I'm over at Case right now, wifi'ing from the Student led energy meeting at Nord Hall. I just learned GE will make over $ billion this year from their wind turbine business, which they bought fire sale from Enron, and the presenter, a Case professor (not Jeff Buster) confirmed GE uses their clout and legal aggressiveness to constrict the US industry. Also interesting, while there are no import duties and tariffs to import fossil fuels, there are high importation costs for solar and other alternative fuel technologies.

Another interesting subject an economics professor (and REI staffer) has proposed is a program for Cleveland for car sharing - a fleet of cars made available on a pooled use basis (as an alternative to everyone owning their own cars). They want to get this program going here (it is successful in SF, for example) - interesting idea. Now another professor is talking about Case strategy developing fuel cells and how that would compliment the car sharing idea. An attendee from all the last three related meetings is now talking about biodiesel, which is another opportune subject for Case students (and this session is largely designed for engineering students).

Consider from this message a few things. First, I'm in a meeting real time sharing important information with the outside world - and recording important content for future reference - and the meeting is not being recorded or filmed and despite being full of students no one else here is using a PC or even pen and paper to keep notes - all this talk is lost and gone when the session ends - no knowledge management except this message. That is a serious problem - a huge waste of resources and potential. Note, the discussion has raised many actionable opportunities that will be lost. We need action.

In discussing the social network plan this morning with Marc Canter he detailed how such a session should be run. There should be numerous people here transcribing and reporting to wiki blogs real time for future reference and those not here to follow and even contribute to - could have video feed as well - we just went to Q&A and you at home could send a question or comment to contribute from afar. Someone mentioned economics students should be here, and some could be from afar. Everyone here who wants to be involved in furthering any of these initiatives in any way would know to register afterward to a mail list, allowing them to continue the dialogue - using the people aggregator everyone interested in a subject would join a related community of interest link - COIL. At the COIL social network site, all the presentations from today's meetings would be available, with links to all related material and organizations - many have been mentioned today - and outsiders could visit and join the COIL. Future events would be posted. Businesses could be started and they could migrate to other COILS of self interest, which could be private.