I am not sure what it is about Facebook that causes professionals to lose all their judgement and ability to reason and act as an adult particularly when it concerns personnel matters. One outcome of this is that employers are allowing themselves to get caught up in their employees' personal, non-work related use of this…
What is Government’s Role in Community Events?
Once again I've been intrigued by the similarities between online and offline communities with the topic this time focusing on the handling of community events. And I wonder how much the "real" and "virtual" communities can learn from each other. If you work for a city, your experience is probably very similar to mine –…
Public Works Puzzles
Lately I've been working on developing some educational coursework related to the public works field. Through this effort I've come across some interesting online tools that can be used for educational purposes. One of these tools, Jigzone, takes a photo and turns it into a jigsaw puzzle. As an example, I've started with one of…
National Highway Institute Using Virtual Worlds for Bridge Training
Although this was posted over on Govloop, I thought I'd repost here because it is so relevant to the public works industry. For some time, we've been advocating for the use of virtual worlds for training, design, and networking in our industry. And now it seems there is finally a sign that the technology is…
The Things Contractors Say
Shortly after I started inspecting construction almost thirty years ago, I started realizing most contractors have the same response to similar situations. When I was younger and asked a contractor to do something, the typical response was something like, "Honey, I've been doing this for thirty years, and …." Then they would go on to…
Modeling Stormwater BMPs in Second Life
Recently I met another civil engineer who works for a county in the State of Washington. He contacted me through the virtual world of Second Life where he is known as Jered Spitteler. Jered has been building a model in Second Life of one of the rain gardens maintained by his agency. Fortunately I…
Business Sim Released by Public Works Group
Over the last year or so I've worked on creating a 3D environment as a representation of the ADA Toolkit for Local Government. Last December I submitted the build in the Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge. The winners were just announced this week, and my entry was not one of the finalists so I began…
Are Gaming Engines the New CAD?
Over the past few years, I've spent considerable time online exploring many different virtual worlds or 3D immersive spaces. Some of these like World of Warcraft are designed to only offer a gaming experience while others like Second Life look like a game, but do not offer gaming as a primary function. My main…
Hoarders – The Untold Story
One of the few television shows I watch is Hoarders – a program produced by A&E Television Networks that highlights attempts at cleaning up homes. The homes profiled on the show are not your average households. Instead they are structures completely filled with objects accumulated by people who do not want to give them up. The…
House Transportation Bill: The Only Logical Solution
I work at the bottom of the transportation food chain. At this level, we have some very basic needs. Each year, we need to fix roads, and we need to find the money to do so. And for the first time in my career, Congress seems to be considering a transportation bill that might…