What happens downstream?: Scott Mattoon's blog

I had the pleasure to chat with Robin Chase last evening.  Earlier in the day I snuck past security at the Connected Urban Development conference to meet her following her panel discussion on Connected and Sustainable Mobility.  I felt like a KT Tunstall groupie slipping back stage after the show.  Overtly, I wanted to understand her experience as a Facebook Platform developer, and see whether and how Sun could help her company, GoLoco, prosper.  Covertly, I wanted to find out what she'd been up to with mesh networks since her TED Talk last March.  We agreed to meet at the end of the day.

One of the first things I learned about Robin when we sat down at at Cafe de la Presse in San Francisco is that she is a connector within the mesh networks community.  Despite her successes and notoriety with Zipcar and GoLoco, she has bigger fish to fry with Mesh Networks, and is working hard to build the (social) network to change personal transportation and the way we access the net.   

She is making the case that mesh networks can help solve three major socioeconomic challenges.  The first is encapsulated in one sentence from her TED Talk, "If we started today [replacing every car with a fuel efficient one,] ten years from now, at the end of this window of opportunity, those fuel efficient cars will reduce our fossil fuel needs by 4%."  Basically, she is saying that no amount of efficiency built on top of a combustion engine will reduce our carbon emissions quickly enough to avert disaster.  The second is the deterioration of our transportation infrastructure at the hands of tax cuts and neglect at the federal level.  The third is the lack of free and ubiquitous access to the Internet.

Her vision is an open source model for building decentralized, ad hoc, peer to peer networks by distributing simple  mesh network transceivers in every car.  Once these devices are sufficiently deployed they work as sensor networks to enable congestion pricing and road use pricing models, plus they will provide ubiquitous and free wireless Internet access.

Obviously, some engineering will need to be done in order for her vision to be realized, but she claims it's already well underway.  Maybe Sun can help her in a more fundamental way than just scaling up her Facebook app efficiently.  Afterall, Sun knows a little bit about Open Source models and has already delivered devices that can form sensor networks.  I hope I can help bring another degree of connection to her network.

I'm excited to see the launch of Connected Urban Development happen here in San Francisco this week.  It is fitting that Cisco should jump into the fray with a community building initiative centered on ICT's role in sustainable development.  They've been among the vanguard of companies innovating in IT and in International Development since their beginning.  John Chambers, et al have a long record of prioritizing Cisco's role in bridging the digital divide and investing in our shared future.

But do we need Yet Another Climate Change Initiative?   Clearly, Cisco can do great things in fulfilling their commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative and help to reduce carbon emissions, but are they detracting from other important programs already well underway to address the same issues?   I hope not, and I certainly will watch this space to see what actually occurs after the conference closes today.  If the list of business and government leaders they've assembled for the event is any indication, CUD is already doing much to help foster the all important public-private partnerships that are so hard to sustain over the life of a long ranging initiative like this.

Among the programs whose mission overlaps with CUD are ICLEI and Natural Capitalism Solutions.  Both organizations have been at this Sustainable Urban Development business long before global warming entered the business world's conscience.  ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) was founded in 1990 to help local governments connect with each other and develop cost effective means of sustainable development.  Hunter Lovins and her posse at NatCap Solutions have made available an incredibly valuable resource for urban climate change programs: The Climate Protection Manual for Cities.  Neither of these two veteran groups appear to be involved in Cisco's climate_change_initiative_come_lately.   Hopefully the connections will be made soon enough and some real efficiencies can be gained in collaborating on development of environmentally sustainable cities.  I'll see if I can run over to the conference at lunch time and help Cisco build their network.  Maybe I'll even get to meet my new business idol, Robin Chase, TEDster and CEO of GoLoco, who is on the conference agenda today.