Kategoriearchiv: Project of the Week

Join this project, or set one up yourself. The idea: Everyone can contribute to the success of a project that aims to bring as many stoves as needed to people who are still cooking with open fire. Apart from reducing the toxic smoke, stoves because of their much higher heat efficiency also greatly reduce the consumption of charcoal or any other fuel. This in turn reduces deforestation and Co2 emissions. Background Information: Every day, 3 billion people in developing countries are exposed to toxic smoke when preparing meals. Cooking on traditional stoves and open fires causes almost 2 million deaths per year, mainly affecting women and young children who are closest to the fire. “The smoke is the equivalent of breathing in two packs of cigarettes per day.”

The “Summer of Smart” in San Francisco is reaching its final with the last event on the 6th of October 2011. The Summer of Smart is a “new model for how citizens and government can work directly together to address urban issues. Developers, designers, city officials, urbanists, journalists, community members, and more are building rapid innovation prototypes and presenting them directly to government.” The event next Thursday probably marks the first time in US political history that hackathon teams will present their projects to candidates in the course of an election.  

In week “26“ I presented the 2011 Bloomberg Businessweek competition America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs. As voting finished after we went on holiday, we are now happy to present the winner. It was very close as the first three of the 25 competitors gained 15,7%, 15,4% and 15,3% of your votes respectively. The winner is Social Imprints (see also Bloomberg Businessweek), a San Francisco print shop that hires recovering addicts and ex-offenders. Second place went to Dalberg, a New York-based consultant focused on international social and environmental problems, and third place to Intuary, the maker of an iPad app that helps people who can’t speak communicate.  

It is summer time. Your funds are low as you invested a lot of money and time  in your new project. Financial return will certainly not materialize before the end of the year. Does that mean that you cannot have a nice holiday this year? No!!! Of course not. Workaway.info the site set up to promote fair exchange between budget travellers or language learners and families, individuals or organizations can help you out. If you are prepared to work 5 hours a day, you receive free food and accommodation in return. Consider an exotic place like Caños de Meca in Spain (see Guardian article) or any other place in the host list.  

We believe coworking events help to increase the attractiveness of coworking  a great deal anywhere on this globe. This holds true for current as well as prospective coworkers and coworking projects. A shared and open calendar that is directly accessible for all coworking space managers like the  “Open International CoWorking Calendar” is unique. It is easy to use and very effective in promoting coworking events. For anyone who needs more reasons to use the CoWorking Calendar, we drew up a list of “10 Good Reasons for the CoWorking Calendar“.