ReWork the World

I went to ReWork the World in Leksand, Sweden. A conference which focused around the subjects of Entrepreneurship, Youth and Sustainability. I specifically went to see the water track and the finance track.

The most interesting new thing I saw was SolarCool’s cardboard refrigerator,(a photo of one of the inventors explaining how it works).

There are some good presentations which are visible here as video, I specifically recommend:

• John Liu’s presentation about regenerating eco-systems (you have to click through to about 60% of the video)
• Hans Rossling’s presentation about demographics (click in a couple of minutes)
• “Rockstar” scientist, Johan Rockström, talks about Planetary boundaries, which was presented in Nature September 2009 and more presentations about boundaries. Really rather good.

  Filed under: Research

Cradle to Cradle

Yesterday I went to a seminar around the Cradle to Cradle concept hosted by CradleNet at Konstfack in Stockholm. Among the lectures we had a presentation fromMichael Braungart, one of the Cradle to Cradle inventors. It was very interesting. To the point where I think that I may need to get the book.

Cradle to Cradle wants you to essentially ask three questions before you purchase anything:

• Can I eat it?
• Can I compost it when I don’t need it anymore?
• If the answer is no to the above two questions, then you ask “Will you take it back when I don’t need it anymore?”

With the understanding that if you take it back you will recycle it in such a way that you are not polluting the ecosystem when you do.

There are a number of unanswered questions around this whole concept, that a seminar didn’t answer. But I suppose that is what the book is for. And there is a Kindle version of the book, which I am going to try on my iPad. Less waste in the long run.

Filed under: Research

Research

Today has mainly been spent on getting PDF files of the relevant documents and entering them into the reference database. If you don’t study at a university it would be prohibitively expensive to actually do any research work. I couldn’t do it as an individual, as there is so much material hidden behind paywalls.

Filed under: Research

Research tools

Something important to me when doing research and writing is to have a good set of tools, which don’t get in the way, when you are trying to write or learn about new things.

Beyond a web browser and a fast internet connection, which has become ridiculously important, I primarily use a reference database and a writing tool. The reference database is Bookends and the writing tools I am experimenting is Scrivener. I also do a fair amount of data visualisations in MS Excel.

The last couple of days I have spent trying to figure out whether Scrivener will actually work for me, I think it may do. But time will tell.

I have a bunch of reference documents which I have started entering into Bookends. This will get me reading again on what I have on the subject I am researching.

Filed under: ITC technology, Research

Signed thesis contract

Today I signed a thesis contract with my professor and assistant supervisor at university. I suppose I need to get started then.

Filed under: Research