Search Results for: Epic

The Drain

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John Pugh’s mural, the Drain has attracted quite a bit of attention. Painted on the side of a title company in Bishop, CA [satellite view], the Drain portrays

an agricultural Shangri La appears as a mural within a mural. This vision of the valley’s past derives from old paintings and photos, book descriptions, interviews, and visits to the less effected areas of Owens Valley. Breathing sweet orchard blossoms while gazing at the lush glory of this place 100 years ago, this depiction is not meant to portray a specific vantage point yet rather allow the viewer an ambient experience of the ecology.
If your eyes are diverted to the drainpipe, this is by design. Like a black hole that allows no light to escape, the protruding drainpipe absorbs all color in its proximity. The odd shape surrounding the pipe is actually a preserved section of the under painting, but conceptually it serves as an after image, or ‘ghost blotch’. It is a stain that is created by the absence of color information – or metaphorically, of life. Written words like ‘water’ and ‘tree’ or even ‘green’ are some of the sketch notes, but historically these are the line items that have virtually disappeared into the drain.

Everyone should take a drive up or down the Eastern Sierra. It’s a region of stark beauty, glorious mountains and desolate lakebeds, whose water has long since been shipped 200 miles southwest to the LA Basin via the LA Water and Power District.

Talking Straight on Wisconsin Economic Development

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I like Mike Ivey’s take on Wisconsin’s economic development efforts:

If holding conferences and talking about high-tech were the sole gauges of economic development success, Wisconsin would be booming these days like Dublin, Ireland.
Unfortunately, every other state from Alabama to Oregon is trying to market itself as the next Silicon Valley or Research Triangle.
And Wisconsin is having a particularly hard time shifting gears from its traditional old economy of manufacturing and agriculture into a new economy world where brains count more than brawn.

This type of distasteful cheerleading does no one any good. I’ve worked for entrepreneurs on the west coast and started a business here some years ago. I think our problem is an aversion to risk taking, which manifests itself in our schools and government. These entities typically discuss a “same service’ approach year after year after year, which makes no sense.

There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but we need many more people to take a few risks. We also need a simplified business tax and regulatory scheme. The paperwork is simply out of control.

Open Source Medical Records System

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Gina Kolata:

Now, however, Medicare, which says the lack of electronic records is one of the biggest impediments to improving health care, has decided to step in. In an unprecedented move, it said it planned to announce that it would give doctors – free of charge – software to computerize their medical practices. An office with five doctors could save more than $100,000 by choosing the Medicare software rather than buying software from a private company, officials say.

Verona based Epic Systems creates and supports a medical records product along with many other health care tools. Slashdot discussion. Worldvista site.

Venture Capital in Wisconsin/Milwaukee

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John Schmid takes a look at a proposed Venture Capital Fund for inner city Milwaukee.

Venture capitalists, a clique of financiers obsessed with risk and exponential growth, incubated the Internet, seeded the bioengineering boom and propelled the likes of Google, eBay, Microsoft, FedEx and Starbucks out of their infancy. Now, for the first time, they intend to apply the same approach to Milwaukee’s inner city.

VC in Wisconsin is very much a chicken and egg problem. My view is that Wisconsin lacks a risk taking, entrepreneurial environment, which is ironic because it used to exist here, in the days when manufacturing was the rage. We see evidence of this everywhere, from The Madison School District’s annual “same service” approach to budgeting in an era of constant change to our very slow adoption of the critical assets for the next generation of entrepreneurs: broadband (wifi and fiber networks to the home). Wisconsin is not a player politically in these initiatives, unlike other areas.

The truth, in my view, is that there’s plenty of money in Wisconsin. We’re simply lacking the will, and perhaps people – though I wonder about this, to apply it to new businesses.

Finally, any VC discussion must include internet entrepreneur Paul Graham’s essay: A Unified Theory of VC Suckage. (I know some venture capitalists and believe they can play an important role. The idea and execution, however are critical).

Finally, why not look at results? Madison’s fast growing (now – started in 1978) Epic Systems never took venture capital, while Berbee did (started in 1994). Judy Faulkner has run Epic from the beginning while Berbee founder Jim Berbee hasn’t run the company for years, and recently left. Foodusa, hypercosm, guild.com (apparently 40+M, including over 2m of local funds) and sonic foundry all took venture capital. A number of local biotech firms are also vc financed.

Zawodny: The Big One?

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Jeremy Zawodny wonders if the Big One is on the way…. I lived in San Francisco during the “pretty big one”: Loma Prieta and posted a few recollections here, along with notes from AnchorBanker Brian Zimdars.

UPDATE: Chan Stroman emails:

I’m late to the party, but enjoyed reading your recollection of the ’89 Loma Prieta. I was in the Russ Building on the bedrock side of Montgomery street when it hit–the building tipped back and forth solidly for what seemed like forever while we all ran to the stairwell. Later, we walked to a colleague’s apartment on Telegraph Hill, and yes, the sunset that night was eerily beautiful. My husband was in the Macy’s warehouse in South S.F. (“South City”) and narrowly missed having some high shelves with heavy stuff crash down on his head. Back in our flat in the Sunset, other than a couple of framed pictures askew on the walls, nothing was damaged. Thanks to this experience, I’m permanently sensitized to quakes…and bolted straight up in bed here in Madison just about a year ago (epicenter Ottawa, Illinois) just about a year ago.

Visit Chan at www.bookishgardener.com (lots of interesting items, particularily the gardening posts).

Madison Area Income Growth

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Lynn Welch on Madison’s 3.9% per capita personal income growth (2002 to 2003), which ranks it 30th among the 360 metropolitan areas measured by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. (interestingly, Appleton’s personal income growth rate was 4.1%) Here’s the BEA’s data (.xls file – 4.27.2005 BEA news release)

Welch credits the high tech economy for these results – perhaps so. Epic Systems has grown substantially as has Promega (mentioned in the article). Of course, Epic is moving to Verona and Promega is in Fitchburg.

Taxes

Wisconsin ranks 12th in per capita tax collections, according to the US Census Bureau. More on state tax comparisons from Kathleen Murphy.

The Economist: The Flat Tax Revolution

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The Economist provides several useful tax simplification pointers. I wonder if I’ll live to see the day that we have a rational, sensible tax system…

The United States, which last simplified its tax code in 1986, and which spent the next two decades feverishly unsimplifying it, may soon be coming to a point of renewed fiscal catharsis. Other rich countries, with a tolerance for tax-code sclerosis even greater than America’s, may not be so far behind. Revenue must be raised, of course. But is there no realistic alternative to tax codes which, as they discharge that sad but necessary function, squander resources on an epic scale and grind the spirit of the helpless taxpayer as well?

more here

USPS Kiosk Takes Your Photo

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“According to FOIA documents obtained by EPIC new Postal Service self-service postage machines take portrait-style photographs of customers and retain them for 30 days.” IBM is the contractor behind the kiosks. Note that the kiosk is supposed to not complete the transaction if it determines the photograph has been compromised, so simply covering the camera is unlikely to work. As the cost of cameras and digital storage approaches zero, is it inevitable that every machine you interact with will take your photograph and store it? Via Slashdot.