Please reply in the comments, and I would really appreciate it if you would throw in whereabouts you do live. I’ll get it started.

If I could change one thing right now, it would be that Middlesex County/London owned and operated its own fibre-optic network and Internet service provider (ISP) with no bandwidth caps or throttling policies. It would be called MLfibre or FibreLDN and you could get a 100Mbps down (maybe 5Mbps up for residential and 50Mbps up for businesses) for under $100/month.

So… what would you change?

I really enjoyed hearing Sean Galloway, a city planner, talk about ‘The Future of London.’ It was very interesting and exciting, especially once some of my friends and I asked him how much of what he was talking about would eventually be implemented in London. I’m pretty sure the answer was “100%.” Nice! Here is Sean’s Ignite Talk:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some of the other presenters I really enjoyed were Nik Harron and Chris McInnis. Ignite London’s YouTube account has the first half of the night uploaded so far, the second half of the night is coming soon.

Lastly, I’m embedding my Ignite Talk and then my slides right after them in case you missed the night or wanted to see it over again. Next time I do an Ignite Talk, I’m really going to have to work on not going over 15 seconds per slide (or having less slides and throwing them back-to-back!).

Click here to view the embedded video.

And the slides:

If you’re coming, I hope to see you there and I really hope my talk on MuniFibre gets you thinking about the possibilities!

In fact, the defaults for Facebook’s privacy settings completely expose your profile not only to everyone on Facebook, but to the entire public including non-Facebook users. Meaning your current and potential employers, people you like and have pissed off, your parents – everyone – can see your Facebook profile. For a visual representation of Facebook’s expanding public defaults, click here.

Those pictures of you drinking and smoking weed on the weekend? Those pictures of you in your slutty Halloween costume? The status updates about how you’re looking for a new job? All public, all the time unless you change your privacy settings.

Not only that, but Facebook’s new, and much maligned, “Open Graph” program, which is basically a 20x worse version of the failed Beacon, will invade your privacy in ways you never thought possible. Here I’m going to help you put an end (somewhat) to Facebook’s over-the-top campaign to make all of your data public and available to advertisers. The addition of “Connections,” which I opted out of, is also generating some harsh feedback from users.

1) Open up your privacy settings control panel by clicking Account > Privacy Settings. That will bring you to this screen:

2) Click Profile Information and be sure that everything is set to “Only friends”

3) Click Back to Privacy and then click Contact Information. Adjust accordingly according to your wishes.

4) Click Back to Privacy and then click Applications and Websites. This is one of the most critical sections of the site for protecting your privacy and data from websites/companies that you don’t want to allow access to! First, click the Edit Settings button beside What your friends can share about you. The default settings allow your friends to unknowingly share everything about you – fix this!

5) Click Save Changes at the bottom, then click Applications and websites at the top to go back to the previous page. Edit the setting for Activity on applications and games dashboards to your desired setting (mine is Only friends), and then click Edit setting beside Instant Personalization. Unclick “Allow,” then hit “Confirm” on the box that comes up.

6) Click Applications and websites at the top again, then click Back to privacy to bring you back to the main control panel. Now click Search. This is another really important tool because the default settings let people find your Facebook profile using search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Change your settings to what you’re comfortable with for Facebook search results and uncheck the box beside Public search results.

7) Click Back to privacy, and you’re done! Not that it was easy by any means.

Facebook suffers from a very poor user experience when it comes to managing your privacy, and my opinion is that it’s on purpose. They make money by giving advertisers access to your data they deem public; a ridiculous list that includes your interests (books, movies, music, etc.), list of your friends, etc. How Facebook can deem that type of information public is beyond me, but that’s their policy.

There are actually two other things you can do.

1. Don’t “Like” news stories and blog posts using Facebook’s “Like” button with the thumbs-up on it.
2. If you normally click the “Keep me logged in” checkbox on the login screen so that you don’t have to login every time you head to the site, discontinue this. Facebook can’t automatically share your information with other sites if you’re not logged into Facebook when you’re visiting Open Graph partners.

If you’re curious to see what information Facebook makes public about you before you get started, try using this tool.

Alternatively you could simply delete your account – which quite a few people have done including some engineers at Google – and use other social networking and sharing sites more heavily.

Your data is yours. Start treating it that way! As they say in the financial services world, CYA… cover your ass.

Publish your offers on your websites. That way the public is informed, the media has access to it and the “other side” can’t distort your numbers because everyone can fact-check.

Unfortunately, ATU Local 741 President Pat Hunniford has already replied to my idea basically saying that it’s not going to happen. Here is the full text:

Good afternoon ATU Local 741,

I am submitting this message via your website in the hopes that it reaches union President Pat Hunniford.

I have a great idea: hopefully you are willing to listen.

If you’re afraid that the LTC will distort the numbers in Local 741′s latest proposal, then make the proposals available for the public to view online. That would take about 5 minutes to either put it up as text on the union’s website or to put it into PDF format for download.

That’s it, that’s all it would take! Then the general public has the ability to fact-check the other side and EVERYONE wins.

I’m not interested in what the offer is because I’m not the mediator. But this would go a long way toward building goodwill amongst the citizens of London despite the strike. At the very least it would look like something’s getting done.

President Pat Hunniford replied:

It is the Union’s position not to negiotiate in the media or to publish offers or the company position on any web site. The company and city hall has taken that action and has caused more problems that it has solved.

I also e-mailed LTC General Manager Larry Ducharme the following text:

Good afternoon Mr. Ducharme,

My name is Derek Silva. I live in the London area and work in the city of London. I’m contacting you in the hopes of helping to move the strike forward as far as negotiations go.

Mr. Hunniford recently stated in the London Free Press that he doesn’t trust the LTC not to take their numbers and twist them somehow. I’m not siding with either the LTC or the union, but I believe I have a solution to this alleged problem and have already sent a message to the union regarding this idea.

I propose that the ATU Local 741 and the LTC make their proposals and counter-proposals available on their respective websites, either in plain text or PDF format. This would allow the general public and the media to act as fact-checkers and quelling the war of words currently going on in the press. It would take just a few minutes to make this happen assuming that the latest proposals were probably written in word processing software (WordPerfect, Word, OpenOffice, etc.) and saved to a hard drive somewhere in the organization.

I hope you take this idea into consideration going forward. This would allow the LTC to receive proposals in writing and also to counter-propose in writing.

If I receive a response from Larry, I’ll post it here.

Lately it has been clear that the requirement and use of unions in the developed world is no longer necessary. Indeed, unions seem to be doing far more harm than good these days. First it was the catastrophic downfall of the North American auto manufacturers (not the only cause, but a big one no doubt). Three months ago, here in Ontario, the union representing driving examiners at the DriveTest centres, which are run by a private company called Serco (clearly outsourcing it was a big mistake) went on strike and there’s no end in sight to that one.

The DriveTest strike has so far caused people to lose their licenses due to non-renewal, delayed young drivers from getting their G1 learning permits and also caused people testing for new licenses (A-Z, A-D, etc.) to lose the opportunity for employment. What good is that doing for the province and our economy?

But that’s the reason for me writing this. Lately, every strike in the developed world (I refer mostly to much of Europe and North America) is about money. Many well-paid, hardly skilled workers wanting more money for work that almost anyone can do with little training. Automotive factory unions, retail unions and the like no longer do the economy, the companies they are employed by, or the employees they represent any good.

If you think I’ve gone off the deep end on this one, think again. I previously worked at a non-unionized automotive parts plant making good money with plenty of opportunity for career advancement. I started out machining parts (adding bolts, clamps, etc.) and then moved to the manufacturing portion because I made it known that I would like to (yeah, that’s really all it took!). They needed help, they had a willing participant… I got the call.

If an employer really cares, they listen to their employees. That’s one of the good things unions have brought us – better rules, a more level playing field. But much of that progress has ended, and now all they want is more money.

Case in point: The LTC strike. From what I can tell, bus drivers are currently paid over $24/hour to DRIVE A BUS. This requires little special skill minus a driver’s ed course and passing the driving exam. But that’s what they get paid, and they want more. Somehow the union has got it into its members’ heads that they’re worth… get this… $30 an hour. That’s what they want! And, unfortunately, precedents have already been set in other cities (Hamilton is often cited though the Hamilton area is almost twice as big as London). They want to be paid over $200 a day to drive a bus around the city. Where do I sign up?!

And this problem certainly isn’t isolated to London, Ontario or Canada. A Boeing plant in Seattle lost a contract to another division in South Carolina because Boeing saw the Machinists Union in Seattle as a big strike threat. Why? Because the Seattle Machinists Union has gone on strike over 3 of the last 5 contract offers from Boeing. Meanwhile the South Carolina plant voted to decertify the Machinists Union there in September.

If I was a Boeing shareholder, I’d be applauding the decision.

And in the other London (England), a union that runs the bus service on the east end of the city started a 48-hour strike on Friday. Why? Stereotypically, they want better wages and benefits. Those drivers are currently paid between $49,000 and $62,000 a year (I converted to Canadian dollars for a better comparison). I know the cost of living in England is higher than it is here, but that’s got to be decent money still. If I’m wrong, please let me know.

The rumours I heard when Toyota was looking for a location for their new plant, before they settled on Woodstock, was that they were screening people for their attitudes towards unions somehow. If this is true, I’m sure they went about it in a way that didn’t violate any laws (or at least they tried to). But still… clearly there’s an aversion to unions by business owners. Why? Because it becomes clearer and clearer every time that unions no longer help to progress fairness in the workplace – they want money, and as much of it as they can get; business viability be damned!

The solution? I think the solution is to elect good political representatives (and stop voting for a particular party but for the best candidate) and make your voices heard. I think the solution is to walk with your feet – if your boss won’t listen, go to HR. If HR won’t listen, talk to a lawyer. If your lawyer tells you you don’t have a case, then either what you think is an injustice either isn’t or there isn’t a law against it yet. Either way, you should probably re-examine the so-called “problem” you have with your employer.

Not to mention, it’s easier than ever to start your own business. So if you hate your boss that much, be your own. There are a lot of ways to start a business, either with your own money or someone else’s.

My solution to the LTC strike is one that has been echoed on Twitter: Shutdown the London Transit Commission. Start up London Transit Services instead (or London Street & Rail, or the We’ll Get You There Commission – who cares?), post up jobs for as many full-time drivers as it takes to staff the service and start them off at $17 or $18 an hour with raises according to performance or the consumer price index (CPI, a.k.a. the cost of living). I bet you this new London Transit will get thousands of qualified applicants clamouring for jobs. Screen the hell out of them, make sure to hire some people who haven’t worked for the old LTC and let’s get going.

I know what at least some of you are thinking – what about the people who still want a union? No problem – if they don’t like raises indexed to the CPI, let’s give them a performance based system. Let’s make sure comment cards along with golf pencils are available, as well as a feedback page on the website, knowing full well that people who complain will be more vocal than people who really enjoy the service.

Promote the heck out of the fact that drivers will be based on their courteousness, how often the bus is on time (taking factors outside of their control into account like construction and accidents), and how often they don’t stop for people that are running for the bus (I’ve been a victim of this and have seen it happen too many times – meanwhile the same bus driver has time to stop the bus, get off and grab a coffee at Tim Horton’s). Make it EASY for people to give this feedback, one way or another, and put together a scorecard. Done.

There are thousands of people who can’t get to work, school, the grocery store, the pharmacy, etc. thanks to this ridiculous strike. It’s clear the drivers are only looking out for themselves – let’s treat them to be a little more altruistic by incorporating a good customer service attitude into their performance evaluations.

And I know I’m not alone.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I want my $451,000 back. That’s right, every single penny of severance that was recently afforded to Diane Beattie after the LHSC Board of Directors forced her to resign.

When a scandal like this one breaks out, there is no reason whatsoever that such gross misconduct should result in such a comfortable severance. $451,000 is almost two years worth of Ms. Beattie’s annual pay ($250,000 – not bad, huh?).

This entire issue has been handled very poorly. The audit outing the $3.3 million untendered contract was produced 2 years ago, yet the public wasn’t made aware of it. Her friend Kelly Butt telling the London Free Press that what she did was right in the business world. That’s a load of bull seeing as the LHSC doesn’t belong to the normal business world – it’s a world where taxpayers foot the bill in an era where we very rarely see tax decreases even when promised… and those decreases usually lead to increases somewhere else.

Not to mention that if a CIO were caught mishandling $3.3 million at any other company when it can be proven someone else could do the work for cheaper, you can bet your ass they would be fired with no severance whatsoever. It’s gross misconduct and breaks every due diligence rule in the book. Why the LHSC Board of Directors didn’t just throw her out on her butt is beyond me.

I really like the way the Autopro at Wharncliffe & Riverside put it:

“Break Company Rules
Get $451000
Where Do I Sign Up?”

Indeed! Maybe it’s time we replaced the entire LHSC Board of Directors and C-level executives? If they’d like to keep their positions, I urge the Board to begin including all tenders, bidders (along with proposals) and winners into the annual report. It’s my hard earned money they’re spending and I have a right to know where it’s going and how it got there.

Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government really, really needs to clean up it’s act. This week was the first time I agreed with something Andrea Horwath and that, to me, is not a good thing. Lastly, CEO Cliff Nordal, stop looking for the source of the leak. They did the right thing and exposed something very, very serious. You’re only making yourself look like a jerk and that’s the last thing you need. If I were on the Board of Directors, I’d be asking for your head on a silver platter.

Let’s start with a great example from Vancouver: The roof of the Vancouver Convention Centre has been turned into a green roof. What does that mean?

Well take a look at this article from Fast Company and then take a look at the Vancouver Convention Centre’s website – it’s quite the marvel to behold.  Not only are they decreasing their cooling costs by doing so, but look at some of these statistics from the Fast Company article:

The Vancouver building also has black water treatment systems and desalination machinery to water the plants, a heat pump that uses seawater, and cooling via radiant floor. The bottom line is a water-use reduction of 60% to 70% over similarly sized convention centers.

I know darn well the Thames River is filled with fresh water, and not saltwater, but surely taking some of these ideas (plus others in the same vein) and incorporating them into city-owned buildings here in London would benefit us and our environment in the long-term! In fact if we end up reducing the bill, maybe we can get a cut on our taxes?

The six-acre “living roof” atop the convention centre also recovers rainwater for irrigation thanks to the over 400,000 plants it houses, and the West Building expansion was built to LEED standards. And living/green roofs have been around in Europe for over 30 years – why are we often so slow to adapt things like this in North America?

Next up – solar power trash compactors. Boston began installing these almost 3 years ago and the press I read on the issue was largely positive.  Basically it’s a trash bin with a solar panel on top and a sensor activates the compacting functionality whenever necessary. They hold over 567 litres of trash and clearly need to be emptied less often. I’m certain the city of London (and all others) could still sell advertising on the sides as they do now.

Just a few of the BigBelly trash compactors would probably handle all of the needs the city of London’s public trash bins handle now, but I’m looking at the reduced manpower needed to empty them out. Another potential big money saver in the long run especially in places like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary. Plus the added capacity would certainly help eliminate the spillover that I so often see downtown in London and in Toronto – and that’d just plain disgusting.

It seems there are design issues that need to be addressed, according to some of the behaviours that Boston residents took to as opposed to opening the compactor’s door and depositing their no-longer-wanted/needed items, but I’m sure the manufacturer would be willing to hear some ideas in return for business.

Third – Find someone who can deliver smart grid technology. What’s smart grid technology? Click here to read up a bit on it. Basically what I would really like to see happen is smart meters on every house in London that can eliminate the need for manual reading (either by London Hydro or the homeowner). AT&T and SmartSynch are already delivering the functionality to a utility in Texas – why can’t we do it here?

The smart meters in that EcoGeek story enable a utility to remotely connect and disconnect the power when people move out/in of houses, immediately alert the utility of power outages and therefore allow London Hydro to deliver their services in a smarter way. Rogers, Bell and Telus all have robust enough networks to facilitate this or we could even build our own WiMAX network here – so why not?

Fourth – Free bus fares! I won’t go too much into this because Tyee Magazine has already done a 5-part series on the benefits and how to pay for it. It’s terrific – check it out.

Fifth – Open our data. Vancouver did it recently and I’m confident they can expect bountiful tools and revelations to come out of it. There’s something very freeing, both to the city and to its citizens, when data about the city is open to all.

And lastly I want to end off with some related articles. Fast Company announced their top 13 cities of 2009 – only 1 Canadian city made it on. Guess who? That’s right, it’s Vancouver. Is it any wonder why?

I really like this video about New Urbanism and urban planning. Please watch it.

And finally there’s on article by ComputerWorld on using technology to build “City 2.0” which basically takes in all of the initiatives I mentioned earlier into account and then some and how this will shape our cities going forward and why how technology can make our lives better.

Please comment – I’d love to hear your thoughts even if they contradict mine!

Recently it has become apparent that indeed, I am a centrist. I don’t tolerate overly polarizing views or people very well (though I do hear them out on the issue and give them their opportunity to explain their rationale) and would much prefer to see people get to the bottom of an issue, brainstorm all of the possible solutions and then pick the best. Sadly that doesn’t happen very often in this “democracy” of ours where few-to-no MPs actually listen to their constituents after gaining power.

The Liberals, however, seem to be mounting a new steed and marching forward under the leadership of an intellectual. Someone who is truly smart, creative even (he has written several fiction novels which, so I read, are actually good). And so I have begun breaking my ties with the NDP both in private and in public in favour of re-joining the Liberal party in the hopes that I may help push them in what I would consider to be the “right” direction.

So yesterday when I e-mailed the riding president for Sarnia-Lambton asking him to take me off his mailing list because of a newly realized difference of opinion, he replied stating that he was “sorry that you feel that way about the NDP’s support of Unions and Pensions. I guess there is only one Party that you would find favour with at the present time.”

Indeed, I’m sorry too.  I’m sorry that the NDP is such a staunch supporter of unions no matter if they misbehave and care little for the financial state of their employers and that the NDP is a staunch supporter of defined-benefit pension plans (as opposed to defined-contribution) that place such huge liabilities on the employer and the employee thinks poses no risk to them (which Stelco employees can tell you certainly isn’t the case in the long run). The NDP candidate also seems to infer that I support the Conservatives – hardly! They’re a polarizing party that cares about nothing more than winning and retaining power, not truly what’s right for the country. They follow a methodology of certain values which is dangerous to any country or economy.

This is the e-mail I sent back to the NDP candidate in question, slightly refined for the purposes of flow with this entry.

There’s nothing wrong with supporting pensions and unions. My problem is that lately unions tend to misbehave and act only in their own interest without regard to the business they work for – that’s a problem. Staging protests outside an arena and slowing down traffic is an absolute nuisance and unnecessary; especially when a good portion of the people arriving at the arena don’t even live in Windsor.

And the CAW seems to be delighted in single-handedly destroyed the auto industry in Canada recently! I used to work for a non-unionized auto plant and could not have been happier. Individuals were rewarded with increased pay and promotions, laggards were punished – exactly the way it should be. The CAW cares about nothing more than increasing the pay and benefits of it’s employees without giving a damn about what shape Ford, GM and Chrysler are in. That’s not a sustainable model! The plant I used to work for just made some changes to it’s pay structure and positions in order to remain viable and more realistic when you compare workloads of different positions – to me that makes sense, and in the end it rewards the people who work the hardest there.

The CAW and CUPE are doing nothing but alienating what little non-union support they have, even within Windsor. They do their best to maintain the status quo without innovating or taking into consideration that the companies they work for are doing so poorly. Why would Chrysler stay in Canada when someone like Ken Lewenza explicity blurts out that there’s no way they’ll concede $19 worth of compensation? It’s ridiculous.

If the banks can’t maintain defined-benefit plans and the CPP has to be extremely aggressive in their investments in order to do so, why must the auto companies be kept to theirs? Because heaven forbid the auto companies download a little bit of responsibility onto the workers and the financial advisors working the account, right? A defined-contribution plan puts the responsibility back into the worker’s hands, along with their financial advisor, giving them the ability to choose the right investments for them. Doesn’t that make more sense? Shouldn’t that be the way we always operate?

Government has its place, and looking back at history and moving forward, I think a very centrist approach is the only way to go. Find the best ideas, leave the partisanship out, and you end up with a better country in all manners. The Conservatives are a bunch of morons and a few candidates have recently jumped ship from the Green Party to the Liberals. Jack Layton is a great man, but in the end I can’t support unequivocal support for unions or the defined-benefit plans they adore so much. It’s unsustainable when they act the way that the CAW and CUPE have recently.

This goes hand-in-hand with my post on self-responsibility. You should be able to rely on government to provide health care, police protection and municipal services along with a small portion of your retirement income (but only because you pay into the CPP, and the money is invested by the CPPIB). People need to take more responsbility for their lives at home, at work and at play. You can’t always rely on government to protect you, let alone your employer. Ford, GM and Chrysler are in business to make money, not to make sure you have a nice retirement fund or that you have the best benefits possible. Those are perks and niceties, not necessities. In fact they cost so much they take away from the money you could be making hourly instead but it’s less expensive for a business to provide benefits instead of wage increases.

If you don’t like what your employer is doing, find a new job.

9:30PM UPDATE: And here again we see a great example of what I’m talking about. Local manufacturing firm Accuride wants to change their defined-benefit pension plan to a defined-contribution benefit plan for new employees. Reduce liability on the employee, put it back where it belongs on the employee and their financial advisor! Unfortunately the London Free Press article mistakenly states that the investments rely purely on how the stock market performs, which isn’t true at all. Most investment portfolios include some fixed-income investments, which are not traded on the stock market. This type of misinformation doesn’t help anyone but the union employees in their fight for better wages and benefits than the rest of us.