Phun with Phake Photoshop (Paint.net)

I was designing my own business cards yesterday, and so I was changing the colors of the UC Berkeley logo. Yeah I know it's kind of stupid because the whole point is that the logo is in the school colors. But...I mean...damn the man or something, right?

Job Pitch

I'm going on the job market!

I wrote up a pitch about what I want to do.  I will probably want to keep editing it a bit.

Investors as well as environmental activists could be more effective if they better understood the pressures corporate boards face from the finance industry. For example, perverse incentives in the financial system may make long term planning difficult.
Corporations should sometimes be insulated from these pressures. I want to analyze how financial incentives influences corporate governance regarding climate change. Then I can help environmental organizations and long-term investors develop ways to respond.  Ways that corporations benefit from managing their emissions may also need to be identified and better publicized to the financial industry.
I'm also interested in improving corporate data management for GHG emissions. These software systems help corporations manage emissions reduction as well as report results to stakeholders such as investors or consumers. These systems always need to be customized for each organization because the operations of different organizations vary so much. As a result, experimentation and iteration is always needed. However, in order for the information to be useful for external stakeholders, these systems also need to be compatible with each other to some extent. For example, managing and reporting the emissions of a supply chain where suppliers have many other customers, can be challenging.

Climate Change Data Management

"To achieve a leadership position in supply chain sustainability, companies should have strong capabilities in data, process and governance" - CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) - the 2013 Supply Chain Report

Yay! I'm into all those things!!  

Discussion on Hazing

A recent Rolling Stones article on hazing has triggered a long discussion over old dorm lists about hazing and fraternities. This was my two cents.

The Stanford prison study shows how this behavior is motivated by
humans' primal nature and response to power. That doesn't explain,
though, why it gets perpetuated in fraternities.

In some sense, hazing activities are like extreme (X-TREME) ice
breakers, which gets people to form a bond based on seeing each other
do and say ridiculous things. All relationship building activities
work because of humans' primal nature, and most of the time there is
nothing wrong with that since we're social animals and we like to hang
out and be part of a group.

Perhaps hazing makes the bond even stronger, and the upside of a
strong bond for the individuals is that there are people out there who
are absolutely loyal to them personally, perhaps even die for them.
The benefits are clear in a military setting. But in general, when
you are in a bind, financial or otherwise, only your family is really
obligated to help you even if you haven't been that nice to them.
Fraternities increase the number of family you have. This is also why
people often start businesses with fraternity people, really close
friends, or family. Since you need to people who will stick with it
even when things seem like they will never get better, it's usually
best to work with people who are extremely loyal to you personally.
In this sense, there is a role for nepotism. I have found that your
personal trustworthiness is your most valuable commodity in the
workplace. Although it can seem extremely stupid to keep incompetent
but loyal people around, there are situations where a stupid person
who will really try their best can be more helpful than a smart person
who is trying to figure out how to get the most credit from the least
amount of work. Obviously you are most valuable as a trustworthy
competent person. I would say that the closer you get to
entrepreneurship, the more primal things get and the more important
relationship dynamics are. In large companies, they have had time and
resources to standardize things and create processes, like for hiring.
That's what human resources are for. Hiring is a time consuming
process so all companies prefer to hire a more known entity. While it
would be great to only hire competent people, honestly it's really
hard to figure out who is really competent and who is good at talking
without working with them for a bit.

Anyway, I think that the primal nature of the professional world,
especially in high risk high reward situations perpetuates things like
hazing. What can we do about it? Find other ways to teach more
valuable skills for those situations without hazing maybe? Increase
the profile of professional networks of living groups to compete?
Make hiring easier for small companies? Get more colleges to require
freshmen to live the first year on campus so people forms bonds
outside their fraternities?

需要安排出优先顺序

很多人在工作里不会安排出优先顺序。 怪不得很多公司有那么多小老板。

Switching Coasts

I've been on the east coast ever since I moved to Boston in 2003. Right now I'm on the southern east coast, Jupiter, Florida. In the fall, I'm moving to Berkeley to attend the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. I am switching coasts and also switching fields.

We are faced with huge environmental challenges with an ever growing human population. Environmental issues are deeply entwined with economic issues, prices, employment, agriculture, etc. I found that as an engineer I have only limited tools. Plus, many worthwhile projects are only in their incipient stages. Much more cooperation between communities, governments, and businesses is needed for such projects to get financial support, legal support, and popular support to gain more momentum.

I am most interested right now in finance for environmental projects and new business models for an environmentally responsible economy. Are there legislation or standards that can help provide businesses as well as consumers with information or incentives to make better decisions? I am interested in working with Professor Lee Friedman, but I still need to explore other professors, too. I am hoping to go into academia or at least get a PhD in policy or economics. However, I am also interested in consulting, starting businesses, or even working in government. It all depends on what I find my strengths are best suited for and also what I think is most worthwhile.

There are definitely a lot of opportunities in the Bay Area for environmental issues so that's really exciting. The food is also going to be great, especially compared to Florida. You would think that a place that is so close to the food production would have better food. I am going to be living with old friends and living near other old friends. I am hoping to be able to do some urban gardening and get better at biking while I'm there.

In Florida

I'm working in Florida for at least another month at an RFID startup. They provide hardware and a software service to help the food industry and other consumer goods industries with ways to track their products as they get shipped. So far it's been pretty fun, but they certainly need a lot of help with design as well as management, in my opinion, especially since the schedule is extremely tight.

Here are some pics.

Finding Internships in Public Policy

NASPAA site with links to internship search engines

Got it off the Harvard Kennedy School site.

RFID Sensors in Florida

I just got caught up with a former coworker from Tagsense, who is now working at Locus Traxx, which is a small engineering firm in Florida. They are using some Tagsense products in some of their products to make sensors and energy harvesters. They are using piezo energy harvesters but also looking into this new kind for wind power. They were also making some sensors to sense the oil in the ocean from the BP oil spill. I wonder if fish will just eat those things, though. I may be able to do an internship there for the spring, which would be really cool.

Synapse Energy Economics

Went to a talk at MIT today, and the ECO of Synapse Energy Economics was there.

Ventana Systems

I looked up Ventana Systems, which is a company founded by Tom Fiddaman and some other people. They're located in Harvard, MA, which is near Boxborough, and I think I'm going to contact them to see if I can do an internship or something there.

This Economic Analysis Collaborative project sounds really interesting.

Intellectual Ventures Lab

Jenny Hu interviewed and got an offer from this company Intellectual Ventures Lab. It sounds like a stimulating and quirky place to work. They are based in Seattle. Some of their projects sound a little crazy, though, like Stratoshield, which is a geoengineering project.

Boston Companies of Interest

CEE seems like the kind of policy place I'd like to work at whenever I'm done with engineering...

Citizenre Corp

i'm trying to go through the companies on this list. last time i did a job search, i was not very thorough. the next time, it will be.

Maybe Alicia Got a Job

at the Broad Institute, heh heh