Ideas Seeded from My First Vegetable Garden

This past spring I planted my first vegetable garden in my backyard.  While the results were mixed, it was an enjoyable project that I learned from and plan on doing better next spring.

More importantly, several ideas sprouted when I connected my vegetable gardening experience with other topics making the news in the United States: obesity (both related to exercise and diet), economy, food prices, medical care costs, organics, and locally grown food.  A little research (including this recent video from TEDx titled “My subversive (garden) plot” and this article by Michael Pollan) revealed my ideas are not new.  Edible gardening at homes and in communities can help positively impact these topics.

This posting presents:

• My experience in vegetable gardening this past year, including photos and descriptions of output and costs
• Key observations from my gardening experience
• A couple of ideas related to edible gardening that could increase the number of gardens established.

I am pleased to know that there are several groups and individuals already thinking about the positive impact home and community vegetable gardens can make and are doing something about it.

Ideas on Designing Products for the 21st Century

As of November 5, 2010, the world population is over 6.8 billion.  The population of the United States is estimated at 310 million or 4.5% of the world population.  And yet with under 5 percent of the global population, the U.S. consumes 30 percent of the planet's resources and churns out 30 percent of its wastes (the U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year.)  In addition, the U.S. consumes more gasoline per day than 20 other large countries combined.

I have often thought on my trips abroad what the world would be like if every country was similar to the U.S. in its consumption and trash production.  As I visited China in 2005 and Vietnam in 2009 with their bustling economies and large populations, I wondered if there is enough raw material on the planet to support similar consumption habits.  If you include India, which is forecasted to become the world’s fifth-largest consumer economy by 2025 (up from 12th now) and the most populous country by 2030, it is easy to foresee much higher consumption and waste production on the planet.  Waste, raw material supply, and pollution issues already exist today and will only be magnified in the next two decades.

This posting recommends the world needs new design principles to be able to handle the increases in consumer demand in the 21st century and suggests a few design principle ideas.  These design principles should be implemented now all around the world to successfully manage the issues confronting us today.

DESIGN IDEAS

All design considerations should strive to maintain or improve quality of life.  The current standard of living in developed countries is the baseline.

This does not mean that designs have to keep the same consumer behavior of today's developed countries.  Consumers have adapted to new designs in the past, and adjustments to lifestyles may be needed.  Marketing of products with these new design principles will play a major role in helping the necessary behavior changes take hold.

There are usually trade-offs in design.  And there are practical design decisions, too, which may override "better" designs.  Making a product to last 5000 washes when it typically will be washed 10 times in its lifetime may make it prohibitively expensive.  These should all be taken into account with preference given to 21st century design and the broader issues we face.

Here are some design ideas I recommend.

Design for compactness.  Benefits:  Smaller products use less raw material, require less inventory and shipping space, and reduce shipping costs because they usually weigh less.

In the past, many products were made large by design to give an appearance of opulence and prestige or to appeal to the "big is better" perception.  A combination of good design and marketing can help compact designs take on these attributes.

New designs leveraging new technologies can reduce the size of products with similar or better features.  Take televisions as an example.  The move from tradition television technology to flat screen televisions has reduced the weight and physical size in the last fifteen years.  For example, compare the Sony Trinitron 40-inch TV with the flat screen Samsung 40-inch HDTV in the table below.  This difference is a significant decrease in both weight and size and translates to all of the advantages of a more compact design.  Multiply these advantages to millions of consumers around the world to compute the tremendous benefits these new designs offer.

Television Model	Shipping Weight (lbs)	Dimensions (inches)
Sony FD Trinitron WEGA KV-40XBR800 40 inch	325	26.2 x 43.2 x 33.2
Samsung LN40C630 40-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV	46	10 x 38.5 x 26
Optoma HD20 High Definition 1080p DLP Home Theater Projector	12	19.4 x 13.1 x 7.3

The next step is to reduce the footprint further through additional compact designs and through new technology.  For example, projectors such as the Optoma Home Theater Projector is only 6.4 pounds out of the box and you can fit 20 of these projectors in the same space as the Sony Trinitron.

There are reasons not to miniaturize certain products too much, and these factors must be taken into account as well.  Poor eyesight can prevent the reading of any visual output on a product if too small.  The size of hands, fingers, other body parts, and other input mechanisms also set practical limits to certain designs.

Another example in line with the compact design principle is to move to higher concentrated products. Proctor and Gamble has begun selling many of their detergents in concentrates.  The same number of ounces of detergent cleans two or three times the loads of clothes.  The compact design results in less inventory and shipping space and costs.

Design for easy assembly.  Benefits:  Assembly of large products close to or at the final destination (rather than at the origination) often saves inventory and shipping costs.

Ikea's products are a classic example of this design principle.  Ikea furniture is sold in compact packages and assembled at the final destination.

Many people avoid buying products that require assembly because of the difficulty in assembling the product.  Some of the reasons are due to the difficulty in understanding the instructions provided, but often it is due to poor design that does not consider the assembly process early on in the design process.

A corollary to this design principle is design for easy non-destructive disassembly. If a product is easy to disassemble and reassemble elsewhere, it is more likely to be reused, which reduces waste.

Design for durability.  Benefits:  Durable products last longer, use less raw material over a longer period of time, and reduce waste.

Some companies design products for failure so they will be replaced and new sales can be made.  That makes business sense, but it does not make 21st century design sense.  The markets in emerging countries are large enough to sell products that last a lifetime.

Convenience has taken a priority in the design of many products, often creating a throw-away culture with one-time use products and little need for durability.  While the use of recyclable materials can help reduce its impact somewhat, the convenience through throw-away design principle must become secondary in the 21st century.

Design for minimum waste in manufacturing.  Benefits: Minimizing manufacturing waste has always made business sense to keep cost of goods low.  But it does require extra design work that is sometimes not on the priority list of designers and even for some businesses where the cost of raw materials are low.

The waste can occur in raw materials for the product itself and in materials used during the manufacturing process.  For example, water is used not only as a raw material in a soft drink beverage itself, it is also used in the manufacturing process, such as rinsing bottles and cans, cleaning equipment, heating, and cooling.  A conscientious effort is needed to make improvements.  As an example, Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. reduced its water use ratio to 1.67 liters of water used to make one liter of product using water-saving technologies and monitoring and targeting systems, which is an improvement of more than 3.5 percent from 2008.

Design for easy replacement of parts.  Benefits: Fixing existing products reduces the likelihood of a perfectly-good product being thrown away because one part broke that is too expensive or difficult to repair or replace.

Easy replacement of parts requires careful design.  Some businesses count on repair services for income or new sales as parts break down.  These need to be called out by consumer groups and reviews as part of the total cost of ownership.

Design for easy removal of hazardous materials during disposal.  Benefits: Reclaiming or proper disposal of hazardous materials reduce toxic waste.

The most desirable situation is to eliminate the use of toxic materials altogether from products.  Apple has been example of a company looking at replacing hazardous materials from their products.  In 2010, Apple stated that that their entire product line is free of lead, brominated flame retardants (BFRs), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), mercury, and arsenic.

If the current state of technology does not allow for a comparable replacement, easy extraction and proper disposal of hazardous materials should be part of the design.

Design for recyclability.  Benefits:  Recycling reduces waste, allows reuse of raw materials so less mining/drilling/logging is needed, and conserves energy in making new products compared to new sources of the raw material.

If a product contains both recyclable and non-recyclable components, it should be designed for easy separation so the proper materials can be recycled.

Design for easy upgrades.  Benefits: A product that is easy to upgrade is more likely to be used longer, reducing waste and use of raw materials.

One of the best ways to upgrade an electronic product is through software.  This typically does not require any additional material resources to improve an existing product.  It also allows fixes and refinements to be made to existing products without requiring replacement and extending their life.

Design for minimal energy usage.  Benefits:  No or low power consumption reduces the need for non-renewable energy sources and reduces pollution generated from the production or use of energy.

Designs prior to the industrial age worked on designs focused on human, animal, water, and wind-powered devices and gaining efficiencies from these energy sources.  The introduction of electricity, gasoline, and battery power shifted designs to new uses; efficiencies were secondary as the energy costs were low enough.  Focus should now be put on designing "no power" products (for example, the perfectly useful flushing toilet uses no batteries and leverages gravity), lower-powered products, more power-efficient products (for example, more efficient motors, software that prolongs battery life), and differently-powered products (for example, hand cranks that store power in flywheels, products powered by light, products powered by movement such as walking.)

FINAL THOUGHT

As the world population, disposable income, and consumption increases around the world, these and other design recommendations can help address some of the issues confronting us.

But another trend should be started.  While there is a human desire for material goods, we need to encourage less unnecessary consumption and encourage spending on more services and experiences that require less use of our planet's natural resources.  Challenging and positive experiences are what are important to happiness, not the temporary pleasure of much of our material goods.  More on this in another posting at a future date.

Happy designing!

Ideas for a New Genre of Journalism: Bona Fide Journalism

Good journalism is more difficult for me to find these days.  I fondly recall the CNN Headline News of the 1980's (not the one today):  30 minutes; mainly facts; no intentional slant; a single newscaster; no banter; no yelling; no fluff.  Granted, it was not in-depth reporting, but the newscast gave you enough accurate information to understand the situation and make an informed opinion.  It is possible my recollections of the 'good old days' are faulty; perhaps journalism has always been slanted or sensational, and I simply have become more observant or wiser.

I have a few ideas on journalism for someone or some group to run with.  These ideas suggest a new kind of journalism for people like me.  I call it bona fide journalism.  I do not have all the answers.  I know the subject is more complex than I make it out to be.  My hope is you can start with these ideas, improve them, enhance them, and make them a reality.

This posting presents three ideas:

• Idea 1 - Bona fide journalism
• Idea 2 - Critique journalism
• Idea 3 - Time-elapsed news article

Please note my ideas are not intended to replace or supersede other journalistic styles or genres that may have some of the same objectives, such as investigative or collaborative journalism.  Bona fide journalism is an additional form.

IDEA 1 - A NEW KIND OF JOURNALISM:  BONA FIDE JOURNALISM

I will introduce this new kind of journalism through a framework depicting a spectrum of journalistic genres.

Aside note: I have drawn the spectrum vertically to remove any reference to a “far right” or “far left” of the spectrum as those terms have negative political connotations which are not relevant to this discussion.

(Click to enlarge)

The middle row of the spectrum refers to the genre of objective journalism.  Objective means not being influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing the facts.  The journalist writes or presents a news report independent of his or her beliefs.  All sides of the story are presented as to be neutral or impartial.  As equal weight is given to all sides, credence may be given to a position even if the facts do not exist to support it.  Filtering and analysis are avoided, otherwise questions of bias may surface.

Advocacy journalism or agenda-based journalism shown in the bottom row of the spectrum is driven by the position being advocated.  The opinion is pre-conceived and intentionally drives what facts to present, what facts not to present, and, for the unscrupulous practitioners, what misleading or false statements to include.  Advocacy-based journalism is transparent about their going-in position; the Sierra Club and National Rifle Association, as examples, are up-front about their views and what they advocate.  Agenda-based journalism is not transparent and may present itself with an ambiguous or misleading name or tagline.

I have coined the term bona fide journalism both for what it stands for and to avoid confusion with other terms used to describe existing journalistic genres and styles. Bona fide comes from the Latin meaning 'with good faith.' As an adjective, it means genuine or real. As an adverb, it means sincerely, without intention to deceive.

Bona fide journalism is genuine, real, sincere, and done in good faith.  Unlike agenda-based journalism, there is no preconception of a position since the facts must be gathered first.  Unlike objective journalism, there is additional value-add to the journalistic process: facts are vetted beyond verification to include truthfulness (“yes, that he yelled ‘fire!’ in the theater is an accurate statement, but we should also add that there was no fire in the theater”) and analysis is performed on facts to corroborate or refute opinions.  Bona fide journalism is transparent in its approach of providing facts and presenting the analysis, all done in good faith.

So how does this model play out in real-life journalism?  One example can be taken from a controversy being covered in the U.S. media in August 2010.  The controversy relates to the permission to build an Islamic community center two blocks from the former World Trade Center towers in Manhattan that were destroyed by a terrorist attack in 2001.  The phrase “ground zero mosque” is being used in the media to refer to the Islamic community center.

• Agenda-based journalism will use the phrase heavily as it supports the opinion being espoused.
• Objective journalism will use the phrase frequently as it keeps a neutral position and provides the talking points as espoused by each side, even if the facts are inaccurate, misleading, or absent.
• Bona fide journalism will document the phrase sparingly and provide the true facts and analysis that support or refute the phrase.  Is it at “ground zero”?  No.  Is it planned to be a "mosque"?  It is a community center with a mosque.

As the phrase is not a correct representation of the facts, it is unfortunate that the journalistic genres practiced today promote its use.  A search using Google on the phase as of this writing returned over 63 million results.

(Click to enlarge)

I appreciate several of the guiding principles of objective journalism.  Verification of facts, independence from outside groups, and neutrality in the going-in position are all important.  Bona fide journalism helps the reader or viewer get closer to the truth and make more informed opinions by providing facts and analysis not encouraged in objective journalism.  This includes: vetting of the facts beyond verification; refutation of misleading facts, half-truths, and false statements; collection of additional relevant facts, including context; and analysis of opinions based on the information.

Some guidelines for writing bona fide journalism in print

Bona fide journalism uses a new writing style.  The text is straightforward.  Section headings and bulleted lists are encouraged to give structure.  Tables and visuals are used to help improve the delivery of the facts and analysis.  Conceptually, refer to the posting on Information Mapping to get an idea.

Sensational and misleading words are avoided.  Headlines should avoid bias.  This example shows different headlines for the same news story.  Of the three displayed below, The Boston Globe provides the best headline for bona fide journalism.

(Click to enlarge)

Quotes are never to be taken out of context.

Portions of a sentence of a quote are never to be used.  This example below quotes a single word ('dictatorial') without context, which would not be allowed in bona fide journalism.

Gabe Pressman, an NBC journalist and former chairman of the New York Press Club, has seen many mayors come and go. He has been reporting on the Big Apple since 1954. He finds Bloomberg's management style, particularly his dealings with the press, "dictatorial."
From the Huffington Post, August 9, 2010

Links to full interviews or articles should be provided if quotes are used in the news report.  Both the questions and the answers should be provided.

A news report should be subdivided into five sections.

Section	Description
Header	Key characteristics of the news report to help set proper expectations.  These characteristics include: Type of report (article, opinion, editorial, advertisement) Headline - what the report is about Author and editor Date published and last updated
Synopsis	One to four bullet points that summarize the key facts and analysis of the news report.
Facts	The facts, bullet points and visuals encouraged.  Facts should have sources referenced in the sources section.  The facts should be organized for ease of understanding.
Analysis	If appropriate for the news report, the journalist's assessment of the situation based on the facts
Sources	A listing of all sources referenced in the news report so a reader can fully view referenced articles and interviews and obtain more information

Only vetted and relevant facts are listed in the facts section.  There is no value in promulgating rumors and false statements.

Skillsets Required

Doing bona fide journalism right is tough.  It requires a certain set of skills, values, and knowledge typical of good journalists, including attention to detail, writing skills, fact-checking skills, interviewing skills, analytical skills, and subject-matter expertise.  You have to be cognizant of your own biases and viewpoints to make sure it is not getting in the way of the news story.  It is not an easy-to-find set of skills and knowledge.

Bona fide journalism does not require the skills of marketing, audience-building, tweeting, search-engine analysis, and blogging.  While these skills are important for ‘celebrity journalists’ and some other types of journalism, it is not the emphasis of bona fide journalism.  This interview with Alan Murray of The Wall Street Journal by the Nieman Journalism Lab provides some additional context of these skill sets.

IDEA 2 – CRITIQUE JOURNALISM

This style of journalism critiques the text, analysis, and opinions written or spoken by others, performing a fact-check to confirm, correct, and question the article.  It leverages the objectives and qualities of bona fide journalism, but starts with a news report by another person.

The result is a more factual news report and a call out (reprimand) of poor journalism if such is the case. Even an opinion piece that includes or implies facts should be confirmed.

I envision a website which contains the full text, marked up in red (with corrections, questions, call outs of faulty reasoning, unsupported assumptions) and blue (confirmation of facts).  Here is a conceptual mock-up.

I could also foresee this work done by a community of volunteers (paid or unpaid) with the appropriate skill sets of a bona fide journalist. Perhaps two bona fide critics critique an article independently associating the comments with the related text. A summary assessment is provided by each. A third bona fide critic--the lead critic--creates the final critique, leveraging the work by others.

All comments by all critics are stored and reviewable by a reader.  Picture a more user-friendly version of the Wikipedia history where you can view all edits to an entry.

Additional comments may be submitted by readers for a set number of days after publishing.  I recommend moderated comments because I believe unmoderated comments add less value and dilute the value of good responses.  These comments are reviewed by the three bona fide critics.  If one of the critics accepts the comment, it is displayed.

A question arises on which texts should be critiqued.  Obviously, not all news reports can be reviewed.  It should also not be biased against a certain writer, speaker, or news organization.  One approach may be a combination of popularity and randomness.  Leveraging current tools and technologies to determine the top news reports based on viewership and readership, a randomly selected subset of these should be pulled and placed in the hopper for critique.  Weighting should be given to articles of newsworthiness and importance to the public.

A database of these critiques can be used to provide a trustworthiness rating of several news organizations, journalists, and news sites.

IDEA 3 – TIME-LAPSED NEWS ARTICLE

This idea recommends there should one single news article on an evolving story.  As an event unfolds and as more facts become known, information should get better.  The original article should evolve and correct errors so that the most recent version of the news article is the most accurate and the most complete.

The history of the news article should be available so readers can see as time elapsed what new information became available and what information was corrected (e.g., there were 3 people shot, not 5 as originally reported).

The time-lapsed news report could be best done on-line, marrying concepts like the Microsoft Word track edit features, the Wiki history, and slidebar to jump to each snapshot of the article.  Print versions may be able to convey some of these concepts with bolded text for the latest information, endnotes with time-stamps, and corrections in-line.

There should be criteria when a news article is frozen.  It could potentially be based on time, the dearth of additional facts, the length of the article, and/or some other characteristic.  If another article on the same news story begins, it should reference and link to the first article as background information.

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These are my three ideas on journalism.  I hope to see these ideas improved and made a reality one day.

Happy journaling!

Business Ideas of Ecologically-friendly (and Tasty!) Cutlery

I ate at my first Ethiopian restaurant in May.  This experience spawned a business idea, and it reminded me of another idea I had a few years back.  Both are related to eating utensils.  I want to share these ideas hoping someone will run with one (or both) of them, start a trend, become a millionaire, and help the environment in the process.

Go ahead, eat these ideas up!

BACKGROUND

The majority of the people on this planet eat with some type of cutlery:  forks, knives, spoons, and chopsticks being the most popular.  (As an aside, the spork was a good invention, allowing you to both stab and slurp your food with one instrument.)

At the Ethiopian restaurant, however, no standard utensils are provided.  You eat with your hands.  Specifically, you tear off a piece of “bread” called injera and grab the food with it.  The injera is your eating utensil.  And you eat the utensil!  It is part of your food.

This got me thinking on several fronts.

• First, the lack of cutlery meant less washing in the restaurant.  Only the plate the food came on needed to be washed after the meal.  In poor and developing countries, it makes sense.  And it is in these countries and cultures where several good ideas in reducing waste can be observed.
• Second, it reminded me there are many other examples of eating without cutlery.  In Mexico, a hard taco is simply food scooped into a shell, which is also eaten with the food.  Soft tacos, wraps, and burritos are all made by wrapping food up in an edible container.  Falafels are stuffed into pita bread and eaten together.  Empanadas, calzones, and meat pies are fried or baked with food in edible wrappings.  Pizza is an open-faced calzone.  Even the sandwich is simply food surrounded on two sides by bread to keep the fingers from getting too messy.  So while eating with your hands sans cutlery for an "Ethiopian cuisine newbie" may strikes one as unusual, it is not as strange as it may initially appear.
• Third, I discovered I did not care for the taste of injera.  It is spongy (a unique texture) and sour (a unique taste, and I am not a sourdough fan).  I find injera overpowers the food; everything tastes like injera.  Hence, business idea number 1 (see below).  I ended up using the injera like a spoon and not eating it with the food I scooped up.  But the smell of injera still imparted a sour taste to whatever I ate.
• Fourth, if we could get rid of the plates then the restaurant would not have to wash anything.  Theoretially, the food could have been served on a sturdy, large round injera, a pizza pie with servings of food on top.  An ice cream cone is an example of an instrument that initially serves as a container that is then eaten after the food is consumed; no dish and no spoon to clean or toss after the meal.
• Fifth, I decided not to use plastic eating utensils and paper plates for a dinner party I was going to host in June.  I always disliked throwing away plastic for environmental reasons, but I was not sure I wanted to wash all the cutlery and plates after the party.  The Ethiopian restaurant experience helped me make the decision to go with reusable silverware and plates.  It also reminded me of the other idea I had several years back.  See business idea number 2 below.

BUSINESS IDEAS

Here are two business ideas.

Idea #1 - All restaurants that want to provide an “Ethiopian-style” of eating -- or eating without cutlery -- should offer a selection of “injera-inspired” breads.

Traditional injera is made out of teff cereal.  This main ingredient can be replaced with flour, corn, or rice.  Flavors could be offered:  plain (without the strong sour taste), parmesan-crusted, tomato-basil.  There could even be a chocolate "injera" for desserts.  Of course, the “classic” injera should be on the menu, too, for those who like the taste.

Idea #2 – Make a line of standard single-use eating utensils that are edible.  This includes forks, knives, spoons, and chopsticks.

There are many benefits.

• No more plastic or paper to throw into landfills.
• The cutlery can be eaten during or after the meal, and if not, they are compostable.
• The cutlery can come in multiple flavors.
• Standard cutlery makes it easier to eat certain foods than pinching with bread.

There are some challenges, but these can all be overcome.

• The cutlery needs to be strong enough to withstand a certain amount of force, particularly a knife.
• The cutlery cannot get soggy quickly in a liquid food.
• The cutlery cannot be too hard or they cannot be eaten (although throwing away a compostable and biodegradable item is still better than using plastic.)
• Depending on how they are made and what ingredients they have, the cutlery may be perishable and have a certain shelf-life.
• The cutlery would be considered a food and would have to adhere to food regulations.

There are several models to consider as starting points.

• Breadsticks:  with a little tweaking of size, length, and hardness, they would be perfect chopsticks.
• Waffle cones:  make them a little harder and in the shape of spoons, they would be perfect for ice cream and sorbets.
• Dried spaghetti noodles or something equivalent: could be a perfect replacement for plastic toothpicks.

Eating utensils made from metal are still highly eco-friendly.  They are durable, last a long time (many lifetimes), and are multi-use.  A washing is all that is needed for reuse.

For single-use utensils, the key idea here is edible and compostable.  There are some companies like Eco-Products that make plastic cutlery out of plant starch.  While going in the right direction from an environmental standpoint, there is an opportunity to go to the next level of edible and compostable.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

One way, of course, is to start your own business using the ideas.  I encourage it.

A second way is to share recipes of how everyday people can make their own edible cutlery.  If every person who typically buys plastic forks and spoons used your recipe once this year, think of the benefits.  In the United States alone “Americans toss out enough paper & plastic cups, forks and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times.”


I look forward to hearing about your success.  Happy eating!