Live At IBM Pulse 2013: NFL Quarterback Peyton Manning On “Getting Back To Zero”

NFL quarterback Peyton Manning explains to the IBM Pulse 2013 audience in Las Vegas the importance of effective decision making, in football and in life.

Peyton Manning has earned his way into NFL history, playing for the Indianapolis Colts for 14 seasons before making his way west to the Denver Broncos, where he had to learn a completely new playbook and offense.

The backstory: After undergoing extensive neck surgery in May 2011, he was forced to miss the entire 2011 season with the Colts and was released in March 2012, at which point he visited with and worked out with several NFL teams during a two-week period before settling on the Broncos.

Along the way, Manning developed his own personal playbook for cultivating leadership and effective decision making, the points of which he shared in the IBM Pulse 2013 day three general session.

The four-time MVP quarterback hit the stage running, explaining he’d just returned from a USO tour overseas where he’d been visiting the troops. He began by explaining that he “hope what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, because I don’t need the Ravens and Patriots to hear some of what I’m telling you today.”

Manning then segued into his key theme, the art and science of decision making and “how quality decision making leads to resilience.”

Manning explained to the gathered Pulse audience that “people make decisions every day,” but that there are those who “make good decisions habitually,” and acknowledging that “it’s easier to practice a skill when the heat is off and when there’s nothing important on the line.”

But unlike most people, Manning explained, “my decision making is instantly judged by 80,000 fans in the stadium and millions on Twitter” — and that he wouldn’t have it any other way.

In fact, Manning explained, “I savor being on the front line,” and that “you can’t wait for someone else to make or execute the plan — you have to be willing to take the risk, even when you have doubts.”

“If not you,” Manning queried, “ then who?”

The key, he went on to explain, is that you make key decisions without hestitation and no stutters, because “when you demonstrate 100% confidence, your team will follow.”

Manning acknowledged that he’s become known for “making audibles,” calling plays ad hoc once his team is lined up in reaction to “something I’ve noticed on the field.”

Manning claimed that his teammates have to trust those instant, snap decisions, and “that if they hear it in my voice that I believe in my decision, that they’ll believe in it, too.  They’ll run better and they’ll block better.”

But to get to that level of confidence, Manning explained, it requires an enormous amount of preparation.  Days of practice, of watching and analyzing game and practice film on his iPad, talking with his teammates.

“Usually there is no one right answer,” Manning conveyed, “but you can’t build decisions on hope. You need a strong and more stable foundation, and thorough preparation is absolutely essential.”

Every week, Manning said, “I gather every piece of relevant information about my opponent, and I study every tendency a defense has. I know exactly what coverage to expect and how to counter it.”

But once on the field, he simply “blots out both the spotlight and the noise and then just decides. It doesn’t matter what the situation is. I can eliminate options before the ball is even snapped.  That allows me to take more calculated risks more confidently.”

Because at the end of the day…or perhaps more appropriately, at the end of the fourth quarter, “If you’re the boss or the quarterback, that’s what you’re paid to do.”

And even with all that preparation, Manning acknowledged, “it’s important to recognize that you can thoroughly prepare and still be hit by a thunderbolt.”

“Some decisions in life,” Manning explained “just aren’t yours to make.”

Manning explained his own decision making philosophy as “getting back to zero.”

“We have seconds to pick ourselves up off the field after we’ve been hit and immediately focus on what’s ahead. You can’t dwell on what just happened, because if you do, your head just won’t be in the game.”

Manning then channeled that great American writer, Ernest Hemingway: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.”

After his injuries in 2011, Manning related that “I’ve learned to savior what resilience can do for people.” His first pass after his rehabilitation “went literally about ten feet,” and he explained “it’s hard for most people to understand the magnitude of changes and the elasticity needed” after such an ordeal.

He had to take his rehab slowly, that the healing had to “happen at its own pace. And no matter how painful it was, I had to accept that.”

Once he arrived in Denver, he explained, he also had “to get my team to trust that I could lead the Broncos. I was now one of them and I was going to put the work into making us a winner.”

Despite taking a brutal hit during a preseason game that year, he bounced up for more. “Resilience was the reward for more meticulous preparation and strategic decision making.”

Live From IBM Pulse 2013: Dr. Danny Sabbah — The Internet Is The Computer

Dr. Danny Sabbah, CTO and general manager for IBM Next Generation Architecture, extols on the promise and virtues of the nexus between “systems of engagement” and “systems of record” at the opening general session of IBM Pulse 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada, earlier today.

Welcome to the world of the hybrid cloud and legacy application environment, a merger of the front office and the back, the nexus of the burgeoning mobile and social milieu (the “systems of engagement”) with the systems of record.

This was the key message delivered in the opening general session of IBM Pulse 2013 here at the almost packed MGM Grand Garden arena here in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The opening itself was another kind of hybrid, one that featured a number of skilled percussionists drumming in the key messages of the challenges and opportunities facing IT organizations around the globe.

Speed is a constant.  Change is a constant.  Declining budgets are a constant.  What’s the variable?

The opportunity to create new kinds of value for the organization by better fusing business assets, facilities, infrastructure, and data into a seamless and holistic view of the entire operation, one whereby you help your organization better gain increased visibility, control, and automation.

In short, to move from being a cost center to a center of strategic business innovation, and to turn opportunities into outcomes.

Are you prepared to take on this new challenge?

IBM Tivoli marketing guru Scott Hebner entered the stage to set the stage for IBM Pulse 2013, explaining there were 8,000+ attendees from over 80 countries around the globe, and that the depth and breadth and diversity of experience in this room (and we’re talking about a pretty big room…like, as in, Carrie Underwood will be playing this room for Pulse this evening) was unprecedented.

Scott started his opening by asking a few key questions of the gathered infrastructure management faithful: Where does an infrastructure begin and where does it end?  How do we make it become more interconnected and instrumented so we can garner more value from existing assets?

Scott explained that we’re all sitting on a staggering amount of operational data, both animate and inanimate — and not just in the traditional data center, either.  In your tractors.  Your warehouses.  Your office buildings.

And this “operational big data” residing in all those assets is an enormous opportunity, one that allows us to better understand the “exact condition of everything in real-time.” Which means also extracting new value from those assets and, hence, being able to then provide better services to our organizations and users.

But the climbing of this new mountain of data has its challenges.  For one, skills.  IDC expects 7 million new cloud computing positions to come online, 6X that over the rest of IT employment.  That means new skills, new training, new…students.

Which is one of the primary reasons we’re all gathered here in Lost Wages, to come together and learn from the experts and one another, to improve the economics of IT, and to uncover those growth opportunities.

Scott introduced a customer who flew all the way here from down under, in Melbourne, Australia, to share their experience in this new frontier of computing.

Neal Roberts, the CIO of Yarra Trams, is part of a team that oversees the largest tram network in the world, one with 250 kilometers of track and nearly 500 tram cars that travel some 185 million track miles per year!

First, Yarra’s values, which help drive both the team and the trams: Think like a passenger, do Zero harm, and provide Continuous Improvement.

The first two are pretty self-evident, but the third, continuous improvement, takes some concerted and coordinated effort and a lot of hard work.

That coordination increasingly takes place between the line of business and IT organizations.  And Mr. Roberts explained that “We’re all facing the same challenges. Trying to manage the velocity of change, and to become centers of innovation while reinventing the customer relationship.”

For Yarra, that meant driving a symbiosis of asset management and location information, the so-called systems of record, with the real-time notification opportunities of social media data.

It goes a little something like this: The rains come, puts a tram out of service when it gets flooded, the operations center is notified, the operations center schedules a dispatch to fix the train, the schedule is altered, data is streamed to the public cloud (including a mobile app for tram users) to notify them automagically the train schedule has been disrupted/altered, the tram eventually gets fixed, all goes back to normal.

Yarra Tram of Melbourne, Australia, uses IBM Maximo asset management technology to bridge to “systems of engagement” and inform Melbourne citizens when trams are out of service so they can make other arrangement.s

No problem, the trams are back to running on time.

Dr. Danny Sabbah, CTO and general manager of IBM Next Generation Platforms, picked it up from there.

Dr. Sabbah observed that we are truly at an inflection point, and that since last year, the key themes which emerged around securing the cloud, mobile, and embedded solutions, have only become more important, and that we’re now seeing this increased integration of public cloud data and the existing services.

That is again the important nexus to focus on, because it is from that nexus that we’ll see increasing value unlocked by organizations around the globe, and it’s a new stage in the evolution of technology and the importance of data.

Dr. Sabbah included a key example: Mobile devices are anticipated to account for 40% of access to all kinds of business applications in the next few years.

And as a result of this, big data is joining mobile and cloud as the next must have competency.

“Devices are becoming more intelligent and communicating even more data,” Sabbah continued, and we’re getting “smart buildings, smart grids, and smarter healthcare. None of these are operating in isolated silos.”

“The convergence of these technologies,” he explained, “is driving the Internet of things.”

And yet intelligent interconnection and instrumentation is making it increasingly hard to balance efficiency and innovation. Sabbah explained, “The drive for innovation drives a commensurate need for technology optimization” and that optimization is what helps free up finite IT resources for focusing on innovation.

That is also another reason IBM has put so much muscle behind its PureSystems line of technology, with the express intention of freeing up people, time, and money from mundane operational tasks of server administration, data routines, etc., so they can work on value added projects!

The new cloud and mobile-based “systems of engagement” spoken of earlier, along with the systems of record from the past 40 years of computing, aren’t going away, and in fact, the opportunity for these systems to interact and interoperate extracts new value.  But that requires flexibility (read: openness) in their infrastructure design, because different workloads are coming together — some require new levels of optimization, others new levels of maintenance, and some towards speed of delivery.

But, ultimately, flexible architectures allow us to mash up new services, so that those organizations who build flexibility into their infrastructure DNA are those “most poised to win.”

Getting there will require rapid iteration and the continued “reduction of confused and conflicting infrastructure and software.”

“It’s not the network that’s the computer,” Sabbah wound down.  “It’s the Internet that’s the computer.”

Taking The Pulse On Mobile

IBM Pulse 2013 is introducing a new social networking feature called “Pulse on Vivastream,” where you can connect and interact with other attendees and speakers to find people with similar interests and skills, share agendas, discuss hot and trending topics, and network with your peers. So, sign up now so you can make the most of IBM Pulse 2013 — before, during, and after the event.

First it was Ubuntu Linux on phones, and now it looks like it’s going to be Ubuntu Linux on Tablets.

TechCrunch posts that on Thursday, developers will be able to start “playing with” the new code, citing Ubuntu founder and VP Products Mark Shuttleworth saying that the strategy is “One Ubuntu” that contains the same codebase but works across multiple platforms, including desktops, phones, and tablets.

But, that each platform “uses a Linux kernel” that’s tailored for the specifics of the target hardware.

This in juxtaposition with iOS and Android, which don’t work as well beyond the handset form factor.

For the record, I currently run Ubuntu on several of my older machines, and save for some VPN woes, I’m a (mostly) happy Ubuntu user.

But what’s more interesting to me about this announcement is the timing. The global mobile confab, Mobile World Congress, is set to launch next week in Barcelona (one of my favorite cities on the planet!).

And speaking of mobile, just last week, IBM announced that Forrester Research, Inc. has recognized IBM as a leader in enterprise mobility services in its recent Forrester Wave report “Enterprise Mobility Services, Q1 2013.”

The report gave IBM the highest score possible on its current offering, writing that IBM “brings clients a world-class design agency (IBM Interactive) combined with breadth and depth of enterprise mobility consulting in terms of technology and global presence.”

I expect you’ll hear more about IBM’s mobile strategy in Barcelona, and shortly thereafter at the IBM Pulse event in Las Vegas, which I’ll be covering for Big Blue.

If you’re planning on attending IBM Pulse, I would highly recommend you start preparing your schedule now.  Already-registered attendees simply need go to the Pulse SmartSite to start checking out this year’s fare.

But wait, there’s more!

This year, IBM has introduced an exciting new social feature in the form of Pulse on Vivastream, a unique social networking platform where you can connect and interact with other attendees and speakers in advance of, during, and after the event to find people with similar interests and skills, share agendas, discuss hot and trending topics, and network with other attendees before you ever land in the land of what happens there stays there.

I’m already registered on “Pulse on Vivastream” myself, so feel free to drop by and introduce yourself.

This year, IBM Pulse guest speakers and performers include 4-time NFL MVP quarterback Peyton Manning and 6-time Grammy Award winner Carrie Underwood.

You’ll also have the opportunity to mix it up with 8,000+ of your peers and hear from IBM business partners and top industry analysts on the latest trends and hottest IT topics…including, yes, mobile.

You can go here to learn more about IBM Pulse 2013, which goes from March 3-6.

I’ll be bringing you more insights and coverage leading up to and during the event right here in the Turbo blog, and will once again be broadcasting via the Interwebs from the show floor, speaking with a variety of IBM executives, industry analysts, and other thought leaders that help make the IBM Tivoli world go round.

Live @ Pulse 2010: The Podcast Recap

Scott Laningham and I did an early morning podcast recap of IBM Pulse 2010, and then I promptly headed to the airport and back to snowy Austin.

In our recap, Scott and I discuss the key themes, announcements, and news coming out of IBM Pulse 2010…all in 8 minutes and 47 seconds!

Listen to the IBM Pulse 2010 Podcast Recap (MP3, 8:47)

Live @ Pulse 2010: Chesapeake’s Smarter City

At today’s IBM Pulse 2010 event here in Las Vegas, IBM and the City of Chesapeake, Virginia, announced how they’ve partnered to build a “smarter city,” one in which intelligent city-wide systems enhance public services, including public works, public utilities, public safety, and even its parks and recreation initiatives.

The use of IBM technology in this effort is enhancing services delivered to the public ranging from maintenance and operations of traffic signals and water systems to the management of the City’s Fire and Police Departments.

As a result of these efforts, the City of Chesapeake is consistently improving the quality of life for its citizens.

The Background

The City of Chesapeake is one of the larger cities in Virginia, covering some 353 square miles. It’s a diverse community, with suburban, urban, and rural areas, with with a business community that is equally diverse.

It includes more than 80 foreign-based companies from 19 different countries, and a city that has more miles of deep water canals, including the Intracoastal Waterway, than any other city in the U.S.

IBM software manages the maintenance of equipment and facilities for the Chesapeake Public Works Department, including the people and trucks using brine for snow removal at the City of Chesapeake Expressway Toll Plaza

The size and location of the city makes it a complex infrastructure to manage. These unique challenges can be addressed in part by using technology to collect and analyze data that can be used to improve how transportation, utility management, and public safety systems react to constantly changing conditions.

A Comprehensive Plan for a Smarter City

In accordance with its comprehensive plan, the City of Chesapeake is paving the way to a smarter future by currently investing more than $1.2M U.S. in capital improvement projects affecting community facilities, economic development, and other key departments.

“Technology is the power tool of today,” said Peter R. Wallace, CIO of the City of Chesapeake. “We’re using IBM Software to give staff the data and tools to continually improve processes, which is essential in this economy. The City of Chesapeake is less than 50 years old, but those founders inherited hundreds of years of infrastructure. Until now, we haven’t had a quick or convenient way to look at the City’s assets and make smart decisions. To succeed, we must be efficient in the way we work and transparent to our citizens. IBM is helping us accomplish those goals.”

IBM’s software is connecting city systems, and providing the various city departments with a transparent view of what’s going on at any given time. By analyzing the data and sharing the findings across departments, the city is able to detect and react to potential problems more quickly.

IBM: A Vision for Smarter Cities

A recent IBM Institute for Business Value report entitled “A Vision of Smarter Cities” asserts that the digitization of data within a city’s core systems will enable city managers to collect data on the efficiency of processes that could not be previously measured, like wastewater treatment. This, in turn, will lead to more informed decision-making and planning from city leaders.

Michael Fitchett, the City of Chesapeake Systems Development Coordinator and a former city firefighter, discussed at a press conference today hosted by Tivoli general manager Al Zollar his team’s efforts in building a smarter City of Chesapeake.

“When we went live in December 2008 with IBM Maximo asset management software, I never thought I’d be up here talking about a smarter city initiative. The system has allowed me and my team to see a lot of different facets and look across the entire environment of the city and to, in turn, provide our citizens with better services.

“My CIO looks at me everyday and says “ATA” — Accountability, Transparency, and Agility.  I have a mayor who walks into the room and asks what our motto is: ‘We’re open for business.'”

Fitchett explained that he had strong management support, and that every day he is looking for “efficiencies and effectiveness” and explained what he considers to be the essence of a smarter city:

“Making sure we’re getting needed data out to our field personnel so that they can make real-time decisions: Working on a broken water main, perhaps having a video feed down that pipe to see proximity locations and able to analyze and instantly make critical infrastructure decisions.”

“The City of Chesapeake serves as a great example of how cities can take advantage of technology to provide citizens and businesses with a better, smarter place to live,” said Bill Sawyer, vice president of operations, IBM Maximo software. “By using these IBM technologies to better manage critical systems like water management and public safety, the city is both improving the quality of life for its citizens today and building a more sustainable future.”

Live @ Pulse 2010: Security and the Smarter Planet

In today’s general session at IBM Pulse 2010, IBM Tivoli VP of marketing, Doug Brown, kicked off the morning by introducing Helene Armitage, GM of System Software, IBM Systems and Technology Group.

Armitage outlined the opportunity presented by integrated service management and its linkage to virtualization, workload optimization, the use of new delivery models, and the need to integrate.

Armitage explained that heterogeneous infrastructure-wide virtualization can deliver systems efficiency (say that three times quickly), as opposed to siloed management of individual platforms. By “managing through a single pane of glass,” organizations can consolidate resources and reduce their complexity, in turn improving their efficiency.

She also discussed the “self-provisioning” of services and resources, whereby companies could leverage the most cost effective provider of the necessary service.  She highlighted one example, SK telecom, a Korean mobile communications provider which had three large data centers with around 1,000 servers, and which deployed a cloud computing platform with IBM to enable quick development and testing of new services.

Another highlight of the keynote were several IBM customers (including a panel discussion), as well as IBM Chief Privacy Officer and VP, Security Counsel, Harriet Pearson’s thoughtful look at security and data privacy in the smarter planet realm.

Pearson explained that 71% of CIOs around the world are concerned about risk management and compliance, but that business needed to view risk management through a lends of opportunity, not liability.

Though admittedly there has been an explosion of regulatory activity in governments around the globe…and a 500X increase in Web links last year that could harm your company…despite these, and other challenges and threats, we can’t go on the way we have been: Bolting on security or risk management after we’ve installed new systems or introduced a new initiative.

We could try, but the planet is getting smarter, and so must we.

The state of security on the smarter planet is complex, no doubt.  As the planet gets more instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent, that presents new possibilities, complexities, and risks (critical infrastructure protection, privacy and identity, cloud security, etc.)

Where’s the data?  Who has access to it?  Who knows who, and who knows who is who??

No question, people like lower crime, less traffic, better health outcomes…all the things a smarter planet can potentially provide.  But people are also increasingly uncomfortable with “them” having all this information about us.

So, we must change how we approach security and privacy, and risk management in general, in our business and our policymaking.

Plan security and privacy from the start, not as an afterthought.  “Security by design,” which is about driving innovation while reducing risk.

Security by design is an enabler of innovative change, not simply a risk prevention measure.

Pearson closed by identifying a number of ways IBM is helping clients get smarter about security.

For example, by safely adopting new forms of technology like cloud computing and virtualization.  Enabling new business models like teleworking and outsourcing. Addressing emerging compliance constructs, while decreasing operations costs.

And, to the point of consumer concerns, addressing consumer expectations of privacy by assuring trusted brand status, while also assuring the integrity of quality and availability of information required for real-time decision making.

The state of security on our smarter planet is good, but with some investment and focus, and planning up front, it could be so much better, and in turn, provide businesses with new opportunities to be “in compliance” with both regulatory regimes as well as key business objectives.

Al Gore’s Smarter (and Funnier!) Planet — The Podcast Edition

Greetings.  Thx to Scott Laningham, I was able to turn my recent recap of the Al Gore keynote into a podcast.

You can click here to listen (MP3, 8:27) to the full dispatch, Turbo audio style!

Al Gore’s Smarter (and Funnier!) Planet

Never mind your political sentiments about Al Gore the politician, what you may not know about “the former next president of the United States,” as he jokingly refers to himself, is that the former U.S. vice president is very, very funny.

Really! Would I kid about something so serious as a former vice president?

In his keynote at this morning’s IBM Pulse 2010 opening session, Gore made me laugh so hard I wanted to cry…not only because of his very folksy yet hilarious delivery, but also due to the severity and great consequences of his important message.

Before you think I’m about to step up onto my soapbox, know that Gore was very cautious not to step up onto his in today’s keynote.

He knew that by coming to an IBM conference to speak to a very business-friendly audience, that he was potentially walking into enemy territory — despite the enormous sum I suspect we paid him to come and speak.

Gore walked into the room of 5,000+ at the MGM Grand Arena with eyes wide open, and with a sobering message that presented as much a cheerleading challenge to global business as an indictment of existing short-term inclined business practices or climate abuse.

Al Gore Speaks at IBM Pulse opening session in Las Vegas, February 22, 2010

The former vice president asserted that the climate crisis did not exist in a vacuum, and like any interconnected system, was joined at a nexus of two other key crises, one economic and involving our recent collective business philandering, the other one national security-related, with the ongoing U.S. role in continuing to buy cheap oil despite the long-term moral consequences.

“As long as we are so vulnerable to expensive energy resources in foreign countries that are not among the most stabile or friendly to us, there will be a national security threat associated with that,” Gore warned, the that being the notion of sending hundreds of billions of dollars every year to those unfriendly foreign countries, then backstopping those petro dollars with American military might.

He also noted that we’re putting 90M tons of CO2 every day into a thin sheath of atmosphere that you or I could drive to (if we could drive straight up) in a matter of minutes, and that the vast majority of the existing heat as a result was being reformulated into our oceans.

But let’s assume you’re just not hip to Gore’s whole climate warming message.

That’s cool (is it getting warmer in here?), but still and all you can’t deny the economic consequences of being dependent on that foreign energy: Every time we see a sudden increase in prices, we see an economic shockwave, investments suddenly dissipate, and we lose valuable time and have to start the cycle all over again with the next petroleum price increase.

So what’s a wandering, unemployed, itinerant, environmentalist ex-American vice president suggest that we do?

Gore alleges that all these things are connected by a common thread, and that if you pull the thread hard enough, you hold at least part of the answer in your hand: A shift to renewable sources of energy, natch; reduced carbon emissions, controversial though it is; but most importantly of all, a new reliance on efficiency.

Said Gore, “We are in the presence of one of the greatest opportunities in the history of business to become much more efficient and eliminate waste, pollution, and losses all at the same time.”

You’ll note that Gore said in the history of business, not in the history of the world.  Methinks that was most intentional.

Even if you don’t buy into the evidence of the climate crisis, efficiency is by all odds the most productive business strategy around, and to that point, Gore himself came out and said that IBM’s smarter planet campaign “just feels right to me.”

I could envision IBM marketing executives across the company salivating (or perhaps cursing?) the implied endorsement.

Nevertheless, with great opportunity comes great responsibility.

Gore explained that the “hinge of history is swinging,” that with all this talk about complexity and complex systems at the Pulse conference, the audience needs to understand that our entire global civilization was going through a very challenging reorganization, leaving business, governments, even individuals around the world trying to figure out where they land in the great reorganization of 2010.

Alas, there’s no org chart that can explain that one, but Gore did explain there are natural places to start, that, for example, we’re extremely wasteful in the way that we use energy in buildings and cities — here in the US about 40% of all the CO2 emissions comes from buildings, another set of legacy technologies we’ve used a little too long.

So how to address these challenges and not instead disappear into the Nevada desert crying out in hopeless hysterics?

Well, we can start by getting better and more relevant information (using technology and the like), and that when there are important factors that are systematically ignored, to use that “better” information to make our own choices.

That, in fact, we all have an opportunity to get all the information relevant to decisions we make everyday in this challenging environment, and to the “pulse” of the conference theme, to automate some of those decisions so that we can free up the RPMs to focus clearly on the Key Major Decisions and be able to better see how they relate to one another.

“If you analyze the human brain as the same terms for computers,” Gore explained, “we have a low bitrate and very high resolution. In making decisions about vast amounts of data, if you try to do it bit by bit, you’ll never succeed.

“But if you can portray the context of all that info, that is a good strategy, whether in healthcare, or city management, or whatever, it is really important to get a clear view of where it’s going.”

Gore went on to say that “using the right kind of information, software, hardware, is your most powerful set of tools in your toolset,” and that this time around, business is leading the way, and that governments have not stepped up to the plate on this (with a few exceptions).

Finally, Gore used more cornpone charm to explain his reaction to the outcome of last December’s climate negotiations in Copenhagen: “I feel fine.”

Explaining, it’s kind of like the old farmer who, upon hauling a big cow to market in the back up of the pickup truck has a bad traffic accident, only to have the highway patrolman come along and shoot the injured cow right between the eyes to put the poor thing out of his misery, whereupon the farmer responds to the question from the same said patrolman when asked how he (the farmer) feels, and as he looks over at the cow explains: “I feel fine.”

The role of business in providing essential leadership is more important than ever, Gore started to wind down, asking us to remember that this is one of those moments in history where “it’s difficult to imagine the scale and scope of the changes that lie ahead of us.”

But imagine it we must.

Gore closed by citing that old African proverb, which was simplistic in its essence, but again concise in its expressed urgency:

If you want to go quickly, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.

Concluded the former next president of these United States, “We must go far, quickly.”

Building Smarter Buildings

If you’ve visited this blog with any frequency, you know that I’ve visited a few cities around the globe in my time — four of them in the last week alone (Stuttgart, Madrid, Milan, and now Las Vegas).

For several years, I lived in a big city (New York), and opted in 2001 to move to a smaller, but still vibrant, city, Austin, Texas, where I worked for several years on Tivoli’s Web site (see today’s CNN Morning show for a feature on how Austin’s economy has thrived during the recession!)

With an estimated 60 million people around the world moving into cities each year, experts predict population in the world’s cities are going to double by 2050. As populations grow, civic leaders and businesses alike are looking for ways to help cities and their buildings cope.

Too often today, many of the systems that constitute a building — heat, water, sewage, electricity — are managed independently and, typically, inefficiently.

Buildings alone are a source of huge waste.  They account for 70 percent of all energy use and 38 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S.  That’s a lot of hot air!

That means, ultimately, that each year buildings emit more harmful CO2 emissions into the environment than do our vehicles (and as Al Gore mentioned in this morning’s Pulse keynote).

The culprits leading to such inefficiencies are varied: Poor planning and maintenance, inadequate energy management, the heating or cooling of unused space, and the inability to collect and analyze operational information.

Today, IBM and Johnson Controls have partnered in a joint initiative called Smart Building Solution, which combines the power of business analytics from IBM with the building technology and energy efficiency solutions of Johnson Controls to help address some of these inefficiencies.

This partnership is intended to help improve operations, lower costs, and reduce energy and water use in buildings and will be targeted at public sector, education, and large commercial real estate owners and industrial facilities.

Read more about this expanded partnership between IBM and Johnson Controls in this post by earth2tech.