"We were no longer able to truly see beyond the horizon of what we had built and to make the necessary leaps in innovation." – Stephan Paternot Today I read a blog post by Stephan Paternot, the co-founder of theglobe.com, and in it, I saw a glimpse of the point I was trying to make in…
The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again?) of Engineering Consulting Firms
It's no secret that engineering consultants have been hit hard by the economic downturn. Some firms closed completely while many firms had to lay off technical staff and institute furlough days. I would imagine the annual bonuses received by employees at these firms have also decreased. The dynamics and operations of engineering firms has always…
MOSES – Ramping up Government Use of Virtual Worlds
We've been fortunate to have a group of federal employees from the US who are dedicated and passionate about government use of virtual worlds. The work accomplished by Eric Hackathorn (NOAA), William May and Lovisa Williams (State Dept), Charles White and Jeanne Holm (NASA), Paulette Robinson (NDU), and Douglas Maxwell and Tami Griffith (US Army)…
Fox Valley Branch APWA Grant Seminar Notes
Below is a Cover It Live embed of the live notes taken during the Fox Valley Branch APWA Grant Seminar Notes: Fox Valley Branch APWA Grant Seminar
Fifty Best Engineering Blogs
A hearty thanks to the civilengineeringschools.org site for listing our blog as one of the top 50 civil engineering blogs and granting us a Blog Frog award. We proudly display our award below and encourage everyone to check out the other Blog Frog award winners at: http://www.civilengineeringschools.org/best-civil-engineering-blogs CivilEngineeringSchools.org
Geneva’s Great Land Adventure
Several months ago, I read some blog posts about frustration with Gov 2.0 not doing enough and a few other posts with offers from people interested in working for free for experience. The two seemingly unrelated topics got me wondering: How could our city use Gov 2.0 to offer job opportunities to people just looking…
Enhancing GIS with Augmented Reality
The other day at work we visited with our police records office to learn more about their reporting software. One of the issues that came up in our discussion was inputting the “address” of incidents. The software they use relies on either point addresses or address ranges along a centerline – both common methods of…
Composting Equipment
In honor of Earth Day, I’m passing along a video that was sent to us at work from Envirocycle. The company makes a composter that looks like a barrel. The operation seems fairly simple. To place the compost, I imagine you could just roll the container to where you need to dump the material. The…
Photocopiers & Depositions
Today I followed a link Governing had posted in a story. This link (http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/03/identifying_photocopy_machine.html)Â led me to what appeared to be an excerpt from a deposition where an attorney was questioning an employee who seems to have worked in the recorder’s office in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The proceeding is somewhat interesting because it is a good…
CCDD Update – Get the Scoop on CCDD & Let IEPA Know What You Think
If you’re involved in construction in Illinois, you are probably well aware of new CCDD law passed last year and made effective immediately by our state legislators and governor. Many of us have been struggling to understand this new law because it was created with little guidance but severe penalties for noncompliance. Fortunately the Chicago…