In preparation for this week’s Bytemarks Cafe, where we talk to Stevie Whalen from the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center and Dave Waller from Hawaiian Electric about biofuels, I dug up this presentation done by Maurice Kaya back in 2002, while he was the State’s Chief Technology Officer. In it you will find background information about the State’s fuel mandates on the use of ethanol. As it turns out, the use of 10% ethanol in gasoline is mandated by law. This was supposed to coincide with the production of biofuels and the extraction of ethanol in the state. This did not happen as planned at the ethanol is now shipped in from out of state. Tune into KIPO 89.3FM on Wed 3/10 at 5pm and find out “the rest of the story.”
Let’s face it the tsunami won. When I went to sleep on Friday night I heard about the 8.8 earthquake in Chile and the potential for a tsunami. When I woke on Saturday morning about 5:30am I got messages from Roxanne Darling and Todd Ogasawara asking if the Unconferenz 2010 was still on. My initial response was, “Yes, it is still on.” There was a tsunami warning in Sept 2009 from an 7.9 earthquake off California that resulted in a 6in wave and I wasn’t about to let this one change my plans.
As I started to call around I noticed that the seriousness of this tsunami threat was considerably more than the one in Sept. Roads were being closed, businesses and shopping centers were shut down, sirens were being sounded, news coverage went into full time mode, people were making runs on gas and food and the clincher for me was that Kapiolani Community College was ceasing their operations. Without a facility, the decision to postpone the Unconferenz was a relatively easy one.
The remaining Saturday was spend watching the news coverage of the tsunami. As natural disasters go, a tsunami is like a spectator sport, at least ones like these that have a long lead time and happen in the middle of the day. For the most part its a normal day with full electrical power, Internet access and phone service. I even went for a run along Pearl Harbor around 9am. Everyone is watching and reporting what they see. As a result there are some very interesting views of the tsunami as it unfolded on the social media aware. Here are a few of my favorites;
Roxanne Darling posted this on her blog: Hawaii Tsunami Proves Social Media Power Again: Information is a Tonic. It’s a great sampling of new and traditional media views of the tsunami as a news event.
Most of us were glued to the television watching the various news casts. KGMB, the CBS affiliate had full time coverage as did the other stations. In the case of KGMB, they had a camera pointed at Hilo Bay with a great vantage point of the ocean. With a clear view you could tell when the ocean tides changed. In this series of photos taken by Ryan Ozawa, you can clearly see the current of the water as it recedes and then flows back in. If the tsunami created a flooding this would provide a perfect view of it. Luckily that didn’t happen. From this view you could see how the repetition of the tsunami waves would enter the bay then recede, an awesome sight to see.
Local blogger John Garcia created a site that streamed the hashtag #hitsunami found at http://hitsunami.info/. This was a realtime view of twitter posts aggregated in one place. Granted you could get something similar by searching the hashtag on Twitter but you would not have gotten the Ustream.tv feed or the Civil Defense updates.
During the tsunami warning, TV cameras were pointed at Waikiki beach. Everyone was cleared from the waters and the beach area. In spite of this there is always the oddball who disregards the warnings and goes into the water anyway. This guy was caught on camera wading out into the surf appearing to taunt the ocean with his arms. This has now been immortalized in a Facebook fan page called: The idiot who was swimming in Waikiki during the tsunami warning.
Obviously this is just a small sampling of the various views of the events as they occurred on Saturday. Finally, I must include this image of the energy created by the earthquake. This NOAA image captures it for me and validates the concern expressed and actions taken by the Tsunami Warning Center and the Civil Defense.
When we first reported on the State’s Task Force on Reinventing Government, I was a little skeptical as to what would become of it. Do these things end up on someone’s shelf collecting dust or are they the impetus for action? One of the reports findings was the recognized need for a Chief Information Officer for the State system. The following section is directly from the report:
Information Technology Recommendations
(1) Establish a new senior position reporting to the Comptroller to be the State’s Chief Information Officer.
Currently, the head of the Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS) serves as both the Comptroller and Chief Information Officer (CIO). The Task Force recommends that the two roles be separated into two job positions. The new CIO position should be budgeted at market compensation. The CIO’s responsibilities would include:
(a) Supervision of the Information and Communications Services Division (ICSD).
(b) Developing and implementing a three-year statewide Strategic Information Technology Plan (SITP) that would include the consolidation into ICSD of all hardware, operating software, related positions, and budgets for all IT and communications within the Executive Branch of state government and provide service level agreements (SLAs) to those departments.
(c) Reporting, at least annually, to the Legislature on the SITP’s progress, and submission of a consolidated IT capital budget for the Executive Branch, as well as a report on the performance under all SLAs.
(d) Formulating a charter and chairing a monthly governance committee, to include all state senior IT CIOs (including Department of Education, University of Hawaii, the Judiciary, Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, and state hospitals), and providing the Legislature with an annual executive summary of projected and achieved budgetary savings, operational synergies, customer service enhancements, state productivity gains, and security improvements generated from the joint collaboration. This governance committee would also be responsible for the development of an annual master state IT budget and vision, as well as standards for IT job classifications; staff training, development, and certification; career path and staff retention goals; customer service and productivity targets; SLA performance targets; customer service survey results; and data management warehousing and disaster recovery planning.
(2) Request that the Legislature explore establishing a dedicated funding source for the CIO position.
Given the monumental task of consolidating all of the State’s separate ICSDs and their associated hardware and operating software and of converting all departmental local area networks (LANs)-so that they can communicate and share data, it is imperative that the State be committed to maintaining the CIO position through a dedicated funding source. A dedicated funding source will ensure the continuation of the position and thereby increase the likelihood of achieving program goals and concomitantly ensuring long-term benefits and cost savings to the
State.
Several articles have appeared about the report. A Business Week article at the end of January was the first to be published. In February this article was written in the Government Technology website. Both referencing the report, speaking to the need for a consolidated approach to information technology in the State system of departments. Each of these were written from a news wire perspective.
Not so in this recent post by John Savageau in his blog Technology Innovation Topics which was also picked up by WebSphere Journal. In it, Savageau brings his own keen eye for technical detail and the experience that comes with building and supporting data centers around the world. I know him from the work he did with Level 3, Pihana (now DR Fortress) and One Wilshire in Los Angeles. The article is a great read and brings attention to the dire need for our State to get serious about Information Technology. We’ve got the bandwidth (although we could always use more). We’ve got the brain power. I see the kind of excellent IT work that goes on in corporations like the one I work at and I am convinced we have the talent here in Hawaii. We just need the vision and commitment to to see this through.
The jury is still out on whether the report will create any real substantive change but it is interesting to watch bills like SB2548 move through the legislature. I will be very interested to see this position get created but more so with who would ultimately fill the role. Hawaii is at a point of critical change. Will we be positioned (in the middle of the Pacific) to have the right infrastructure, like IT and broadband, to compete with the rest of the world? Stay tuned.
There are a lot of interesting tech bills to follow during this 2010 legislative session. For example, HB2698: Creates the Hawaii Broadband Commission; or SB2548: Establishes within the Office of the governor a chief information officer and information technology steering committee; or the complete listing of Tech Caucus bills; or you can keep an eye out for SB2405, which proposes to tax online purchases through a national streamlined sales and use tax agreement.
With all this activity it is easy to overlook SB2314 a rather simple bill that proposes to allow the video recording of Board Meetings. As the bill states: The purpose of this Act is to clarify that audio and video recordings are permitted at public board meetings.
One of the board meetings I used to follow was the Hawaii Broadband Task Force within which I had no problem webcasting. I have heard though in other board meetings, video recordings were not allowed as the current 35 year old Sunshine Law statutes are vague on the allowance of video recording. Therefore, in the interest of good governance and transparency it makes sense to make it clear that video recording of board meetings are permissible. The problem is there is a deadline coming up and this bill hasn’t been scheduled to be heard.
There is a simple solution to this. All it takes is an email to Judiciary and Government Operations Committee chair Sen. Brian Taniguchi. His email is sentaniguchi@capitol.hawaii.gov. Just send him an email which simply asks him to schedule SB2314 for a hearing. I just sent mine off.
Mark your calendars, the 3rd Annual Unconferenz is happening on Saturday, Feb. 27, 2010, starting at 8:00am. This year’s event will take place at the beautiful Diamond Head campus of Kapiolani Community College. The Unconferenz is a grassroots gathering of tech enthusiasts interested in exploring, collaborating and interacting. The nature of the Unconferenz is organic. Session topics are determined by what is timely and of interest to the participants. There’s a discussion going on at unconferenz.ning.com about potential session topics. At the event we will post these suggestions along with any others that come up that morning. Everyone who attends is a participant. During the sessions we encourage short presentations and long discussions. The goal of the Unconferenz is to:
Be a catalyst
Create an environment for sharing
Provide support for people and innovation
Network and connect
Start a movement
Bring your ideas, your experience and spend your Saturday expanding your mind. Hope to see you all there.
A friend of mine in college was studying to be a nuclear engineer and after graduating headed off to the Navy to do his tour of duty on a submarine. At the time I could not comprehend what 6 months on the sub really meant. I probably still don’t fully understand although having the opportunity to tour the USS Santa Fe (SSN 763), I have a much better appreciation. Leading up to the tour, the identity of the submarine was not revealed to us until we got to the docks where a torpedo weapons retriever would shuttle us to the waiting sub out in Pearl Harbor. We boarded in the protected waters of the harbor over a gang plank and down a hatch. I couldn’t help but notice how the surface of the sub looked like a soft cushioned surface. I was later told this was anechoic material to minimize acoustics reflection. Once in the vessel, the outside world is shut off except for what is received through instrumentation.
To provide a sense of what the inside of the USS Santa Fe looks like this cutaway of a typical Los Angeles class attack submarine is a good orientation. Our first stop was the Wardroom where COB (Chief of the Boat) John Davis, LCDR Mike Beckette and Ship Doc Rob Lazarin provide the overview of ship operations. Right above the wardroom is the Control Room and Attack Center. This is the hub of activity on the submarine. Steering and navigation is located here, along with the periscopes and sonar room. It is here where Commander Dave Adams ran through maneuvering capabilities of the sub and an attack exercise. During the maneuvering exercise he took the vessel into an incline which felt like a 30 degree angle. You can see here where Nathan Kam and Melissa Chang are both standing at a forward slant. CDR Adams then took it into a decline of 30 degrees and you could feel the opposite affect of leaning backward. Quite radical when you think about it. It is like being in a bus but moving in 3 dimensions. We then did an attack simulation on a surface target. Although the sub is equipped with torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles this exercise used a water slug, basically a torpedo tube filled with water. The crew provided precise readings from sonar and the sub surfaced to periscope depth. The periscope was used to visually acquire the target and made multiple short viewings to confirm. Once the target was secured the CDR gave the “fire torpedoes” command and the water slug was launched. You could hear the expulsion of water and the change in air pressure within the control room.
One cannot visit a submarine without a tour of the torpedo room. This is on the deck below the wardroom. In this photo you can get a relative size of the torpedo (in green) along side Melissa talking with LCDR Dave Benham. The torpedoes are position such that they can slide into the facing tubes. The USS Santa Fe was equipped with about 30 torpedoes mounted on a sliding mechanism that allows loading into the tubes. This is not a trivial feat in such close quarters. We did not see the vertical launch tubes for the Tomahawk cruise missiles which I assume were pre-loaded. It’s one thing to load horizontal torpedoes. With the limited space on the sub, vertical missiles need to be stored within the launch tube.
Another area I found quite interesting was the air handlers in the submarine. Being underwater for extended periods of time requires special monitoring of carbon dioxide and replenishing of oxygen. These CO2 scrubbers remove the carbon dioxide from the air in the sub. Right next to it is the electrolytic oxygen generator. It takes seawater, purifies the water by removing all the salts and minerals, then adds potassium hydroxide as an electrolyte. The water mixture is then electrolyzed separating the hydrogen from the oxygen. This oxygen is then added into the air mix replacing the carbon dioxide and replenishing the depleted oxygen. The air is constantly being monitored to maintain the right mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Stay tuned for more as I have a video I plan to post of our visit to the sail area when the USS Santa Fe surfaces. You can also check out the set of USS Santa Fe photos on Flickr.
It’s the classic “chicken or the egg” problem. Which came first? Is it the electric car or the charging stations? As Mike Leone of HIEV explains, customers are weary of buying an electric car because of the lack of charging stations and businesses are hesitant to install charging stations because there are so few electric cars. Enter into the picture, Frank Rogers of Green Energy Outlet (GEO). Together with Leone, they install solar panels on the roof of GEO, tie it into the electric grid and install the first ChargePoint smart plug-in for recharging. It’s the first in Hawaii and the first of a wave of charging stations that, if you imagine one-day, being as easily accessible as gas stations currently are. The idea is that these charging stations can be anywhere the electric grid is. These can be installed in parking lots, gas stations and businesses. A driver simply pulls up to one of them and plugs in their car. Understandably the adoption rate is slow. You can think of it like when we went from horse and buggy to the automobile. (I’m too young but I can image.) The infrastructure to install a gas pump must have been substantial. Each gas station requires a huge tank to be buried and the plumbing installed necessary to dispense the gasoline. Now look at the proliferation of gas stations, there’s one on and across every street. It will one day be the same way with charging stations, if of course the electric car takes off.
That may still be a ways off. Hybrids extend the life of gasoline as a portable fuel source. Cars like the Toyota Prius recharge their batteries through regenerative braking and the gasoline engine. They never need to be plugged in. The major auto manufacturers have put so much development into the gasoline powered car it will be some time before they transition completely away from that fuel source. Honda has hinted about a 100% electric vehicle (EV) to be available in 2015. So perhaps by mid-decade we will start to see a sea change of EV automobiles on road.
Nevertheless, this charging station at GEO is a significant first step in the right direction. Hats off to the pioneers like Mike Leone and Frank Rogers who are bold enough to make their vision real.
As the legislature gears up for the 2010 session, the tech community is mobilizing to make the most out of what is to be one of the more difficult law-making years. In order to make up for the $1.2B deficit Gov Lingle is already looking at deferring tax returns, restricting spending and refinancing debt. It is highly unlikely lawmakers will support any tax-credits for the tech industry. Even back in October at the Rebuilding Tech workshop, Senators Fukunaga, Hanabusa and Representative McKelvey predict “programs are being cut, nobody will be giving away money in the form of credits.” So what is the tech community going to do? Mobilize for one thing. Jay Fidell, Bill Spencer and a host of others are organizing Crucible 2010: Hammering out Tech Initiatives For the 2010 Legislative Session. For anyone in the tech industry interested in efforts to introduce new bills in this session should attend this workshop being held at the Plaza Club on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010 starting at 4:00pm. The program agenda includes:
• WELCOME – JAY FIDELL
• STATE OF TECH: JOBS AND SO MUCH MORE – BILL SPENCER (5 minutes)
• HAWAII’S FUTURE IN TECHNOLOGY – KEIKI-PUA DANCIL (5 minutes)
• THE COALITION WORKGROUP – CAROL FUKUNAGA & ANGUS MCKELVEY (5 minutes)
• RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COALITION WORKGROUP (40 minutes)
GENERAL FINANCE – DAVID WATUMULL & KARL FOOKS
ENABLING ENVIRONMENT – MARK GILBERT & YUKA NAGASHIMA
R&D CREDIT – JOHN CHOCK & IAN KITAJIMA
RENEWABLE TECHNOLOGY – DARREN KIMURA & TED PECK
CREATIVE MEDIA – RIC GALINDEZ & NANCY GREKIN
• Q & A FROM LEGISLATORS AND INDUSTRY – BOB TOYOFUKU (20 minutes)
• CLOSING REMARKS – JAY FIDELL & BILL SPENCER (10 minutes)
• 5:30 p.m. LIBATION AND BONDING
• 6:30 p.m. PAU
The event is free but you need to RSVP by calling the Hawaii Venture Capital Assoc. at 808-262-7329 or ThinkTech at 808-524-0544. You can also email Bill Spencer or Jay Fidell.
In related news Lisa Gibson is stepping down from her post at the Hawaii Science and Technology Council as President/CEO. Keiki-Pua Dancil is replacing Gibson as the new President/CEO. Dancil will be presenting at Crucible 2010 and talk about Hawaii’s Future in Technology. I spoke briefly with Gibson who told me “it’s time for a change.” She wasn’t clear what she would be doing now but whatever it is it will be dynamic. We all wish Lisa the best in her future endeavors.
For those interested in a primer on the legislative process you might want to check out the Legislative 101 Workshop on Jan. 28th. The program will feature experts from the legislature’s Public Access Room, elected officials, and experienced advocates who will explain the legislative process and share insights on how to participate effectively. Speakers include Sen. Les Ihara, Jr., Rep. Maile Shimabukuro, Jeff Mikulina (Blue Planet Foundation), and Kapua Sproat. The program is free of charge and a good way to understand how to engage in a process that might otherwise look quite daunting. Reserve your seat here.
Graffiti art or street art as I like to refer to these pieces, stirs feelings that range from awe to disgust in those that view it. Born out of the street punk movement dating back to the late 70’s and early 80’s in the subways of New York City, this was a statement by rebellious youth. Personally I don’t condone the defacement of public or private property by illegal graphic expressions but on some occasions I am truly amazed at the artistry. So when I saw these pieces at the Academy Art Center at Linekona, I was quite captivated.
As timing would have it, the two artists responsible for this masterpiece (and one right around the corner) were just finishing up, Prime (on the right) and Estria (on the left). I half expected them to grab their spray cans and run as I approached but this was obviously a commissioned work. Prime holds classes at places like Palama Settlement to teach youth art technique and appreciation, mentoring and leadership development. The artist collective known as 808Urban works with kids in underserved areas like Kalihi. In addition to teaching art they work with communities to create mural art, the legitimized version of street graffiti. I’ve seen their work in various places like the Palama Settlement and a recent mural at Kokua Foods. Checking out Estria’s Flickr site, he’s got all kinds of work going on in Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of it revolves around bringing graffiti artists together to showcase their work and to collectively work on murals like the Four Guardians in Oakland. It’s very impressive, in-your-face, vibrant, “happy to be alive” expressions of creativity.
