From Bloomberg BusinessWeek: Las 50 Mejores ciudades/Fifty Best Cities

Es el segundo año que Business Week construye este indicador (entretenimiento, educación, economía, delitos,calidad del aire). La única ciudad de Florida es TAMPA que por mucho tiempo ha trabajado para ser lo que es. Varias cosas que pensar/ Business Week has done it for second time, based on leisure, education, economy, crime, air quality. The only one city from Florida is TAMPA, with a long time effort to enhance itself. Several things to think about:

1.- No siempre coinciden los números con las aspiraciones. (Imaginense diciendole a la familia: nos mudamos para Anchorage, Alaska para vivir mejor…) Ese es un viejo problema (los matemáticos que descubren las mejores dietas por costo/persona saben hace rato que no hay quien se las coma…)/ Human aspirations and numbers not always go in par (Just wonder how to tell your family they are moving to Anchorage, for a better living…) It is an old problem (mathematicians discover best diets based on cost/person but there is no way that people eat them…

2.- Nuestros líderes civicos debian de pensar sobre el tema para descubrir la receta adecuada para que nuestras ciudades se consideren cunas del progreso y mecas de vida humana…/Our civic leaders must think about this,to discover the right recipe to turn our cities in progress cradles and human living meccas…

The Best Places to Live 

(http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/2012-09-26/americas-50-best-cities#slide1)

It's impossible to say what's "best" for everyone, of course. But where's the fun in not trying? Welcome to Businessweek.com’s second America’s Best Cities ranking. With assistance from Bloomberg Rankings, Businessweek.com evaluated 100 of the country’s largest cities based on leisure attributes (the number of restaurants, bars, libraries, museums, professional sports teams, and park acres by population); educational attributes (public school performance, the number of colleges, and graduate degree holders), economic factors (2011 income and June and July 2012 unemployment), crime, and air quality. Major professional league and minor league teams, as well as U.S.-based teams belonging to international leagues in that city were included. The greatest weighting was placed on leisure amenities, followed by educational metrics and economic metrics, and then crime and air quality. The data come from Onboard Informatics, except for park acreage, which comes from the Trust for Public Land. As the methodology has changed since the 2011 ranking, a city’s rise or fall compared with last year does not suggest that it has gotten “better” or “worse.”

1.- San Francisco	11.- Pittsburgh	21.- Cincinnati	31.- Oalkland	41.- Dallas
2.- Seattle	12.- Minneapolis	22.- Houston	32.- Rochester	42.- Reno
3.- Washington DC	13.- Nashville	23.- Oklahoma ity	33.- San Jose	43.- Scottsdale
4.- Boston	14.- New Orleans	24.- Philadelphia	34.- Lincoln	44.- Phoenix
5.- Portland, Oregon	15.- Kansas City	25.- Lexington	35.- Tampa	45.- Chesapeake
6.- Denver	16.- Atlanta	26.- Milwakee	36.- Colorado Springs	46.- Cleveland
7.- New York	17.- Madison	27.- Arlington	37.- Indianapolis	47.- St. Louis
8.- Austin	18.- Raleigh	28.- Chicago	38.- Tulsa	48.- Omaha
9.- San Diego	19.- Honolulu	29.- Baltimore	39.- Charlotte	49.- Anchorage
10.- St Paul	20.- Colombus	30.- San Antonio	40.- Virginia Beach	50.- Los Angeles

E N M I O P I N I O N: Por: Ricardo Tribín Acosta

Aquí nadie pregunta por ti

Esta es la historia del hombre que se consiguió un trabajo magnifico a nivel ejecutivo que le demandaba bastante actividad, punto que el caballero de marras se tomó bien en serio. 

Estando en plena ejecución de sus funciones y con el ego mas subido que “mico” del congreso, un día se le apareció a su mujer con un papelito en el que pretendía detallarle su horario de las noches para que ella tuviera conocimiento de lo que haría. Mira, le dijo, quiero contarte que los lunes después del trabajo tenemos reunión del comité de relaciones públicas; el martes celebramos los acontecimientos más importantes de la semana; los miércoles es la cena con los otros directivos; el jueves vemos todos el juego de futbol por televisión; el viernes es , como tú sabes el “cultural’ y entonces nos tomamos unos “aguardienticos”; el sábado voy a la casa del jefe a cenar y a revisar los planes de la semana siguiente; y el domingo…bueno, pues ese sí que es para mí ya que, con  tanta actividad termino muy cansado y entonces salgo a divertirme un poco.

Qué opinas de ello, mi vida, le pregunto a su esposa? Bueno, pues por parte mía no hay ningún problema. Puedes hacer lo que te parezca, pero quiero recordarte algo. En esta casa se hace el amor tres días a la semana escogidos al azar y ello sería no más tarde de las nueve de la noche, este el marido o no. Además te sugiero que no te tomes tan en serio tus funciones durante las horas extras pues podría llegar el momento en que llames para preguntar qué hay de nuevo? y se te conteste: “nada, mijito. Por aquí todo muy bien, no te preocupes que nadie en esta casa, incluyéndome a mí, pregunta por ti”.

http://ricardotribin.blogspot.com

Miami, Octubre 20 de 2012

Small Business : This Week

From Bloomberg BusinessWeek: This Week's Top Story

BIOFUELS 

By Karen E. Klein on October 11, 2012

 

ALGAE ARE A GROWING PART OF SAN DIEGO'S APPEAL

The city's biofuels cluster is a "mecca" for entrepreneurs hoping to turn nonfood crops into fuel

In 2006, rising oil prices prompted molecular biologist Stephen Mayfield to shift his research from algae’s medical uses to turning the green goo into green crude. His work prompted a handful of biotech entrepreneurs to found Sapphire Energy in San Diego in 2007 in the hope of producing the sustainable fuel commercially.

Gas prices have continued to climb since then, and the swift jump above $5 a gallon in some parts of California last week “is a reminder of the vulnerability Americans face, due to volatile markets and a continued reliance on finite sources of crude oil,” says Tim Zenk, Sapphire’s vice president for corporate affairs.

The 150-employee company, backed by more than $350 million in public and private funds, is a leader in a rapidly growing cluster of 40 biofuels ventures around the city. The scientific breakthroughs and engineering expertise at research powerhouses such as the University of California, San Diego, the Scripps Research Institute, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies are part of the cluster’s allure. BP (BP) established its Biofuels Global Technology Centre there in 2010, says BP spokesman Matt Hartwig, attracting “leading engineers and scientists especially from the local San Diego biotechnology community.”

That tight-knit community is turning San Diego into a destination for entrepreneurs betting on alternative fuels made from nonfood sources such as algae and jatropha. “San Diego has developed as the Mecca of algae technology development, as well as a model community for the cleantech movement,” David Schwartz, editor and publisher of AlgaeIndustryMagazine.com, writes in an e-mail. “This is largely due to a remarkable convergence of … resources and brain trust [that] has resulted in the development of pioneering companies.”

Martin Sabarsky, president and chief executive ofCellana, a 25-employee company founded in 2004 to commercialize marine microalgae, says “it’s no surprise that San Diego should be a place where [biofuels research] companies are headquartered and dollars are flowing.” Although Cellana’s research and production are based in Hawaii, Sabarsky found it imperative for the company to locate in San Diego. “The breadth of companies attracts top talent and venture capital to the region,” says Jennifer Jamall, communications director for local trade group CleanTECH San Diego. “Biofuels startups benefit greatly from being tightly clustered in San Diego.”

Local and state government is supportive, too, because San Diego’s biofuels cluster “represents a significant opportunity to expand the region’s research corridor to a new field in technological discovery and entrepreneurial business development,” Jamall says. “Policy makers in California have singled out biofuels discovery, development, and commercialization, among other cleantech ventures, as a promising sector for innovation and job creation statewide.”

Algal biofuels research generated $80.9 million in economic activity in the region last year and employed 466, up from 215 in 2009, according to a study (pdf) from the San Diego Association of Governments. A $4 million grant from the California Department of Labor has helped meet growing industry demand for skilled labor by training biofuel workers and job seekers through local universities, community colleges, and extension programs.

Keen to avoid corn-based ethanol’s chief disadvantage, of diverting costly food crops away from the global food supply, entrepreneurs in the cluster are trying to circumvent their own problems. Kirk Haney, president and CEO of SG Biofuels, has staked his 60-employee company on a tropical shrub called jatropha curcas, which produces oil that in August 2011 successfully powered a Boeing 777 Aeromexico test flight from Mexico City to Madrid. “I raised $1.3 million three days before the market meltdown, and it took me a year to raise an additional $750,000,” Haney says. In the worst of times, some of his employees shifted to part-time jobs and others took compensation in company equity rather than cash, he says.

Jatropha production has had its share of false starts, with several industry bankruptcies and disappointing yields in field trials. Haney says SG Biofuels has solved those problems with hybrid crops that produce better yields with less water. A Bloomberg New Energy Finance reportreleased in February says that jatropha-derived aircraft fuel could be competitive within five years.

Sapphire’s scientists have conquered many of the early obstacles to commercial algae production, says Zenk, including growing algae on a commercial scale with salt water and developing a cost-effective, nonpolluting extraction process. Improving yields and protecting crops from pests and disease are ongoing challenges, he says. He estimates that by 2015 the company’s technology will be sophisticated enough to produce the fuel economically on an industrial scale. The Bloomberg report predicts that “large-scale, biofuel-producing algae farms will not appear this decade.”

The biofuel entrepreneurs agree they are not going to discover one magic fuel. “We already found it, and it’s petroleum,” says Mike Lewis, co-owner of 10-year-old alternative fuels distributor Pearson Fuels in San Diego. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling how efficient it is. I don’t think we’ll ever find something that has as much widespread utility.” But petroleum’s political and environmental drawbacks mean that a variety of sustainable alternatives will eventually have to replace it, he adds.

Haney agrees: “I’m very bullish on my peers. I hope they are wildly successful, because we need a multi-pronged attack to get this technology to scale.”

Klein is a Los Angeles-based writer who covers entrepreneurship and small-business issues.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek : Technology...3D Printing

The World’s First 3D-Printed Acoustic Guitar

              

By Ashlee Vance on October 12, 2012

 

Scott Summit does unusual things on his vacations. For instance, he just spent a week up in the mountains, taking in the majestic scenery and all that, but also sitting at his laptop creating a 3D model of his ideal guitar. Then he sent the computer design to 3D Systems (DDD), which used its massive 3D printers to transform the graphic model into an actual acoustic instrument that Summit can play.

As far as anyone seems to know, this is the first 3D-printed acoustic guitar on the planet, and it raises all kinds musical possibilities. (As several readers noted, people have already made 3D printed electric guitars.)

As a kid, Summit pined after fancy guitars. “I wanted a $3,000 one like Jerry Garcia would play,” he says. At the time, Summit didn’t have the money, so he spent around $100 on wood and other parts and fashioned his own guitar. “It sounded like crap,” he says.

These days, Summit spends most of his time designing custom body parts and stylish prosthetics that get built from 3D printers. He is, in fact, one of the world’s leading 3D printing and design experts, and he decided to put those skills to use over a holiday, refining his childhood vision.

Since the acoustic guitar would be made from fused plastic, Summit figured it would have some serious shortcomings. If it actually worked, it would probably sound worse than his old $100 model. But chances were the guitar would break under the 200 pounds of string pressure that comes with tightening the strings via a tuning machine. Summit set up a video camera to record what would happen when the stringing process started. “I thought it would at least be cool if the guitar exploded,” he says.

But, no. It worked, and it sounds pretty good. “It’s rich and full and has a great tonal range,” says Summit, who’s been known to play at friends’ weddings and at dive bars.

Summit describes this version as a rough draft. He wants to start experimenting with more radical designs to see how they change the sound. Somewhere down the road he figures people will be able to use software to pick out what sort of treble, bass, or sustain they desire and then print a guitar to match those qualities. “It will arrive in the mail and sound just the way you wanted,” he says.

Earlier this year, 3D Systems acquired Summit’s body part printing startup. He’s shown the guitar to the 3D Systems crew, and they’re thinking about how to advance the idea. The one-off model used about $3,000 worth of plastic and had a headstock 3D printed with sterling silver; the plate on the neck was 3D printed out of stainless steel. “It’s sort of this salad bar of 3D printing,” Summit says.

Vance is a technology writer for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Bloomberg Businessweek Politics & Policy

The promise: 5 million green jobs

Unemployment The 5 Million Green Jobs That Weren't

In 2008 candidate Barack Obama promised to create 5 million green jobs. He laid out a plan to invest $150 billion over 10 years that would advance a clean-energy economy built around biofuels, hybrid cars, low-emission coal plants, and renewable sources such as solar and wind. How many has he actually created?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking green jobs two years ago, but it counts only how many existed as of the end of 2010. It doesn’t keep a running total of newly created jobs, so there’s no way to tell how many existed before Obama’s election. The Brookings Institution also has a tally, but it too goes only through 2010, and of the nearly 2.7 million green jobs it identifies, most were bus drivers, sewage workers, and other types of work that don’t fit the “green jobs of the future” that Obama imagined. The report does zero in on cleantech, which includes the wind, solar, fuel-cell, and smart-grid industries. In 2010, Brookings shows, there were 184,699 such jobs nationwide—up 2,642 since the president took office in 2009.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 set aside $90 billion in renewable energy grants and loans for a grab bag of thousands of projects—wind farms, solar installations, natural gas fueling stations, biofuel research, and a $5 billion weatherization project for low-income homes. Digging into the public records of the $21 billion spent so far through 19 U.S. Department of Energy programs reveals 3,960 projects that employ 28,854 people.

That’s not 5 million. In November 2010, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers said federal recovery spending had “saved or created” 225,000 clean-energy jobs, including “both the direct jobs of people involved in the construction of a particular project and also the jobs generated by the additional economic activity sparked by these projects.”

There’s no way to know whether this multiplier effect really resulted in the number the administration claims. But if you take it as true and generously assume similar growth for 2011 and 2012, that’s 675,000 jobs created at best—and 4,325,000 to go.

Sources: BLS, Brookings Institution, Council of Economic Advisers

E N M I O P I N I O N: Por: Ricardo Tribin Acosta

El “Abuelazo” y “el hombre del tabaco”

Por tiempos cada vez que he almorzado con mi buen amigo samario, ex gobernador del Departamento del Magdalena en Colombia,  “Rafa” Infante, le he preguntado siempre por su gran amigo Don León Londoño Tamayo, dirigente del futbol colombiano de grata recordatorio por sus positivas ejecutorias en este campo, y a quien lamentablemente ya no podrá el ver pues el pasado sábado seis de octubre de 2012 le entregó su alma a Nuestro Señor. 

Don León fue un hombre espectacular quien en su equipo el Cúcuta Deportivo por allá en 1959 trajo grandes figuras suramericanas a jugar como lo fueron entre otros Walter Gómez, Omar Verdún y Juan Eduardo Hohberg. Estas eran mis épocas doradas pues, desde nuestro Deportivo Pereira con mi padre Carlos Tribin Biester y con Alfonso Roldan García, les hacíamos barra a jugadores de la talla del número nueve Eusebio Escobar, conocido como “la locomotora negra “y del cancerbero del elenco Matecaña, Adelmo “Achito” Vivas,
León Londoño, llamado “el hombre del tabaco”,  hizo muchísimas cosas dentro del futbol colombiano entre ellas estar en su división  mayor “Dimayor”, entidad en la que se quedó treinta y tres años , primero como gerente y luego como presidente, cargo en el que permaneció entre 1983 y 1988. Su paso por la Federación Colombiana de Fútbol le llevó a la FIFA en donde estuvo en la comisión técnica, organizadora del Mundial, proyecto frustrado por la miopía del gobernante de turno, y en la del estatuto del jugador. Su nombramiento como miembro honorario resultó toda una curiosidad, puesto que Joao Havelange, presidente de la entidad, hizo modificar los estatutos durante veinticuatro horas, en razón a que el colombiano no cumplía con el requerimiento de edad.

Londoño Tamayo ha dejado sin “compinche” de traguitos a mi querido “Rafa”, y este, quien tanto lo apreciaba, deberá por tanto destinar más tiempo a su único nieto que le dio origen a su denominación de “El abuelazo” y entonces, cuando vaya a Bogotá, le tocará buscar a ver con quien poder meterse sus “anetoles” en el Restaurante Salinas del norte, lugar adonde se reunía con su gran amigo León. Paz en su tumba, querido dirigente del futbol, y esperamos que en el cielo conforme un equipo a todo dar y que allí haga, no el mundial que le frustraron en su época, sino el universal del maravilloso juego del balompié.

http://ricardotribin.blogspot.com

Miami, Octubre 14 de 2012.

Small Business, from Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Why 'Makers' vs. 'Takers' Is the Wrong Conversation

By John Tozzi on October 08, 2012

 

For Maurice Lim Miller, election season chatter about “makers vs. takers” misses the point. Miller, who was just awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant for studying how people in poverty improve their lives, says America’s poor are an entrepreneurial lot. They have to be.

“In Oakland, if you walk down International Boulevard, you see tons of entrepreneurs,” says Miller, who grew up in a poor immigrant family. “You see people selling CDs on the street, you see food carts, you see people repairing cars in their garages.”

The Family Independence Initiative, Miller’s Oakland-based nonprofit, has tracked 350 families with a median income of about $26,000 in San Francisco and Boston. His group doesn’t give them social services or tell them what to do. Instead, he asks them to report what they’re doing to get out of poverty and pays them a modest amount, about $160 per month, for documenting how they’ve met their goals. They could choose to focus on improving a child’s grades or paying down credit-card debt. Miller wants to find out what people do to help themselves when they’re not being steered in certain directions.

It turns out a lot of them start businesses. In the past three years, those 350 families have started 41 businesses that have created the equivalent of 74 full-time jobs. Miller says small, informal ventures, such as driving taxis or making floral arrangements, are one way families make up for lost income when they lose jobs or have their hours cut back. Some enterprises became more permanent, such as a storefront candy shop in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. “The way families were dealing with the recession was by becoming entrepreneurs,” says Miller.

About a third of the families Miller tracks receive some kind of government support, such as food stamps or living in public housing. Entrepreneurship is one way families reduce their dependence on government. Miller’s data show that, far from the caricature of welfare queens, families in poverty work hard and find creative ways to get off welfare. “Given alternatives, you see families really try to drop out of that system,” he says. “So how do they do that? They start creating their own jobs. They try to get their kids to go to college. There’s a lot of initiative.”

Tozzi is a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek in New York.