Tropical storm Irene and The Connecticut River

This was my first week back from vacation and it was a busy one both inside and outside the office. Tropical Storm Irene came through last weekend and the flooding after really did some terrible damage and continues to impact people's lives from North Carolina to Maine..

Much of the rain that fell north of us from Irene eventually ended up flowing down the Connecticut River that separates Vermont and New Hampshire and splits Massachusetts and Connecticut. I drive by the Holyoke Dam every day going to and returning from work and took a few minutes to shoot some video on August 30, the day the river crested. I have never seen the river this high and this powerful. This was shot on the bridge connecting Holyoke and South Hadley Falls.



I could not believe the debris along with the color of the water.

CloudCamp Western Mass Invitation

On April 20 the ICT Center and Springfield Technical Community College will be hosting CloudCamp Western Mass.

Never heard of CloudCamp? Here's some info from CloudCamp.org CloudCamp is an unconference where early adapters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions. At CloudCamp, you are encouraged you to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing. End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to participate.

We're fortunate to have some great sponsors for the event including Microsoft, TNR Global, intuit, tropo and the UMass Amherst Computer Science Department.

Here's details on the event:

Date/Time: April 20, 2010, 2:30pm-7pm

Location: 1 Federal St, ICT Center, STCC, Springfield, MA 01105 Directions

Price: Free, food will be served at registration

Who should come: Developers, managers, faculty, students, etc from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and surrounding states, who are working with or are interested in working with cloud technologies.

Schedule:

2:30pm Registration & Networking, Food

3:00pm Welcome and Thank yous

3:15pm Lightning Talks (5 minutes each) Sponsors TBD

3:45pm Unpanel (in the same room with lightning talks)

4:15pm Organize the Unconference Sessions

4:30pm Unconference Session 1

5:30pm Food break and Networking

5:45pm Unconference Session 2

6:45pm Wrap-up Session

The event will be technically very interesting and it will also be a great opportunity to network and connect with both national and regional high-tech people and companies.

We'll also be streaming portions of the event out to the web.

Register for the free event by following this link http://www.cloudcamp.org/westernmass/2010-04-20

If there are any questions feel free to email me at gordonfsnyder@gmail.com or call at 413-755-6552

Green High Performance Computing: Ping, Power and Pipe

On October 21 I was at our National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education annual conference in Washington, DC. Green was the theme of of this year's conference with sessions on everything from bio-fuels, wind power, photovoltaics, computer virtualization and storage. Back at home there was another green event happening in Holyoke, MA that I had to miss. Governor Deval Patrick came out to Holyoke Community College to discuss his continued support and announce the go ahead for the planned construction of the regions first high performance computer center in a new "innovation" district located in Holyoke, MA. Partners in the project include Cisco, EMC (both companies also in attendance at our NSF conference in Washington, DC), MIT, Boston University and the University of Massachusetts.

If you are not from Massachusetts maybe you haven't heard of Holyoke. If you are from the area you probably think of Holyoke as an old New England mill town. What you may not know is 160 years ago Holyoke was the first planned industrial city in America. Here's a brief historical overview summarized from the city website:

• In 1847, taking advantage of the broad plain and the 57 foot drop in the Connecticut River at South Hadley Falls, work began on a planned industrial City. Construction of Holyoke's first wooden dam began in 1847 under the Hadley Falls Company.
• As Holyoke matured, it began to diversify industrially. Four and a half miles of canals were dug by pick and shovel through the lower wards, and all types of products were manufactured along their banks.
• Textiles were the first major product of the City, quickly followed by paper. Within 30 years, Holyoke would become known as the "Paper City of the World".
• From its highs of the 1920's industry showed a gradual decline in overall employment. Many labor and energy intensive firms followed the national pattern, and moved to the South and West, to be nearer raw materials and cheaper labor. The remaining industries took advantage of Holyoke's unique resources, especially her highly skilled labor force and plentiful water for power and process uses.
• Although many of the paper mills left, many specialty paper producers have remained.

Manufacturing, textiles, speciality paper,,,,, what does that have to do with a green high performance computing center? A recent post at MassTech.org referred the attraction to Holyoke as ping, power and pipe - the city has a high-speed network in place with fiber connections to major research universities, low cost water-power generated electricity and the required cooling infrastructure.

There is still considerable work to be done with the next step over the next couple of months an executed purchase and sale agreement. According to the MassTech.org piece, 80 different sites in the Holyoke canal district are being considered for the center.

I live across the Connecticut River in South Hadley and drive through the canal district every day back and forth to work at Springfield Technical Community College. The canals and old buildings are beautiful and I love the ride - I'm looking forward to the watching the center, innovation district and area transition and grow.

Getting Ready For The Snow

We're expecting a big snow storm today in Massachusetts. The college is closed so I'm home doing some work. I'm always amazed at how quiet the woods are right before a big storm - no birds chirping or flying around. Squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks - not sure where they are but probably just about where I am right now..... Stocked up at the grocery store this morning and looking forward to a nice meal this evening. Stove is full and kicking out some nice heat..... everything has slowed down..... it feels good.

Think I'd miss this if I moved someplace where it did not snow.

Don't Limit Access to Higher Education

My college president has written an excellent op-ed piece in BusinessWest, a Western Massachusetts news magazine. The piece discusses the critical importance of funding for public higher education and particularly for community colleges, in light of our current Massachusetts state budget crisis. Here the piece:

OPINION by IRA RUBENZAHL
President of Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) in Springfield, MA

By most accounts, we are now entering the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Nationally, the signs abound: the loss of home value, the meltdown in the stock market, the rise in unemployment, collapse of the credit markets, and a record $1 trillion federal deficit.

As these dramatic changes reverberate through the economy, a college education becomes ever-more important to secure a decent paying job and enter a stable career; studies show the link between higher levels of educational attainment and higher average salaries. Furthermore, certain associate degrees such as those in nursing, allied health, computer science, and manufacturing, pay much greater dividends because jobs in these fields are in high demand.

In this environment, individuals are facing hard choices about where to commit to spend their money. Where to go to college and how to pay for higher education ranks among a family’s most important decisions.

One may choose between public and private colleges, with elite private colleges now costing — without room and board — upwards of $40,000 per year. Within the public sector, there are three options: university campuses, state colleges, and community colleges. In Massachusetts, average student charges per year without room and board for these three segments are:

• $9,585 for the four UMass campuses;
• $6,400 for the nine state colleges; and
• $3,862 for the state’s 15 community colleges.

Since community colleges are the least expensive, they are becoming more and more popular as a way to stretch a family’s and student’s limited resources. And people are flocking to these local colleges. Fall 2008 figures show community colleges now dominate enrollment in the state with 89,000 students, compared with 46,928 at the four university campuses, and a total of 37,509 at the nine state college campuses.

This fall, community colleges statewide had an enrollment increase that averaged 5.3%, the largest jump of any segment. Although the Commonwealth’s community colleges offer only the first two years of a baccalaureate degree and a number of two-year career programs, the quality of instruction is superb. Consider that community colleges are teaching institutions with a focus on undergraduate students. Faculty are hired because of their knowledge and their ability to teach, not for research skills.

Springfield Technical Community College, for example, offers 60-plus career programs in business, health professions, computer science, and engineering technology. In addition, the college has a robust liberal arts curriculum leading to transfer to baccalaureate colleges throughout New England. Local private colleges — AIC, Elms, Bay Path, Western New England, and Springfield College — court STCC graduates through agreements that provide guaranteed scholarships for students with good grades.

Many STCC students also transfer to the public institutions, most notably UMass Amherst and Westfield State College.

So, for those worried about the economy and the future, community colleges continue to be the best deal in the state.

However, the current state budget deficit now threatens the accessibility and affordability of public higher education just when Massachusetts residents most need it.

Community colleges are the most lean and efficient segment of higher education, educating more students with less funding. They enroll more than half of public higher-education students, yet receive approximately one-quarter of state funding. Consequently, it will be more difficult for these institutions to absorb major funding cuts without affecting the quality of the education and resources so important to students and to our economic future.

Education is the economic driver for our state, producing the skilled and knowledgeable employees needed by business, schools, and industry — particularly the health care industry.

While cutting funding for education will save money in the very short term, it will represent a far greater loss for our citizens and our state.

Ira Rubenzahl is president of Springfield Technical Community College.

This article first appeared in BusinessWest Magazine, Springfield, Massachusetts and is directly linked here.

Curt Schilling: Red Sox Pitcher, Roll Playing Game Developer and Academic Challenger

Red Sox pitcher and 38 Pitches blogger Curt Schilling has launched a gaming company in Maynard, Massachusetts called 38 Studios. If you are not a baseball fan - 38 is Curt's uniform number.

The company was started last year and currently has 45 employees. Schilling has funded the company to this point with his own money but in January will announce a second round of funding from "strategic partners" (perhaps with some Red Sox teammates?)

He's brought in some big names from the animation and fantasy business - here's a piece from the 38 Studios website:

38 Studios' first products will feature the artistic vision of world-renowned comic book and toy creator Todd McFarlane (www.spawn.com ) and best-selling fantasy author R. A. Salvatore (www.rasalvatore.com ). To bring this epic world to life, 38 Studios employs skilled and dedicated artists, programmers, designers, writers, and others drawn from the world’s most successful game and entertainment companies, all of whom join 38 Studios with the common goal of creating a most unique entertainment company.

Yesterday, 38 Studios announced an interesting game challenge where teams of 2-3 students from New England area colleges will submit ready to play games they've developed. The development platform/game engine is at the discretion of the team and each submission must include the participant created game source code.

According to the 38 Studios contest website, teams will be judged on the following criteria: degree of overall finished product; originality; visual polish; stability; length of quality game play; and expanded market vision and product strategy.

New England Cable News has a great video interview of Curt describing 38 Studios and the contest linked here.

The first place team wins $3,000, second place $2,000 and third place $1,000.

An exciting opportunity for New England students, the deadline for submissions is February 18, 2008 and winners will be announced on or before April 21, 2008. If interested, be sure to go to the 38 Studios website and download the complete set of contest rules. Go Sox!

A New England Beaver Meets a Retired Cable Splice

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In the next few blog entries, I’m going to be focusing on green technologies. I know it is stretch but could not resist kicking off the series by writing about “nature’s engineer”.
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Our home in Western Massachusetts is surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods and there’s lots of wildlife around including deer, fox, wild turkey, coyotes, black bear and beavers. We try and get out in the woods as much as possible and especially look forward to the winter because the ponds, brooks and swampy areas freeze over, allowing us to walk on the ice and explore places we cannot get to when it is warmer. It’s been cold recently and there is a good 4 inches of ice – more than enough to support the weight of an adult.

We were particularly interested in checking out a beaver pond that we discovered about a year and a half ago. The beavers have built a pretty good size dam and lodge and it’s always fun to walk over the ice, getting a close-up look at their work. Yesterday my daughter and I got right up next to the lodge and got some great pictures. The first picture here is of the lodge and the second is a picture of a hole next to the lodge that they use (it’s thinly frozen over) to get in and out of the water through the ice. The lodge entry is under water so this is also their way in out out of their home. In the second picture you can also see mud they’ve recently dragged up off the bottom to patch and seal the lodge.

Here’s a couple of pictures of trees they’ve cut. The first is the stump of a tree they dropped across our road in August. The second is the stump of a tree they cut within the last week.

In September we first noticed what looked like a cable-splice pedestal box but could not get close to it because it was on a little island in the middle of the flooded area. Yesterday, the ice allowed us to walk to the box and finally get a close up look - here’s a picture. You can see the box is bent and twisted with the cover broken off. I’m guessing the combination of high water and ice last winter twisted and broke the pedestal open – I don’t think the beavers busted it open.

I also don’t believe this cable is active – about 10 years ago Comcast installed a piece of fiber that feeds the coaxial connections to the homes on our road. It’s still interesting to see the kind of damage beaver can cause - I just hope they don’t know where the fiber splices are!

Broadband Gaming in the Sticks

I'd like to thank Karl Kapp for including my blog in his Blog Book Tour for Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning.

Karl's book takes a look at members of the "just starting to retire" baby boomer generation - highly skilled individuals who will be taking with them all of their expertise. Simultaneously, a new generation of employee (dubbed by Karl and others as "gamers") is entering the workforce with a different focus and learning style. For the first time, our workplace will experience the invasive influence of video games, Internet surfing, blogging, and podcasting. Karl's personal website is linked here, the book website is linked here and you can purchase his excellent book by following this link to Amazon.

In my blog today I take a look at broadband access and availability - critical for gamers and many of the applications Karl discusses in his book. My post is a little different than most that have been posted on the blog tour - I hope it makes sense and you can make the connections to gaming, gamers and Karl's book.

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One of my passions is what I refer to as the "broadband divide" - basically the broadband "haves" and "have-nots" in the United States. In today's blog I focus on availability in some of the rural parts of my state - the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Broadband availability and affordability are critical as our online efforts in education (including gaming) move forward - whether it's bandwidth on our campuses or in our student's homes. Residential access is especially important for community colleges since most do not have dorms - students are commuting back and forth from their homes.

Let's get into some of the things going on in my state - I think you may find similar scenarios wherever you live.

When most people think of Massachusetts the first thing they think of is probably Boston and second maybe the Red Sox or New England Patriots. If you've been to Boston and the surrounding area you know, like any big city and its suburbs, it's relatively congested. The fact that it is congested is good in some ways - typically it's great for things like broadband roll out. Houses are close together with short consistent length driveways. Many of the neighborhoods are older and there are still poles carrying power telephone and cable services. It's relatively easy for providers like Verizon to come into a neighborhood and run a piece of aerial fiber down a street and then add relatively short and consistent length drops to homes on the street. As a result, people in these kinds of neighborhoods (including school kids) have lots of bandwidth available for information, education and entertainment.

Those in the more rural parts of Massachusetts (and many other areas in our country) are not so fortunate when it comes to broadband availability. Today, there are 32 towns in rural parts of Massachusetts that have no high-speed Internet, or broadband, access whatsoever. An additional 63 are under-served, with broadband access available in only some areas of the community. Many of these rural town are parts of regional school districts which can present significant problems for students living in these towns. I'll use the beautiful town of Blandford, MA as an example. Blandford is part of a regional school district that services seven towns. Blandford does not have broadband availability (no cable modem or DSL) while others do (although coverage in some of these towns is not complete). Students living in Blandford are at a "broadband disadvantage" when compared to other students that do have access.

In a podcast interview late last month, Stan McGee, Massachusetts Assistant Secretary for Policy and Planning for the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development and also Director of Wireless and Broadband Development (try to get all of that on a business card!) talks with Sharon Gillett, Commissioner of Telecommunications and Cable for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The two discuss Governor Deval Patrick’s recently announced broadband initiative.that will invest up to $25 million over five years, and will seek to make broadband available in all under-served towns in Massachusetts by 2010 and "improve conditions" in many of the under-served communities. Here's a few quotes from the show-notes:

The main elements of the plan include creating a Massachusetts Broadband Incentive Fund. And the fund will be capitalized by the issuance of a $25 million broadband bond. The fund is proposed to be managed by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, a division to be created within the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. Once this management entity is in place, we believe public-private partnership developed here can be extended to under-served regions of the Commonwealth to ensure ongoing broadband equity.

The Commonwealth’s approach will be to invest public funds into essential and long-lived broadband infrastructure assets. These include things like fibers, conduits, or towers for wireless broadband services. By investing in these assets, the Commonwealth will lower the overall cost of deployment for private providers.

Public-private initiatives have worked in some situations and failed in others - several Municipal WiFi projects come to mind off the top of my head. There have also been some successful wireless initiatives in rural areas including an AT&T implementation in Alaska I blogged about recently.

The Massachusetts initiative is referred to as "ambitious" and I'll add challenging but it is something we must do. Here's one of my favorite quotes from the podcast:

We believe that any individual or community without high-speed Internet access today is educationally and economically disadvantaged, and Governor Patrick tasked us early on to prepare a plan that would bridge the digital divide that faces all too many communities across the Commonwealth.

It's great to hear this kind of spirit and ambition and I hope it does not get bogged down in state politics. I do have concerns that $25 million may not be enough to push this to critical mass in Massachusetts. It's a start though - I look forward to the day when all of my students and their families have available and affordable broadband access in their homes.