How can we make society better? New course!

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This is info about a new course that might be of interest to you. The information is in Swedish and I the course seems to be in Swedish too so I won't bother to translate the text.

Nov 15 is the deadline for applications - only 24 students can take the course and KTH students are limited to only 8!

/Daniel


Hej lärare på CSC

Vi vill ha er hjälp att välkomna studenter till den första OpenLab kursen (pilotversion). OpenLab är den stora projektkurs, 15 hp som ges under VT 2013 och som bygger på behovsdrivna utmaningar. Kursen ska skall kunna väljas av studenter från KTH, SU och KI. Det som nu behövs är ett antal studenter från utvalda skolor som skulle vilja delta i kursen och det behövs en aktiv rekryteringsinsats. Det rör sig bara om 8 KTH-studenter i denna version och det finns intressanta projekt från Stockholms stad resp Stockholms Läns Landsting som skall genomföras av tvärdisciplinära studentgrupper. Vi tror det är bra att kunna välja studenter som särskilt gärna vill vara med!

Det behövs en mer aktiv insats från er studierektorer eller lärare i lämpliga ämnen. 
Kort introduktion till kursen nedan, för mer information ligger det också en länk på www.openlab.se.


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Hur kan samhället bli bättre?

Svåra problem kräver ofta nytt tänkande. Och nytänkande är svårt inom gamla ramar med etablerade tankemönster.


Därför startas kursen ”Innovationer för den växande staden” – en ny multidisciplinär projektkurs inom OpenLab på Valhallavägen 79 i Stockholm. OpenLab är en plats för kurser i innovation och nytänkande, där studenter och lärare från KI, SU och KTH möter uppdragsgivare från Stockholms stad, Stockholms läns landsting och Länsstyrelsen i Stockholms län, för att tillsammans skapa innovativa lösningar på stora samhällsfrågor. I projektkursens terminsuppdrag lär sig studenterna hur man arbetar i innovativa processer över olika vetenskapsfält. Och uppdragsgivaren får nya idéer på hur man kan lösa viktiga samhällsfrågor som kommer att betyda mycket för alla människor i samhället.


Kurserna vänder sig till dig som redan har en kandidatexamen. Du kan ha läst ekonomi, humaniora, juridik, medicin, samhällsvetenskap eller till ingenjör. Du kommer att studera tillsammans med människor du kanske aldrig skulle ha träffat annars. Du vill lära dig att hantera samhällets utmaningar och prova nya arbetssätt. Kursen kommer att vara krävande och stimulerande.


Du kommer att arbeta med riktiga uppdrag som kan påverka andras liv i en nära framtid. Regionens politiker och beslutsfattare väntar på dina förslag till lösningar.

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Meta: Daniel's reflections on the course

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I happen to know a few people in the "Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas" (ASPO Sverige). They asked me to come and talk about the DM2573 course and my thoughts about it. If you want to, you are welcome to join this Swedish-language meeting on Sunday (Oct 21).

Time: Sun Oct 21 between 16-19.
Place: The restaurant/pub Pelikanen (Södermalm), Blekingegatan 40

Since ASPO would like to have an idea about how many people will come to the meeting, please fill in this Doodle if you would like to come!

/Daniel

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Daniel Pargman, lektor i medieteknik, KTH

Titel: Peak oil på högskolan?

Daniel berättar om sina tankar kring att utforma delar av en ny kurs om "hållbarhet och medieteknik" kring teman som "begränsningar" och resursutmaningar. Vilket var utfallet när civilingenjörsstudenter på KTH fick höra att hållbarhetsproblematiken och resursutmaningar inte representarer abstrakta frågor som "någon annan" får lösa, utan potentiella ödesfrågor som kommer att komma att få en konkret inverkan på deras egna liv? Vad händer när unga människor ("future captains of the industry") börjar väga möjligheten att pågående problem (EU, USA) kan vara tecken inte på en tillfällig svacka utan på en oundviklig kollaps?

David Webb talk at KTH Oct 25

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During the course wrap-up (Oct 10) several students said they would have wanted David Webb to give a lecture in the course. While the course has now ended, you actually do have the chance to listen to David talk at a seminar at KTH next week.

Due to the fact that David is invited to a seminar (not a lecture), space is limited and we unfortunately thus have to limit the number of students to maximum a dozen (12). So I have created a Doodle where you can indicate if you want to come (or if you don't want to come).

Please only state that you will come to the seminar if you really will come to the seminar!

/Daniel


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Date: To 25 oktober kl 15-17
Place: Seminar room 1537 (house E, floor 5)

Guest: David Webb, Retired financial analyst, investment banker and hedge fund manager.

Title: Paradigm Collapse

Talk: Beginning with a chronicle of the unprecedented increase and scale of financial exposures in the United States, we will discuss evidence that the banking power of the United States is indeed collapsing.  We will discuss available historical precedent, and some unexpected implications including the prospects for interest rates, commodities, deflation vs. hyperinflation, the devaluation of the dollar, and the involvement of China.  The relative merits of Sweden and the Scandinavian region will also be discussed.

About: David Webb is the founder of Origin Investments AB, which has applied to the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen) for permission to manage a market neutral long/short equity strategy designed to serve as a core holding for institutional investors. Mr. Webb was the founder of Verus Investments, where he managed long/short equity hedge funds with AUM in excess of $600 million. Previously, Mr. Webb was a Senior Managing Member of Shaker Investments where he was the sole manager of long/short equity hedge funds with AUM in excess of $1.3 billion. Mr. Webb has served as an Associate with the venture investment arm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co., Inc., and as an Associate with the Mergers and Acquisitions Department of Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. Mr. Webb moved with his family to Sweden a few years ago to escape the impeding collapse of the US banking sector.

On the future of this blog

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The deadline for the home exam has passed. I think it is pretty logical that the time to write blog posts here and get bonus points for them in the course has passed too.

However, you are welcome to continue to post stuff here - I will continue to subscribe to the blog and I hope some other people will do that too. I might post some stuff myself here now and then.

More specifically, this is what will happen to the blog:
- You will still be able to post stuff.
- A year from now when the course starts again, we might continue to use this blog and thus build upon your blog posts. At that time, I will kick you out and a new crop of students will get invitations to contribute to the blog.

Do note that this blog post is followed by two blog posts about events during this coming week that might be of interest to you - even though the course has ended.

/Daniel
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Sustainability indicators

As this wasn’t part of the lesson, I thought it might be interesting for others as well. I wondered how the progress of sustainable development is measured and visualized. Because of this I searched for some actual systems.

The “Committee of Sustainable Development“ (CSD) introduced a set of basic indicators in 1997. Since then, 22 countries (e.g. Germany) are testing these indicators. As the basic indicator set doesn’t fit the need of all participating countries, each participant defined their own set of indicators. Because of that, a comparison of the different countries is extremely difficult. I will use the report of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany as a base for this blog entry.

The report is divided into four parts. As there are more than 30 indicators, I will mention only the most interesting The first part handles the Intergenerational equity, which includes resource conservation, climate protection, the usage of renewable energy sources and other environmental issues. The quality of life is part of the second part, this includes mobility, air quality, crime rate and healthcare. The third part is about Social cohesion, examples for that are the employment rate, integration and equal opportunities. The last part deals with the international responsibility and includes only two indicators: Development cooperation and Opening markets.

The report is published every two years. In every report, the collected data is compared to the previous reports. These trends are compared to the climate & sustainability goals of the government. In the report of 2012, which is available online (see link), more than the half of the indicator developed in a positive way. 20 indicators are developing weaker than expected, the defined goals might not be achieved. The remaining 8 indicators had a very high deviation of the target value.

This example shows the effort of some countries in setting transparent goals for sustainability. On the other hand these goals are relatively weak, as the government tries to set achievable goals. There are several other criticisms as well, but as these indicator systems are “new”, they might need some time to develop.

Source: Federal Statistical Office ofGermany, Indicator Report 2012

Sustainable stadiums

I found a quite cool site about some eco-friendly, sustainable, unic and certainly beautiful stadiums around the world. We have already seen some of these huge arenas recently like the Olympic stadium in London this year during the summer olympics and we will be more familiar with some of them in the near future, like for instance the 2014 Winter Olympic stadium in Sochi, Russia. They contribute differently to a sustainable future which you can read shortly about. Some of these are for example covered with huge solar panels, photovoltaic panels or rainwater harvesting systems. Maybe we have a few preconceptions about stadiums in general because of bad influences on the environment? These comparatively green arenas are supposed to change our point of veiw I guess.

http://www.greendiary.com/worlds-most-beautiful-eco-friendly-sports-stadiums.html 

Stockholm - European green capital 2010

We often hear a lot of bad things about how our society looks today from a sustainable poit of view. A few days ago i read about a conferens that will take place at Kistamässan, october 19th. I went to their home page and found out that Stockholm became the first ”european green capital” in 2010. At  European green capitals home page their are some funny information about Stockholm from a sustainable point of view that I think is worth reading. For example all inner city buses and trains runs on renewable fuels and the green house gas emissions have been reduced by 25% since 1990. Sometimes I get the impression that we are going in wrong direction but after reading the review of Stockholm it seems that we (the city) actually making improvemenst all the time.

Link to the conference at Kistamässan:

http://www.buildingsustainabilitysweden.se

Link to  European green capital:

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/winning-cities/stockholm-european-green-capital-2010/index.html