Happy Holidays! 2007 is coming close, and it is time once again for my Holiday Letter to you and yours. Every time I think about writing out Holiday Cards to each and everyone in my Address book, my eyes go wide and I think, "Gee, isn't this why people invented email?" Odds are, some of my friends will say "Why do you write so much? Can I get a simple summary?" To all of you who need a quickie version of my past 12 months, I offer the following: Taught Systems Engineering and Web 2.0 Product Development and got some nice press Launched a number of websites including Greg Warren and Abigail's Teen Diary Revised Red Hen Spectra and launched cooperBricolage with some great people Hit some conferences in Seattle (Gnomedex) and San Francisco (Supernova) Watched my freshmen students create a viable design for a "tricorder" for Homeland Security and first responders Visited London and South Africa on an interesting client project For the rest of you, follow on though this email - with photos and videos included. 2007 found me spending more time in New York - with visits to see family and clients in Florida, business trips in California, London and South Africa - but pretty much keeping myself on the island. And, as you already know, life is always interesting when you are daring to change the world. Recap prior to January: Last year's letter mentioned the classes I was working on at Cooper: one on Systems Engineering (read: making mathematical models on physical systems) and one on Web 2.0: Emerging Programming Paradigms (read: giving seniors some real world experience in developing software with customers and rapid application prototyping). So, when the year started, I had a bunch of classes to lead. January to March: New Years 2007 found me in Manhattan at a friend's party with a slew of other people - including my friend Sanford Barr from the West Coast. He and I had a hell of a time traipsing through the City. At the time, my Cooper classes were just starting out, somewhat insane, but definitely rewarding. The Red Hen Project I mentioned last year was still going strong, the students from the summer were giving a few hours of work every week - with a new programmer helping out every so often. As classes were happening, I spent some time doing work with Evil Global Corporation (producers of Goodnight Burbank as I mentioned last year) as well as some work with some web-based clients. One of my favorites is a comedian I met named Greg Warren. His website took a bit of time, but he is quite the talent and has an ever-growing fanbase. While I find his humor somewhat funny, I leave it for you to make you own mind up at gregwarrencomedy.com. By March, most of my effort was on classes, finishing websites and looking for more work. April to June: In March/April - I began to work on another software project in earnest. The Advocacy Management Project was one of my dreams that I wanted to develop from my experiences in the Kerry Campaign. The product started with a conversation with a friend of a friend, and has been underway for some time. Suffice it to say that, when the AMP is ready to show, I will have some interesting things to tell all. While this project began, another one was still happening with a firm I had partnered with, Gigapixel Creative. I had met Yao-Hui Huang, an incredible networking powerhouse, at a Web 2.0 event. A couple of days later, we ended up talking and found we had a number of interests in common. Within weeks, we were working on various project proposals for her business. At one point, I mentioned my desire for a "mobile incubator" in New York, sort of a wandering co-working space for free-agents and freelancers. Within days, Yao created her own vision which became "The Hatchery", a mix of "American Idol" and "The Dating Game" in one (for startups in NYC). But as the semester began to come to a close, my students found themselves being driven to deliver their projects in both classes. Of the two classes, the Web 2.0 class bore the most impressive fruit, yielding an incredible four software projects for presentation. In particular, Catherine McCarthy from C|Net Webware and Allen Stern from Center Networks wrote particularly flattering articles on the student's work. Even I wrote stuff up after the class was over - you can see it here on TheSocialEngineer.com. Right after school came to a close, I have some travels at various conferences including Supernova in San Francisco (where Goodnight Burbank opened the conference with a video introduction) and Gnomedex in Seattle. If you want to see an interesting video of what I was doing in San Francisco, check out this (slightly embarrassing video). As the summer began to kick in, I began to have some conversations with people who wanted to bring the concept of "coworking" - the concept of sharing office workspace (whether at an office, a cafe, a school, whatever) - to New York City. There was already a very successful group, Jelly, but there was a desire for an ongoing physical place where people can collaborate and work on projects, with the potential of serendipitously finding people in the general vicinity to help out on various efforts. So I decided to try something a little bit different than what had been done before. July to September: Close to Cooper Union, there is a street called St. Marks Place which kind of reminds me of Height and Asbury in San Francisco or Camden Yards in London. A kitschy place, it has all sorts of restaurants, tattoo parlors and such. One of the restaurants I had gotten to know the owners and noted that they were closed in the morning hours on weekdays. After a couple of conversations and some number crunching, I negotiated a deal with the owners to set up a coworking hub in the restaurant from 10am to 5:30pm, Monday through Friday - equipped with wifi and other business amenities. CooperBricolage - coworking in New York City In late July, cooperBricolage (in honor of Peter Cooper, the inventor and the benefactor to Cooper Union, and h/t to Nate Westheimer and the ClueTrain crew) opened. We had an incredible party (over 150-200 came) and began to get some press (check out the video here and here). Months later, we are at a different location (only five blocks away) in a coffee/tea shop called Gramstand (the original restaurant had a change of management) and a group of people that now manage and run the collective that is CooBric (as the members have taken to call it). Now, I am focusing on finding a real physical space, much like Citizen Space in SF and Independent's Hall in Philly. It is time for New York to have a technology center, for collaboration and community - more than an alternative to Starbucks. Red Hen Spectra - version 2 As I mentioned last year, I met two professors at Cooper where they were working on building a Windows application that had evolved into a "crowdsourcing" database project (read: a chemical fingerprint database that works kinda like Wikipedia). During the Spring semester, while teaching, I recruited a couple of new students to the project. After two and one half months, we built out an almost-functional platform. You can see their work at alpha.redhenspectra.com. On top of that, I spent some time in places like Boston (for the American Chemical Society Convention), applied for funding for the project, and worked on other client work. One project, in particular, made me laugh when it began to take off and seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. Abigail's X-Rated Teen Diary Abigail's X-Rated Teen Diary is another podcast by Evil Global Corporation, and out of the mind of my friend Hayden Black. Now, you may be shocked by the name, especially since this email is the G-Rated kind, but be sure that I would never steer you wrong in this case. While when I first heard the idea and saw his initial sketches, I was definitely of the mind thinking, "What have you done, Hayden?" Weeks and months later have demonstrated to me that Hayden is one of the best comedic talents in short-form I have seen. And, don't take my word for it - judge it for yourself. iTunes just named it one of the Best Podcasts of 2007. Try it. But be sure to watch the first few, you can not jump in immediately. The first episode is here and the next one here and my personal favorite is this one here. But while Abigail was taking off, I began to work with my new class of students, getting 29 freshmen (and women) to work on an idea that I had created during the summer. October to December: In the beginning of this school year, I was asked to teach EID 101, which is Cooper Union's Introduction to Engineering Design for freshmen. The idea is to show freshman the concepts behind engineering product design, but also to give them a taste of working as a group on a project. Instead of one, two or three person teams, the idea is to help the students build out their project management and people skills in a pseudo-realistic situation, complete with presentations, Gantt charts, team reports and frustrating deadlines. My project, keeping in line with the chemistry theme, was to ask the students to build a tricorder. "A what?", I hear you ask. A tricorder - essentially a hand-held sensing device that uses technology to determine the chemical makeup of items that are being scanned by a police officer, a security guard, even a food researcher looking for the chemical/caloric makeup of some food additive being tested. If you watch any of the CSI shows, they already use a spectrometer for analyzing substances. Could the students make one? Well, after fifteen weeks of work - and a lot of sweat and tears, they came up with a viable design and product specification for a Cooper Tricorder. What was amazing to me was beyond the fact that the students were able to come up with a viable design, but that they did so in the midst of so many people telling them that it was an impossible project for them to accomplish - and they saw, with their own eyes, how they were able to accomplish so much in the midst of this adversity. What surprised me was the fact that a group of the students were so dedicated that they ended up reworking their final report to such a degree that they were still working on it, three days AFTER I had already submitted their grades. Rocketseed - Email Branding In the midst of all of this, I had a trip to London to do some work on my company out there, and ended up taking a couple of meetings - including a company that had originated in Cape Town, South Africa. This company, Rocketseed, has been the leader of a product offering that one might call "email branding". As in, you send you email that you write on a daily basis through their email server (instead of or including your own) and the email gets "transmogrified" or "prettied up" to look very professional, and branded. I was introduced to this company two years ago, and have kept the conversation brewing for some time. On a recent trip to London, an opportunity came up to work together. Weeks later, I was invited to evaluate their technology and found myself on a whirlwind trip to South Africa and London in the early part of November. Two weeks later, after 18 hour flights, an interesting tea (have you heard of Rooibus?) and a technology friend who flew in from San Francisco to help with our due-diligence. The product is quite exciting, and in the coming weeks, I should have more to tell you. Thanksgiving was spent with my brother and his family, who had recently moved from South Florida to Gainesville. He has a beautiful house and my sister-in-law's family all came up from South Florida to experience the first Thanksgiving in their home. At about 5pm, I jumped into my rental car (a convertible Mustang, I must admit) and drove all the way to South Florida and to my mother's Thanksgiving event in four hours and twenty minutes (average transit time usually five and a half hours). Driving up and down the State of Florida can be a joy, especially in the sky with the setting sun. The end of the year is upon me now - classes are done (I won't be teaching next semester, no classes needing a substitute professor), my projects are nearly complete, and in the coming days I will be putting the finishing touches on the last of them before the start of the New Year. Looking after the New Year So, what happens next? Well, been doing a lot of great work in consulting and "social media" work, but I am looking for something I can sink my teeth in. I will keep you up to date on my personal blog, TheSocialEngineer.com and I still post on Political Gastronomica from time to time. As I did last year, and the years before, my very best wishes to you and yours - and I hope that the New Year brings nothing but joy and happiness to you. Please, keep in touch. Tell me how you are doing - just reply to this email. With joy for this upcoming New Year, +1 (650) 533 5893 (CA cell) +1 (954) 323 4450 (FL business number) +1 (212) 353 4022 (Cooper Union office)    www.whoissanford.com (Personal Website) P.S. And yes, I have shaved. Time to go clean-shaven for a while.
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