.000-08:00

I started my new job last week at VigLink! I am very excited for this opportunity, and the biggest reason is the people I now get to be associated with. I really like the team (we are 5), there is excitement about what we are doing and the atmosphere in the office is very focused and driven without feeling at all frantic. We have an exciting product, I am learning the industry, and ready to rock and roll! Check out some great press about the release just before I came on board. It is an all-star group of investors as well, see my post here about a cool initiative at First Round.

iSlate | Apple's rumored Device

2010-01-21T17:42:00.010-08:00

iSlate | Apple's rumored Device

While I am a gadget geek, I wouldn't normally blog about it, but I have been thinking about this device in the shower. I need to put my thoughts out there.

Actually, my imagination has been caught by a mix of the images of this tablet, and what I have heard about firefox mobile. I often find myself looking at a tweet in twidroid on my droid phone and wanting to open the link in the tweet to read later. Right now I share the tweet as a task to my g tasks and then open the g tasks on my laptop and read it in the browser there. I am imagining clicking the link on my phone, then leaving the browser open in the background and what-do-ya-know it is ready for me when I open my laptop. I am really hoping that the tablet interface is a lot more like a phone than a computer OS, with a phone-like battery life, 3G connection, and this firefox mobile with real time tab syncing. Best case, the tablet has a data connection, and it talks to my phone with bluetooth (or something), and all my phone really does is let met display the tablet which is still in my bag. I use the phone when I don't have time to pull out the tablet. All my calls are VOIP through the connection to the tablet, no more cell minutes. Even without this tablet/phone connection, the idea of a mashup with the very easy, super portable interface of a smart phone and the display and power of a laptop has me up at night.

By the way, I am not at all tied to this being an iSlate/iPhone thing. Personally I would rather have the above super gadget combo be a Chrome OS/Android thing! Here are some concept images.

UPDATE: 50 Apple tablets found by flurry, probably.

BTW, Steve Jobs is excited.

Live blogging from NYT of the announcement, ~~I am a little disappointed to hear that so far it looks like no 3G.~~ (3G and under $700, Whoa baby). I hope there is a keyboard functionality for dragging your finger rather than tapping, like swype for android (which I love).

Oooo, spotlight search (at the bottom).

These are overstated criticisms, but I have to say that no multi-tasking is tough to get over.

Update: Front facing camera for future releases!

Moving on, and Starting Up

2010-01-18T15:24:00.000-08:00

Over the Holidays I made the decision to leave Colorado Forest and Energy and move to San Francisco. I made this decision for many reasons, lack of faith in the quality of the product or the future of the business is not one of them. I believe strongly that in the energy world centralized will be replaced by distributed, products making effective use of waste have an advantage, and modular systems that are easy to deploy can gain a foothold quickly and be successful. The most important reason (in code) for the move is that it will remove the LD from the R with my SO. I am in San Francisco, living in Noe Valley (with my SO). So far I have found the magic curry kart twitter.com/magiccurrykart and the sexy soup cart twitter.com/sexysoupcart, and I have decided that I will become a connoisseur of food carts in the Mission (the creme brulee cart will be my white whale). I love our apartment, our roommates, and the first week of living here has gone off without a hitch. I am actively job hunting, which is turning out to be a fun and fascinating process. I am learning a great deal and enjoying the search quite a bit. I am very excited by the prospects I have so far, and I look forward to posting about what I decide to do.

Share Liverpool FC

2009-10-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

I am a Liverpool Fan, they are the champion of champions. They are the best club in the world.

I must say that when their current American owners purchased the club I was a little concerned but hoped that it would really bring some needed resources. Instead, they have saddled the club with their debt, and I agree with most Liverpool fas that it is time for them to leave. Share Liverpool FC is an effort by fans to acquire ownership in the club. Barcelona already has a fan ownership model, one that is worth emulating. Sign up for updates and pledge to own a piece of the Reds!

Also, check out this site for my kind of socialism, the football kind.
"The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life." -Bill Shankly

Colorado PUC issues emergency net metering rules- Reposted from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council

2009-10-02T19:04:00.022-07:00

These regulations have the power to determine the life or death of a company like ours. Colorado's renewable energy regulations have an interesting history. In 2004 when voters here passed Amendment 37 we were the first voters to pass renewable portfolio standards (RPS). The Colorado Public Utility Commission is responsible for defining and updating the rules governing RPS and all activities of Utilities.

This recent ruling (the emergency rules were formalized in a recent filing) is especially relevant to us as it discusses "third party operators," like us. We finance the units we install, selling heat and power to our customers but requiring no up front capital from them, making us a third party operator. The solar industry has thrived in Colorado because Xcel offers them the rebates and rates described below. We are beginning to push for the same rules to apply to us as well. Our units can provide equally clean energy to apply to Xcel's RPS, but we also have the added benefit of operating 24x7, day or night, rain or shine!

Colorado PUC issues emergency net metering rules: "COLORADO – On August 26, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission issued emergency rules for the state’s Renewable Energy Standard, to implement changes required by SB 51, signed into law in April 2009. The changes became effective September 1. SB 51 required several changes to the state’s net metering rules for investor-owned utilities as they apply to solar electric systems. As previously mentioned in this publication, these changes include shifting the maximum system size for solar electric systems from 2 MW to 120% of the annual consumption of the site; redefining a site to include all contiguous property owned by the consumer; and allowing system owners to make a one-time election in writing to have their annual net excess generation carried forward as a credit from month to month indefinitely, rather than being paid annually at the average hourly incremental cost for that year. While SB 51 dealt explicitly with solar electric, the emergency rules pertain to all eligible energy resources. The Colorado PUC continues to develop final rules under Docket 08R-424E.
On a related note, in August, Xcel Energy Inc. asked the Colorado PUC for permission to change its popular “Solar Rewards” rebate program to allow third-party developers to participate. Senate Bill 51 allows third-party companies to own and install solar panels on residential roofs, while homeowners pay a monthly lease for the panels and use the renewable power in their homes.
Xcel on Monday proposed changing its Solar Rewards rebate program to allow these third-party companies to access the rebate money. In the past, only the property owner could receive any rebate money. All solar power systems get a $2 per watt rebate, per state law. The systems are also eligible for an additional payment for the Renewable Energy Credit (REC), associated with renewable power generation.
For systems owned by third parties, and sized 1 to 100 kilowatts, REC payments are 11 cents per kWh. For those sized 10 to 100 kilowatts, the REC payment is 11.5 cents per kWh. For systems capable of producing between 100 and 500 kilowatts, the $2 rebate is capped at $200,000, and the REC payment is 12.5 cents.
Xcel also recently announced that with the recent completion of infrastructure build-out and software deployment, Boulder, CO has become the world's first fully operational smart grid-enabled city."

Combined Heat and Power

2009-10-01T14:02:00.046-07:00

Many existing forms of electricity generation produce huge amounts of waste heat, but these massive centralized plants have no way to make use of this resource. Regardless of how efficient these plants become, or how "clean," centralized generation will always waste energy. As we rethink and update how we create and use energy in the United States, distributed energy is going to be a huge part of the solution.

The biomass gasification systems that we use at Colorado Forest and Energy are perfectly suited for distributed generation, they make extremely efficient use of waste residues by converting them to both power and heat. We attach directly to customer's site, where the heat produced in gasification and generation is easily routed to the customer's facility. When operating in this "combined heat and power (CHP) mode" these units have over 80% efficiency, converting over 80% of the energy stored in the feedstock into useable energy.

I came accross another very interesting combined heat and power company recently, Ceres Power. Their fuel cells are sized for a single home, much smaller than a BioMax, but are based on the same principle of providing heat and power. They use the natural gas piped into the home to do this. Some day perhaps we will see a fuel cell running on the syngas from a BioMax!

The Colorado Cleantech Opportunity- Reposted from Cleantechblog.com

2009-09-29T16:31:00.000-07:00

I am reposting a great article from Joel Serface about the Colorado Cleantech climate from earlier this year. I think he hits the nail right on the head. We at CF&E have seen the power of NREL and the strength of the state leadership, as Community Power Corporation developed their technology with support from NREL, DOE, USDA, and DOD. However, we are also experiencing the lack of local investment vehicles that Joel refers to. We are finding that while we can generate interest, our deal does not fall in the strike zone of any of the investors we have come across and we are becoming increasingly creative about getting it off the ground. A challenging and opportunity filled environment, what could be better!

The Colorado Cleantech Opportunity: "By Joel Serface – July 2, 2009

In June, I took a great camping trip to a truly unique feature that many outside the state of Colorado know little about. It was the Great Sand Dunes National Park – the tallest sand dunes in North America with the backdrop of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I arrived at the perfect time of the year when the temperature was warm enough to simulate a beach environment (small waves included), but before the snowmelt ceased over the course of the summer. It was a fantastic experience, but few other than Coloradans knew about this well-kept secret nestled in the interior of a beautiful state.

I found this a good analogy for the Colorado cleantech opportunity. While I have been in Colorado for only a year, I feel that I arrived at that perfect time when all the conditions were right for a unique experience that could only happen here and that few outside of the state know about. Could it be the perfect time for everything to converge in Colorado allowing it to become the leading cleantech state?

When I arrived to Austin in 2006, I conducted an inventory of local cleantech companies. I found around 20 of what I considered viable cleantech start-ups in Austin and over the time I was there helped grow this to around 40 through starting, recruiting, or coaching companies into the community. When I arrived to Colorado, I found a very surprising thing. In the Front Range – the area stretching from Colorado Springs to Fort Collins – alone, I was able to inventory almost 200 cleantech companies (not including the many services companies that comprise almost 1,778 reported by the Pew Center / Cleantech Group in Colorado). After meeting with many of these companies and delving deeper, I found that there was an incredibly fertile environment for these companies in Colorado with only a few key limitations.

Let’s start with the strengths of Colorado that created this environment…

Research – Colorado boasts among the highest renewable energy research budget per capita in the United States. This primarily comes to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), but also to several cooperative national labs including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and several defense laboratories. In addition, three major research universities in the state collaborate with NREL including the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, and Colorado School of Mines. Each of these institutions works closely with one another through the Colorado Collaboratory and the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, NREL’s management company.

Energy and technology industry expertise – The Colorado Front Range boasts something that no other major population center does… A location where the technology industry and traditional energy industry coexist. This translates into one of the few centers where both talent for cleantech company development and project development can both be executed.

Ease of recruitment / low cost of doing business – Colorado is a state that carries significantly lower costs than other tech states such as California and Colorado. Colorado also boasts among the of the most highly-educated workforces. Because of the low cost of living, highly-educated workforce, and an environmentally-friendly culture that values outdoors and quality of life, it is not difficult to recruit people from all over the United States to move here.

State leadership – Colorado has had strong leadership at the state and national level for a number of years around renewable energy. By setting a 20% Renewable Portfolio Standard and a statewide solar rebate, the state has signaled that it is open for clean energy business. Bill Ritter, the Governor of Colorado, is one of the most progressive governors on renewable energy issues that I have met and has an excellent supporting executive team in its Governor's Energy Office and Office of Economic Development. Because of their leadership and other factors above, Colorado has attracted major new renewable energy companies including Vestas, Siemens, ConocoPhillips, Abengoa Solar, and others to the state. They have also been successful in this despite the lack of other tools (see below) that other states have in place.

Thought leadership – In addition to research and state leadership, Colorado has a legacy of thought leadership in a number of areas such as green building, energy efficiency, smart grid, and energy analysis. Most already know the great work of Amory and Hunter Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute, but several other leading analyst firms exist. eSource, IDC Energy Insights, and Architectural Energy Corporation are all located in Boulder. NREL also maintains one of the largest renewable energy and energy efficiency analysts corps in the world in its Energy Analysis group.

City / community leadership – Boulder and several other communities have taken on leadership in vital areas such as its Smart Grid City efforts with Xcel Energy and in building efficiency standards and protection of open space. It is community and city leadership that are going to provide test beds for the integration of larger technologies at the city level. Denver, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, and many smaller communities (including mountain communities that are seemingly off grid) each have their respective efforts around energy and environmental leadership.

It’s not all rosy in Colorado. One of the major complaints at the state level are that they have limited economic development funds to help attract or re-locate companies. In my conversations with leaders in the state, I have expressed that their leadership is much more important in creating markets for clean technologies than in providing cash incentives. Leadership, markets, and environment all combine to attract companies to the state; having a little bit more economic development funding could be helpful in rounding out that portfolio, but not a requirement in moving major companies to the state.

A further weakness in building early stage companies in the state is its lack of “domestic” venture capital. Given the ideaflow, creativity, and talent here, it is disappointing that there are no cleantech-focused investing professionals on the ground here to help build early-stage companies providing the coaching and governance necessary to move them to their next stage of development. Several local generalist firms have tipped their feet in the water, but have not made this a large portion of their portfolios. A leading energy technology fund in the state makes very few investments in the state and even fewer in early-stage clean technology companies. There is a robust angel community of former entrepreneurs in Colorado, and a few of them are ramping up their cleantech investments. But still, most of the cleantech venture capital in the state today still comes from coastal VCs.

Like Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado is a relatively unknown commodity in cleantech. Many investors on both coasts suspect it has tremendous potential and will occasionally make it to the state to look at opportunities. Unfortunately, unless the investor is on the ground or has native ties here, many of these opportunities will be overlooked.

After a year here, I can attest that this will become one of the best places to build clean technology companies in the United States as all the above conditions converge and successful role model companies emerge.

Joel Serface served as NREL’s first Entrepreneur in Residence with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. As an investor and entrepreneur, Joel has planted cleantech seeds in Massachusetts, California, Texas, and now Colorado. Since 2000, Joel has started or invested into more than 20 cleantech companies with 5 liquidity events so far and has catalyzed the formation of numerous supporting cleantech institutions and regional and national policy initiatives.

Colorado Forest and Energy

2009-09-24T17:16:00.001-07:00

I am now working (and have been since June) at Colorado Forest and Energy (CF&E), a renewable energy start-up in my hometown of Denver, Colorado. Our website (colofe.com) can give an idea of who we are and what we do. Our founding team is a group of people that I know from the Obama campaign, we worked together in South Jefferson County Colorado. We are working with another local company, Community Power Corporation, to commercialize the BioMax technology they have developed (the website has good info on the technology).

The energy context in America is changing rapidly, and I think a few key concepts (that reinforce each other) will emerge as the most transformative.

Distributed Generation (small units connected directly to a facility like a school)
Community Based Solutions (engage people in the production of the energy they use)
Smart Grids (this includes demand management and the integration of distributed generation with good telemetry)
Thrift (we use all of the waste heat generated by our units, central plants waste huge amounts of heat and even central solar and wind waste energy in transmission and distribution)

It is not a mistake that these are the core principles that drive what we do at CF&E. We are pushing hard to get our venture off the ground, and when we do we will be the only company that deploys small (100kw) biomass gasification units and owns those units, selling the power generated to utilities or directly to customers. That is why we make the claim that we are "the world's first community-based bioenergy power company."

EGT is Famous, Goodbye to Jordan, and the Next Step

2009-09-19T17:12:00.000-07:00

It has been some time since my last post, and a lot has happened! EGT and the recycling program have grown, and have grown famous!

First Treehugger profiled us and highlighted the work of Andreas Petsas and Glen Walker. I mentioned Glen and Andreas in the last post, they are Manufacturing Engineers and recent graduates of Cambridge University. They did a tremendous job of following leads and analyzing the networks of recycling in Jordan. We joked that at the end of their weeks in Jordan they knew more about the big picture of recycling in Jordan than anyone in the country and it was probably true!

More recently, Jordan Business wrote a feature article on the accomplishments of EGT. It is a great article and gives a picture of the whole company, including the recycling business.

I left Jordan in June. I never posted an official goodbye, but I just want to say how grateful I am to everyone I lived and worked with. It was an amazing time and I learned so much. Thank you all!

I will start writing about my new enterprise from now on. The hiatus in the blog has been due to demands of the entrepreneurial venture I am currently involved with, Colorado Forest and Energy. From now on you can expect posts to be relevant to that business, distributed clean electricity generation and the clean tech world in general.

Onward!

EAB update

2009-05-29T09:40:00.001-07:00

It is just over 1 week until I head back home, I thought I would update with some of the improvements Magid has made to the site.

Here he is with the PET in its new, hopefully temporary home. Those bunkers behind are also full. This is about 5 tons of PET, but we have some ideas about buyers so it will hopefully be more than an eyesore soon.

All materials will be sorted and put directly into tire bays now, this will decrease the number of bags we have to use. Magid is showing us plastic. The bays are sized so that he knows about how much they should weigh when they are full, a full one should be about a truckload. When they are full he weighs them for the exact number and sends them to sale.

Tire garden looks great. Eggplant, grapes, tomatoes, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, cauliflower, excellente.

This is for you know who.

Petra

2009-05-29T05:53:00.003-07:00

Well, after 3 visits to Jordan and 3 months on this one I finally made it to Petra.

It was really beautiful and I am glad I waited to do it with the Julemeister.

The Treasury.

Andreas in front of the treasury. Andreas and Glen came from Cambridge to do an anlysis of our systems, especially making suggestions on what to do with all of that PET. They did a really excellent job, and after talking to all of the different organizations working on recycling, most of whom didn't know about each other, we decided they know more about recycling in Jordan than any other 2 people. They studied the informal sector, the Municipality, NGOs, the private sector, and EGT. Now we have dreams about conveyors and 40 ft shipping containers.

This is Glen. I should really post his pics, they are really amazing.

Plastic Remanufacturing

2009-04-24T01:12:00.002-07:00

These pics are from a while back, I forgot to post them, some shots of a factory that buys plastic from scavengers and makes office chairs.

Injection molder

Grinder and a pile of nylon.

A different grinder.

Not the most organized factory.

Ghabawi Landfill

2009-04-24T00:45:00.004-07:00

I got to go out and visit the big landfill that is receiving waste from several big cities including Amman. For someone working on a recycling project it was a pretty motivating experience.

This column of smoke was coming up from a power plant on the way to the dump. We asked the guys around it what was going on, they said they gathered all the trash from around there and burned it. We ask why, given that they were literally neighbors of the dump, they didn't take it there. They didn't really have an answer for that.

The weight bridge, you get weighed in, and then again empty on the way out.

The expanding edge. The dump is done in layers, which is covered each day with soil.

Everything that isn't soil is from today so far, it was about 11am.

A municipal truck with a compactor bulldozer behind it.

This bulldozer is not a compactor, you can tell by the caterpillars.

This is methane bubbling up through the leachate, 2 pretty horrible things. The leachate is literally trash juice, and this is coming from the completed cell 1. Cell 1 is 3.5 million tons of garbage. The methane coming out is 21x more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

This is a leachate treatment pool. Right now they are not actually treating the leachate. This, combined with the fact that cell 1 was overfilled, means that this toxic juice is getting into the soil and then the groundwater. It is the most foul substance I have ever seen. Yummers.

Garden Update

2009-04-24T00:39:00.003-07:00

About time I update the garden, it is taking off!

Here you can see the three main beds, bottom to top you see lettuce, tomatoes, and eggplant. The buckets have lettuce, it is growing too big for the plot so we are expanding! The raised beds have sage, the a grape.

This is looking through the plum tree at other beds. Fruit on the Plum oh my! The buckets have Rocket, Arugula, Jar Jeer, whatever you want to call it. So does the first bed. Behind that are 5 new strawberry plants. The long beds, from right to left, are broccoli, rocket, and cauliflower. In the seed starters there are pumpkins, lettuce, lavender, brussel sprouts, carrots, celery, and parsley. In the way back you can see our mutant 2 foot tall green onions, they are amazingly tasty.

Looking through one of the apple trees (there are 4) at the olive tree.

These are the massive broccoli next to the massive onions, we need to figure what compost we put on those beds!

We have an almond on our almond tree! Several of the brand new trees made an effort at fruit, very proud of them.

I think this is a peach tree, it is covered with baby fruit. Whatever fruit it is we will feast.

Community Recycling Ventures

2009-04-18T23:01:00.004-07:00

I found a really promising model for how we can work with our ecoRangers in a financially sustainable way. I am not sure how this will translate into the Jordanian context, especially given the presence of scavengers and the informal waste sector who take the most valuable waste, but the concept of recycling and repurposing waste as a form of stable employment for at risk men and youth is pretty promising. Collection on the streets and in neighborhoods is difficult because the informal sector can always outmanuever a bureaucratic program for the valuable waste. They don't take all recyclable waste if it takes a lower price or is bulky, and the informal recyclers don't provide environmental benefit because waste is transported so many times before it arrives at the Material Recovery Facility and the MRF itself is not environmental. At the same time, collection from large accounts is very difficult without large scale equipment, and when you try to manage the entire waste stream it requires a lot of time and resources to organize the waste in the account.
Here is the example from Australia http://www.communityrecycling.com.au/, a partnership between Eaglehawk Recycle Shop and Future Employment Opportunities Inc. Check out the brief description here http://www.communityrecycling.com.au/a-guide. They are supported by a social venture fund called Social Ventures Australia (http://socialventures.com.au/).

Right now our training is going really well, but at the end of 3 months have to part with guys we would really like to keep working with. The idea is to catalyze some recycling program that recognizes the value of these guys over capital intensive solutions so that they have more employment opportunities.

Recycled Products ctnd

2009-04-11T06:42:00.001-07:00

Check out a couple more, shelves and clothes rack (the hangers are also from the waste).

Shelves close up.

Recycled Products

2009-04-11T06:24:00.001-07:00

A few things we do with materials...

Tree rings and planters.

More containers, to keep in mulch and water.

A fine desk from an old glass door and Polystyrene.

Old bricks, polystyrene, and a bigger door. Nice kitchen island, no?

21st Century Storgage

2009-04-11T06:19:00.001-07:00

All of our storage is moving into tire bays. We can sort from the table right into the bays and then we don't have to use as many bags.

Justifiably proud of their work, Ahmed and Hatim.

Soon the tires will all have things growing in them. Maybe we can even paint them. Imagine an ecoPark with recycling storage as well as raised bed organic gardens all made of tires.

Go Hatim!

Danger!

2009-04-08T09:39:00.001-07:00

The Hazards of recycling. Found these in Whitman Academy's bins.

Frightening.

Rusaifa Land Fill

2009-04-08T05:23:00.002-07:00

This is actually a sad story. Massive landfill, equally massive biodigester and electricity generator. Could collect large amounts of Methane (21x more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas) from the garbage or imported organic waste and burn it to make electricity. Current electricity production-zero.

That's the landfill out there. Should be covered in plastic to keep the Methane from escaping, but it is too expensive to employ guards to keep it from being stolen.

The sludge from the digesting that is going on is also not being used. It should be used as compost, but currently it is full of heavy metals and pathogens from the slaughterhouse down the road. Enough to make you a vegetarian? Just about did it for me.

Anselm, friend and EnviroManager at the British Embassy.

Field Trip!

2009-04-08T05:21:00.002-07:00

We had a visit from Amman Baccalaureate School. 3rd graders, woot. They were great, lots of good questions, and definitely a change of pace for us.

Don't get too close to the sorting table young ones, ecoRangers are only partly tame. Magid being his usual fabulous self.

Now go home and tell your parents to Reduce-Reuse-Recycle!

Grinder

2009-03-29T05:59:00.001-07:00

This we have not bought yet, but man do we want to. At the moment we can not sell PET or glass, there is no where to recycle it in Jordan. If we ground it up we could sell it. We would also use it to grind organic material to make better compost faster. Yum.

This is a 3 ton grinder, meaning it can grind 3 tons of material a day.

There are 6 34 cm blades and 2 70 cm blades on the walls. Basically the short ones on the gears in the middle spin and pulverize things into the blades on the walls of the drums. When pieces are small enough to fit through the holes of the sieve they fall through. Otherwise they get crushed again. Simple, my kind of machine.

Hopefully I will have a noisy video to post soon of this bad boy in action.

Scale

2009-03-29T05:58:00.001-07:00

We got a scale! Turns out one of the guys on the site used to work in a steel shop and he is an expert on the scale. 15 and a scale expert, ya salaam. We used this to figure out today how much we can make on one round on a cart. The first day's test was about 3 dollars, the second day was less than 1. Materials sales are not going to drive this program!

Compost bin/ Recycling Bin

2009-03-23T08:41:00.003-07:00

A couple new products from Eyn al Basha...

Can't argue with a recycling bin made of all recyclable materials.

This is the compost bin. The wooden slats on the back are nailed on, each side has removable slats. This near side has the slats out. The bins are set up next to each other so that when it is time to turn the compost (about once a month) you remove the slats on the sides and everything moves right. You use about 4 bins, so after 4 months the final bin is moving right, out of the bins and into the garden! The slats are spaced with small pieces of wood to allow good air circulation.

Dead to Red Bike Race

2009-03-23T08:34:00.002-07:00

I have been bad about posting, let's catch up...

This was a 250k+ bike race. We had 5 on our team, we started with 10k sections then 5 k at the end. We were called the Dred Shaheen.

I had the fortune of starting and finishing for our team, luck of the draw. This is the finish.

This is one of the interchanges, relay style. Not a bad backdrop.

That is me. At that point we were leading the pack. Behind me is Jordan's ex-national champion and the #2. I did not lead for long on this hill. And oh yeah, they did the whole race on their own and this was about half way.

Back fromthe Boiler Room

2009-03-14T00:14:00.002-07:00

Ghalib stopped by to say hi on his way home from working in a boiler room, the pics were too good not to post.

What a handsome guy.

I didn't manage to capture a smile, but he is a fun lovin guy and mostly came over to celebrate the good mess he made.

Hitting the streets

2009-03-14T00:13:00.002-07:00

Here is a pic of Philip and Muhammad back from a run around town cleaning up and picking up recyclables. We are trying to build the model of the ecoRanger on the streets helping manage waste in a more appropriate way than the big municipal trucks that creates mess and traffic problems. There are a LOT of social factors to solve that become clear when we are out on the streets, but it is also as clear as ever that for recycling to work here the informal sector must be integrated. We are focusing on investing in our guys and hoping the idea catches with an institutional player. Muhammad is 16 and can't read and write and is also the hardest working guy in the program. Feeding off his energy reminds us that even if we don't get the institutional contract we can still have a strong positive environmental and social impact.

Cutting Glass Bottles

2009-03-13T23:59:00.001-07:00

I tried cutting glass bottles and it actually worked pretty well. Fill a bottle with water up to the line you want the cut at, soak a string in alcohol, tie it around the bottle at the line, light the string, finally dunk the bottle in ice cold water with pressure and viola! I am going to try cutting the bottom off of wine bottles and using them as light shades for the lights hanging from the ceiling. Maybe pics soon.

Compost Experiment

2009-02-27T08:17:00.005-08:00

We got together with our friend Ragheda to help her start moving her large and very beautiful garden to be fully organic. She is also working to incorporate organic gardening into a program she runs for mentally handicapped adults.

This is an example of a compost pit.

Oh yeah, she also has gazelle on her property.

Some nice covered vegetable gardens.

Just to add some contrast, you can see Baga'a from the house. I have been told it is the largest refugee camp in the world, home to 250,000 Palestinians. The extreme density of housing characterizes the camps in Jordan.

Harvesting the Pruned Olive

2009-02-27T08:10:00.003-08:00

We pruned the olive tree pretty dramatically and that means lots of trimmings full of olives! Check it out.

We pulled them off onto the tarp to collect them.

So nice!

That's about 3 gallons of olives.

Graduation

2009-02-27T08:06:00.003-08:00

Just a quick pic from the whole crew at the most recent graduation.

We had three graduates, we are working hard to grow the program and generate the cash flow we need to afford jobs for them. Balancing the short term survival of the program with the long term planning is not easy.

Late night cardboard run

2009-02-20T05:33:00.003-08:00

We got word that someone dumped a whole bunch of cardboard out in an empty lot, they called in the eco-Rangers. It turned out the cardboard was full of styrofoam so we couldn't take it all, we stuffed as much styrofoam as we could in a couple of boxes and took the rest. I just wanted to post something about the work we do to figure out what the factors are that need resolution in order to build a real grassroots recycling system.

In this case we obviously need a better system.

The New Cart

2009-02-20T05:31:00.003-08:00

Our new cart arrived! This is the main tool of the eco-Rangers, collecting with the cart and then the truck brings material down to Ayn al-Basha for sorting.
Go boys go!

The team and the folks from Shems, the french NGO that donate to the program. Big thanks to them. The cart made for a very exciting day and they really made it possible.

That is Magid with the cart. Magid teaches the class and oversees the sorting. Magid is a rock, we have some pretty young guys and some pretty old guys working with us and everyone looks up to him. He is a great manager and leader.

Heloowa!

A use for bottles!

2009-02-20T05:26:00.003-08:00

There is no PET recycling in Jordan, but there are a LOT of PET bottles. WorldChanging.com posted a story about a house of bottles (http://lacasadebotellas.googlepages.com/) and obviously we were intrigued. See some photos below of Ghalib and I trying our own design.

Maybe we should use them for drapes...

Chopping off the top of one bottle, then it fits over another bottle to make our bricks.

Holes are drilled in each end and here Ghalib is feeding a wire through.

21 rows of 6 bottles. Wire runs through each row with other wires weaving across the 3rd and 4th bottles for stability. Ghalib putting on the final touches. This is just to test the model, but we are going to make the gate for the cafe next. The panels would be good for a compost bin, or even insulated concrete forms for construction. Maybe more to come.

Wadi Numera

2009-02-16T10:08:00.004-08:00

On Friday we went down to Ghor As-Safi and hiked the Wadi. We also visited the cement block workshop. We are working with the Jimaeea in Safi to generate their own bricks for their housing project. The site can also serve as the base of operation for recycling in the dead sea area, as well as our permaculture test site. I don't have and CBW pics, but here are some good ones from Wadi Numera. Thanks to Zach for the pictures, I had forgotten my camera.

It is nice and cool inside.

Climbing the waterfal.

Leap! The water would normally be much higher, even covering the canyon floor, but there has been no rain.

That's snow!! No, of course not really. It's salt. Yes really. Those are the salt flats at the south end of the dead sea. It made a really gooey soup with the mud underneath, but in some areas it was solid enough to walk on without falling in.

B-Day dinner

2009-02-12T13:08:00.001-08:00

We had a very nice dinner tonight at the cafethat I think is worth sharing (can you tell I am finding blogging a little adicting?). Philip made his speciality, Carbonara.

The green onions and the Arugula flowers are from the garden.

Mmmmmm...

I was in charge of the fire.

Thanks guys for a great B-Day! This is Philip with Nancy on his right and Zach on his left, by the way.

Lemons, the Sunset, and Strategic Planning

2009-02-11T12:38:00.000-08:00

Today was the most productive day yet. We got a lot of the foundational documents nailed down and we can jump into the business plan with gusto. That is going to be a fun process, woot strategic planning! I basically just read a book on business plans and downloaded it into a planning template, we will see how it goes. It was a very helpful book though, if you are on the market for a business plan book I do recommend "Writing a Convincing Business Plan," Third Edition by DeThomas and Derammelaere. Anyway, I have never worked with a document like this before, it is a very different writing style. I am used to academic writing where you can make much broader claims and dream pretty big dreams and probably even find someone to quote to support it. Now we can only say what we can deliver, that is a little harder. Cut the fluff and reel it in G!

This is the lemon tree.

It really is pretty prolific. I will post more later on all of the goodness in the garden.

Post rain sunset.

When I came to Amman the first time I saw the moon rise over the city. It was the first time I had ever seen moonrise. I will try to capture that sometime, I think it might only happen in the summer.

We made marmalade

2009-02-10T14:48:00.001-08:00

Much thanks to Sticky Nicky, who led the charge. It tastes great, and we cooked it with the seeds in for the pectin so it is pretty firm, which I like. Yep, those are chunks of real fruit inside.

Rain!

2009-02-10T14:45:00.001-08:00

It finally rained! We have all been waiting for this rain today, the wind was wild all day but for a while the sun came out and we thought we wouldn't get a drop. Then this. There was even some pretty impressive lightning. We let some green onions soak it up and we picked them and made green onion and olive pasta, yummers.

Ayn Al-Basha

2009-02-09T13:18:00.001-08:00

First, I suppose I haven't really posted a description of what I am doing here. I am working with Entity Green Training (EGT).

"Entity Green Training (EGT) is a Jordanian company that provides livelihood strategies to meet the needs of people from poor and marginalized communities. EGT's approach focuses on vocational training, income generation support services, and building affordable housing. Our long term goal is to create sustainable communities where people have access to economic and social opportunities and can enjoy a sense of security and well-being."

Things are settling in, I even bought groceries. I got a kilo of bread, 3 tomatoes, 4 cucumbers, and 6 tangerines for the same amount as a small jar of peanutbutter ($3). I think I am going to leave out the peanut butter and stick with the basics. We had fried spring onions and cabbage for dinner, mmmm.
After a few days of sitting in and tagging along I am feeling more in touch with the program and able to contribute some real work. Among other things, I am helping get the website up and running, I will post it as soon as it is live.
I finished E.F. Schumaker's Small is Beautiful on the plane coming here (if you haven't read I would really suggest it) and it has proved very appropriate. We are being very intentional about developing and growing, and I can see the merits of Schumaker's focus on small, appropriate, localized solutions. Just as with the Obama campain "community organizing" didn't mean anything to me before I started, now "integrated" and "community based" are words that are gaining layers of meaning and importance for me.
Below are photos of the vocational training site at Ayn Al-Basha.

Inside the hanger. In the back are hundreds of bags of water bottles collected from the Sheraton Hotel, our largest account. In the front is a sorting table where I was pouring water left in the bottles into an oil container we got out of the garbage. I did three bags and got around 10 litters of water from each.

This is a section of the bottle mural. I will post the whole thing sometime. No one in Jordan recycles glass, and we aren't sure exactly what we will do with these, but for now they look nice. I am advocating for their inclusion in the construction of a structure, maybe as a window. Finding good markets for our waste is a barrier to what will eventually be a self sustaining recycling opperation. Some materials we cannot sell, and some materials have been hit hard by the recession, cardboard for example went from about $140 a ton to about $30 in the last few months.

These bays are where the VT magic happens. The classes offered at the site are electrical, plumbing, recycling, automotive repair, cooking, computer software, computer hardware, cement block production, construction, and organic gardening. The site is always humming with activity, I call it good church.

The offices are in the turquoise building. The site and the VT program are mostly funded by a large grant at the moment. Students receive a stipend and teachers (some international and some Jordanian) are also paid. The program works with 80% displaced Iraqis and 20% Jordanians. The site is right next to Bagaa refugee camp which is home to 250,000 Palestinians. The lease on the land is up in a few months and we will reevaluate the program if we can not keep the site. The presence of the Iraqi refugees sparked an influx of funding in Jordan, but as Iraqis go back there is the worry that the good projects that have developed will lose funding and will not survive. There is a need for a training program in Jordan (or anywhere) that offers the support services and integrated livelihood support we do. We will stay lean, mean, and mobile if the need arises.

The Cafe

2009-02-07T13:31:00.001-08:00

Things are going well, I have started to read through all of the documents on the internal network and get the lay of the land. I have also spent some time at the vocational training site and spent a couple days digging through dumpsters with the eco-rangers. The program is developing slowly and on a very small scale right now. We do recycling for the Sheraton and we steal (with permision) all of the carboard from a hospital, among a few smaller recycling accounts. Soon we hope to develop the hospital as an account and help them developing sorting processes so we can collect their waste, but we need to refine the community based model and establish a few community depots for sorting before we can go after any bigger accounts. It is a good process, we are learning a lot of ways to be more efficient.
The Cafe is one of our most flexible accounts, we own it. We don't own any of our tools or other facilities at this point, so this is a great place for us to develop ideas. Also it is very comfortable and a short bike ride from my place (my place now has a name, Rainbow House).

Here is the front of the EG Cafe. The first floor will eventually be a public cafe, Philip and Zach live on the second floor which is also where the office is. The whole house is designed for passive solar heating and cooling, facing south to get the low sun in the winter with long overhangs to shade the sun in the summer when it is higher in the sky. Everything in Jordan is built with cement blocks which get cold at night and hold that temperature during the day when it heats up. This means that you shower at night in the winter because it is a little chilly in the morning but during the summer you shower in the morning because you can't get cold water at night since the cold water tank is baking on the roof. The garden is very active and growing, we will add some green growing things on the roof eventually and if we get really ambitious maybe some vertical growing systems. We have figs, apples, lemons, berries, grapes, and all manner of vegitables.

In the corner we have the 'wednesday well.' As I mentioned a LOT of water is lost in Amman. We live on a big hill so a lot of that water runs under us. We noticed a line of plants growing under our wall and found that some of the water collects there. We directed it to the tank in the corner and filled it up in 3 hours. So now every Wednesday the tank will fill up (that is when the municipality fills the tanks on the roofs).

This is taken from the roof, a nice view of the whole front garden. And the truck.

Inside the cafe. We also store and sell some of the crafts from the MPA (Marketing, Packaging, Access) program. It is a women's income generating program in some communities around the vocational training site. We have a TV and dvd player that someone left on our doorstep. The word is out that we like garbage and broken down electronics, so neighbors leave things on our balcony now. Recently someone left a dvd player with an american plug, we have no idea how it got here as even with a transformer it won't work , but it will give the electical training class something to work with next week. Apparently they can convert it to work here.

My Urban Homestead

2009-02-05T12:55:00.002-08:00

The steps from Shariye Omar Bin Ghattab. You know you reached our house when the wall turns pink.

The pump for that tank in the background was literally pouring water down the street when I arrived. In a country with almost no water at all, in the middle of one of the worst droughts ever recorded , people estimate that anywhere from 50-80% of the water in Amman is lost by leaking pipes.

The garden is nice though, my roomate Nicholas is a master gardener from England.

The bike is chewing up the pavment, I love it.

Roofs in Amman are actually a little depressing, mostly rusty metal and more leaky water storage. All of these roofs are designed to hold another floor that may never be built. Imagine if they were all covered with soil and green growing things. Goodbye heat island, hello banadora!

The Beggining-Istanbul

2009-02-04T14:00:00.006-08:00

Here it goes, first ever blog post...
On my way to Jordan I was delayed by many hours in the London airport and missed my connection from Istanbul to Amman. It worked out great though, I got a day in Istanbul paid for by the airline (thanks Turkish Airlines, they were great). Here are some highlights....

The Blue Mosque

The Hagia Sophia

Inside the Hagia Sopia