I wasn’t able to attend Mark Rivers City Club speech but there seems to be a lot of reactions out there to it.

The Boise Weekly has a very short post regarding his comments about the Boise Hole:

But either way, the vacant lot at the corner of Eighth and Main is overvalued and underutilized, Rivers said. Rivers reminded the gathered city fathers and mothers that The Hole is just one project among many downtown.

The Guardian has their usual slant on anything that effects taxes:

When asked how much his projects contribute to the Boise City tax base, he danced around, but never came up with the truth which is NEARLY NOTHING…most of his tax money goes to the CCDC so it can subsidize more growth.

The IBR has a little more complete coverage and a lively discussion in the comments:

“If you think you can stop this growth, it’s coming,” he said. “We have to be smart with how we react to their arrival. Infill development is the answer clearly.”

Chris mentioned Richard Florida in his last post, and I know that these are the same principles that drive Mark and the types of developments he does. It’s why Mark put up almost all of the money for the WaterCooler.

I personally think that a vibrant downtown is critical to the right kind of growth. We don’t need anymore sprawl. We need smart growth. We need to keep the young talent we have (cool downtown’s are a proven attraction) and we need a place where the Creative Class can mingle together and share ideas (once again a cool downtown works well for this).

The growth is coming. We can either be proactive and attract the type of growth we want or be reactive and continue to complain about traffic, air quality and sprawl (although people are always going to complain about that).

The way I see it (and I’m no expert) but we can either pay for it up front now with taxes, bonds etc and build the infrastructure we’ll need or pay for it later with decreased quality of life.

Let me know am I way off base here? Are there better options than the one’s Mark is proposing? Because if there are, I haven’t hear any.

Share This

TechBoise is a blog, and not a news agency, but that is still no reason for us to slip into rank boosterism. At the same time no one here wants to adopt a sky-is-falling tone. Still, amidst all the constant lists that Boise makes for being a great place to live, work, and raise a family, there is other news to consider.

If you follow Creative Class guru Richard Florida, you saw his chatter about Human Development Index and potential implications for America and its communities. Not familiar with the report? The Measure of America website describes the index and report:

The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009, produced by the American Human Development Project, is modeled on the United Nations Development Programme’s global Human Development Report, which has provided authoritative analysis and a ranked index for countries around the world for almost two decades. The Measure of America, published by Columbia University Press and The Social Science Research Council, is the first time the human development approach has been applied in the United States or any other industrialized nation.

In developing the index, the report considers things such as income and growth, but also weighs things such as “quality education, a long and healthy life, personal safety, a secure livelihood, and a say in decisions that affect one’s life.” All that said, you like me, must by now be wondering where Idaho ranked on this index put together by some of the world’s top scholars. We’ll get to that in a moment but let me first say that the report contains a forward authored by an interesting partnership: Nobel Prize winning Economist Amartya Sen, and Venture Capitalist Bill Draper. I’ll get back to the significance of the Social Science/VC partnership in a moment, but let’s look at the Idaho results.

• Idaho has the lowest Human Development Index west of the Rockies, and one of the lowest west of the Mississippi - joining states such as Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
• Overall, Idaho is in the bottom 10 states in educational attainment and school enrollment, and of the 11 states west of the Rockies scores 10th.
• In median earnings age 16 and over, only Montana has a lower income level than Idaho. That’s right - Idaho was #50.

That doesn’t paint a very shiny picture of the state of our human capital here. But there is hope.

As mentioned in a previous post about Vidoop’s move from OK to PDX, we learned an important lesson: that innovation occurs everywhere. We also learned that even tech innovation occurs outside of engineering schools (again see Vidoop). The first point is great news for Idaho - even with human capital trending on the low side all you need is one guy/gal with a good idea to start a spark. The second point is one I want to talk more about.

The big tech innovations in recent years AREN’T technology based - they are SOCIALLY based. Think about it. Craig’s list? Looks like circa 200 web dev. It’s barely anything more than HTML. Facebook and MySpace? Massive technological leap forward? Nope - just the social application of computer code. YouTube? No more difficult than creating an e-mail attachment. Blogger? Word on the web with cloud storage. These ARE NOT massive technological advancements - they are SOCIAL advancements. So what’s the implication? We need MORE partnerships like Amartya Sen and Bill Draper. It’s all fine and dandy when engineering students build a better mousetrap, but when it fails in the marketplace, they’ll need a social scientist to figure out why.

So - with limited human capital in the state here’s the plan: Idaho needs a bigger innovation tent. The engineers are playing, the VC’s are playing - but even we here at TechBoise have not begun to scratch the surface with including some people who are really on the cutting edge when it comes to tech and innovation.

Examples? I can’t disclose some of the projects that are being worked on by digital humanists within certain of our government agencies (but they can if they come here and leave a comment), but the level of technical competence and ingenuity that is coming down thew pike from the Historians at the Idaho State Historical Society, and from the librarians and programmers at the Idaho Commission for Libraries would blow your mind. And what about private sector companies like Blue Cross? Is no one out there cognizant of Microsoft and Google’s efforts to digitize medical records? Do any of us know what is going on with the Blues?

As I also alluded in that previous post, innovation takes care and feeding to nurture. Because we have a smaller pool of human capital from which to draw, and because that pool is not as deep (yet) as our national counterparts we need to follow the example probably unwittingly set by Sen and Draper and expand our innovation tent to include those that we might not ordinarily think of as innovators. We’re fortunate in that it’s FREE to do and we already do a pretty good job networking among the community and finding pockets of innovation no matter where they may be. Let’s do more of that.

Share This

Those of you on Twitter or at OSCON have already seen the posts from @kveton and @turoczy about the press that Vidoop is getting as they move their corporate headquarters from Oklahoma to Portland. I think there are at least three important lessons in this article I am reposting from the Oregonian:

1) Innovation can happen almost anywhere (Vidoop’s technology created in Oklahoma?)

2) Engineers are not the only ones responsible for innovation. Repeat: engineers are not the only ones responsible for innovation. Vidoop’s co-founder is a retired ballet dancer.

3) Innovation takes care and feeding. Vidoop moved from OK to PDX because there is not enough local talent to sustain its growth.

If you are not familiar with Vidoop - you should be. Its secure log-in technology powers a small company called AOL.

Have some thoughts of your own about the lessons in this short article? Leave a comment.

Coffee Break: Vidoop’s bosses
by Mike Rogoway, The Oregonian
Monday July 21, 2008, 9:53 PM

A chat with an interesting, influential or innovative voice in Oregon business

Joel Norvell and Luke Sontag, Vidoop

What they do: Run a company called Vidoop (say “VA-doop”), which makes technology to improve password security online. Founded in Oklahoma, Vidoop’s headquarters and 45 of its employees — including Norvell and Sontag — are moving from Tulsa to new offices in Portland’s Old Town this fall.

Why Portland? “The food was the kicker,” Norvell joked. Portland’s restaurant scene helped sell them on the Rose City, but it’s the city’s community of software developers that hooked them. Although Vidoop’s tools are proprietary, they interface with an open source login standard called OpenID. Vidoop hopes to tap into the collaborative spirit behind open source software that’s prevalent in Oregon’s developer community. “We need a certain kind of developer with a certain kind of expertise, and that just did not exist in Oklahoma,” Sontag said.

Bios: Norvell, 50, was a professional ballet dancer. He retired in 1984 and joined his family’s jewelry business in Oklahoma, teaching yoga part time. He retired from the family business four years ago, but got the itch to start fresh with Vidoop. He’s married with and has an adult son, and now lives in a Pearl District penthouse.

Sontag, 28, is single with and has no kids. He met Norvell in yoga class and stayed in touch after moving to New York to work for JPMorgan Chase, heading back to Tulsa to help launch Vidoop. He’s staying with friends in Sellwood.

The move: Vidoop’s work force is young and mobile — “Most of their things can fit in a couple of trash bags,” Sontag said — so they’re planning a five-day caravan from Tulsa to Portland, “Oregon trail, ‘Grapes of Wrath’ style.”

This week: Vidoop is exhibiting at OSCON, the national open source software conference under way at the Oregon Convention Center.

Online: www.vidoop.com

– Mike Rogoway; mikerogoway@news.oregonian.com

Share This

Editors note: This one seemed too good to pass up. Reposting here an article from the Times of India. Who says Tech and Ag can’t be friends?

Microsoft helps farmers by creating videos on best practices
20 Jul 2008, 0428 hrs IST, Prashanth G N,TNN

BANGALORE: A global technology giant isn’t usually expected to take much interest in agriculture. Here’s one with a difference.

Microsoft, which spends most of its time making computers better in distant Seattle, is quietly producing videos for farmers in Kanakapura on improved farming techniques.

The Bangalore Microsoft Research Lab’s ‘Technology for Emerging Markets’ programme has reached 5,000 farmers, in and around Kanakapura and parts of Chitradurga, so far. The lab’s Digital Green initiative is part of the company’s Information, Communication, Technology (ICT) for Development module through which it aims to use technology to aid development in emerging economies.

Researcher Rikin Gandhi told TOI: “Being one of the largest companies in the world, we believe it is our responsibility to use technology in emerging markets to improve development. Agriculture is a huge and crucial sector in India and we are working to see how we can use our expertise to improve farming conditions, practices and lives of farmers.”

Gandhi and his colleagues make videos of farm practices that yield the best results. The videos of progressive farmers are taken to other farmers who are thus enabled to adopt methods and practices of the progressive farmers.

Using this method, Microsoft has built a database that covers almost every farmer in 13 villages of Kanakapura and a few in Chitradurga.

Gandhi said: “We differentiate farming techniques with good results and those without and communicate the difference to farmers. An example is seeding technique. Random versus systematic seeding shows that the latter consumes less water, increases yield and occupies less space. The same is communicated to farmers.”

Similarly, there is data on vermi-compost, seed germination and remedies for diseases. Crucially, the data comes from farmers themselves, and extension officials of the livestock and animal husbandry department.

Gandhi said: “They’ve been a great help. They act as the local management team. They give us the content and we put together quality information on farming and take it from village to village. We believe there is lot of clarity when farmers see on video what they themselves are doing. We get farmers to make these videos and be a part of them.”

This dissemination of best farming practices has yielded results. “We’ve done our own evaluation that suggests a seven-fold increase in adoption of best farming techniques by farmers and a 10-fold increase in cost-benefit ratios. People are using less water, incurring lower input costs and getting more,” Gandhi said.

More farmers have taken interest in the video packages and many have even started applying new techniques on their lands, Gandhi said. For example, farmers have taken to grid seeding which has reduced water consumption and input costs.

Microsoft plans to stretch this to every crop and season.

“To prove useful, our intervention has to increase yield, reduce costs and enable farmers to have more to sell in the market. Ultimately, the farmers’ income must go up. That’s when it all matters,” he added.

Share This

In case you missed my last post on the event, our next TechBoise event is this Wednesday, July 23rd at the WaterCooler (1401 W. Idaho St) from 5:30-7:00.

While I was digging through my brain (it’s not pretty in there) trying to come up with some people I could harass I could get to speak about their companies I realized the growing number of mobile tech companies and how cool it would be to have a themed meeting.

Mobile TechBoise

We have three very exciting presenters for you.

• Dave Clemons, CEO of Push Mobile Media. You can read his company blog or his guest post on TechBoise
• Mike Freeman of Mobile DataForce. You can read Kevin Benedict, their CEO’s blog here.
• Matt Rissell, CEO of Tsheets, who blogs here, has a company blog here and we’ve covered here.

What really has me excited about these companies is they are not just mobile companies, they are companies focused on solving mobile business problems. All three of them are doing some cool stuff, you really need to see what they are up to.

They will each take 5-10 minuted to tell you what their companies are up to and the rest of the time will be left for enjoying the FREE BEER and PIZZA provided by Mark Solon and Highway 12.

In order to get an accurate head count, please leave a comment if you plan on attending or shoot me an email tac@techboise.com.

Share This

• Upgrading WordPress « WordPress Codex

  OK well I think I’m going to finally take the plunge and update all of my sites. I’ll start with my neglected.. er, less active HyperBored site and then if I don’t screw that up I’ll update TechBoise and NewCommbiz. So if the site has issues you’ll know why. Of course if the sites down you won’t see this anyway, so, whatever.

  tags: wordpress, upgrade, tutorial, blog, howto, codex, NCB, HyperBored, techboise

Share This

It’s the topic that is on the tips of everyone’s tongue - innovation. But only one law firm is innovative enough to reward Idaho’s innovators: Stoel Rives.

I know you have an entrepreneur or firm in mind already, so don’t delay. Get over to the Stoel Rives website (link is there you just can’t see it because of the CSS here . . .) and get your nomination in for this prestigious award.

Past winners include our friends over at 2Moto, the rocket scientists over at INL, and Rodenator, among others. Luncheon for the winners happens in October. I know it seems like a long time away but you are busy all summer innovating anyway! So get to the Stoel Rives site and support the innovators that support Idaho.

Share This

Boise, ID - Today Metageek released the latest in a string of revolutionary wireless devices, the Chanalyzer 3.1. From CEO Ryan Woodings:

Chanalyzer turns data collected from the Wi-Spy 2.4x into highly interactive charts and graphs, allowing users to actually “visualize” their wireless landscape. Together, Wi-Spy 2.4x and Chanalyzer 3.1 enable both business and home users to visualize, troubleshoot, and optimize their Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) networks.

With Chanalyzer 3.1 you don’t need to waste your time watching real-time RF activity to troubleshoot. Chanalyzer records the data for quick viewing and analysis. You can then use Chanalyzer recordings to visually explain to your customers how you will optimize their wireless network. Troubleshoot your wireless networks without leaving your desk. Just install our new Recon application, which is a simple Wi-Spy 2.4x data server and then connect to it remotely from anywhere with Chanalyzer 3.1.

Full release and product details are available at the metageek website.

Share This

• My Commute | Balihoo Kennel - Advertising Media Insiders

  Here’s another great example of why tech workers (and everyone really) enjoys working in Boise.
  “These combined factors make for a great spirit and mindset coming into work each morning. Moreover, it’s really amazing to live in a capital city and have such amazing access to the outdoors right in the center of the city. Here are a few pictures of the sights you see along the greenbelt:”
  (be sure to check out those photo’s)

  tags: balihoo, techboise, life style, commute, biking

• Sluggish housing industry prompts tech firm job cuts

  Sad news from one of the promising startups here in town. MobileDataforce lays off 7 people.

  tags: MobileDataforce, techboise

• Report says Idaho can create jobs and increase energy security with renewables | News Updates | Idaho Statesman

  This is one are that Idaho needs to be aggressively investing in. Not only is there bottom line financial benefit, but ag, tech and everyone benefits. Especially if the money invested isn’t just in infrastructure but research and development both in our colleges and the private sector.

  tags: renewable energy, IdahoStatesman, tech, research, ag, techboise

• Balihoo adds media veteran Jack Haire to Board - TechBoise

  Media planning software firm Balihoo has added media veteran Jack Haire to its Board of Directors

  tags: techboise, balihoo, Jack Haire

Share This

Well against my better judgment (my judgment’s really not that good) I have been talked into upping the ante on our TechBoise events.

1. I have been talked into having our TechBoise events every month (we’ll try it and see how it goes).
2. We will have beer and pizza! Mark Solon has extended the olive branch after last months soap box standing so Highway 12 will be buying the beer and pizza (actually I suspect it was the lack of beer at the last event that had Mark edgy in the first place). Thank you Mark!
3. A themed event. No, not Toga night. I’m hoping all of our presenters will be from the same industry.

I won’t blow the surprise speakers (actually I’m still waiting to see who accepts) but it’s a topic that I am very passionate about and it’s NOT Web 2.0.

So whatever you do save the date on your calendars:
Wednesday, July 23rd @ The WaterCooler 5:30-7:00 (or whenever Krissa kicks us out again)

Share This