BlogHer Politics Break-out Session: What Questions Do Women Bloggers Want Candidates to Answer in Election 2008? SubGroup - Iraq

I was asked to liveblog during the BlogHer politics break-out session Saturday entitled "What Questions Do Women Bloggers Want Candidates to Answer in Election 2008?" when we broke into subgroups. I sat in the Iraq subgroup and there were some really interesting women in my group (as with all of them) who put together a great set of topics and questions, chronicled here in the comments, along with the liveblog about the entire panel.

The three main issues we came up with were: leaving Iraq (timeline and logistics), financial support through the transition and infrastructure rebuilding, and status of the VA/Healthcare system for our military veterens.

Maplight.org Data Mashup & Clean Elections

I had an opportunity to tour the Maplight.org congressional search a couple of weeks ago. At their launch party in Palo Alto, they showed their new search and discussed how their data analysis relates to clean elections and why it's important to be able to combine this data to see the realities of what's happening in terms of campaign contributions and legislative voting records.

One example from their statewide program shows a bill where bottled water manufacturers gave a legislator money the day before he voted against a bill that would mandate stronger bottled water standards. It could be a coincidence, of course, and there's always a chicken-egg scenario in these cases but the combined data is fascinating regardless.

Maplight.org is a Berkeley-based nonprofit with a mission of "illuminating the connection" between money and politics. The congressional search and the California state search are both now up on their web site.

Help Save Berkeley Landmark Ice Rink!

If you're a figure skating fan, could you picture figure skating history without Kristi Yamaguchi, Brian Boitano, Rudy Galindo, and even Sonja Henie? Of course not, that's absurd! Well, the Berkeley Iceland (in Berkeley, CA) was home to all of these skaters at one time or another - some only on occasion but it has been around for 65 years. It's now closed - land to be sold to the highest bidder and demolished for whatever purposes they choose.

Berkeley Iceland is one of the largest, most beautiful rinks I've ever seen. Tucked in a hidden pocket close to campus, the rink spans Olympic size 200'x100' and includes grand stands for viewing hockey games and performances. The family who own it ran into financial troubles (rinks are expensive to maintain) after having some cooling equipment issues. So now a nonprofit group has banned together to Save Berkeley Iceland. Let's hope they can be as successful as saving Kepler's Bookstore here in Menlo Park has been so far.

Yes, there are rinks in Oakland, San Francisco and Dublin now that aren't too far away for skaters, but none of them is quite like this one. It truly is a historical building. This Thursday, a group meets in the City of Berkeley to determine whether the building can become an official landmark. Whether that has much bearing on its fate remains to be seen, but if you love figure skating, please consider helping Save Berkeley Iceland turn it into an environmentally sustainable rink that will last another 65+ years.

Clinton Foundation's Next Generation of Philanthropic Leaders

If you've never seen Bill Clinton speak, this is a relatively inexpensive way to do so. It's a nonpartisan, tax-deductible event and benefits some wonderful causes. Please join Chuck and I at the event. Let me know if you would like to attend (post a comment or email sairy[at]sairy[dot]com) and we'll get an official invitation sent your way. Normally I wouldn't post full event info, but since there's no web page yet to submit RSVPs, this will have to do for now.

...

Millennium Network's Inaugural Reception Benefiting the William J. Clinton Foundation
with President Bill Clinton

Saturday, April 14, 2007
6:00pm-9:00pm
Fairmont Hotel
950 Mason Street
San Francisco, CA

Tickets: $100 (Tax-Deductible)

“President Clinton's vision is to encourage the next generation of leaders and philanthropists to address the challenges of global interdependence through the Clinton Foundation Millennium Network, which seeks to engage under 40- year-olds in the work of the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation delivers tangible results to meet pressing issues in the United States," such as:

- Fight Against HIV/AIDS
- Poverty
- Global Warming
- Urban Development
- Childhood Obesity

All Contributions benefit the Clinton Foundation, which are also tax deductible. If you are unable to attend, you are encouraged to donate in support the organization.

Green is Greater than Gold

In an international, star-studded event, tonight's Oscars captured not only a billion viewers but it conveyed a strong message of environmentalism and world cohesion. One of the films was described as "a time-bending rumination on today's global village", but that could have described many of the movies highlighted by the awards tonight.

Several Aussies, Mexicans, Spaniards, Italians, French, Taiwanese, Japanese and British actors, writers and filmmakers presented awards and received nominations and Oscars. Included in the winners was Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" for "Best Documentary Feature". As expected, it received a well-earned standing ovation. On oscar.com, you can read recommendations on how to go green. On top of that, during the show, some simple steps were listed as Melissa Etheridge sang a song, "I Need to Wake Up" from the film.

Each year of the past decade, it seems that one issue has been central at the Oscars. One year was the year of black award winners; another focused on gay rights, and this year's took a global perspective. Every year from the Golden Globes to the Oscars, I want to see all of the films nominated. I wish I had time to do so. This year, for starters, I really want to see "Babel". Having traveled much of the world, I feel a strong association with its message about how similar we all really are. Also central to tonight's Oscars was a stronger emphasis on all of the nominees. But the real winners are all of us if we can take home the message of how to stop global warming - being green will make us much a much richer planet than any gold ever could.

Online Account Nonsense

About once a week, I find myself creating a hand full of new accounts for various sites that I may or may not ever use again. And then there are the couple that expired or were purged that I have to renew. Of course also we can't forget the passwords that need to be changed - which I'll admit even as a security professional, I'm not as on top of as I should be.

Today, I decided to count all of the accounts I have for sites that I have to date. Not including client accounts or ISP/telephony - just things like containerstore.com and blogger.com - I have over 225. As someone who learned about e-commerce before it existed, I'm still mind-boggled by this. Who can keep track of these things in a secure, organized fashion without being overwhelmed?

Options?
a) Use a site that aggregates passwords that better be damn secure if you have any kind of financial or personal data in it
b) Save passwords in an insecure but easily accessible location
c) Use the same password for multiple accounts
d) Create fake email accounts that are really anonymous or have pseudonyms to use for as many as possible

These still each have their own problems. But what's the alternative? Don't read news online, don't conduct business transactions online, don't use your own identification for your searching? It's tiresome...

e-Commerce Coming of Age

Holiday sales have been commonplace for many years, but I think this year the online sales have hit an all-time high. Stores like Neiman Marcus and Restoration Hardware are sending out e-mail about their big holiday sales, and it seems like everybody in the world is offering free shipping to entice people to buy online.

I remember back in the day (1995), attending a USENIX symposium on e-commerce in New York City. I was a student scribe at the conference and was able to sit in on meetings about this amorphous 'e-commerce' concept, now ubiquitous it seems. Back then, we were mostly concerned about aspects like databases and security which are commonplace now (although certainly still not quite as good as they should be).

What I think is interesting is not where we are today - sales and free shipping galore - but the question of where we will be tomorrow, next year, and especially 11 more years from now. I saw demos at the World Summit on Information Society (in 2003) of handheld gizmos used between tribal communities, bearing symbols, to communicate remotely with each other about buying, selling and trading goods. That's pure e-commerce.

As we read more about globalization every day and see communities like Lagos Island where raw economics rule every aspect of life, I wonder when globalization and e-commerce will merge into one. It seems like e-commerce is coming of age now, but with all of the possibilities still out there, particularly for marketplaces like eBay and Amazon.com there is still a long way it can go.

NASA Launches VC for Mars Mission Prep

Here's something interesting I found on VentureBeat: Red Planet Capital, a $75Million venture capital fund fased at NASA Ames here in Mountain View, will be funding businesses that develop technology for space exploration.

In his post, "NASA Ames Research Center has vital role in future space exploration", Pete Worden (NASA Ames Director) writes about all of the new work that is happening local to the Bay Area including partnerships with Google, testing new heat shields for the shuttle replacement, Orion, and developing IT for health monitoring tools. He also notes that robotics and small satellite missions are something for the near future.

Red Planet Capital is a nonprofit organization originally based out of San Mateo. They have eight business areas of focus: "eight business sectors: information technology, communications, biomedical support, environmental systems, smart manufacturing, man-machine systems, energy, and advanced materials." They invest $3-$5 Million in most of their portfolio companies over the course of multiple rounds of funding, starting with sums of $250k. See also: NASA's press release from last month and of course redplanetcapital.com.