I read this today from Fox News and nodded my head
A recent report has estimated that about one-third of adults worldwide are not doing enough physical activity – causing just as many deaths as smoking, BBC News reported.
USV, a New York venture capital firm, sponsored an event last April called “hacking society”. Fred Wilson posted about this today which prompted me to waddle over and check out the site. Here is the link to the hacking society site.
My take? Well, this is fun. Like TED. And we need stuff like TED for inspiration. So we need stuff like Hacking Society too. Instead of a presentation that TED gives, we get a glimpse of a discussion.
But I have a bit of a problem here as well. The site says
Hacking Society is a conversation about how networks are transforming our economy and society, and what this means for the future of innovation, regulation, advocacy and politics.
As far as I can tell, the conversation about money in politics that Fred refers to is over. it produced a fully baked idea from the conference. And those who did not attend are left with artifacts (a video and blog posts) but not more. Well, perhaps this type of “wow” idea will create a few ripples in the media. But I was not surprised when Fred wrote
I have had a few conversations with the industry leaders about this idea but honestly it hasn’t gone anywhere. It would be great if our industry could rally around this idea and make it happen. Hopefully this post and other actions we are taking this week might get this idea rolling.
So what could be done better? Well, how about trying to get more people involved in the platform? Make room for the rest of us to join in this conversation. Enlarge it. Give nuance. Build a wave, not just a great idea. That would be more effective advocacy, I think. And something that we need.
And now for something rather different!
Mark Bittman has done a good thing. Well, two good things. First he wrote an op ed talking about how cutting out dairy helped relieve an acid condition in his stomach. That might help people with similar problems. Way to go! Second, he is asking people to share stories that they have about problems from dairy. It’s a nice forum.
I don’t have a story about dairy. But I do have a white bread story. I suffered from chronic asthma for years. I thought it might be diet related and I tried cutting out all sorts of stuff from my diet. Milk, dairy, chocolate, coffee, you name it. Nothing worked. Then I cut out white bread and my wheezing was gone in a week or so. I still have a hard time believing what a huge effect this simple diet switch had for me.
So congrats Mark!
There is a huge amount of capital invested in shopping malls. And one can understand why. The buildings and land tend to be cheap. That includes huge parking lots. And if you can attract 2 or 3 anchor stores (places that attract large numbers of people), you can fill out the mall with a lot of smaller shops, sit back and collect the rent. A lot of rent.
But the internet has intruded on this idyllic business model. People are buying more stuff online, meaning they shop less in the real world. Less foot traffic means less rent for owners of shopping malls. What to do?
Well, with all of that money invested in malls, one expected the owners to do something. And they are. They started by asking the question what does the internet NOT provide people? Answer - quality experiences. You can’t crawl into your computer or mobile device and actually experience anything. You can see things and hear things. But you cannot go anywhere, meet people or do anything. Right. So, why not make shopping malls centers for great experiences? Places that give you a huge selection of experiences. Then once again, the mall might become a destination location.
And that is what smart mall owners are doing. NYT reports.