Sunday, October 21, 2012

up: urban prototyping festival. sf.


That was a lot of fun!  the sf urban prototyping festival was held on October 20.  I went down there to check it out and ended up getting into some very interesting conversations.

I'm especially excited about this "DIY Traffic Counter" that these guys in NY made.  It was so awesome.  I was already thinking of doing a little project in my hood to track car speeds in certain areas where pedestrian casualties have been high over the years (the SFMTA has a great online map that shows you were every pedestrian injury/death has occurred in the city from 2005 to 2010). (and good information is necessary for good planning).  Perhaps, better information on car speeds in these high-casualty areas will be the impetus for further enhancements for pedestrian and bicycle safety.  Now, with this DIY device, I can easily conduct my little study project!  Yay!


the DIY Traffic Counter


Another nifty project that I encountered was SmartStop (below pic).  For SmartStop, while at a bus stop, you can text any question you want to this one phone number and get a response.  Sounds pretty neato, and forgoes the need to have 10 different location-based apps in your smart phone.  However, I'm still trying to figure out just how useful it is because of the need to use text message rather than just an app...
SmartStop: smart bus stop

I am now inspired and fired up to start up some of my own projects.  Likewise, I'm starting to get more serious about starting my own organization (like an LLC).  I need some engineers on my team and perhaps a few web or mobile designers to do the bigger stuff -- but I can already start it out now with the little things.  Time to gather like-minded urbanists that want to DO good work for our communities in a variety of ways!  I'm really interested in the "do-tank" (instead of "think-tank") organizational layout (from my conversation with one of the guys at "Tomorrow Lab").  Think-Design-Do.  Or, Think-Plan-Do.  2dees.  d-squared.  Anyways, this is starting to ramble as I continue to ponder...

so fascinating!


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