eaves.ca - Latest Comments in Feeding the next economy – Give us a stimulus that stimulates, not placates

Re: Feeding the next economy – Give us a stimulus that stimulates, not placates

DuncanKinney — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:41:50 -0000

Yes, yes and more yes.

Thanks for writing this. Well done on so many levels.

Re: Feeding the next economy – Give us a stimulus that stimulates, not placates

kferaday — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:36:16 -0000

I'm the worst one for that kind of stuff as my wife will be happy to tell you. Since you're really connected on the government side I'd be interested to hear from you what use cases the government sees for data it's publishing.

Re: Feeding the next economy – Give us a stimulus that stimulates, not placates

ditrain — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:28:17 -0000

Ha! Now that's embarrassing. :)

Re: Feeding the next economy – Give us a stimulus that stimulates, not placates

kferaday — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:25:54 -0000

It's at the bottom of the link that you provide ($2.3M of value). http://www.appsfordemocracy...

Re: Feeding the next economy – Give us a stimulus that stimulates, not placates

ditrain — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:22:21 -0000

kferaday - thank you for the comment. Completely agree this needs to be sustainable. Do you have a link to the Kunda video that you could send me?

Re: Feeding the next economy – Give us a stimulus that stimulates, not placates

kferaday — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:19:01 -0000

I fully agree that propping up GM and Chrysler is essentially flushing money down the toilet. I also agree that government should invest in the high tech industry. There has been a pretty vigorous debate on the the sorry state of high tech VC in this country over the past 4 months and the government could play a role in stimulating new investment.

This should not be done to the exclusion of other sectors. The next economy is not just the digital economy but in creating diverse local and regional economies that are self sustaining. We should be looking at concepts like those proposed by Riversimple to give us ideas as to how this might evolve and result in actual jobs. Some of this thinking should be applied to high tech, auto, energy etc. to create real jobs that hopefully will be less susceptible to global shocks. Focusing on one sector is, in my opinion, just another recipe for disaster, the more so with high tech since it's even easier to move the jobs. A couple of examples include Sun Life moving actuarial jobs to India or big tech companies like IBM, MS etc. doing the same.

And while the efforts like Apps for Democracy are interesting I would challenge the notion that it has resulted in $2.3M in value. It has possibly resulted in that amount of cost avoidance by DC government, but has generated no revenue on the other side. I would also question the value of some of the apps. This is certainly reflected in the video with Vivek Kunda. He suggests two fundamental problems with the first contest -- requirements gathering and commercialization. If you can't create a market for the stuff then it doesn't have much real value. I got the same impression at Van ChangeCamp. There's been no real thought put into real requirements gathering or how someone can make money from this stuff. That's what's going to create jobs.

Re: Feeding the next economy – Give us a stimulus that stimulates, not placates

seemsArtless — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:30:03 -0000

An excellent point, one that hopefully our governments will eventually understand., bit by bit. Thanks!