State of Massachusetts Internet of Things Day - May 12, 2015.

Morning and afternoon May 12, 2015 event at the MA State House about Massachusett's commitment to Internet of Things - IoT. Organized by Tech Caucus - Senator Karen Spilka with support of MassTLC.

Remarks by Senate President Rosenberg and Speaker DeLeo. Keynote by Chris Rezendes of INEX Advisors. Breakouts on Government, Healthcare, Energy and Transportation.

MBTA Orange Line Train Shuttle - Kudos.

MBTA deserves a compliment. With Orange line delays lately, and the uproar about weather and maintenance, it was a pleasant surprise to have the MBTA doing a very sane thing using train shuttles between Wellington and Oak Grove. The one track shuttle is a great idea...

- Only one track has to be kept running.
- Switches need less operation.
- Signals can be minimized (one train just goes back and forth).

There were minor delays. There was some confusion. Though the confusion seemed unwarranted and somewhat frivolous from the ridership. Riders standing in the door at Malden asking "does this train go to Boston?" seemed almost comical. The anonymous answers "Eventually." and "Just get on, its frigid out there!" seemed very appropriate. The only real confusion was at Wellington with announcements saying to get on for Oak Grove on the "South" side (aka Inbound or Boston-bound track, or the Westside track, or the track farthest from the busways, or the track nearest the MBTA Orange Line repair shops).

The delay from train change at Wellington seemed to be mostly due to holding for the outbound shuttle to fill. Always a somewhat dubious decision (rather then setting a schedule), but is nonetheless understandable.

Staying on Track Blogging.

Stay on Track Blogging 2015 by thoughtlight, LLC, Thursday, February 5, 2015 from 6 to 8 PM.

Great group, presentation and ideas. At 50 Milk Street at new(ish) CIC Boston. Visit to the space worthwhile. Takeaways:
- schedule regular blogging
- images always worthwhile (even a little relevance is fine).
- okay to curate or review.

So as a part of the scheduling "exercise": Editorial calendar : (and maybe this has some tongue in cheek spirit *grin*):

Thousand blogs by end of main career (next two decades). Smoothed average: four to five blogs a month.

Current feature: IoT. Ongoing emphasis: Energy and metrology. With a mix of hobbies, book reviews, sociology, robotics, manufacturing, design, toys, transportation, travel, science, engineering and so on.

Third Industrial Revolution - Rifkin.

Started reading Jeremy Rifkin's Third Industrial Revolution, TIR. Not exactly what expected, but in many ways what was long sought. Chiefly about renewables distributed generation supplanting old central models.

Five pillars of TIR:

1. renewables.
2. micro-power at buildings.
3. storage - hydrogen emphasized, but arguments works just as well for any way of storing electrons or converting electrons to storage.
4. Internet of Things, IoT, for energy grid.
5. transportation to take advantage of new electron sources and storage.

PBS - America Revealed - Yul Kwon

My wife happened by this television program, and put me onto America Revealed on PBS http://www.pbs.org/america-revealed/

Host Yul Kwan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yul_Kwon

Stories on transportation, manufacturing, energy and food http://www.pbs.org/america-revealed/story/

Have interest in them all. Have blogged on these topics. The series presentations have something for everyone. Learned something from each.