One solution to the Bogota post : Allo Velo’v!

I said that I’d continue on the Bogota post later. I had a lot of ideas but too much to write for one post.

So, quick solution for Ottawa: get a rent-a-bike system.

I’ll be honest. I’m a terrible cyclist so it’s quite something that I’m blogging about biking. But I think this idea should materialize.

Ottawa has some of the best and most beautiful trails/bike paths in Canada and as the Capital city, there are obviously a lot of tourists that come through that want to explore. Renting a bike should be easy and it shouldn’t be $9/hour!

Lyon, France piloted a project in 2005 called the Velo’v (for an English read click here) . Essentially, it’s a 24/7 rent-a-bike system which has over 200 stations across the city.

This is how it works in a nutshell:

• each station has about 10-20 bikes (enough stations so that you could pretty much walk 5 min and you’d find a station)
• take the bike (after you’ve signed in), ride it for however long you want (you pay for your time) and put it back at any other system around the city.
• The key: You have to have a French bank account. This acts as your tracking system. If you don’t return the bike (or you return the bike and it’s damaged, then they withdraw 180 euros from your account. This also acts as your timer
• The cost? EXTREMELY CHEAP!
  • For one week, the cost of signing up is 1 euro. For the year, it’s 5 euros
  • The first half hour on the bike is FREE (you can get anywhere in Lyon within 30min – or at least find another station, wait two minutes and take it out again…umm..something the students do all the time…)
  • after that, the price is less than 2 euros /hour

It’s an ingenious idea. I actually met the Chief of Staff for Grand Lyon who made it happen. I asked him how often the bikes got damaged or stolen and he said that the track record was pretty good. The Velo’v system had become public property – anytime anyone saw someone damage it, they’d get upset and call the person on it.

It took me a while to muster up the courage to ride it in the busy streets of Lyon…I’m not that courageous of a cyclist as you can see….. I much prefer bike paths to city streets (which thankfully, this city is quite blessed with!)

I think Ottawa would be a fine candidate for something like this. Let’s try and make public transit, whether buses, light rail or bikes, useful for people. Oftentimes people don’t want to ride a bike somewhere because they then have to think about where to store it while they go do something. This solves that issue and it also just makes the non-bikers like me more open to at least trying it out. I won’t spend $9/hour to go biking and I won’t spend a couple hundred on a bike when I might not stay here.

Bogota did the right thing by investing in public transit. Lyon has done the same. Small cities with large populations understand the importance of finding less spacious, more environmental ways to move people. Public transit should not be thought of as something for the lower classes. It’s a healthy choice – both for people and the environment.

Here’s Germany’s version of “Call a Bike”-see comment below from Simon Chen.

Education like limbo? Just keep on lowering that bar…

Ok, I had to do a quick post. There’s an article on the front cover of the Ottawa Citizen this morning, “Tolerating cheaters deserves “F” for flaky”. Oh god….is this what we’ve come to?

…a new Ottawa public school board document now circulating among schools directs teachers and principals to bend over backwards to avoid penalizing cheaters. It takes a similarly permissive approach to late assignments.

It’s all part of a provincially-driven plan to make sure that the maximum number of people graduate from high school, even if it means lowering the bar so far that cheaters and the habitually tardy can still stumble over it.

Seriously, I’ve harped on this before. I feel like they lowered the bar enough in University. Now, they’re giving the green light for plagiarism and late assignments? Seriously, what’s wrong with our society? In France my friend got a 0.5 out of 20. Their answer to her complaints? Well…at least it wasn’t negative marks! They also couldn’t believe that we here in Canada always received high grades and no one failed. What lessons are we trying to teach our youth? Don’t worry, you can always succeed no matter how hard you don’t try. Failure happens. Get over it. Let’s teach youth that lesson and maybe they won’t grow up to be babies.

These kids are going to have some serious problems when they enter the work world and we’ll have the new “modern education system” to blame.

Two thumbs up for Bogota

This is a little late, but if you haven’t read this past Saturday’s Globe and Mail, I suggest you pick it up. There was a great article in there on Bogota’s urban happiness.

From living hell to living well: A radical campaign to return streets from cars to people in Colombia’s largest city is now a model for the world

Fabulous. I love hearing environmental/social success stories like this. In short, Bogota has adopted a better way to move people. Instead of exasperating the transportation issue like we do here in the land of the ‘developed’, they opted to invest heavily in public transit. I’ll just jot down my favourite parts, but great read.

• this decision was not based on environmental ideals, it was driven by economic philosophy based on human happiness
• traffic jams and long commutes make people angry while biking/walking and faster commutes makes people happy (strange eh?)
• Bogota almost went the nasty route of urban sprawl, complete with a paved paradise (thankfully Mr. Peñalosa stopped this)
  • “A city can be friendly to people or it can be friendly to cars, but it can’t be both,” the new mayor announced. He shelved the highway plans and poured the billions saved into parks, schools, libraries, bike routes and the world’s longest “pedestrian freeway.”
• public transit= equity (i.e. biking and public transit should not be reserved for the poor)

I don’t own a car and I have no plan on getting one soon. I have to say that there are definite times when I hate OC Transpo (getting to Kanata after 9am is nothing short of a pain in the ass), but I save thousands and I somewhat like the mindless 45min in the morning that gives me a chance to read or listen to podcasts.

Ottawa looks so foolish for dropping the public transit ball. We’ve been so close and then we always go for the wrong decision. Again, get your act together Ottawa!

While reading this, it conjured up a project I did recently on the auto industry. The more I looked into it, I was sickened. Here were some of my thoughts on the industry:

• geographic impact:
  • just give it a second to settle in on how much space our damn cars take up:
  • roads, highways, bridges, parking lots, gas stations, junkywards, garages (also..think about where the garage is place: smack in the front – that’s how much pride we put into our cars

• social impact:
  • first came freedom (think On the Road by Jack Kerouac)
  • then came dependence (think 2 hour commutes for those suburbanites)
• There’s so much more but I should stop it there….

So, when I grow up (haha..past article) I’d love it if I could work, live and play:) in the same area. For some reason I have this vision about always being able to buy fresh bread and market fresh food just around the corner. .. I’m not saying I’ll never buy a car, but I’d love it if I could just keep it stored up and then use it when I really needed it. That would make me happy. And as the ingenius mayor of Bogota was quoted:

“There are a few things we can agree on about happiness,” he says. “You need to fulfill your potential as a human being. You need to walk. You need to be with other people. Most of all, you need to not feel inferior. When you talk about these things, designing a city can be a very powerful means to generate happiness.”

I have so many more thoughts on this..but I’ll save it for another post.

Where are the girls for the math geeks?

I went out for dinner with a good friend of mine a couple of days ago who I hadn’t seen for a while. As always, the conversation streamed into the inevitable “So, are you seeing anyone now?” “What happened to that French girl?” etc. etc. etc.

I’m most definitely not going to blog about my personal love life on this blog (I said that I didn’t know what this blog was going to be about, but it most definitely won’t turn into a personal diary!), but I thought I owed it to my friend to get his message out.

I told him that I love having good conversations with people and learning from relationships. Whether it’s about business, current affairs, history, politics, even (gasp) tech – I like substance in a conversation. This was one friend’s Facebook quote and I completely agree.

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about other people.

But here’s his problem. He wasn’t a history major, he didn’t do politics or business etc.. his passion is math and economics.  This is where he stopped me and said “Would you still find it sexy if I talked to you about integrals and vectors?”  True true, I had never thought of it before. Not sexy at all. I hated math (like many women out there).   I have to say that guys in the math/engineering department have it kind of rough when it comes to the ladies. It’s well known that their programs are highly unequal gender-wise. The arts, commerce, even science boys  have better luck with their programs. And then when they’re out, they can’t always impress the girl with what they know because oftentimes (I’m just guessing but my friend’s stories validates this) what they’re passionate about is boring to the rest of us.

Of course conversation can always be about something else but it’s too bad that my friend can’t talk about what he’s really interested in.

This goes for everything.  One of my sisters is passionate about speech pathology. She’ll talk to the rest of the family about neurolinguistics and what our vocal chords do for certain sounds…. she keeps going and the rest of the family zones her out.  I didn’t realize how much it hurt her until later on she told us that it was unfair that I could talk about business, my other sister about the news (journalism) and she couldn’t talk about her passion.

Perhaps this is a lesson for everyone. Why don’t we stop and actually try to understand their passion? Even though you may not be interested, their passion could rub off a little on you and learning something new (or at least in a new way) is always a good thing.

So, for all you single ladies out there looking to expand their knowledge in math/economics,  my friend is smart,  well-traveled, just bought his own condo and single,  – email me at me@janeporter.ca and maybe I can play matchmaker:)

Enjoy the weekend and the jazz festival for all you folks in Ottawa.

The way marketing should work

A few weeks ago while in Toronto, I came across the best marketing campaign. It was an extremely hot day and I was walking around the city- with no sunscreen. Smart Jane. About 40 degrees, exposed skin after 10am and no protection. I’m usually really good about applying it but this time I didn’t even bring it to TO. So, I almost spent $5 at the grocery store on some cheap no-name brand. I walked out without buying it and felt awful….but then lo and behold….the best marketing campaign I’ve ever seen in my life.

L’Oreal was out there (Luminator sponsors) with two girls on the waterfront wearing backpacks full of Ombrelle sunscreen. I literally ran to them with my arms out. They couldn’t give out freely so instead, they were asking for donations for breast cancer research. They gave me a few squirts and off I went.

I loved it for 3 main reasons:

1. I got sunscreen (a product everyone needed)

2. Money went to a good cause

3. Amazing branding – I liked Ombrelle before, but now I’m even giving them talk on my blog:)

If you were walking on the boardwalk on a hot day, how could you say no to something you feel guilty about not putting on?

My friend and I walked away, protected:) and completely awakened to the way marketing should work.

For me, it’s always been a love/hate relationship with marketing. I love connecting with people and finding new ways to deliver a message that has value, but I hate marketing when it’s just marketing a product to just ‘market the product.’ It’s all about selling something that matters vs. just trying to squeeze a buck.

Marketing that’s driven by intrinsic value is something that I’m quite passionate about so I’m sure I’ll continue on the subject soon.

Facebook to LinkedIn OR LinkedIn to Facebook?

Oh god, my 5th post and I’m talking about Facebook….how original!

I’m 22, still young in a lot of ways, still naive, still growing up and still have a lot of learning to do.

Not that it’s a big step, but I took one step a couple weeks ago. I deleted all of my ‘inappropriate?’ pictures from Facebook.

I’ve been an avid Facebook user since about April of last year. At that time, I was living the life in the beautiful city of Lyon, France. That year, I traveled a lot, partied a lot and ate a lot of great cheese with wonderful Cotes de Rhones wines. As studies slowed (who am I kidding though… it was always slow!) I became addicted to Facebook. I connected with friends from elementary, high school, dance etc. It was amazing. I also posted and got tagged on some pretty awful “university-life” pictures. Although I knew that all of my friends could view my pictures, see my wall etc., I really didn’t care. “Meh, they’re all my friends!” (yeah…. all 497 of them. – definitely not, but they were all university aged people for the most part)

This year, as I got closer to the finish line of University, I realize I needed to step it up a little and “grow up”. I attended a lot of networking events through school and on my own. Connecting with people is one of my passions in life, so, it was an obvious next step for me to join the ranks of the professionals in the “mature” social network- LinkedIn. I’ve loved it. It has given me the chance to show the world my “professional” self and connect with people that I wouldn’t normally connect with. (Check it out here and add me if you’re on it too and feel like connecting.)

However…

The tables have turned. My LinkedIn contacts have added me to Facebook. Although I knew that it was coming, I can’t say I really enjoyed it. Mind you, I was the one who showed it off to my sister and her late-twenties friends….I didn’t realize that it would happen that my mom would now think about joining. (Although she wouldn’t- she’s so much more computer illiterate than even me!)

So point being: “my growing up” into the Linkedin world hasn’t really improved my situation. I’m still there, as my university-self (minus the many many ‘inappropriate’ pictures).

Even then, I have to say that I was contemplating getting rid of some of those pictures. Really, if you didn’t want to hire me because you saw that I liked beer, the question then becomes, do I want to work for you? Seriously. Someone once told me that they’re more afraid of hiring a student that had straight A’s than someone who had C’s and B’s. Why? Because they think that the person with the lower grades ‘lived a little’. So, for a good month or so, I held off.

So why did I do it?

I realized that I needed to grow up.

Recycling continued…

Many more thoughts on recycling…

Last Post cont.

I left off on my last post about how California had the best recycling habits in the US because they don’t even make you sort. Just want to elaborate on that…

From the economist.

San Francisco, which changed from multi to single-stream collection a few years ago, now boasts a recycling rate of 69%—one of the highest in America. With the exception of garden and food waste, all the city’s kerbside recyclables are sorted in a 200,000-square-foot facility that combines machines with the manpower of 155 employees. The $38m plant, next to the San Francisco Bay, opened in 2003. Operated by Norcal Waste Systems, it processes an average of 750 tons of paper, plastic, glass and metals a day.

The only thing I didn’t get was that it was all man powered sorting, and then I continued reading:

Although all recycling facilities still employ people, investment is increasing in optical sorting technologies that can separate different types of paper and plastic. Development of the first near-infra-red-based waste-sorting systems began in the early 1990s. At the time Elopak, a Norwegian producer of drink cartons made of plastic-laminated cardboard, worried that it would have to pay a considerable fee to meet its producer responsibilities in Germany and other European countries. To reduce the overall life-cycle costs associated with its products, Elopak set out to find a way to automate the sorting of its cartons. The company teamed up with SINTEF, a Norwegian research centre, and in 1996 sold its first unit in Germany. The technology was later spu off into a company now called TiTech.

The article has a lot more good info. If interested, it’s a good read. Makes me think that our VC money should be going into things like this which would actually benefit everyone and I’m sure it would produce a lovely return. (don’t ask me to elaborate on that…I’m just an optomist:)

So now we know that the technology is there to improve our recycling habits and we know that Ottawa wants to improve its ranking. (Rethinking Garbage is a City of Ottawa task force committed to increasing our % diverted from landfills to 40% by this year.)

Start moving Ottawa!

Composting

I’m on a roll…. so I will continue.

Composting. (Something my family couldn’t do while growing up because I lived in the country and we’d attract bears everytime we started one)

Anyways, I always knew that composting was good for the garden but I never thought of it on a mass scale. Now that people are listening, the media’s talking about another huge issue, besides global warming. We’re running out of topsoil.

Reading a book right now and one part explains the importance of soil in our lives and how fast it’s going away from us…

According to Nobel Prize winner Henry Kendall and population biologist David Pimentel, modern farming methods now deplete topsoil 16-300 (big gap?) times faster than it can be replaced. Worldwide soil erosion has caused farmers to abandon about 430 million hectares of arable land during the last 40 years, an area equivalent to about one-third of all present cropland.

It takes an average of 500 years to build 2.5 centimetres of topsoil. today, Pimentel says, the glboal loss of topsoil exceeds new soil production by 23 billion tonnes a year, which is 0.7 percent of world’s soil.

Scary shit.

My idea? (Really can’t take the idea because the city will be doing it soon) – use the art of collaboration for organic waste. Don’t have a garden? Live in an apartment? Who cares! I want your egg shells and old lettuce:) It just doesn’t seem right that we’re running out of topsoil and the organic material that we need is being thrown in the dump (along with our recyclables and timmy’s cups;)

Wow, for any new readers you might be thinking that I’m a hippy, vegan, granola kid etc. Sometimes I am…(not a vegan though, love medium rare steaks) but promise, next post will be about Facebook or something;)

Recycling Timmy’s

I am happy to say that I’ve slightly influenced my good friend Marta to be more green. She used to be the one making fun of me with all my talk on the environment, now she’s the one upset about throwing away receipts from Rexall.

So the other day while out on our daily afternoon Timmy’s run, I was pleased when she got upset about throwing away our Timmy’s cups. “Why don’t people recycle these? They’re paper!” True. Timmy’s cups are paper, but are they recyclable? This question itched at me when I got back to the office and so I did a little search on the topic. Turns out, Timmy’s cups can be recycled but only in certain cities.

Windsor, for example, accepts Tim Hortons cups in its blue boxes and Hamilton takes the cups at its organic composting plant, said Javor. But Toronto says its technology can’t process the cups’ wax lining.

I’m obviously not the first to notice the Timmy’s trash around me. The CBC just reported last week that Timmy’s cups account for 22% of all the litter in Nova Scotia. Talk about extreme! So, yes, a lot of people/groups are pushing the Canadian icon to think about their environmental impact. The company too has come up with some anti-litter programs to try and improve their image and they’re also researching some other ways to change the cup to a corn starch lining although there are some issues with that too.

But here’s my question. Do the people in Windsor know that they can recycle Timmy’s cups? Does Timmy’s have recycling bins for their cups available at the store? What’s the holdup with the rest of the cities’ recycling depots?

And then maybe the bigger question is: How much do we really know about what’s recyclable and what’s not?

The City of Ottawa site has some interesting stats on recycling and although it’s pretty detailed, I’d like to know who researches that site in detail. Honestly, I think I know what goes into the blue box and the black box but some things are definitely questionable, and (honesty kicks in here) but I definitely don’t check that site everytime I have a questionable item.

Now here’s the next question (yep, full of questions now…) when a container is contaminated with a non-recyclable, does the whole bin get chucked? I was horrified to find out that Carleton’s recycling program wasn’t really that much of a recycling program. Because a lot of people were careless as to what went in, the people looking after the bins at the end of the day would be careless too. I’ve seen the maintenance guys pick up the garbage and the recycling bags and drop them into the same bin. Glad to know that my effort pulled through…

It’s getting late but I can think of some solutions for the recycling issue.

BETTER MARKETING! (Surprise, surprise…this post is coming from a marketing student;)

Tell me exactly what’s recyclable and what’s not. The city should constantly be trying to expand their product list to include the non-recyclables and then INFORM us of this change. And when I mean INFORM us, don’t just include it on your City of Ottawa website. Be a little more creative.

If there’s a lot of recyclables being thrown in the trash, either the people are lazy or the people don’t know. And if a lot of items are being thrown in the recycling bin that shouldn’t be – INFORM us. Use those marketing skills to get us in the know and then make it easier for us to actually do it.

Another thing…just heard this morning on the Economist podcast that California has the best recycling habits in the US (another big surprise) Why? Because they don’t even make you sort. Easy done, easy results.

Your thoughts?

I’m a Twentysomething…complaining about the education system. Big surprise.

This Thursday is my graduation day. I’ll be crossing the stage at Carleton University’s Field House. This entire year, I’ve been waiting for this moment of pure accomplishment. Four years (3 somewhat studious and one fabulous year in France), thousands spent on tuition, books and coffee and beer at Roosters/Olivers, and countless amazing memories to last a lifetime. Yep, I’ve crossed that finish line (crawling at the end…but finished nonetheless.)

Last year, while in France I came to be a huge fan of Jamie Cullum, partly because his lyrics hit home. Anyone living the ridiculous twenties can most likely find truisms in his Twentysomething song.

After years of expensive education
A car full of books and anticipation
I’m an expert on Shakespeare and that’s a hell of a lot
But the world don’t need scholars as much as I thought
Maybe I’ll go travelling for a year
Finding myself, or start a career…

Granted I’m no Shakespearean scholar as studying Hofstede’s cultural dimensions was more the International Business style – there’s a lot of truth in his words.

Although I’ve learned a lot over these past 4 years, now that I’m out, I’m focusing more on what I haven’t learned. I’ve been one of those classic “cookie cutter” kids my entire life. Good grades, got involved, the works. The funny thing is, now that I’m out, I’ve realized that a lot of successful people out there didn’t even take the education route. I’ve met quite a few extremely successful people over the past few months who barely graduated from high school.

This in turn has made me reflect on how I’ve spent the last 17 years of my life.

Here’s my beef with the education system.

• Don’t cater to the lowest common denominator of intelligence
• Don’t baby us
• Don’t allow me to play the system

So what does this mean?

Don’t give me good grades in school when in reality, it would never be accepted in the work world. As for the babying, (guaranteed my classmates wouldn’t necessarily agree) but a lot of teachers change the rules to accommodate the whiners. Ex. “I don’t like my grades.” Answer: “Don’t worry, I’ll add a point five percent for question 5”. Ex. “How do they expect us to research that?” “This is impossible and the real world wouldn’t ask you to do this” Answer: Handing in a half-assed project deems great marks. And when I say “don’t let me play the system”, don’t allow me to get A’s without understanding the concepts. I was always great at writing tests. It was a classic case of cramming – in one ear and out the other (15 min after the test was over). I always found it strange that the kids that understood the concepts never really seemed to do well on the tests. In retrospect though, who was the winner? The person with great grades? Or the person who knows how to actually use those concepts?

I shouldn’t harp on myself too much, but they are questions worth reflecting on. Then again, maybe University did exactly what it was supposed to do: make me question everything…

So, cheers to being a twentysomething and a toast to those fellow classmates on Thursday. Let’s party.

 

Thanks for meshing…

Finally, I did it. I started a blog.

Now that everyone’s talking about web 3.0, I figured I should at least jump on board with the 2.0. What can I say, I was mesh-inspired;)

Yep, I just got back on Sunday from Toronto after spending an incredible time at the mesh conference. I can’t even begin to explain how much I got out of those two jam-packed days. Although embarrassed to admit, it was only about a month ago that I figured out what RSS feeds and podcasts were. (I seriously feel like I was left under a rock during those university years). Although I’m working a bit on social media right now with my job, I wanted to go to mesh to do just that – mesh. And that I did.

Although the content was great (for the most part), the networking was fabulous.

To all of you that I met last week:

I loved all of our conversations, whether it was about web 2.0, social and environmental change in business, starting a business, the education system (which I will most definitely comment on on a later post), or about just being passionate about something—thank you. I wish you all good luck with your future endeavours and I hope to stay in touch. You can always contact me here on this blog, at me@janeporter.ca, on LinkedIn or even Facebook (that also will be another post;)