Travel - Montreal

From Guy:

http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/canada/quebec/montreal/67285/garde-manger/restaurant-detail.html

I asked Jess, but since she lives in Montreal she didn’t have any hotel recommendations on hand. 

Travel-Capetown

from Marlon - 5/12

For capetown, there was a million things to do. They’re not all necessarily  in the city, but close to it. I did the double decker tour first to get my bearings of the city and you can get on and off at any of the stops to see different parts of the city. District 6 museum was pretty cool, Nelson Mandela museum was also good. You can then go to the prison where he was kept, but u can tell they’ve painted over the place and so it doesn’t seem as dire. Stellenbosch was the wine district area that was really beautiful. Along the way to stellenbosch is a cheetah conservation park and a lion conservation park. Both were really cool. They don’t let you near the lions, but they do let you pet the cheetahs for a very small fee. Moya was the restaurant in the same place as the cheetah conservation park and we had dinner there which was buffet style and really good food. But what’s awesome is they paint your face all tribal like and they have great performances. I do believe they just do this for dinner. Cage shark diving was about 2-3 hours away from capetown in a city that starts with a G but pronounced with an H sound. Sorry, can’t remember exact name off the top of my head. 

I also can’t remember the name of the bars I went to there. But I know I had to go to a specific part of downtown to be in the gayborhood. However, all parts of capetown seemed to be open to gay people. I also checked out the huge farmers market on a Saturday morning. I believe it was called good market or good eats or something to that effect. 

Cape of good hope had beautiful views.
Boulders beach has a penguin sanctuary. 
If they go to south Africa, I recommend they try to make it to Kruger park for a safari which is close to Pretoria, but opposite side of the country.

Building the Business Case for Energy Efficiency Retrofits - from the Tenant’s Perspective

Project summary:

To close out my last days in my Green Accounting class, our group assignment explored the practice of “Building the Business Case for Energy Efficiency Retrofits from the Tenant’s Perspective.”  The idea was played out literally in a role play presentation where each of us participated as a key stakeholder in an internal real estate department.  

The conversation was also inspired by one of my internship managers who also raised the issue of the ROI of green buildings for a tenant, not a building owner as a study she had not seen before.  For example, “why would I, as a tenant invest in low flow toilets in a building that I don’t own?”  The challenge of this question is a leading barrier for the built environment.  

Our research was guided by industry trends and how city planners within the US, UK, Australia and Canada were discovering the process behind Green Leases.  We attended a panel hosted on campus exploring the same argument as well as a webinar hosted by the Department of Energy (DOE) which highlighted their announcement of their “Green Lease Library.” 

Luckily, we live in a city committed to efficient urban development and supports incentives for a more sustainable New York (minus recycling and composting!)  Our team turned to PlaNYC for the latest information on the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan for NY and how policy through statutory regulation, Local Law 88, effectively enforces the initiative for existing commercial building owners.  Check out how NYC’s tactical approach will be changing the conversation of Commercial Leases from now until 2025:  Energy Aligned Lease Language, Solving the Split Incentive. 

How this affects you and why should you care?

Image:  http://www.visualnews.com/2012/03/27/tracking-energy-consumption-for-each-building-in-nyc/

*At the time of this study, we could not find the metric that shows what percentage of existing commercial buildings are multi-tenant  buildings, but you can only imagine!

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PRACTICE or LEARN more aboutthe problem set on your own using the above resources as well as gleaning more information from Green Tenant ToolKit or reach out to your local USGBC chapter and AIA chapter.  As sustainability managers, the importance of this exercise is to understand how to “start” the conversation for executive buy in or management negotiations as well as with your building owner and what data you will need to build your business case to implement green retrofits in a property you only lease not own.

Role Play provided by my awesome team and colleagues in the M.S. Sustainability Management program at Columbia, SUMASA:  Emily (graduate!) Anastassia and Harold

II.  Evaluate the data you will need or assumptions to start your NPV Analysis:

Total Square Footage, Lease rent per square feet, and retrofit cost per square feet

Solution:  Predicted Energy Savings with the EE retrofit as a percentage, the adjusted payback period in years, and NPV discount rate as a percentage.  Compare your tenant NPV and landlord NPV as a dollar amount.

How negotiations play out and what to think about overall:

Continuous Partial Employment

brycedotvc:

I saw this term, Continuous Partial Employment, used by Chris Anderson over the weekend and it’s been rattling around in my head ever since. Clearly, it’s a riff on Linda Stone’s concept of Continuous Partial Attention, which she defines as:

Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We’re often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing…. To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network.

Given the current state of the job market, Chris’ prediction of a future state of continuous partial employment could be cast in two very contrasting lights.

On the one hand, it would remove the stability that many individuals and families have come to rely on. As children we’re taught to go to school so we can get a good job. For many this means a life of waking up each morning, driving to a building and sitting at a desk or standing behind one. We work, then go home to spend a bit of time with our family or friends before calling it a day (often still checking email late into the night). Then, rinse and repeat. Over time, working at these jobs allows us to save a little extra so we can retire and live out our golden years.

For many in the western world, this is what employment looks like. And it’s been reasoanably safe and somewhat comfortable for decades. Alas, the current state of things is throwing a wrench into this security, and that is the negative light that the concept of continuous partial employment casts. As this notion of company as stabilizing force erodes so do the assurances of pensions plans, 401ks, health insurance and the 2-4 weeks paid vacation they once provided. And that a scary scene for many people.

On the other hand, continuous partial employment is an acknowledgement of the cultural shift away from the single company or career paths that so dominated the employment history of our parents. I, personally, don’t have any peers who’ve been at the same company their entire career. Quite the opposite in fact. Nearly everyone I know has jumped from company to company racking up experience points at large employers and vesting shares, ala mini angel investments, at promising startups. Some work like dogs while others take on only as much contract work as they want or need. Some commute to an office to spend face to face time with co-workers while others get all the work done they need from coffee shops or living rooms. They’ve traded the historical security of a company job with all of it’s accoutrements, for one with more freedom, but less safety nets.

It’s this shift towards personal entrepreneurship that I think is most compelling about the notion of continuous partial employment. As Tim riffed the other day:

This idea that you get a job from someone else rather than creating one through your own effort is fundamental to restarting the economy. Even if you do end up working for someone else, the kind of mind that says “It’s my responsibility to make something useful with my time” is one that is more likely to get brought into someone else’s enterprise than one that is just passively looking for a pre-determined slot.

We’re seeing an acceleration in services that enable the most micro of entrepreneurial enterprises to emerge without massive amounts of venture capital. From selling handmade goods to launching new consumer electronic devices, there are technologies, platforms and supply chains rising to meet this cultural shift.

And I believe that’s exactly what continuous partial employment is- a long term cultural shift. A shift from having a job to having a life. A life that work empowers and defines, not dictates and distracts. Work that let’s individuals define themselves by what they do, not what they have. Or, as Linda defines, work driven by a desire to be a LIVE node on our global network.

The implications of this shift are broad and disruptive. They will certainly have a deep impact on my business of backing startups and the future career paths of my children. Which is why this concept of continuous partial employment keeps rattling around in my head and why I wanted to start the conversation around it here.