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reportonbusiness.com: 'Social networking for social change'

marketing / business strategies for website, recurring revenue stream tips

Tags: globeandmail, socialnetworks, socialjustice, business, local_news, revenue on 2008-08-05 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.theglobeandmail.com

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It's time to overhaul copyright law | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Excellent points by Cory Doctorow on how "folk" copyright usage get eroded (sodded, more like) by corporate copyright law, and why that doesn't make sense: it's "a genuinely radical idea: [that] individuals should hire lawyers to negotiate their personal use of cultural material, or at least refrain from sharing their cultural activities with others (except it's not's really culture if you're not sharing it, is it?). It's also a dumb idea. People aren't going to hire lawyers to bless the singalong or Timmy's comic book. They're also not going to stop doing culture."

Tags: copyfight, copyright, cory_doctorow, law, socialjustice on 2008-01-29 and saved by3 people -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.guardian.co.uk

In theory, there's just one set of copyright rules and they apply to everyone, from Sony Pictures to your neighbour's eight-year-old who wants to photocopy his Spider-Man comics and sell them to the other kids.
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- - key phrase: "in theory" (how true)
  posted by lampertina on 2008-01-29
Now you have billionaire media empires behaving as though parents should get a licence for a Prince song before they upload a YouTube video of their adorable toddler dancing to it.
They are also acting as though fan fiction writers should be applying for a licence too - along with karaoke singers, would-be painters and, yes, the OAP picnickers who've uploaded the shakycam video of last weekend's knees-up in the church basement.
This is a genuinely radical idea: individuals should hire lawyers to negotiate their personal use of cultural material, or at least refrain from sharing their cultural activities with others (except it's not's really culture if you're not sharing it, is it?).
It's also a dumb idea. People aren't going to hire lawyers to bless the singalong or Timmy's comic book. They're also not going to stop doing culture.
We need to stop shoe-horning cultural use into the little carve-outs in copyright, such as fair dealing and fair use. Instead we need to establish a new copyright regime that reflects the age-old normative consensus about what's fair and what isn't at the small-scale, hand-to-hand end of copying, display, performance and adaptation.
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- - right on!
  posted by lampertina on 2008-01-29
A diverse and extremely sensible group of people are doing just this: the Access to Knowledge (A2K) treaty is a proposal from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to set out the rights and responsibilities of archivists, educators and people who provide access to disabled users of information.
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- See:
  http://www.access2knowledge.org/cs/node
  and:
  http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.en
  posted by lampertina on 2008-01-29

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How to make housing affordable (The Toronto Star)

"By relying on donations from suppliers, a Brampton developer has managed to build high-quality abodes for low-income families.
(...)
When the 16-storey "Chapelview" project, on John St. in downtown Brampton, is finished next year, it will provide 200 apartments for seniors and low-income singles as well as people with disabilities, and if all goes according to plan, it will earn LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification.

If he's successful, D'Angelo believes the Chapelview project, which includes a six-storey garage for municipal and tenant parking, will be the first high-rise social-housing project in North America to receive the LEED platinum rating, the highest benchmark for green building and design."

And then you wonder why this can't be done in more cities across Canada...?

Tags: affordability, canada, cities, development, socialjustice, toronto on 2008-01-21 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.thestar.com

When the 16-storey "Chapelview" project, on John St. in downtown Brampton, is finished next year, it will provide 200 apartments for seniors and low-income singles as well as people with disabilities, and if all goes according to plan, it will earn LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification.
If he's successful, D'Angelo believes the Chapelview project, which includes a six-storey garage for municipal and tenant parking, will be the first high-rise social-housing project in North America to receive the LEED platinum rating, the highest benchmark for green building and design.
"He's really shooting for the moon here," says Stephen Kemp of Enermodal Engineering, a sustainable-building consulting firm. "For affordable housing, it's amazing."
Just as he has done on previous housing projects, Woodbridge resident D'Angelo, 53, will ensure the cupboards are stocked with donated food when the tenants move in, and each will be given a quart of paint and a brush for future touch-ups.
D'Angelo's overall mission is to create non-profit housing of quality and comfort, with better-than-basic finishings and appliances. To achieve that end, he persuades corporate sponsors and construction trades to donate upgrades or cash. So far D'Angelo's been promised $800,000 in upgrades and donations for Chapelview and is shooting for his goal of $3.2 million.
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- - amazing! Simple, but brilliant and amazing.
  posted by lampertina on 2008-01-21
Future tenants will also have better air quality, since each apartment will be fitted with its own ventilation system, and doorways will be weatherstripped so smoke and other odours don't penetrate the hallways. Carpeting and wood flooring that out-gas minimally will be used throughout, and the appliances will be energy-efficient, as will the plumbing.
Meanwhile, the building's design and materials were chosen with sustainability in mind. The steel used in construction is recycled, and the concrete and drywall have recycled content. The accessible green roof and landscaping will be drought resistant, says Kemp, so they won't need to be fertilized and irrigated.
D'Angelo is also aiming for universal accessibility in the design, which will allow people with disabilities to live in any apartment.
Chapelview is expected to cost about $37 million, with $11 million from the feds and the province, $8.5 from the city of Brampton and about $18 million from Peel Region.
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- - interesting -- how does one leverage that kind of funding ...here, in CANADA, land of perpetual senior-level-of-government meanness?
  posted by lampertina on 2008-01-21
Peel Living, the region's non-profit housing company, estimates total building costs will be $2 million less than expected market costs for a comparable structure – because of D'Angelo's fundraising efforts and the efficiencies that come from his past experience.
This isn't the first time that D'Angelo, a partner in Martinway Contracting Ltd., has broken new ground in affordable housing. He won an award from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. in 2004 for Millbrook Place, a 163-unit building in Mississauga that houses seniors in one- and two-bedroom apartments in one section of the building and singles, including the formerly homeless and people with mental illness, in furnished bachelors in another section.
"That kicked off our getting back into the social-housing game," says Keith Ward, general manager of Peel Living and commissioner of human services. "We kept waiting for the government to announce more funding. It didn't happen. Now we hope there are more builders motivated by that sense of altruism."
"Most contractors would use mid-range paint, but he wanted to use top-of-the-line," says Doug Funston of Benjamin Moore. "That's his strategy – he delivers a platinum-level product for a bronze level price."
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- - brilliant
  posted by lampertina on 2008-01-21
The value to the corporate donors is a higher public profile, better public relations, new connections in the community, and letters and plaques of appreciation for being good corporate citizens. "It's wonderful to get those accolades," says Funston.
"Years ago you heard 'social housing, why put money in when people are just going to destroy it?' – I've heard that from contractors on various sites," says Brett Barnes, a corporate representative for CMHC. "John has been able to turn that around. The more they contribute to bricks and mortar, the more they also contribute to improving the lives of lower-income households."

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CEOS for Cities - Conversations - CEO Blog - Travel Wishes for 2008

"Ban further luxury hotel development until they can find enough capable people to staff them." That's a suggestion from Monocle's Travel Wishes for 2008/09 (via CEOs for Cities) -- and it's great. Here's CEOs for Cities further comment: "How can you have 'luxury' hotels without workers who can deliver a 'luxury' experience? If people are willing to pay more for luxury experiences, shouldn't some of the benefits accrue to workers equipped to deliver those experiences?" A carpenter once told me, "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys," and monkeys aren't going to be able to build you a quality product. If you call yourself a "luxury" outfit, make sure you're not trying to get by on peanut payrolls.

Tags: ceos_for_cities, income_disparity, monocle_magazine, socialjustice on 2008-01-01 -All Annotations (0) -About

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