Blake Burris

NYC Big Apps: Cleanweb Big Issues Track

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:55:00 -0700

NYC Big Apps: Cleanweb Big Issues Track:

Check out my post on Cleanweb “Big Issues” as a key track of New York City’s Big Apps competition.

It’s exciting to have Mayor Mike and NYC’s EDC popularizing Cleanweb with a broad base of innovators in the City and reaching people far beyond.

Dear Kettlebell: Thanks for making me feel guilty if I...

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 10:34:48 -0800

Dear Kettlebell: Thanks for making me feel guilty if I don’t take you out for 70 good swings 2x per week. I’m going to outgrow your 50# weight soon! #4HB #paleo – View on Path.

Chris George: Chicago's Cleanweb Scene is on Fire!

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 06:35:00 -0800

Chris George: Chicago's Cleanweb Scene is on Fire!:

I first met Chris George at the Cleanweb Hackathon at Rice University back in August 2012 where he’d volunteered to help organize some details of that event. In casual conversation, we discovered a mutual interest at the intersection of nutrition and technology (a bit of quantified self). As we talked more over the weekend, I learned of his experience in organizing running events and community (barefoot running and paleo lifestyle) meet ups along with raising of sponsorships. His skills and interests were fairly adjacent to what’s required of local teams producing hackathons. So, I figured that with his outgoing and personable style and flexible schedule, he might be a fit (and interested) for working with me to support the burgeoning cleanweb community.

Over lunch at a nearby Chinese vegan joint, we made a bargain that I’d train him up on the cleanweb space along with relevant technology and take him to the events happening the remainder of the year where he could get first-hand experience and meet scads of new people. If things worked out, I suggested, he could create an opportunity (and paying job) for himself. Since then, it’s been a whirlwind tour of the cleanweb communities; where he’s traveled (in couch surfing style) representing cleanweb in San Francisco, Austin, NYC, Los Angeles, Rome and most recently, Chicago.

Chris’s work scope (as much as it can be constrained in a startup) is working with self-selecting leaders internationally to building the global cleanweb community (mostly in the mega cities) where Cleanweb takes root. The ultimate goal of creating the next web-scalable companies addressing resource issues.

Chris, It’s great have you in the cleanweb family and it has been encouraging to watch you find your footing and apply your creativity to accelerate the Cleanweb. You’ve been a critical part of building the momentum towards the launch phase of the Cleanweb Initiative. We could use another four of you so get busy!

cscotthack

As I return from yet another trip evangelizing the Cleanweb Gospel, I find myself imagining a few things: where will Cleanweb pop up next? Which cities will rival Rome and London as primo innovative-Cleanweb community icons in 2013 and beyond? I believe I have an answer that may cause you…

SuperFudge from Houston’s patgreerskitchen.com...

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 10:45:08 -0700

SuperFudge from Houston’s patgreerskitchen.com #plantstrong – View on Path.

Matt Reisman on the CleanTech Startup Ecosystem and GreenLite Labs

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 09:36:00 -0700

Matt Reisman on the CleanTech Startup Ecosystem and GreenLite Labs:

After spending time with Matt Reisman (@mattreisman) a Boston native and his business partner, Duer Reeves a former SUN executive, in Boulder a few months back, I left excited by their plan to focus their accelerator on #Cleanweb. While no one would claim it’s easy starting and funding an accelerator, they do have a few advantages working in their favor:

Genuine interest in helping early stage entrepreneurs
Techstars affiliation
Boulder location with 300+ days of sunshine with a rich startup history community

I’ve also joined their advisory board and look forward to getting more involved and recruiting for the first class begins. Godspeed!

Google TV round 2 looks interesting. When this, Apple TV and...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 09:00:09 -0700

Google TV round 2 looks interesting. When this, Apple TV and Roku are all priced right at $100, it’s painless to sample the goods. We routinely flip between Roku (for Heather’s TV fix and Amazon Prime Videos) and AppleTV for other movie library, TV subscriptions. Netflix is everywhere now so that’s easy.

The shoe everyone including me is waiting to drop is the next Apple TV play.

(via Vizio Co-Star Google TV set-top box is up for pre-order, $100 brings it your way in August — Engadget)

Photo

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:24:16 -0700

Photo

Fri, 18 May 2012 15:33:54 -0700

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Thu, 03 May 2012 15:37:04 -0700

Spreading the cleanweb meme

Tue, 01 May 2012 18:41:54 -0700

It seems like just yesterday that we were in the final stretch of planning the second Cleanweb Hackathon in New York. It was a great event that brought people together from the Cleantech community along with investors, city officials, entrepreneurs and a spattering of students. It exceeded my expectations and has led to follow up discussions and spurred the city’s own hackathon, Reinvent Green.

During the two weeks following NYC, I had some great follow up chats with people interested in doing hackathons all over (Tel Aviv, Houston, Paris, L.A., Singapore, Berlin, and Philadelphia). Wow, this thing has legs I thought.

Luckily, Sunil Paul and Nick Allen (of Spring Ventures) shared my enthusiasm for doing something beyond the first two events that would catalyze local leaders who could in turn continue the momentum. While we could have just let Cleanweb spread organically, my opinion was that Cleanweb, as an evolutionary mantra for continued innovation, deserved some focused execution. If we could identify leaders interested in spreading the meme, real community could be formed for create some major impact and disruptive new companies. We quickly agreed on a plan and they agreed to invest funds and to help raise sponsors interest in a Cleanweb 10-city tour.

So, after several months of planning, it’s time to kick off the first spate of hackathons:

Boston, May 4-6
Boulder, May 17-20
Santa Clara, May 22-24 (in conjunction with Connectivity Week)
Oakland*, June 8-11
Paris*, June 17-21 (in conjunction with Futur en Seine)

* Registration opening soon

I hope you can join us at one of these if you’re nearby or can get there. If you’re one of those wondering “when cleanweb is coming to my city,” consider recruiting some compatriots who would make good organizers and complete the facilitator application to get the ball rolling.

It might go without saying, but producing a great event for 150-200 people is a big commitment. It takes about 90-days of planning, a great team, raising $10-20K, securing sponsors, and then making sure you do everything in your power to get people to bring their creative guns on game day.

Join the #Cleanweb conversation on Twitter or for some serious dev chat: ##Cleanweb on irc.freenode.net

Almost forgot to share this on Tumblr. Lots of opportunities...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:14:33 -0700

Almost forgot to share this on Tumblr. Lots of opportunities coming up to get involved in Cleanweb. Check out our new site for updates and tour schedule. (via Why Cleanweb Will Beat Cleantech)

Books I'm Reading

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:29:48 -0800

I’ve had a few great books land on my plate recently from various sources that I’ve been enjoying and thought would be worthy of sharing. I’ve finished a few of these and am reading the others simultaneously; shifting from iPad to Kindle and hardcover as time and situation allow.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg whom I heard speak at BloomReach’s recent launch party (Thanks for the invitation Stormy). The book was in their goodie bag so I’m reading the hardback version. I’m not far into it but it definitely has my attention as I’ve given up drinking alcohol during Lent and it’s interesting to notice the effect of forced changes in habits.

I finally decided to pick this up over other choices on urbanism after reading news of Tony Hsieh (Zappos founder) and his new $350MM startup to rebuild a section of downtown Las Vegas. With my recent travels to NYC, it’s fascinating to read about the history and renaissance of the city. He also makes many references to Texas and what’s right about state and local policies in Houston and Dallas for attracting people and business.

While riding the train recently, I discovered my first Kindle Single, “Weekday Vegetarian.” I was suspicious at first of the $2.99 price but am glad I tried it. I lately got introduced to the author, Graham Hill, in NYC who’s also the founder of Treehugger. They covered our recent hackathon in the city - small world.

I never studied the infamous French essayist Montaigne in school but was fascinated by an article about his life I read several years ago.

I didn’t think I stood a chance of working through his original opus at 1,000 pages so when I saw this pop up in an Amazon daily deal, my interest was piqued. People from all walks of life have been talking about Montaigne and his essays for over 400 years. I’m discovering what all the fuss is about.

I’ve followed Umair Haque online for quite a while and have always been impressed with his writing and perspective. He’s certainly more raw and unfiltered in his tweets. Given my professional interests over the last years, the topic of this short story was instantly of interest: “betterness” and “economics for humans”

After returning from my last trip I had an unexpected Amazon package waiting at the office. I didn’t recall ordering anything and upon opening still didn’t know where it came from. The packing slip simply said “enjoy your gift” or something. The cover certainly looked like something I’d buy so I wasn’t going to return it. Then I noticed Billy Parish, the co-author on the back cover was a founder of Solar Mosaic, a company that seems to come up in my daily conversations on #Cleanweb. That’s because their company is part of the collaborative consumption movement; they’re innovating in the solar space; and their other founder and CEO, Daniel Rosen, participated in our recent NYC Cleanweb Hackathon (Cleantech Group coverage).

…that’s it’s all for now. I’ve got a few others in process and queued but will refrain from posting lest I give the impression that I’m unfocused, easily distracted or incapable of finishing anything!

You can thank me anytime if any these books radically alter your perspective on life or inspire a new adventure. :D

nycopendata: Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg signed into law what he...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 07:13:04 -0800

nycopendata:

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg signed into law what he termed “the most ambitious and comprehensive open data legislation in the country.”

The Mayor remarked:
“If we’re going to continue leading the country in innovation and transparency, we’re going to have to make sure that all New Yorkers have access to the data that drives our City. Across City government, agencies use data to develop policy, implement programs, and track performance — and each month, our Administration shares more and more of this data with the public at large, catalyzing the creativity, intellect, and enterprising spirit of computer programmers to build tools that help us all improve our lives.”

Read more on NYC.gov

Cleanweb lands in NYC

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:51:00 -0800

The day has finally come. I’m in NYC to kick off Cleanweb Hackathon round 2. Just a few months after a successful event and good time in San Francisco, we’ve kicked up the heat with a stellar line up for New York.

Uploaded with Skitch!

Momentum has really spiked in the last two weeks. We will be near capacity at our NYU ITP venue and are expecting over 200 for the kick off at The New York Academy of Sciences Friday night.

During the earlier stages of planning I was certainly questioning the need for another hackathon in here given an increasingly crowded green, sustainability, open-data, hackathon activity. NYC has amazing momentum with open data (NYC Big Apps), hackathons, incubators like NYU ACRE and a crop of homegrown startups in this broadly defined space. Does NYC need an SF-import of this sort? Will they welcome us with their resurgent pride for the Gotham tech scene. Would we find an anti-Valley bias? These questions were certainly nagging my mind.

As we continued making local connections in New York, and thanks to Sunil’s October meetings there, we found not only interest but excitement and a willingness to support the concept and promise of “Cleanweb” - onward march! With the date and venue set, it was on. Along the way, we enlisted the support of key sponsors, organizers, and an top-notch panel of judges. We couldn’t have pulled this off without the following big guns who volunteered many hours of their time:

Micah Kotch, NYC ACRE at NYU-Poly
David Gilford, NYC EDC
David Yeh, Generation
Jean Barmash, Bright Power
Nick Allen, Spring Ventures
Jay-E Emmingham, Pratt Center
Matt Solt, Civvic
Nicholas Eisenberger, Pure Energy Partners
Chrysa Caufield, Tendril

And falling from heaven, we’re very excited to have Aneesh Chopra, the U.S. Chief Technology Officer, joining us on Sunday for presentations and awards. His visit comes just days after his launching of the Green Button initiative in California; which is a key enabler of consumer-centric Cleanweb apps and a focus of Tendril’s global competition culminating Sunday in at the hackathon.

With some great advance media stories posted already and a press conference on Sunday, the world will soon learn more about Cleanweb and the amazing progress innovators can make in the span of just thirty-six hours.

If you’re following the NYC event remotely, please check out our Hacker League site for participants and projects, follow us on Twitter and tune into the live stream from NYU Tisch ITP on Sunday afternoon (2-5PM EST); which GigaOm will be mirroring.

This is just the beginning. Let us know your thoughts in the comments or via twitter.

Amazing Judging Panel for NYC Cleanweb Hackathon

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:24:21 -0800

Amazing Judging Panel for NYC Cleanweb Hackathon:

Nick Allen laid it out. No need to restate the obvious awesomeness of this line up.

My Cleanweb Journey

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:26:55 -0800

As we roll into 2012, I thought I should explain my fascination with Cleanweb,why it’s had my attention since early last year and what it means for my company, Dynamo.

Cleanweb broadly describes transformative opportunities for innovation at the intersection of IT and Energy. This description allows for everything from smartgrid companies like Silver Spring Networks, Efficiency vendors like ThinkEco and Nest to GetAround, Airbnb and OPower.

Sunil Paul can be first credited with use of the term “Cleanweb” in his seminal blog post and his presentation at GreenNet (if not earlier). I was introduced to Sunil by a friend, Andrew Ng, who suggested we connect on my vision for transforming the consumer relationship with energy, efficiency and cleantech. It was in the process of reading up on his history and firm, Spring Ventures, that I discovered Cleanweb along with his work on Gigaton Throwdown - both pleasant discoveries .

You see, at the time (early 2011), we were just finding our way in clean energy - knowing we wanted to serve the user (real people) not the incumbents. We were promoting Dynamo as a Cleantech company and our prototype aggregated in-home usage data from disparate sources…sounded good to us. Cleantech really wasn’t a great conversation starter though and several people suggested we were more about “behavioral analytics” but we still didn’t have the bridge to connect the user with the things that would open up a dialog about energy or drastically change their consumption patterns.

Cleanweb helped us find our identity as a company and is increasingly defining our mission to solve the world’s energy problems by accelerating consumer adoption of cleantech and efficiency solutions.

In my quest for success with Dynamo, I realized Cleanweb was something we needed to be widely recognized and promoted. I joined Sunil in an effort to recruit more people (innovators) who would also answer the Cleanweb call. Cleanweb Hackathon was established as the vehicle and the inaugural event was held in SF last September with great reception and results.

The parade continues January 21-22 with a stop in NYC. Thanks to the help of an incredible volunteer team, I’m co-producing this event at NYU’s Tisch ITP. We’ve rolled out the carpet for participants to come out, join teams, and produce apps for prizes and exposure.

There’s also a Friday kick-off reception at the incredible New York Academy of Sciences. It’s going to be great event, so please join us, send friends, or tune in to the live stream.

Join the movement. Hit me up on twitter or tune into the #cleanweb chatter.

"While the best personal trainers are giving advice based on dozens, or perhaps hundreds of clients,..."

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:24:45 -0800

“While the best personal trainers are giving advice based on dozens, or perhaps hundreds of clients, (Runkeeper) will have access to the experience of millions, if not billions, of clients.”

- Jason

THIS is the real opportunity of data networks.

This Startup Costs Me Thousands Of Dollars...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:30:41 -0700

I tried jamming through the initial course but only got to 38% before I messed things up. Having read @parislemon’s post on Codecademy, I’m giving it another shot.

parislemon:

…simply because they didn’t exist yet.

Codecademy.

About 6 years ago, I decided I was going to go back to school to learn how to code. I had very casually dabbled with some simple stuff ranging from HTML to C++, but decided I needed a more formal setting to truly learn. I was wrong.

It’s not that I didn’t learn anything going back to school — I did. But I was wrong that I needed to learn in a formal school setting. As any programmer will tell you, you’ll learn a lot more by doing things on the fly.

Read More

Now we’re talking about apps putting fun into things like...

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:22:01 -0700

Now we’re talking about apps putting fun into things like running that are really tough starting for many - me included. (I meant to publish this when first spotting in my feed.)

(via Zombies, Run! A Fitness App and Zombie Game)

An EV dominates the 12.4 miles Pike’s Peak summit climb!

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:01:27 -0700

An EV dominates the 12.4 miles Pike’s Peak summit climb!