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What is a TEDx in a Box, you ask? It’s a suitcase stuffed with everything an economically marginalized community needs to host their very own TEDx event — a projector, an iPod preloaded with subtitled TED Talks, a sound system, camcorders to capture fresh talks, and a how-to guide. TEDx in a Box was an idea that originated at TEDxKibera, a vibrant event held in the slums of Nairobi. With TEDx in a Box, individuals in the developing world and other underserved areas are delivered all the resources they need for an event, packaged into a portable box designed by IDEO. So far, boxes have been shipped to organizers in Ecuador, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, India and Pakistan — and counting.

In a new twist, members of the TED community can now donate a TEDx in a Box, which costs $2,000 USD, including shipping. It’s a great outlet for anyone who wants to inspire learning in an underserved community. It’s also a fantastic way for TEDx organizers who find themselves with leftover funds to pass the baton. Find out how to donate a TEDx in a Box » 

Do you live in a economically marginalized community where a TEDx in a Box would help you host an event? We’d love to match you with a donor. Read the requirements for receiving a TEDx in a Box here and then apply for a license through the TEDx website » 

Financial markets are not working for charities and social enterprises today. Most traditional financial intermediaries, like banks, are focused on short-term returns and deem unsecured lending to charities and social enterprises to be too risky. If financing is offered by a bank, the terms are often too onerous. As a result, charities and social enterprises do not have the cushion of external financing to manage their various capital requirements. Like any small business, they need working capital to balance out the peaks and troughs of their business cycle. Sometimes they need bridging capital to pay for projects that are being grant-funded upon completion. And for their long-term success and ability to scale, they need access to development capital to fund capital investments and the development new income streams. This lack of affordable funding limits their ability to deliver on their mission, hampers their ability to grow, and constrains their positive impact on society.

Banks have a role to play in the social sector. But it is not the one you might think. Instead of trying to develop a convincing business case to provide unsecured lending to higher-risk charities, banks should use their own philanthropic capital to implement the new models that others have developed to address this market failure.

CAF Venturesome, the social investment arm of the UK’s Charities Aid Foundation, offers one such model. To bridge the gap between traditional bank loans and grant funding, we provide “patient capital” in the form of long-term unsecured loans to charities and social enterprises. We use donors’ philanthropic capital to offer unsecured loans ranging from £25,000 to £250,000. To date, we have loaned over £22m to over 280 charities and social enterprises in the UK. Much to many skeptics’ surprise, the default rate is less than 6%.

This model is an innovative way for donors to achieve greater impact. Donors’ philanthropic capital can be “recycled” in the form of loans to different charities over and over again, thereby achieving exponential impact over a one-off donation. When you make an investment using your philanthropic capital, ie. what you would otherwise give away as a one-off donation, we then use your capital to make an unsecured loan to a charity. When that charity pays us back, we then loan that (your) money out again to another charity — over and over — until we eventually pay you back your investment (as per your agreement with us). Hence, instead of making a one-off donation, if you invest through this model, your money is ‘recycled’ as a loan to charities over and over and you achieve a much greater impact.

Of course, this is easier said than achieved. Internally, this approach requires recruiting skilled financial analysts with great people skills, since one hour they may be meeting a small community group and the next they may be structuring a corporate finance-type deal. These people are hard enough to come by; finding top talent who are also willing to forgo for-profit sector salaries is even tougher. There are also external challenges. While social entrepreneurs and nonproft leaders are often smart, passionate visionaries, they may not have had any formal commercial training. As a result, reporting quality and skill levels often vary. Unlike the standardized processes and products of traditional banks, lending to higher risk charities and social enterprises requires customized application processes, careful due diligence, and tailor-made lending offers. It is time and resource intensive.

Bank CEOs are under increasing scrutiny to demonstrate the “good side” of banking. Innovation in social finance should be an integral part of that story. Banks already have the necessary evaluation processes, highly skilled talent, and global reach. And they also have sophisticated corporate philanthropy and CSR programs. By combining the two in a new unsecured-lending-to-charities model, banks could achieve much more social impact than they are today.

To be clear, this is not about a new charity banking product within their existing for-profit structures. Nor is this about developing another socially responsible investment (SRI) product for their clients. This is about generating greater social returns on their own philanthropy investment by offering unsecured loans to charities that would otherwise not have access to capital.

Strategic corporate philanthropy requires CEOs to take a hard look at the skills and resources they have in their organizations, to mobilize these skills and resources to achieve the greatest social impact, and to act boldly, especially when they can do what others can’t. Anything less falls short.

Follow the Scaling Social Impact insight center on Twitter @ScalingSocial and register to stay informed and give us feedback.

“I flew this guy in for an interview from the west coast, with high hopes that I’d hire him as my new BizDev VP,” my friend Martin said. “Total train wreck, when I actually sat down with him.” I could tell he was frustrated. He’s the CEO of a 400-person (and growing) company, and a happy stress case most of the time.

“The guy did not impress you,” I guessed.

“So much worse than that,” said Martin. “I couldn’t wait to get him out of my office. Felt like I had to wash my hands, a complete sleaze-ball, and then I had no choice but to take him around to the VPs, since I’d flown him into town and given him the whole roster of people he was supposed to meet. I felt like an idiot. We missed a day of executive staff time, and the worst part is I still don’t have my BizDev guy.”

“So, what’s the learning?” I asked.

“Well, I interviewed this dude for an hour on the phone, a week ago,” Martin said. “The guy sounded like such a straight arrow. His background is perfect. Then I meet him and he’s an empty suit, but the worst kind — the kind of guy who thinks he’s God’s gift to American business. He literally told me in the interview, ‘I guess you could call me the Philosopher King type.’ I don’t know how I screwed up so badly.”

“I’ll take a guess,” I said. “The guy’s background looked great, and he said the right things in his cover letter and resume, so your hopeful brain said ‘Could this be my knight in shining armor?’ On the phone, your gut shut down. You heard what you wanted to hear, and perhaps didn’t probe all that deeply.”

“That’s it,” said Martin. “We had a friendly conversation on the phone, and he seemed to know what we’re all about. I guessed he knew enough of the customers that he could walk right in. Now that I’ve met him, I’d say he’s the guy to walk right in and alienate everyone on the team and our biggest accounts in the first week. No thanks.”

“So, what will you do differently from here on out?” I asked him.

“I should have dug a lot more deeply ahead of time,” said Martin. “I should have gone down to the nitty-gritty and asked him how he got that deal with Motorola, and the one with Siemens, and asked him to walk me through those deals step by step. It’s socially awkward to ask people to drill down to that level of detail, because we assume they’d have all the logical and emotional chops that you expect from a VP-level person. Sometimes they don’t.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said, “and it doesn’t have to be socially awkward. You can take the vantage point ‘I love deal-closing stories. I want to hear how the Motorola thing went down.’ You don’t have to quiz a guy. You can ask him to tell you the movie.”

“I’m going to do it, from now on,” said Martin. “But how do I start over now?”

“Go to your team, explain what happened, and ask for their help in finding a new candidate,” I said. “Tell your VPs you aren’t one hundred percent sure of your biz-dev-guy-vetting antennae right now. Your teammates will appreciate your forthrightness, and the fact that you’re telling them you’re not perfect. Tell them, ‘Put out your feelers, and let’s bring in some people who are the opposite of the Philosopher King.’”

“Which might mean the person we end up hiring doesn’t have all the credentials we were asking for,” said Martin.

“Bingo,” I said. “If you got this bozo using the credentials you are expecting now, it’s probably time to rethink them. What do you need, for national-accounts bizdev in software? You need integrity, imagination, some contacts, some muscles for getting contacts, a sense of humor, and someone with follow-through. There are tens of thousands of those people around.”

“There are,” said Martin, “but it seems so easy and so correct to spec the job at the highest level, with the right MBA and the blue-chip career history.”

“Well, if it’s easy, that means everyone will do it, and then you’re just competing for the same sought-after little pool of talent,” I said. “What’s imaginative or sparky about that approach? Why not get someone from another industry, or someone who’s done relationship-building in another function? When you sit down with the right person, you and he or she will both know it’s a good match. It’s a gut thing — let’s face it.”

“That is so true,” said Martin. “I can’t believe I paid for two nights for that idiot, in the fanciest hotel in town.”

“Be easy on yourself!” I said, “That hotel bill and the limo bill are reminders, like a stubbed toe, not to do the same thing again. They’re good things. They’re gifts from the universe.”

“You’re always talking about nudges,” said Martin. “Those are the nudges?”

“You got it,” I said. “Blow up the old job spec and write a paragraph in human English about what’s going on in your shop and what you’re after in 2013. Ask interested job-seekers to write you back and tell you what they think about your situation. Easy as pie. The right people won’t write to you about “end-to-end solutions” and “world-class customer relationships” and all that claptrap. They won’t call themselves “Results-Oriented Professionals” or any of the other gagtastic things we teach fearful business types to call themselves. They’ll tell you what they think and what they would do if they were you.”

“But what do I tell Mr. Philosopher King, now that he’s waiting for an offer?” asked Martin.

“You call him up and say ‘Stan, or Jack or whatever the guy’s name is, it was great to meet you. It was really helpful. This isn’t a good match, but we wish you well.”

“Lying through my teeth, then?” asked Martin.

“Not lying!” I corrected him. “It was great that you met him. There are companies that will hire people, sight unseen, after a phone interview. Can you imagine the damage that guy would have done walking in the door, if you hadn’t spent the money and the time to bring him out?”

“You’re right,” said Martin. “We were very glad to meet him, and very glad to put him back in the limo.”

“God bless those insufferable Philosopher Kings,” I said. “They help us see the difference between wheat and chaff. God bless that guy for being so overtly obnoxious. If he’d have been a little more subtle, your reaction might not have been so visceral, and he might have slid in the door.”

“Slithered,” said Martin.

“Crisis averted,” I sighed.

The BlackBerry World site has been recently revamped but as far as we can tell it seems broken. Now, it could just be our browser but it’s the only site that seems to have these problems. Yesterday, RIM’s PR messaged out to say the site had received a redesign and it’s very likely that this redesign has some bugs in it. Here at BlackBerryCool, we know that redesigns can cause huge headaches. We’ve been through them. Keep reading to see the errors we’re getting.

Clicking on the Apps section results in the CSS breaking.

This is what happens when you click on the Newest Apps section.

Here’s a screenshot from this link.

States with oil production from shale oil formations have seen impressive revenue and job growth. In North Dakota, for example, the state’s economy is growing at 7 percent and its unemployment rate is a mere 3 percent — figures that should make most state governors envious. But, North Dakota is not alone in benefits stemming from oil production. Texas has a budget surplus of $8.8 billion that matches the record it set in 2007. The Texas economy has topped budget projections over the past 15 months, as energy output fueled job growth and an 11 percent fiscal first-quarter gain in sales-tax receipts, the biggest source of general-fund revenue in the state.[i] The story is simple—energy production creates economic growth creating thousands of good-paying jobs even during tough economic times.

Young adults with a college education are finding it difficult to find jobs in most areas of the nation where the unemployment rate for that age group is over 12 percent.[ii] Further, a recent Rutgers University study showed that the starting salary for a recent college graduate is $27,000, 10 percent less than five years ago.[iii] But in Montana, teenagers are foregoing college to work on oil rigs and other related jobs with salaries that can start at $50,000 per year.

The jobs in states embracing energy production not only include direct energy company jobs, but also support company jobs including the excavation, building and maintenance of oil wells, as well as construction of the hotels, apartments and camps for employees. Many of these companies offer $20 an hour to start, plus benefits. That contrasts with many jobs in the United States where benefits are only a dream to many workers.[iv]

The Current Oil Boom

This U.S. oil boom began in 2004 in North Dakota when hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling were combined and applied to a well, confirming that these technologies could unlock profitable amounts of oil in pockets deep underground. In horizontal drilling, a well is bored at an angle to run lengthwise along the richest slice of rock. Hydraulic fracturing uses a high-pressure stream of water, sand, and a few chemicals underground to crack apart the rock and free the crude. These technologies have made drilling faster, cheaper and better at obtaining oil from shale rock formations.

North Dakota is now the second largest state producer of oil, behind only Texas, and produces 747,000 barrels a day. Other states have followed the lead set in North Dakota’s Bakken shale basin. Texas, where the Eagle Ford shale basin is located, produces 2,100,000 barrels per day–the most oil production since 1987. Output from Wyoming increased 7 percent, the biggest jump in records going back to 1981. New Mexico’s output increased by 13 percent, and Oklahoma’s by 18 percent.[v]

Due to these technologies, U.S. oil production increased by a record 766,000 barrels a day in 2012, with an average of 6.43 million barrels per day produced–the highest level of domestic output in 15 years. Forecasters are predicting that the nation will surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer by 2020 and that North America will become a net oil exporter by 2030. U.S. net petroleum imports in 2012 fell by 39 percent from the 2005 peak, now accounting for 41 percent of demand, down from its 2005 share of 60 percent.

 

Source: Energy Information Administration, http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec3_3.pdf

The most recent data from the Energy Information Administration supports these forecasted trends. In the week ended January 11, 2013, oil production increased to 7.04 million barrels per day, the highest level since January 1993. Oil production was 23 percent higher than a year ago. Further, the nation met 83 percent of its energy needs in the first 9 months of 2012, the highest annual rate since 1991.

Oil producers deployed as many as 1,423 rigs in 2012, the most rigs deployed in records going back to 1987. The increased oil production has resulted in a bottleneck in Cushing, Oklahoma that caused the 500-mile Seaway pipeline last year to undergo construction to reverse its flow to carry crude oil south to Gulf Coast refineries instead of north. By adding pump stations and other modifications, the capacity of the reversed Seaway Pipeline increased to 400,000 barrels a day this month from its previous capacity of 150,000 barrels per day.[vi] The Seaway Pipeline also has the support needed to move forward with construction of a loop (twin) of the Seaway Pipeline, designed to parallel the existing right-of-way from Cushing to the Gulf Coast and more than doubling Seaway’s capacity to 850,000 barrels per day by first quarter 2014.

 

Source: Energy Information Administration, http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/e_ertrro_xr0_nus_cm.htm 

Railways are also moving oil from major production areas including North Dakota to refineries at levels not seen since World War II. Northeastern refiners now find it cheaper to replace foreign oil shipments from Africa, Europe and the Middle East with domestic oil brought in by rail, boosting the profits of tank-car maker American Railcar Industries Inc. and BNSF Railway Co., owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

But railways and the expansion of the Seaway Pipeline have not removed the oil glut out of Cushing. The Energy Information Administration just reported that Cushing, Oklahoma added another 1.8 million barrels to storage with total Cushing stocks equaling 51.9 million barrels of oil in facilities at the energy hub. During the last 6 weeks, 6.2 million barrels of oil were added to Cushing stocks. Cushing oil inventories are now almost double their level this time last year when they stood at 28.3 million barrels.

The glut of oil in Cushing has been caused by increased oil production from North Dakota’s Bakken basin and imports from Canada. The Keystone XL pipeline was to aid the movement of the increased oil production from these areas but was delayed, denied, and delayed again by President Obama and the U.S. State Department because of the need to determine if the pipeline is in the ‘national interest’ since it would cross the U. S. border with Canada. In February 2012, TransCanada announced it would build the southern section of the pipeline, from Cushing to the Gulf Coast refineries, which does not need State Department determination and a Presidential permit. Construction of Keystone’s “Gulf Coast Project” began in the fall of 2012. The $2.3 billion southern leg is expected to be in service by mid- to late 2013.[vii]

Part of the issue with the delay was that the pipeline was to traverse a sensitive area in Nebraska. TransCanada, however, rerouted the pipeline away from the area. A report recently released by a state agency in Nebraska found the new route poses ‘minimal risks’ to the Nebraska’s environment, eliminating a hurdle to its approval.[viii]  And, Nebraska’s Governor Dave Heineman just announced his approval of the new route for the Keystone XL pipeline that avoids the environmentally-sensitive Sand Hills region.

Recently, ten governors and the premier of Saskatchewan wrote to President Obama asking him to approve the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and citing its importance to the two countries. The letter indicates that with the Keystone XL pipeline U.S. imports from Canada could reach 4 million barrels per day, twice what is imported from the Persian Gulf. And, the pipeline would also provide “critical infrastructure” to move oil from the Bakken in North Dakota and Montana.[ix]  In their view, the economic, energy and national security benefits of Keystone XL overwhelmingly support its approval.

Conclusion

The oil industry is providing much needed jobs here in the United States, but impediments from our federal government are causing oil production to be bottlenecked in Cushing, where it cannot be refined into products demanded by the American public. Our current pipeline capacity is being expanded and our railways are moving oil to refining facilities, but Cushing still remains a bottleneck. Approving the Keystone pipeline would help alleviate the oil glut at Cushing and move North America towards energy independence as forecasters are predicting.

To work out differences and get things done, people in organizations need to work together. To foster this kind of collaboration, managers need to develop personal relationships — and some amount of trust — with potential partners. Without this foundation, negotiations often become adversarial; parties question each other’s motives and neither side truly listens to the other.

Sound familiar? The struggle to reach consensus in Washington over spending, taxes, debt limits, and other issues is a case in point on how the absence of relationships constrains compromise. Clearly the issues involved are divisive and emotional, but watching these leaders try to find a middle ground is painful and discouraging — largely because they have so little relationship capital to draw upon. According to recent news reports, Republican leaders routinely turn down invitations from President Obama to come to the White House for social events, whether they are state dinners or movie screenings. And President Obama, for his part, has indicated that he prefers to spend time with his family instead of schmoozing with members of Congress.

Nobody is suggesting that President Obama, Speaker Boehner, and Senate Minority Leader McConnell become close personal friends. They do, however, need to understand and appreciate each other’s points of view and be willing to look for middle ground. Getting to that point takes hard work. As one manager at the World Bank once said to me, “Building relationships requires a thousand cups of tea.”

A number of years ago, many of the big commercial banks and private corporations encouraged their officers to build relationships by providing special executive dining rooms (with gourmet meals). While there was a certain amount of elitism involved, the practice gave managers a chance to get to know each other and create an underlying support structure for doing business. Similarly companies also organized regular offsite team-building retreats, and social events for managers and their families.

Today companies tend to be more egalitarian, and more concerned about costs and perceived boondoggles, so that many of these relationship-building vehicles (some of which were excessive) no longer exist. However the need may be greater than ever, since managers often do not work in the same locations as their peers, spend more time traveling, and usually do not have the luxury of extra hours to just “get together” with colleagues. The result is that many managers simply do not have relationships with a wide network of people across the company (and outside) and therefore struggle to resolve conflicts. In fact I’ve been in a number of senior management conferences in the past few years in which top-50 managers are meeting each other for the first time.

The bottom-line is that whether you are the president of the United States or a mid-level manager, it’s worthwhile to be strategic and proactive about building relationships. To do so, here are two steps you can take:

First, identify the people in your company, or in adjacent organizations (e.g., customers, thought-leaders, partners) with whom you might need to collaborate at some point. In particular, focus on managers who are likely to hold divergent views or may see the world through a different lens.

Second, develop a tailored way to reach out to each person on the list — a few at a time — with the simple goal of getting to know each other. I know one manager, for example, who commits to setting up 10-minute calls with three people each week, just to “say hello.” Another manager makes sure that he contacts people on his list whenever he’s going to be traveling to their city or country. And still another uses social media to connect to some people and builds an email dialogue with others.

Most people understand that building relationships with potential business partners is a critical strategy for success. But it’s a strategy that often won’t happen by itself.

Tasia Malakasis, owner of Belle Chèvre, defines product management as a method of communication that differentiates your offering from the rest of the market.

“Pakistan is a highly complex and ambiguous country,” Ehsan Malik, Country Manager for Unilever Pakistan, told me. “The media projects Pakistan as conservative, but there is a large segment of society that is liberal and broad minded.” (Disclosure: Unilever is a client of mine globally, but not the Pakistan branch particularly.)

“My predecessor at Unilever Pakistan was a woman who went to run L’Oreal Pakistan. My wife runs a business and both our mothers and sisters have always worked, as do many in our families and friends. So for me Unilever’s gender balance drive is not something extraordinary.” Two of the people on Malik’s six-person Management Committee are women, and he sees the possibility that his successor could be female. “There are three senior women who have been listed as high potential so we could have a majority female Management Committee in the foreseeable future.”

“We aimed to set an example and become a model on gender balance. Now, virtually all our competitors are doing the same… In Pakistan, despite the bad press, when it comes to gender, employers are progressive.”

How do the men react? “There was a debate two or three years back, around a concern that we were favoring women. We made it very clear: between two equal candidates, we said we would pick the woman because there is an imbalance that needs to be corrected.” In Pakistan, as in a growing number of countries, women perform better academically. “Medical colleges are 70% women but less than half of them continue working beyond a few years of qualifying, partly because of family reasons but also due to working conditions,” notes Malik.

In many companies I work for, some of the greatest openness and action on gender balance is in emerging market operations. I have found managers in Brazil, India or Malaysia more enthusiastic and convinced of the business case than their Western colleagues, in much more challenging contexts. And ready to go to much greater lengths to adapt to women’s needs.

Like Pakistan. Unilever Pakistan has achieved its gender balancing targets internally (ahead of most Western countries), which Malik considered “relatively simple,” yet by doing things that might appear inconceivable elsewhere. So, for example, to recruit female engineers in its remote factories, Unilever provides security-guard staffed housing for the women next to the facilities, ensuring their safety and reassuring their families. Flexible working from different locations — home, distributor premises, or ad agency offices — is another step that benefits all managers. However, he observed, “some female managers prefer coming to the office — there is a day care center to look after their children, they want to get away from extended families that many in Pakistan live with, [and] they can escape the power cuts that plague large cities.”

These seemed like obvious investments to Malik who is now setting his sites on “a much bigger agenda” with gender as a competitive advantage with consumers, and a condition for working with suppliers.

Unilever’s global strategy is to move increasingly into the beauty business. In Pakistan, where Unilever has been operating since 1948, two thirds of the population is still rural. The villages are much more conservative than the cities, and women don’t interact with men and are more reluctant to shop for beauty products. In a twist on the Avon model, Unilever has been recruiting village women and training them for three months in the basics of beauty care and vocational business basics (e.g. How to open a bank account, blow dry hair and apply bridal makeup). When they return to their villages, they are positioned to offer both sales and services to the locals.

Over time, Malik is preparing to partner with other companies, so that these women become business hubs for their villages. For example, telecoms companies might make their Pay As You Go cards available through the same location.

For the moment, there are 900 women who have gone through the training, and Malik is planning on increasing this to 7,000. “The rural population’s bank is usually a couple of villages away. So we are finding that not only do other women come for beauty advice, they also start coming for advice on how to open bank accounts and start a business. And it seems the men are starting to come too, looking for the same guidance.”

“Where government fails,” concludes Malik, ” global companies can fill the void by building concepts that become platforms for change and progress.”

Randal O'Toole

Earl Blumenauer, Oregon’s bow-tie wearing, bicycle-riding member of Congress, has endorsed the idea of replacing gas taxes with vehicle-mile fees. Last week, he introduced a bill directing the Department of Transportation to start vehicle-mile fee pilot programs in every state and authorizing $150 million to fund the pilots. Since privacy is a major concern for many people, Blumenauer wisely makes protection of personal privacy a top priority of the legislation.

Blumenauer’s support for vehicle-mile fees is refreshing considering that, during the last Congress, the House passed a bill forbidding the Department of Transportation from even studying the possibility of such fees. (The otherwise-fiscally conservative member of Congress who introduced that bill ended up being a one-term congressman.) But Blumenauer’s stance also has some questioning his motives as he is one of Congress’ leading advocates of funding rail transit and other non-highway programs out of gas taxes.

It’s true that Blumenauer supports building streetcar lines more than new roads. In introducing the bill, the congressman focused on the fact that, over the past four years, Congress has had to transfer $48 billion in general funds to the Highway Trust Fund, and is currently spending $15 billion a year more on surface transportation than is coming in from gas taxes and other highway user fees. The Oregon representative obviously hopes vehicle-mile fees will help close the gap, allowing him and his colleagues to continue funneling billions of dollars into rail transit and other forms of travel that are actually pretty obsolete.

Of course, Congress could also close the gap by just spending no more money than it takes in. As it happens, the annual deficits are roughly equal to the amount Congress diverts to non-highway projects, so it is not that highways aren’t paying for themselves; they just aren’t paying for the pork Congress wants on top of roads. It is ironic if not hypocritical for highway opponents to insist on diverting billions of dollars from gas taxes to transit and other non-highway programs, and then proclaim that such deficit spending proves that highways are subsidized.

Still, I welcome Blumenauer’s support for vehicle-mile fees, which have several major advantages over gas taxes. First, they will allow people to pay for the roads they actually use and not just for the gallons of gasoline they burn. Second, once the technology is implemented, cities and counties–which currently spend about $30 billion in general funds subsidizing roads–can collect vehicle-mile fees and end all subsidies to roads. Third, as I explain in a recent Cato Policy Analysis, varying vehicle-mile fees with traffic levels can end congestion by effectively doubling highway capacities during rush hour. Fourth, by forcing state, county, city, and other road owners to compete for people’s travel dollars, they would offer road users better services at lower cost.

Moreover, rather than a way to fund more pork barrel, vehicle-mile fees would offer a natural path towards devolving transportation funding to state and local areas. The only real justification for a federal gas tax is that the federal government has an inexpensive way to collect this form of user fees: it collects the tax straight from refineries and importers long before the fuel reaches your local gas station. With vehicle-mile fees, the revenues can go straight to the road owners–meaning states, counties, cities, and private owners–thus cutting out the need to have the federal government as a middle-man.

How much would it cost to use roads under a vehicle-mile fee system? Americans drive nearly 3.0 trillion vehicle miles per year, and current revenues from gas taxes, tolls, vehicle-registration fees, and other user fees are about $120 billion per year, or about 4 cents per vehicle mile. Of course, trucks and other heavy vehicles would pay more; motorcycles and other light-weight vehicles might pay a lot less; people driving on more heavily used roads might pay less because they share the cost with more users, while people on lightly used roads might pay more.

Nearly all of the opponents to vehicle-mile fees express fears that government will invade people’s privacy. But this is a red herring. None of the dozen or so pilot projects that have been planned to date would allow anyone to keep track of where people go or when they go there. All they do is record how much people spend as they use the roads. People concerned about privacy should worry more about telephones and credit cards, where the government actually does invade people’s privacy.

Vehicle-mile fees would be a true user fee if the money went to the roads that users drove on. They would be a tax if the money went to transit or some other program, especially if the fees were set at a punitive level designed to reduce the amount of driving people do. As a user fee, vehicle-mile fees would increase mobility and, in the long run, reduce the cost of travel. As a tax, they would increase the cost of travel and limit mobility to the wealthy.

While it is nearly certain that Blumenauer and I disagree about where the funds collected from a vehicle-mile fee should go, I welcome his support for replacing gas taxes with such fees. Once we get people over the hump of accepting a shift from gas taxes to vehicle-miles fees, then we can argue about what level of government collects them and how to make sure they are spent where they are most needed.

Michael F. Cannon

Most of President Obama’s second inaugural address was painful. For libertarians. For those who understand the difference between science and opinion. For those who have tracked his administration’s relationship with openness and the rule of law. All of which cringe-inducing elements undermined the splendor of this gem:

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

It’s not the first time the president has tied “Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall” together. Here’s hoping more politicians do.

Contrary to popular opinion, strategy is not about turning uncertainty into certainty. Lots of bureaucratically inclined board members and corporate executives want and expect this to be the case. When reviewing strategies, you can hear them asking for proof that the strategy will be successful.

This kind of exchange is a terrible mistake on all sides. Advocates are promising something they can’t control and are setting themselves up for harsh punishment if things don’t turn out the way they hope. At the same time, making a guarantee in advance simply reinforces the mistaken belief that it is possible to be certain about any future outcome.

The reality is that strategy is about making choices under competition and uncertainty. No choice made today can make future uncertainty go away. The best that great strategy can do is shorten the odds of success. When crafting a strategy, all companies need to make bets about what customers will want in the future, what competitors will do in the future, what the company itself is capable of accomplishing in the future, what will happen in the economy generally. None of these bets can be guaranteed

Strategy means making the best possible choices you can make today and then being responsive when the bets do or do not come in as hoped. In essence, the strategist says “this is what I think will happen,” watches what does happen, and then updates the strategy and bets based on the newest information.

If strategy can’t eliminate uncertainty and needs repeated adjustments, why bother doing it at all? Why not just let the world play out and react accordingly? The reason is that strategy is the only way to figure out to what to pay attention to and how to get better.

The act of articulating a desired future state — a decision about where to play and how to win — enables the tracking of progress against the desired state. Stating the set of key bets about the future that have to come true for that desired state to happen allows the monitoring of how the key bets are playing out.

For example, a company looking to win on the basis of superior consumer service would have to bet that consumers would reward it for superior service and that it could deliver that service meaningfully better than could competitors. Having articulated the strategy and the bets, the company can develop measurement systems for both the outcome and the bets.

These systems should clearly point to the things that matter, the things the company must pay attention to. Without them, as the future plays out, the company won’t know what matters or how to make sense of the things that happen. In essence, articulating a strategy raises the signal-to-noise ratio of feedback from the market.

So strategy is not about getting rid of uncertainty, it is about knowing when the world is breaking against your bets — e.g., we thought customers wanted smaller screens but they really want bigger ones. This way of thinking about strategy is helpful in two ways.

First, the company can watch the key bets like a hawk, see deviations as early as possible and take action as appropriate. Without knowing what to watch for, the company is much slower to respond.

Second, the company gets a leg up on how to modify its strategy. The company has a logical structure to its existing strategy to which it can apply the new data, updating and enhancing the strategic logic. This is much more efficient than having to create the structure from scratch.

So rather than seeing strategy as a way to get rid of uncertainty, think about strategy as a way of dealing productively with life’s inevitable uncertainty, by continuously making and updating your bets about the future.

At first glance the Singer 911 looks like a standard old Porsche 911 with some subtle body tweaks. Look a little harder though and you’ll begin to see that not only are there huge differences, but that there’s zero in the way of classic 911 left in this car. Chris Harris recently spent the day touring Singer’s facility and then, took one of their cars out for a canyon/road course blast. To say he came away impressed would be an understatement.

Source: Youtube.com/DRIVE

There are a lot of applications that you may now access and utilize to make your everyday tasks easier. Tracking systems like BlackBerry cell phone trackers allow you to do a number of things in a snap. Trackers basically function the way GPS does.

For security:

Trackers are essential in putting an extra blanket of protection to your family and friends, especially to your kids. Through these systems, you would be able to monitor their locations from time to time. Thus, you would not have to worry about where they are. The best thing about mobile phone tracking is that it has the capacity to provide you the exact location (or a slight difference, say a few meters) of the phone you aim to monitor. For parents, this is a necessity as it is of paramount importance for them to know where their kids often go. For kids, on the other hand, this is also a safety measure as they are aware that if something unfortunate happens to them, their parents could be notified in no time. The same principle also applies in the case of the elderly people. If they suddenly get lost, their family members would not find it hard to locate them.

For Mobile Phone Recovery:

Phone stealing is a common problem in many areas, whether in the city or even in other parts of the world. With phone tracking system, this may be avoided and your lost phone due to stealing or other reasons could be recovered. This application allows you to locate your phone through the internet, provided the phone is turned on; and the sim card still works. The information about where your mobile phone is can actually be updated from time to time, giving you an idea about the movement of the one holding it.

For Tracking People:

Although some people argue that phone tracking invades one’s privacy, it must be noted that only those who give you permission to be traced are the ones you can locate. This service is useful for individuals who run businesses, especially in the field of sales as it lets them check if their people are doing their job during client calls and other business-related meetings.

Let’s cut the crap. Life is short, you have less time than you think, and there are no baby unicorns coming to save you. So rather than doling out craptastic advice to you about Making!! It!! To!! The!! Top!!™, let me humbly ask: do you want to have a year that matters — or do you want to spend another year starring-slash-wallowing in the lowest-common-denominator reality show-slash-whiny soap opera of your own inescapable mediocrity-slash-self-imposed tragedy?

If (congratulations) your unquenched desire to have better than a smoking trainwreck of a so-called life exceeds your frenzied mania for spending another 365 days wallowing in a sea of junk-food wrappers, then — don’t worry, I’ll be gentle — here are a few tiny questions.

Why are you here? I don’t mean to induce a full blown heart palpitation accompanied panic attack filled existential crisis in you (or maybe I do) — so let’s keep it simple. This coming year: why are you (really) here? There are plenty of answers to this biggest of questions — but, no: all answers aren’t created equal. There are poor ones, which will probably lead to a long, dull, dismal, rainy Sunday of a year. And there are better ones — which just might begin to explosively unfurl a life that feels fully worth living. Allow me to break it down for you.

What do you want? Here are some perfectly valid answers, if tedious mediocrity’s the limit of your horizon this year: money, sex, power, fame, keeping up with the Kardashians. Here are some better answers, if a year in a life meaningfully well lived is what you’re after. To make a difference. To transform something that sucks. To create that which transforms. To build that which counts. To experience what’s true. To do stuff that matters.

How much does it matter? Here are some pretty good answers, if a snoozer of a year in a cavernous landfill of a life is what you’re after. To your boss, her boss, his boss, or their boss. To shareholders, to the markets, to “consumers.” Here are some better answers, if you want this to be a year that one day that, in a surprisingly short time, you don’t just remember, but that you still savor: to society, to humanity, to tomorrow. To the timeless spirit of furious impossibility that characterizes the art of human excellence — not just to the zombie vampire robots that make up the bulk of our beige, big-box, yawn-inducingly banal infomercial-for-dystopia of a so-called economy.

What’s it going to take? You don’t get to a life well lived using the tired capabilities and skills built to Farmville the cubefarm. You need to “use” not just your whole mind, but to learn to employ your whole being: mind, heart, soul, and body. If nothing less than a life worth living’s your goal, you probably need to nurture not just the so-called pseudoscientific skills of a sartorially power-suited spreadsheet jockey — counting beans, pillaging the townsfolk, sweetly stabbing your peers in the back, all the while slickly glad-handing your higher-ups — but the arts of empathy, humility, passion, imagination, rebellion, to name just a few.

Who’s on your side? A life meaningfully well lived isn’t a Western, and you’re not John Wayne (although I bet you, like me, look darn good in a cowboy hat). Rugged individualism is nice in theory, but the truth is: if you’re going to make a difference, you’re probably not going to make it happen all by your lonesome. So who are your mentors and allies, friends and peers? Who’s at your back, manning your sails, crewing your boat? Here’s a hint: if you look around and your boat’s empty, learn to lead. Challenge, provoke, inspire, connect — and then, harder still, evoke the best in people. For it is the best in us that, in turn, elevates our capacity to love; the truest currency of a life well lived. And so respect is earned — and love given — not just to those who pander, but those who matter.

Where’s your true north? If you’re going to live a life that matters, you need an ethical compass: a belief system with a true north that points toward values that are in some sense enduringly, meaningfully good. Lance Armstrong’s true north seems to have been trophies — not championships; and the result, I’d bet, is a life that now feels arid, empty, wasted. So what’s your true north? In what direction do you find the stuff that makes life “good”? Does your true north point to consumption, status, transactions — instead of investment, accomplishments, relationships? If it’s the former, I’d bet: a life well lived is going to remain as elusive to you as it’s been to Lance.

What breaks your heart? Follow your passion, we’re often told. But how do you find your passion? Let me put it another way: what is it that breaks your heart about the world? It’s there that you begin to find what moves you. If you want to find your passion, surrender to your heartbreak. Your heartbreak points towards a truer north — and it’s the difficult journey towards it that is, in the truest sense, no mere passing idyllic infatuation, but enduring, tempestuous passion.

What’s it worth? A life well lived isn’t partytime with the airheads at the McClubs in Ibiza. And here’s the inconvenient truth: it’s going to take more than the tired old refrains of hard work, dedication, commitment, and perseverance. It’s going to take very real heartbreak, sorrow, grief, and disappointment. Only you can decide how much is too much. Is it worth it? Aaron Swartz, who packed an astonishing amount into his short 26 years, was relentlessly persecuted by an overweening prosecutor — and tragically took his own life in part for it. Van Gogh, of course, famously died for his art. A life well lived always demands one asks of one’s self: is it worth it? Is the heartache worth the breakthrough; is the desolation worth the accomplishment; is the anguish balanced by the jubilation; perhaps, even, are the moments of bitter despair, sometimes, finally, the very instants we treasure most? There’s no easy answer, no simplistic rule of thumb. The scales of life always hang before us — and always ask us to weigh the burden of our choices carefully.

Sure, you might read all the above and mutter: “Duuude? Check me Broseph. All I really want is a mega-bonus, a lifetime membership to the VIP room, and the keys to a Maserati.” Welcome, then, to bootylicious mediocrity. For mediocrity isn’t the poor, hardscrabble immigrant cleaning the bathroom at the 7-11: it’s the lucky trust fund kid who could’ve, just maybe, lived a life worth living — and thinks a life worth living is a loft, a corner office, a sports car, and a designer coffee machine instead. All that stuff’s nice — but entirely besides the point. Of life. For the simple, timeless truth is: You’ll never find the rapture of accomplishment in mere conquest, the incandescence of happiness in mere possession, or the searing wholeness of meaning in mere desire. You can find them only — only — in the exploration of the fullness of human possibility.

Hence: every moment of every day of this year, and every year that follows, what I want you to map is the uncharted shore of potential: the capacity of life to dream, wonder, imagine, create, build, transform, better, and love; the infusion of the art of living into the heart of every instant of existence.

We’ve been taught to be obedient rationalists. And the rationalists say: there’s no magic in the world. But they miss the point. There’s a kind of quiet magic that each and every one of us is condemned to have in us, every moment of our lives: the facility to exalt life beyond the mundane, and into the meaningful; beyond the generic, and into the singular; through the abstract, and into the concrete; past the individual, and towards the universal. And it’s when we reject this, the truest and worthiest gift of life, that we have squandered the fundamental significance of being human; that the soil of our lives feels arid, featureless, fallow, a desert that never came to life; because, in truth, it has been. And so this almost magical facility you and I have, potential, is something like an existential obligation that we must live up to: for it’s only when we not just accept it, but employ it at it’s maximum, that we can reconcile ourselves not merely to regret, but with mortality; that we can escape not merely our own lesser selves, but the all-destroying scythe of futility; and come, finally, to find, at the end of the day, not merely time’s revenge on life, but life’s revenge on time: an abiding grace for both the fragility and the fullness of life.

I don’t pretend any of the above is revolutionary, or new, or anything less than obvious. Yet, the lessons of a life well lived rarely are: they’re simple, timeless truths.

So let me ask again. Why are you here? Do you want this to be another year that flies by, half-hearted, arid, rootless, barely remembered, dull with dim glimpses of what might have been? Or do you want this to be a year that you savor, for the rest of your surprisingly short time on Planet Earth, as the year you started, finally, irreversibly, uncompromisingly, to explosively unfurl a life that felt fully worth living?

The choice is yours. And it always has been.

Much has been made of the flows into U.S. equities this month. Funds have rolled out the red carpet for a record $11.3 billion or so in net inflows over the first two weeks of the year, more when you factor in ETFs.

Just to cool the enthusiasm a little, it’s worth remembering that this comes after a torrid 2012.

Our graphic detailing Lipper’s latest estimated net flows in and out of various fund sectors shows combined outflows from U.S. equity funds and U.S. small cap funds reached a total of more than $150 billion last year. The fourth quarter alone contributed more than $50 billion of that.

To make the point more forcefully, those 12-month net outflows from the two sectors are far in excess of the rest of the top 25 worst-hit fund sectors combined. 

So there’s a fair deal of ground to catch up, and just as it makes recent inflows seem less gargantuan, that yawning gap can also be seen as succour to the bull case for equities in the U.S. and beyond (a bull case which now includes — oxymoron ahoy — permabears among its adherents).

You can view the full interactive graphic by clicking on the image below.

Of course, the glut of withdrawals from U.S. equity was a much touted trend; there are some less well-known nuggets among the Lipper data.

Notably, U.S. income funds took in a good chunk of the cash flooding out of their domestic peers, posting the fourth largest net inflow over the year. And just behind them, Swedish equity funds nudged into the top five, rewarded for a growth story that sharply contrasted with those of its euro zone neighbours.

There was clearly some hunting for returns further down the market scale too, with four regional small and midcap fund sectors making it into the top 25 for the year. And looking at the fourth quarter alone,  European small and midcap funds  pulled in a healthy $890 million, while another $440 million made its way to Asia Pacific smaller companies funds. There be stock pickers here; maybe the trampling of active management by the ETF behemoths isn’t quite a one-way street just yet.

COMPETITION TIME*: A quick look at the performance numbers for 2012 shows that only four equity fund sectors put in a negative return over the 12 months… Reward yourself with a pat on the back and a firm handshake if you can name all of them before checking.

I’ve concentrated on the equity story here. You can play around with the interactive graphic to look more deeply at bond fund sector flows and performance.

For any questions on the data, you can contact me on Twitter at @reutersJoelD or via Reuters messenger.

 

*No actual prize available

 

Having undergone significant changes in the past few years, RIM has decided to rename their yearly flagship technology conference to BlackBerry Live.

The conference has been growing in scale and scope for over a decade and launched under the name Wireless Enterprise Symposium. Two years ago they rebranded the conference to BlackBerry World when it was clear that the conference covered so much more than the enterprise angle.

BlackBerry Live is an apt name for what the conference represents: Your chance to meet and connect with the movers and shakers of the industry. The name change also coincides with the rebranding of BlackBerry App World to BlackBerry World.

Attend the keynote address that showcases cutting edge BlackBerry development and use cases with RIM’s world class technology partners. There’s no shortage of live demos, breakout sessions and access to RIM staffers who make BlackBerry happen.

If you want to connect with BlackBerryCool at BlackBerry Live, drop us a line at tips(at)blackberrycool.com

Click here for more info about this year’s BlackBerry Live that takes place from May 14th to 16th near Orlando Florida.

In his Inaugural address earlier today on Capitol Hill, President Obama called on all Americans to work together to solve our nation's problems:

America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands:  youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention.  My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it — so long as we seize it together.  

The President's second term will offer many ways for citizens to participate in conversations with the President and his team about the issues that are most important to them, from immigration reform to preventing gun violence to changing our tax code. In keeping with President Obama's commitment to creating the most accessible and participatory Administration in history, the next four years will feature ongoing opportunties for citizens to add their voices to discussions in Washington, creating an open dialogue and working together to move our country forward. 

We put together a video that looks at some of the ways President Obama has engaged with ordinary citizens over the last four years, and highlights ongoing opportunties for Americans to raise their voices and join the national conversation:

read more

This morning, at 11:55 AM Eastern Time, President Obama delivered his Second Inaugural Address. The speech was 2,137 words long and took 15 minutes to deliver.

"America’s possibilities are limitless," he said, "for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it — so long as we seize it together."

You can read the official transcript here.

You can watch the video here:

You can listen to the speech here:

Learn more

• Read "One Today," the Inaugural poem written by Richard Blanco. 
• Check out a photo gallery of Inaugural images from the White House photo office. 
• President Obama and Vice President Biden toasted the room during the Inaugural Luncheon at the U.S. Capitol. Read what they had to say. 
• President Obama spoke at the Commander in Chief Ball. Check out his remarks. 

A group of BlackBerry developers are currently climbing to the summit of Kilimanjaro and will be developing a charity app for BB10 in “the most strenuous hackathon ever”. It’s an awesome idea that’s raising money for a good cause – Doctors Without Borders. Check out the pics and follow along with the Twitter hashtag.

Donate to “Reaching New Heights with BB10″ at this link.

Check out pictures from Luca Sale after the break.

Getting closer… #BB10AppVenture twitter.com/blackberryluca…

— Luca Sale (@blackberryluca) January 21, 2013

As high as the clouds twitter.com/blackberryluca…

— Luca Sale (@blackberryluca) January 21, 2013

As high as the clouds twitter.com/blackberryluca…

— Luca Sale (@blackberryluca) January 21, 2013

“You remember the 80′s?” @alexbowker #BB10AppVenture twitter.com/blackberryluca…

— Luca Sale (@blackberryluca) January 20, 2013

Donate to “Reaching New Heights with BB10″ at this link.