Derek E. Silva

I’m looking for your submissions on this one. If you could change just one thing about London, Strathroy, Kilworth, etc. (wherever you live in Middlesex County), what would it be?

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?

The first ever Ignite London took place on Wednesday night over at Gigs Grillhouse (great food and service!). It was a very interesting evening, to say the least. I got to meet more people, re-connect with some folks from high school that unexpectedly showed up (not on my behalf), and had my chance to stand up in front of the 100+ crowd to deliver my Ignite Talk about MuniFibre. (more…)

I’ll be doing an Ignite Talk at Ignite London tonight. It’s happening a Gigs’ Grillhouse – doors open at 6:30pm, things really start up at 8:00pm.

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

Disclaimer: I was “born” and raised Catholic. Baptized at about 1 month of age, have been through four of the seven holy sacraments, “lost the faith” at around 15 years of age and never looked back. Best decision I ever made.

I know this story is several months old now, but it isn’t too late to talk about it. St. Joseph’s Hospital and London Health Sciences Centre embarked on restructuring the hospital system here a long time ago and both hospitals say they are very well “integrated” now. Cliff Nordal, the current CEO of both hospitals, had a significant role in this restructuring. (more…)

Please forgive the slightly crude blog title, but there really isn’t a better way to ask that question when I’m feeling the way I am.

Photo by plousia

London implemented a pilot project last summer that supposedly cost $140,000. The project? Letting people park overnight on city streets. The $140K cost comes from the apparent revenue loss of parking tickets that are normally issued to the poor saps caught leaving their vehicles on the road in the middle of summer.

A lot of people loved being able to leave their cars on the street. House parties, people too drunk to drive home or hail/call a cab (admit it, you’ve been there!), or a simple lack of parking in your driveway or on the lawn. The reasons you may need to leave your car on the street are numerous. (more…)

Not good enough anymore

While researching innovative approaches to educating our children, I came across a pilot project that was run this past summer at a single school in New York City. It’s been dubbed “School of One,” and the approach is very similar to the types of things I mentioned as possibilities in “The Textbook of the Future?” To quote this New York Times article:

The program [...] consists mainly of students working individually or in small groups on laptop computers to complete math lessons in the form of quizzes, games and worksheets. Each student must take a quiz at the end of each day; the results are fed into a computer program to determine whether they will move on to a new topic the next day. (more…)

Dear LHSC Board of Directors and Diane Beattie,

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?). (more…)

I was recently on vacation in the Azores (archipelago of 9 islands about 1,500km from the coast of Portugal, in the Atlantic Ocean) and late one night I got the spur to begin writing my next blog entry. Though it’s taken me this long to finally sit down and begin fleshing it out, at least I’ve finally gotten to it.

After being exposed to nothing but European news for almost 2 weeks, I began thinking about ways that Canada could improve it’s government in (probably) 12 months or less. Some of these require lengthy explanations, others don’t because others have done the explaining family. So let’s get right into it! (more…)

Seeing as we have entered construction season here in Canada (a.k.a. spring and summer), I thought it prudent to collect some things that other cities have been doing that I think we ought to be implementing here in London (in some cases especially since we’re known as the Forest City) and other Canadian cities ought to be at least contemplating.

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? (more…)

A few years ago I became a supporter of the NDP. I listened to Jack Layton and his vision for Canada and was inspired. Not to mention that I couldn’t stand Paul Martin and the Liberals seemed to be agreeing more and more with the Conservatives on issues that I did not.

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. (more…)