SMIT@ Pratt Design Incubator 2005-2008

SMIT's co-founders, Sita and Sam featured on FoxBusiness - Sept 10, 2008

2008-09-15T00:45:00.004-04:00

We were contacted by a woman at Fox Business about the possibility of having our company featured on their website as a new, innovative start-up. There were 2 stories and a video that were featured on their website.

Here are links to the 2 stories:

- Donna Fuscaldo's story
- Christina Scotti's story

Here is the video that was featured:

Summer interns

2008-05-28T14:39:00.000-04:00

It looks we'll have a few interns working for us through the summer to get further along on our design for manufacture version of GROW.

They are:
Boston University, Justin Chin, engineering & design
Brown University, Nick Stoker, engineering & design
New York University, Younghyun Chung, electronics & programming

We are excited for them to be working with us throughout the summer. They will be working with us from June 2nd - August 1st, 2008.

Teresita Cochran on City Year Panel - May 5th, 2008

2008-05-11T15:02:00.002-04:00

A good friend of mine who is on the New York - City Year Board asked me to be on a panel discussing what I have done since my AmeriCorps service (2001-2003), so I sat on a panel to talk about SMIT and GROW. At the end of my talk, I mentioned that we are looking for a new CEO who might be able to help us raise our first round of venture capital. One of the other panelists gave me his card as a possible CEO! (His name is David Caplan, he was CEO of Evan Piccone for many years)

SMIT panel on "cube" in Greensburg, KS

2008-05-03T15:04:00.002-04:00

We were contacted by a team of graduate students from Kansas State University a couple months ago working on a project to rebuild Greensburg, KS, a small town which was decimated by a tornado last May (2007), as a "green" town. They wanted to use a sample of GROW on the outside of one of their model buildings to show how alternative power could be used in the rebuilding of the town.

See their website, and images of our panel on their cube:

Greensburg Cubed

Slideshow of Green Haus cube with GROW:

AI2V with Sharon on her birthday!

2008-05-02T18:01:00.001-04:00

We were able to get a quick meeting with our AI2V coach, Sharon Ballard, on her birthday! She happened to have an overnight stay in NYC on her way back from Europe and before she went out west.

We got her a nice little piece of cake with a candle on it during our coaching session! Fun! It was great to be able to share her day with her, and it gave Sam and Ben a chance to meet her and speak with her face-to-face.

We went over our 3 business models with her and discussed which direction we felt would be best for us to head. We also updated her about our talks with Think Energy, a company interested in working with us in some capacity.

Here's a short slideshow of our dinner:

GROW to be purchased by MoMA for their permanent collection

2008-04-20T14:39:00.001-04:00

We received a message from Patricia Juncosa, curatorial assistant to Paola Antonelli, at the beginning of April, and she asked if we would be agreeable to having our prototype installed in the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit be purchased by the MoMA. We of course said "yes!"

What that means is that instead of taking it down and bringing it back to our studio, we will help the deinstallation team take our piece down and then pack it away for whenever they might want to reinstall the piece in the museum. We are very very excited about the fact that it might be up at the museum again in the future!

Down to Earth : Sustainable Design, March 28-30, 2008 : Boston, MA

2008-04-05T14:09:00.002-04:00

I was asked to be on a panel about Sustainable Design at the Down to Earth conference in Boston:

I gave a 20 minute presentation about SMIT and GROW and brought our 4' x 8' panel to display. Sam and I drove it up from Brooklyn on March 28th for the conference on the 29th. (This panel has gotten to travel a lot in the past few weeks!)

After the presentation, quite a few people asked questions about GROW and about how it could be used on small and large scales.

I then sat on a group panel discussion with Ursula Tischner (founder of eConcept/Agency for Sustainable Design in Cologne, Germany), Michael Singer (Artist/Designer - Wilmington, VT/Delray Beach, FL), Bryan Glascock (Director, Environment Dept, City pf Boston) and moderator Terry Swack (Founder/CEO - Clean Culture). The bulk of the discussion focused around the future and importance of Sustainable Design

After the panel, an engineering student from Boston University, Justin Chin, came up to talk with us for a bit and helped us disassemble our GROW panel. He lives in NYC and might work for us over the summer as an engineering intern.

Sam drove back to NYC that night with the GROW prototype.

NCIIA - March Madness for the Mind 2008

2008-03-26T20:25:00.000-04:00

Our interactive technology consultant and NYU/ITP student, Raphael Zollinger, and I flew to Dallas for one day to participate in the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), "March Madness for the Mind 2008".

It was a whirlwind trip, but well worth it! We saw a lot of our pals from NCIIA, Jennifer Keller Jackson, Humera Fasihuddin, Phil Weilerstein, and then our coach from AI2V, Sharon Ballard, as well as one of the leaders of our first AI2V workshops, Courtney Price.

We feel so privileged to have been able to take part in such an amazing event!

See the slideshow below for all the photos from our prep, travel and participation in all the events.

(We were also interviewed on video, and will post those when we get the edited versions back from the videographers)

Early March update

2008-03-19T19:17:00.003-04:00

The MoMA openings in late February were a big success and as a result of being in the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit, we have gotten a lot of press. As I mentioned in our last post, I met one of the co-founders of Ecolect.com, a sustainable material website, and was asked if I would be interested in being the first featured person on their new "limelight" page. My feature on their site caught the attention of people at core77, inhabitat, treehugger and a long list of other blogs and as a result, we have been contacted by people from around the world...South Africa to France to Greece to Hong Kong, not mention the hundreds of people across the U.S.

This has done two things. One it has stepped up our commercialization plan considerably. And two, it has had us realize that we are going to need a lot more help and expertise to get GROW in the hands of all the people and businesses that have contacted us. And that requires outside funding.

We are currently getting very rigorous business coaching by EnableVentures with Supercoach, Sharon Ballard from my attending the AI2V in Amherst, MA. Her coaching is to get us to a point where we have a very solid, informative business pitch and plan. We are very much looking forward to our final presentation, when we will be ready to go out and ask for the funding we need to get GROW manufactured by the end of next year.

Since MoMA opening...

2008-03-10T18:01:00.000-04:00

Well, things have really kicked up since the MoMA opening. We have been blogged about in a number of different places. I met the co-founder of Ecolect, Joe Gebbia, back in early Feb at the Greener Gadgets conference and he ended up wanting to post about me on
his website.

Then that got picked up by Inhabitat and Treehugger and then that went all around the world it seemed in only a few days. We have been getting lots of calls and people have been asking to order GROW.

Things are picking up and we are just getting started with our AI2V coaching with Sharon Ballard. Hopefully this will prove to be a very productive time to have her coaching and we will be able to use it to our best advantage.

-Sita.

Opening Week at MoMA

2008-02-25T20:12:00.001-05:00

What a week!
The MoMA sure does know how to throw a party. We attended the opening of Design and the Elastic Mind which GROW is a part of, and met a lot of the designers for other pieces in the show as well as well-known artists and designers from varied backgrounds. It is such an honor to be a part of what is already an amazing show.

Installing GROW at MoMA

2008-02-06T17:14:00.004-05:00

We are the first piece being installed in the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit...so it's hard to tell what the other pieces will be. We only know of one piece that is supposed to be in the show and it's a vacuum cleaner, so it'll be a surprise to see what else is in the show.

Here are some pics of us installing at MoMA:

GROW going up in the Design and the Elastic Mind gallery:

Sam on the ladder at MoMA:

SMIT putting GROW into MoMA gallery space:

Just outside the gallery space:

It's up and dusted and there are now some other pieces installed in the space as we are leaving:

We can't wait for the opening at the end of the month!
The Members' opening is Feb 19th and the public opening is Feb 24th, 2008.
Stay tuned!
-Sita.

Making panel for MoMA

2008-01-24T17:24:00.003-05:00

Here is what we have been doing since I returned from Amherst...

Testing the print-out of the leaves:

Testing the laminating of the leaves:

Old design vs. new design:

Possible grommets, rivets, stand-offs:

Possible copper rivet:

Wiping down the leaves:

Attaching the panels, using plastic rivets:

First 5 rows of GROW:

Getting set up to roll the panel onto a cardboard tube:

Coop and Kevin help start the panel on the tube:

Attaching the screws and grommets:

Moving along quickly now: (R to L) Sam, Kevin, Coop and Ben

Almost done:

Done. Ready to be packed up for MoMA:

Boxed up:

So there it is. Ready to take to MoMA.

We'll post more pics when it's installed!
-Sita.

original GROW panel redesign

2008-01-16T10:13:00.000-05:00

Sam has redesigned GROW from his original thesis design. These are a few options that he has been playing with for the redesign.

AI2V in Amherst, MA

2008-01-13T21:29:00.001-05:00

While Sam is redesigning the GROW panel for the MoMA exhibit, I am in Amherst, MA at an Advanced Invention to Venture (AI2V) with Sharon Ballard. Sharon is a Supercoach, and an entrepreneurial rockstar in general. I feel very fortunate to be able to attend this workshop while Sam and Ben are feverishly working away back in Brooklyn.

Some pics from the workshop:

MoMA responds to our images of GROW

2008-01-04T20:29:00.000-05:00

So, we sent in a few images of our working prototype of GROW to the curator and asst curator at the MoMA. Their feedback is that it doesn't look like the original design which they prefer. We are going to re-make a version of the original GROW for them to put in the Design and the Elastic Mind show. It's a bit of a setback, but luckily we have the time to make another version of the panel so we can still be in the show.

Soldering solar panels and cutting plastic

2007-12-20T16:17:00.000-05:00

We got the solar panels in and as you can see, we are all soldering away! We also got in the plastics for the leaves and have cut a whole bunch into our "leaf" shape.

Friends and Family support, provis patent

2007-12-12T20:30:00.000-05:00

Our family and friends have really come out in force to support us in getting our panel made for the MoMA! After doing some budget estimates, it looks like we will be able to get our panel made for sure with the support we have garnered over the holidays so far.

We will definitely continue to talk to our friends and family over the upcoming holidays.

We started a bank account for our newly formed LLC at Commerce Bank in downtown Brooklyn where all of our investment capital will be tallied.

Our GROW panel is under way. We have put orders in for solar panels and our support structure. We are also talking to our attorney about provisional patent on our new leaf design.

Things are moving!

Email sent out for F+F support

2007-11-16T18:19:00.000-05:00

Have gotten some initial feedback from the email that I sent out for family contributions. Our Aunt and Uncle in Vermont want to support us, and possibly Sam's landlord. A lot of Ben's family is interested also.

We will have to talk to people over the Thanksgiving holiday with Promissory Notes in hand.

Will let you know how it goes after Thanksgiving.
-Sita

LLC name, operating agreement, banking, friends and family email

2007-11-15T17:30:00.000-05:00

So we are nearly finished with our operating agreement. we are working with Dan Friedson on getting it complete by the 20th of Nov. He is also working with us on creating Promissory Notes for our F + F investors and Forgivable loan contracts.

Our official LLC name is: SMIT - Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology, LLC
It's long but will allow us to use SMIT without stepping on smit, llc's toes. Our attorney, Rick Hollingsworth submitted our articles of organization to the state of DE on Nov 13th, so we are an official LLC. We are going to have our operating agreement complete before the 20th and will submit it to Rick for the state of DE if it needs to be on record with them.

In order to open a new bank acct for our new LLC we have to get a bunch of paperwork from the state of DE and NY in order to be recognized as a business of good standing in NY state. I am ordering and faxing and applying for the necessary papers to be able to open a bank acct. We have chosen Commerce Bank. They are close, have a free small biz checking account so we won't lose money every month to bank handling fees like we did with our other bank.

Also, I am sending out our friends and family email tonight and will hopefully be able to announce lots of positive response to it soon.

-Sita.

LLC formation

2007-11-05T13:24:00.000-05:00

Sam, Ben and I have been working on how to set ourselves up as an LLC. We are talking with our attorneys, Kelly Talcott and Rick Hollingsworth at K&L Gates, also with Eric Cochran, an attorney who does mergers and acquisitions (a friend of the Howes family) as well as with an attorney in Pittsburgh, Daniel Friedson who is an old and dear friend of mine.

We are piling over other companies operating agreements as we form our own for smit as an llc and we are trying to come up with the best name for ourselves as an llc (smit, llc is taken). We want to have this handled before the MoMA show so that it's squared away, and also for our first round of friends and family investment (which we are starting in the next 2 wks).

We will post our new LLC name soon, and will hopefully be done with our operating agreement in the next week. Our goal is to have it done by Nov. 15th so we can receive checks from friends and family over the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday.

More soon.
-Sita

LLC, MoMA, funding

2007-10-31T13:59:00.000-04:00

I was out sick last week with some kind of fever and cold thing, but am back this week, full speed ahead.

This week has been very busy with planning for MoMA. Ben, Sam and I had a meeting both Mon and Tues to structure out our timeline, work on finishing our Operating Agreement as an LLC and detail out parts for the MoMA panel.

I'll update again soon with more on the MoMA and our legal incorporation work.

-Sita

Back in Brooklyn

2007-10-17T15:43:00.000-04:00

Sam has returned safely after a few hiccups on his return flight (mad dash across Heathrow after a flight delay and lost baggage which then got returned to him 2 days late, having half of his things stolen). He has been in a few conversations with me about a stand he is taking for higher levels of communication and interaction design that works for everyone in the world as a result of his mishaps in travel. His trip to Rwanda was a big success and he was able to take over 1000 images of all aspects of their trip. After hearing about Africa and after many discussions about the state of the world, we are both getting more and more empassioned about what we are out to create on the planet through sustainable design.

MoMA update: I talked with Patricia Juncosa at the MoMA and she said that the space we would be installed will likely have 18 foot ceilings, so we are talking about the possibility of having 2 of our 4'x8' panels stacked vertically so that the viewer will be able to get an accurate feeling for what GROW would look like installed on the facade of a building. Sam and Ben have been talking at length about the design evolutions that have taken place and we are all excited about the design advancements that have led to the newest GROW iteration. We are going to need to talk to Kelly (patent lawyer) about the copyright issues about the integration of ready-made parts into our system and see what we will need to do to make sure that we are not infringing on anyone's designs.

Other news:
Prototyping has fully moved into the Navy Yard and our 2 prototyping interns have been working there with Sam and Ben every week. Brian Kerr is our Pratt intern and Raphael Zollinger is our ITP intern. James Daher had been working with us, but was not able to continue due to an increased work load at ITP, which we totally understand, and appreciate his honesty and frankness. Our marketing intern, Kenzan, has been in communication with Diego Portillo and his presentation is on a much more leisurely pace at this point, since our focus is on our prototype and the MoMA panel. However, Kenzan is going to have a presentation for us before the end of the semester, either way.

Lastly, the incubator space was redesigned before Sam left with myself, Diane and Sam talking about the space and how to reorganize it, since Deb has moved into her new office and new title as Director of Sustainability of Pratt. We have 3 teams that will be based in the Incubator space, so we reorganized it accordingly, allowing for space for the 2 assistants that Deb has kept on staff for her. The redesign looks like this:

Will share pics of what it looks like now, soon.

We got our high speed fan for prototype testing, but it was damaged. Sam fixed it and we gave it a "whirl." Seems ok, not as fast as we were hoping, though.

We also *finally* got our solar panels!

-Sita.

MoMA and Sam in Rwanda

2007-10-06T15:21:00.000-04:00

Sam made it safely to Rwanda and has been communicating via chat with me almost daily. It's weird to be in such regular contact with him knowing that he is so far away!

But there is some big news for us...we received an email today from Deb Johnson (Incubator Director) telling us that we have been asked to put GROW in the MoMA for a show titled Design and the Elastic Mind, curated by Paola Antonelli! We were going to be featured only in the catalog for the show, but now we are going to be in the show itself! We are so excited. But it means that we have a lot of work to do in very little time. The MoMA wants our piece to be installed by January 2008, so we are going to have to turn ourselves up to overdrive.

Our new business partner Ben has been an amazing addition to our team thus far. He has been working on some large scale renderings so that we can possibly include them in the show at the MoMA for an idea of what GROW looks like on a grander scale.

Also, we are trying to get ourselves incorporated while Sam is away, but it seems to be going sort of slowly. We are getting our name reserved as of now, and with the help of Rick Hollingsworth, will get ourselves incorporated as an LLC in the state of Delaware, doing business in NY state.

Some concerns that we have that we will need to address with Kelly and Rick (our lawyers at K&L Gates) are the issue of dessign patents, filing international utility patents, and making sure that we have every other protection available for ourselves to be in the MoMA.

I am working from home in Boston this week, but will be back in Brooklyn on Monday the 15th, when Sam will also have returned from his trip.

-Sita.

Sam in Rwanda, a day early! Prototyping, Interns, etc.

2007-10-02T19:28:00.000-04:00

So, Sam had a mix-up with his ticket. He is going to Rwanda to work on his freelance design project called "Lab on a Chip". Sam is the head designer on the project through the Incubator, so he is going there to do some design research and cultural research.

His ticket mix-up happened because the booking agency didn't correctly match his ticket to the person from Columbia University with whom he is traveling (Curtis Chin), so Sam had to drop everything (including a meeting with our interns scheduled for last Friday at 7:30pm in the SMIT Navy Yard space) and do a rushed pack job and head straight for the airport. As a result, he wasn't able to put in a few of our most recent prototyping orders nor finish a SolidWorks file for the Pratt student who is going to be milling a piece for us. Alas, he made the flight and all is fine.

I was able to get the orders in correctly, so our solar panels are finally going to be processed after a mix-up with SKU numbers at Sundance Solar and the Purchasing Dept computer debacle. Who knew that ordering things via Pratt's Purchasing Dept would be so laborious and time consuming? Thank goodness for Mitzi, our purchasing agent who has been working with us very patiently and now understands what we are doing. We are also going to get our high-speed fan next week for the "wind funnel" that will allow us to test our hybrid panel once the leaves are attached properly with the PV and wind devices. We're so close!

Interns:
Kenzan's update was very general. He has been struggling understanding the best way to glean information from the Boston Public Library - Business Library (Kirstein). We have pointed him toward Diego Portillo again who has over 8 years of experience doing exactly what are asking him to do. He says that his next update will be much closer to what we are looking for. We are excited to see what he can find out for us.

Because of the flight mix-up with Sam, the ITP/NYU intern meeting sort of fell apart. The interns had trouble getting past the guards at the Brooklyn Navy Yard entrance, so we rescheduled them to meet with Ben this Wed (tomorrow) at 7:30pm. I'll update how that goes once it has happened.

-Sita.

Kenzan's Second Presentation: Oct 1st, 7:30pm

2007-09-25T14:25:00.000-04:00

Kenzan will make his mid-term presentation to me and Ben this coming Monday in the Incubator at 7:30pm. He has been in touch with my friend, Diego Portillo, a market researcher and business analyst.

He will give us an update on how he is progressing with the numerical analyses we have been requesting of him for our future venture capital presentations down the line.

More after the presentation/update.

-Sita.

Kenzan's Second Presentation

2007-09-21T14:03:00.000-04:00

We scheduled a second presentation with Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn for the first week of October. Sam will be in Rwanda, but Ben and I will be able to give Kenzan feedback.

Will get details of the presentation and post later.

Planning Meeting : 9/18/07

2007-09-19T13:03:00.001-04:00

Sam, Ben and I met last night as a follow-up to last week's Big Dreams meeting and hammered out, in good agenda-ed fashion, the details of what will happen while Sam is in Rwanda from the 29th of Sept to the 14th of Oct.

We reviewed a few things from our last meeting, then moved on to the new business of planning out how to get the most out of working with our interns from ITP. We are working with two 2nd year ITP students, Raphael Zollinger and James Daher. We are trying to schedule a meeting for us and them with their advisor, Jamie Allen, our systems engineer for Friday the 28th of Sept at 7:30pm. Also, we still have Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn, who is a Pratt 2nd year grad student, working with us until around the first week of October. We finalized a date for him to present his final Marketing presentation to us and will see if that date and time works for him.

We discussed in great detail how to build the wind funnel and also how to finalize the testing device for our wind element. We are hoping that one of our interns will spend time working on and adding functionality to the wind funnel. Also, our work-study student, Ebbin Martin is finishing up milling the last pieces needed for the wind element testing device, and we are happy that it feels like all the pieces are finally coming together for us to be able to get the testing of the wind device, the building of the wind funnel and the final build-out of our first working prototype in place at long last.

The Pratt purchasing department has been having computer issues, so we've had to hand-in a vendor list for the 3rd time and also alter some of the vendors who have never been able to be reached. Due to this we have had MAJOR delays in placing and receiving orders, but have actually been able to squeeze some in here and there between the mishaps in their office.

Sam and Ben are going to meet again this weekend to hopefully have a chance to move the prototype over to the Navy Yard.

Our next meeting before Sam leaves is the 25th of September at 7:30pm.

-Sita.

Tues, Big Dreams Meeting

2007-09-11T23:05:00.000-04:00

We met to talk about what our Big Dreams are for SMIT and our partnership. We went to Chez Oskar and sat outside which was nice and quiet (amazingly, being on the streets of Brooklyn).

Our ideas revolved around what we want our business structure to be, what we see our future products being, what we envision the company to stand for, and what we envision the future of green technology being. Although I'd like to, I won't go into detail for company privacy reasons.

The other thing we talked about was what Ben and I will be working on while Sam is out of the country. Sam is going to Rwanda for work on a probono freelance project he's doing. He'll be gone for 2 weeks doing design research and data collection there. While he is gone, Ben and I plan on incorporating SMIT as an LLC acting as a C-corp. I will be asking and talking with my lawyer friend, Dan, and with our atty's office to make this process as smooth and economical as possible.

We also spent a great deal of time talking about our new website. Mainly we discussed how to go about improving it for our final version, how we plan to use it for the future, and what kinds of information are important to have on it.

We also decided that we need to move our working prototype out of Sam's studio and into the Navy Yard space that's designated for the Incubator teams. This will ease in having easier access for Ben and wil also allow our new interns from NYU/ITP to be able to enter and leave without Sam needing to be there. However, it also brings up additional issues about privacy and confidentiality. We have to be really careful about who can see our prototype and how it gets worked on while in a public space. We are still discussing how this will work and what precautions we'll need to take. More on this as it unfolds.

The last thing we discussed was our timeline for the project and how we will need to move foreward to keep in line with our NCIIA grant. Since we didn't get the check from the NCIIA until October of last year, we are requesting to have our timeframe extended (we actually did put an 18 month timeline into our grant application, but I think they saw it as a 12 month one). We are hoping to be complete with our ptototype and the NCIIA grant and be out of the incubator by late spring 2008.

Our next meeting is next week: 9/18/07 at 7:30pm at our office at Pratt. And this time we will have an agenda. (Freeform is nice, and dreaming is nice...but I like to have bullet points here and there!)

-Sita.

Ben Howes to be brought on as a partner

2007-09-10T23:03:00.000-04:00

Sam and I have been talking at great length with Sam's long time friend, Ben Howes about bringing him on as a partner on SMIT. We are now in action about it and have set a date to have a planning meeting and do the things needed to incorporate with Ben on the team.

Ben studied Architecture at Pratt and graduated in 2006 and is now working at an Architectural firm in Manhattan called Graftworks.

You'll hear more about Ben very soon...

-Sita.

Ben, Ebbin, Sam prototyping meeting

2007-08-21T15:07:00.000-04:00

Sam, Ebbin and Ben met at the studio and:
- Made a list for Mitzi of all the things that we will need to order through our grant for the next part of our prototyping
- posted list on google docs
- Sam will send email to Mitzi in Pratt purchasing

Ebbin and Sam prototyping in studio

2007-08-16T18:47:00.000-04:00

What they worked on: (most of it is proprietary so I'll have to be vague about it)

Designs of wind element...
- designed a bracket for the wind element.
- made up a list of materials to use to build bracket (proprietary design)

Ebbin will take on and complete the milling of a piece for the testing of the wind element.

Next meeting, 8/20/07

Leaving for UK, France, Turkey

2007-07-30T15:29:00.000-04:00

I will be leaving for 2 weeks to go to a wedding in Turkey via London and Paris. Sam will be working in the studio primarily and getting our purchasing power capabilities squared away (4th or 5th attempt) through the Pratt purchasing department. It's been a long laborious process but hopefully by the time I get back it will be squared away.

It's amazing how much we have done with such little money (although some of the important stuff was out of pocket, to be paid back from the grant) and ingenuity!

Look forward to touring Byzantium...Constantinople...Istanbul!
-Sita

7/25/07 Incubator meeting 11:45-1pm

2007-07-25T17:08:00.000-04:00

things we talked about:
- purchase orders for our prototype/grant, mitzi
- ben partnership
- incorporation, legal advice
- accounting advice
- spn advice from 2 CEOs
- linda's competition in october
- investor's circle?
- nciia, reworking budget to be able to pay down patent
- matthiah connection at trina solar (china), shekhar connection at tata power (india)
- cleaning shelf above sam's desk
- me away in august
- moma, paola antonelli

diane:
- woman from reno gave critical feedback on her biz plan, but gave actionable advice: sequencing wrong, timeline off
- not working with same advisor at rainforest alliance, now under rick hilton
- father head of cooperative (1 million members) in thailand

PDI:
- deb interviewed for head of center for sust design on pratt campus
- LOC going well
- anyone to donate to LOC?
- dumpster project on holding pattern next 4 mos.

Dealings with Mitzi in Pratt Purchasing

2007-07-19T19:51:00.000-04:00

Sam has been trying to push our Vendor list for building our GROW panel from the NCIIA grant through the Pratt Purchasing Dept. since the first week of November of 2006. We now have an ally in the Dept., Mitzi, who is working with us to get things in order. Finally we've been able to put a purchase order through and have them not look at us like we're crazy.

We ordered solar panels and some wiring materials from Silicon Solar and are waiting for them to arrive.

-Sita

David Gibbs on treehugger!

2007-06-20T14:45:00.000-04:00

Our intern featured on treehugger!!

Kenzan's Final Presentation: 6/18/07, 6pm

2007-06-19T14:59:00.000-04:00

Kenzan's Final Presentation, originally uploaded by sita.

Kenzan came in with a stack of about 50 current magazines for part of his presentation and separated them into 4 different piles representing the 4 consumer sectors to whom he projects us being able to market ourselves.

In his opinion, they are:

1. The Eco-Elite (celebrities, big namers who are "going green" and can afford big ticket items: Leonardo Dicaprio, Brad Pitt, Al Gore, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, etc.)

2. Design Seekers/Savvy (people who prefer things that are aesthetically pleasing and well-designed, not concerned with cost so much...think iPod)

3. The Modder/Maker/DIY (people who might be a mix of frugality, eco-consciousness, nostalgia, technology and self-expression)

4. Cultural. Conscious. Capitalist? ("the 3C catergory", people who fall under the healthy lifestyle umbrella, willing to spend more for organics and electric cars, perhaps also more spiritually minded, very conscientious, etc.)

His final presentation was strong, however we are going to work with him again in the fall when he returns from his time in Copenhagen this summer to really tackle the projection models for our market penetration and also to get some hard numbers to accompany the groups that he laid out as our potential market sectors.

Sustainable Panel Discussion: 6/12/07 (6:30-8pm)

2007-06-13T13:17:00.000-04:00

Credit Suisse hosted a Sustainability Panel discussion at their offices near Madison Park yesterday. There were 4 companies that presented their business models in order to inform and demonstrate the success of their companies in this growing and potentially lucrative space of sustainable business.

There were 3 companies whose models I was able to understand:

1. NuRide : www.nuride.com
Their model is basically to create social networks whose outcome was to encourage and incentivize ridesharing by offering points for each ride shared. The points once accrued could be used at various local retailers for discounts.

2. RecycleBank : www.recyclebank.com
Their model is very similar to NuRide, minus the social network creation. A RecycleBank member would receive a specially encoded bin for their recycling then get points based on the amount of recycling they had each week. The points are also redeemable in their local communities. They coin themselves "IBR" or incentive based recycling.

3. GroSolar : www.grosolar.com
Their website is sort of a resource guide, and sort of a retailer. They are based in White River Junciton, VT and ironically met my Aunt Kye at the Upper Valley Food Co-op in White River Junction where she is the manager, just before they were on this panel!

The first panelist was from the company below, and I had a really hard time understanding the operating model for his company. He had to leave early before being able to take questions.

4. Consumer Powerline: www.consumerpowerline.com
You'll have to explore what they do on your own and maybe you can get it better than I did.

It was a great panel and I was really happy to be able to meet the CEOs of such innovative companies in such a small and somewhat open setting. We were able to take with and meet them after the panel and exchange cards, etc.

-Sita.

Summer interns: Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn, Ebbin Martin, part-time David Gibbs

2007-06-06T20:05:00.000-04:00

We have 2 summer interns!

- Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn is going to do Market Research and analysis.

- Ebbin Martin is going to continue working with us as an intern instead of a work-study student and will be milling the bed for our wind element testing device as well as doing some CAD work.

More as they progress!

-Sita.

Summer at Pratt: June 2007

2007-06-05T18:27:00.000-04:00

All the students have left for the summer and things are quiet around here.

We have a summer intern, Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn, a grad student in Industrial Design who will be working with my friend, Diego Portillo who is a professional Market Research Analyst who focuses on trends and projections. Diego will be working with Kenzan on a market research and strategy project for GROW.

Our first progress meeting with him was this afternoon at 2pm.

Kenzan:

Sam:

The meeting went well. He has come a long way since our last meeting and we look forward to what he will put together for us. We set up his final presentation for: MONDAY June 18th, 6pm. Kenzan will be leaving for a furniture program in Amsterdam on the 20th but he will continue to work with us when he returns in August.

-Sita

Rolex Award application sent in!

2007-06-01T12:05:00.000-04:00

After a few weeks of working on the Rolex Award application, I finally sent it in on 5/31/07 (yesterday) on my husband's b-day. Here's the competition info:
http://apply.rolexawards.com/servlet/Login

We applied with GROW as our project. The top prize is $100,000 and a gold rolex (which I think is hysterical, and which we don't really need...and would likely sell to make more prototypes). Who knows, though. We won't win if we don't apply. Might as well.

Just glad to have it done.

-Sita.

Our meeting with Shawn Frayne, MIT alum

2007-05-18T12:27:00.000-04:00

We met with Shawn Frayne on May 17th at 7pm at the Pratt Design Incubator. In attendance were: Sita, Sam, Ben and Shawn. (Jamie couldn't make it) Deb was also able to meet him when he arrived which was great because she had been told about him from another source and had a few questions regarding the Lab on a Chip project to ask him. (Sam is a design and sustainability consultant on the LOC project)

Shawn is an MIT alum who is now an inventor of really cool things. We were hoping that we might be able to use one of his latest inventions (humdinger) in our product to minimize cost and increase energy production of GROW, but as it turns out, it may not be a great match as of yet since he has patents pending on the product.

However, meeting Shawn was totally inspiring. He's so talented and clearly a creative and engineering genius. We may help him with the design of some of his future projects and he has offered to give expert advice on our future products.

All in all we were very happy that our advisor, Linda Plano from the AI2V workshop introduced us.

-Sita.

Final AI2V presentation with Linda Plano

2007-05-16T12:29:00.000-04:00

Had our final presentation with Linda Plano yesterday and I gave our shpiel in 15 minutes on the nose.

She gave me lots of feedback about how to organize things, and what exactly investors would be interested in. We also then went over how to restructure our presentation so that it's more streamlined and to the point, given that it is a commercialization presentation. We went slide by slide to determine the most effective reworking of the presentation.

It is a work in progress.

We're meeting with Shawn Frayne, an MIT alum, later this week who Linda put us in touch with.
More soon,
-Sita

Sundance Channel: How Green are you quiz

2007-05-14T19:12:00.000-04:00

I took this quiz today and this is what I scored:
-Sita

Prototyping Meeting, Tuesday 5/1/07

2007-05-14T19:09:00.001-04:00

Sam has continued holding regular weekly prototyping meetings with Ben Howes, who we are looking to have join us as a partner in the not too distant future. Occasionally in attendance will be our work-study student, Ebbin Martin, and possibly David Gibbs.

More as they progress.
-Sita.

From our friend Mattias in Sweden

2007-05-05T13:16:00.000-04:00

Hey kids...

found this link, thought it might interest u.
hope all is well.
big love
Mattias

check it out

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Prototyping meeting, Tuesday 4/10/07

2007-04-11T18:03:00.000-04:00

Prototyping Meeting : 10 April 2007, 7:30pm - in attendance: Samuel Cochran, David Gibbs, Ben Howes, Ebbin Martin

I. Introduce David Gibbs, Industrial Design (senior)

A. Background
B. Skill sets
C. Best utilization on prototyping team

II. Review of last week

A. Tension cable designs
a. Visual prototyping full-scale
i. Materials
b. Scheduling for making of full-scale prototype

B. (Wind) mechanism
a. Review Ebbin’s research
b. Critique
i. Future direction?

III. Wind Tunnel (for testing of GROW)

A. Research existing designs
B. Sketch and scale
a. Make in sections (modular) for mobility
C. Materials needed?
D. Where can we put this on campus for testing?
E. Timeframe for testing? (summer?)

Prototyping meeting, Tuesday 4/3/07

2007-04-09T23:41:00.000-04:00

Sam and Ben have set up regular meetings to build our prototype.

Sam has been getting our list of needed items together for purchasing...more next week.

-Sita

MIT Ignite Clean Energy Semi-finals

2007-04-06T17:40:00.000-04:00

I got a call from our business coach, Linda Plano, at about 1pm on Wed. 4/4 telling me that Sam and I got a spot to present our business in the semi-finals of the MIT Ignite Clean Energy (ICE) business presentation competition. We were wait-listed for the semi-finals, so I had been loosely working on the presentation, but didn't think that we'd actually get a spot, so it was a bit of a crunch to get it all together in time.

After working on the presentation on the phone with Sam until about 2am and then by myself until about 4:30am, I scheduled to meet with Linda at 11am the next day to go over the presentation and get her feedback. This allowed me to do some last minute changes and also to get more information into the presentation. Sam wasn't able to come up for the presentation, so I was on my own to give it. There were 5 judges and thankfully Linda was able to be in the room with me while I gave our pitch.

I had prepared everything on PowerPoint and to my chagrin, the computer in the room I was pitching in didn't load PowerPoint properly when a WIndowsVista upgrade had been installed that morning, so I wasn't able to use my PowerPoint presentation. I gave the pitch from photocopies of my slides, which in a way was better because I had been practicing from them in the bathroom anyway (see pic).

I gave the whole pitch in the allotted time of 15 mins and got some really great feedback. Here's what the judges said: (without giving out our proprietary info)

- our goal of 200 watts was unrealistic unless it was averaged from peak to minimum performance

- do we know that solar panels' edges have failure? if our leaves are small what is the actual production area? (assuming the leaf coverage is roughly 30% of the whole) would be better if there were lots of them in series (I explained that the concept is that they would be interconnected so that they would produce more power as a whole...we are hoping that one panel of 10 leaves would produce that much power)

- what is the life cycle of the leaves?

- if we have someone go to each site to assess the best attachment, our gross margin will go down...and how many people do we then have to employ to go to each site? how much will that cost? how big does our company have to be?

- given that this is a high-touch sale our sales and marketing plan is going to be really important

- how many people will we have to pitch to to make a sale?

- any appliance must meet regulations; be sure to get regulatory building inspections and UL listings for GROW (what are the time scales for getting approval?)

- interesting idea, but to argue as "energy device" = uphill battle (might make more sense to present this as product that would draw attention to people's interest in eco/green concepts more than being a highly efficient energy producing device. (for example, in germany people have had solar panels for a long time, well before they were being proven to be efficient, mainly to show that they believe in and are aligned with a push for alternative power)

- artisanal product vs. energy production device

- market is going the other direction: simple not complex

- but you are not a LOT of complexity...

- make competitors your partners

- Do you want to use this as a vanity product?

- 15 of 15 way out of ballpark (?? not sure what he was talking about)

- go get 250K on one, make a breadboard, then 500K build a brassboard

- not venture ready, seed or angel material

Consider:

- how to combine in higher energy production capacity (incremental energy production, vs. saying that we are huge energy producer)

- sunlight and wind on smaller more efficient scale, remote location/application, but this wouldn't utilize the art/design

- "branded domicile vanity product"

Although a lot of the questions they asked were related to things that I couldn't answer: "how much power does one panel produce?" and "how much will one panel cost?" and therefore wasn't able to give concrete answers that would have really made a difference in giving our first product credibility, being in front of the judges with a brand new, much more complete presentation was a really big step for us.

Linda Plano gave me a lot of feedback after the presentation saying that I did a great job answering their difficult questions, and that she was very happy that I was able to come through and give the presentation on such short notice.

I knew that we wouldn't move to the next round of the MIT ICE competition after giving this presentation, but was very pleased to have been able to attempt to talk to venture capitalists who would give a critical perspective to our start-up.

-Sita.

Coaching, Website and Green Week@Pratt

2007-03-25T00:56:00.000-04:00

We have told everyone we can about the AI2V conference that we attended in Boston and are now bringing all this new knowledge to our own business. We have Linda Plano as our coach for the next 6 weeks whom we talk with each Friday about how our "homework" is going (creating our commercialization plan) and where we might have questions. Our first conversation with her will be this Friday.

Also, last week was the first annual Green Week at Pratt. According to Eva Hanhardt, it is a terrible week to host it here because all the students are deep into mid-term projects. But the thought was to have it before Earth Day so that it has it's own personality and to have it build up to other green events around the city.

We were asked at the very last minute (or rather an hour or two beforehand) if we could host the Green Design Charette with students on 3/19 who might be interested in being in the Green Competition for the Sustainable Pratt initiatives. We met a few of the students who were planning on entering the competition and were able to begin and lead a discussion about what sustainability means and how we as designers can address all the important issues of being green in a city like New York and apply those principles to honor and promote a green Pratt campus. Tony (Helger), who works at Pratt, was there with answers to the many questions the students brought up. Matthew Berger (head of the ID dept) also stopped in to join in the discussion and give some encouraging words. It went well, we thought, and we met some really interesting ID (industrial design) students who are entering the competition. We are hoping to keep in touch with them and maybe bring one on to work with SMIT in the not too distant future.

Lastly, our website. We are hoping to meet with Jason Culler, a Pratt ID student who in his previous life was a graphic designer/web savant, to help us lay out a new design for our sorely lacking website. You will hear quickly about the website when we redesign it. In the meantime, we are featured on the Pratt Design Incubator website.

Until soon,
-Sita & Sam.

AI2V Conference in Boston 3/11-3/14/07

2007-03-15T12:26:00.000-04:00

So a really yucky thing and a really great thing happened to me this past week. I called Humera at NCIIA who knows about all the upcoming events that are sponsored by them to foster the growth and development of their E-teams amongst all the other people they serve, and she got me interested in the Advanced Invention to Venture (AI2V) seminar in Boston at Northeastern from the 11th - 14th of March.

I was actually calling to ask her about the 4/20/07 talk in Lowell, MA but she convinced me that we had to hear her out about going to the AI2V seminar the coming week instead of going in August like we were planning. The only issue was the cost. It was $500 dollars for our team to attend. We probably could have scraped the money together between us, but after a couple emails back and forth Humera and the NCIIA gave us a full-scholarship to attend the seminar which was above and beyond generosity. We changed our lives to make it work and it was amazing! (The yucky thing was that I got the norovirus stomach bug 2 days before it started and was nervous that I would be vomiting throughout the whole seminar - luckily it was gone in 24 hours, phew.)

So what it entailed was bringing together people with different venture concepts and inventions that wanted to create business models around their product(s). The leaders, Dr. Courtney Price and Mack Davis, were not only motivating, but extremely intelligent, insightful and endlessly informative. They were so approachable and because our group was so small, we were able to get to know one another and give carefully considered feedback to each others' ideas.

Courtney and Mack gave us many "golden nuggets" of useful knowledge so that our start-up didn't have to make the mistakes that others have made. We gave our elevator pitch a few times throughout the 3 days and saw ourselves improve as we went. We also took a very intensive survey that allowed us to discuss and assess our current state as a start-up and what things were 1) missing 2) partially thought out or 3) well-handled and gave an opportunity to write comments with each answer then build a timeline for how to completely handle what was left to handle and create various plans and models for the future of our company.

The 3.5 days proved extremely rewarding and well-worth the last minute dropping of everything to attend. Lastly, the most remarkable part of the seminar is that we are able to work with an advisor, Linda Plano, chair of the MIT ICE competition, to build out our business plan and model in chunks, starting with the Management, Organization & Staffing Plan.

We are greatly looking forward to talking in greater depth with Linda who has already put us in touch with some amazing people (Shawn of humdinger! John of powerpods! and the people at Smart Money magazine!) and benefiting from her expertise and advice.

Clearly we are glad that we attended the AI2V and are telling everyone about it here in Brooklyn.

-Sita & Sam.

First week in March 2007

2007-03-06T12:08:00.000-05:00

Our planning meeting is tonight with Andrew Sharp, Ben Howes, and Ebbin Martin (and me and Sam). Jamie Allen, our systems designer, can't make it nor Avani Patel, our NYU intern.

What we will cover in our meeting is briefly the following:
- Patent filed as of Jan 19th, 2007
- GROW will be featured in upcoming exhibit @ Pratt
- Green Week (we will be giving a talk)
- possible attendance of conference in August (AI2V)
- Prototyping planning
- Wind tunnel planning
- Funding preparations
- Upcoming competitions
- Website
- 6 month schedule

We will let you know how it goes.

-Sita & Sam.

Return to work

2007-02-28T11:16:00.000-05:00

This is my first week back in Brooklyn since our return from India. I can't tell if I'm still jetlagged, but things are still a bit foggy. We are planning a meeting with our whole team for next week so that we can catch everyone up to how our trip was in India, what it inspired in us, and where the next few months will take us.
More to come...

Back from India

2007-02-13T23:51:00.000-05:00

Wow...what an amazing trip! I just got back today from India via a London layover. An incredible time was had by all of our family and friends who travelled there and we will eventually post some pictures on our Flickr feeds of our trip.

One unexpected thing that happened was 2 of our uncles who are well connected within the TATA company have shown considerable interest in talking with us at greater length about our project and ways that they might be able to work with us. One of them works at TATA Power and is overseeing the production and installation of a 100MW wind turbine farm north of Mumbai. The other works at the TATA Motors subsidiary, Telcon. They asked us to send them more info once we have a working prototype and a marekting package.

Another thing that we were able to do is travel around the country more than usual. We were there for one month on this trip which allowed a bit of sightseeing as well as family visits. The main reason we were there is for the wedding of our cousin which was beautiful and a lot of fun. (Bollywood tunes and lots of Bhangra!) And after that we went north to Darjeeling where we never actually saw the Himalayan mountains because of fog cover. It was very different than most of the rest of India because of its climate and the heritage of most of the local people was more Buddhist Nepali and Tibetan than Hindustani Indian.

In Darjeeling, we visited a Tibetan refugee camp where we saw them making woolen items for sale and learned about Tibetan traditions and struggles with the Chinese. We also visited a tea plantation and tasted its tea leaves in a very tasty cup.

Towards the end of our trip I was able to visit a very good friend and former classmate of mine who lives in Kolkata, Nupur Goenka, with whom I had an enlivened discussion about the path of India in the realm of sustainability and commerce (amongst many other things). On each trip that I have been on to India in the past 13 years I have noticed more and more plastic waste items on the ground and asked Nupur why she thought it was happening. My theory was that it came from a physical memory of what people did with items that were previously made of bio-degradable materials.

For example, tea cups used to mainly be made of once-fired clay cups which after a few minutes of holding hot tea would start to turn back into clay, so once someone finished their tea, they would toss the cup on the ground and it would become part of the earth again. However, now the cups tend to be plastic. They stack better for the tea-seller so they don't need to replace them as often, but for the tea-drinker their memory is to drink the tea and toss the cup, hence streets littered with thin plastic cups.

Nupur didn't buy my theory. She felt that that was only part of the issue. She said that another aspect to the issue is the trash in general and in particular the fact that there is no organized system for recyclng or trash collection. She feels that a combination of a waste management system and the retraining of consumers who toss trash on the streets would create the beginning of a solution. I could see her point.

As we were driving towards her home, she pointed out a large office building that had been designed and built by a company that won awards for the building's extremely high environmental integrity. I don't remember the name of the designer or architect, but I will find out.

What I have always loved about India is the inventive reuse of things and simple solutions to problems. An example, my father and I went to visit a friend of his who had just completed installing a new well next to his house. He had a very nice pump system, and for when the power went out (which it does daily in Jharkhand) a metal pail with what looked like a plastic bag tied to one side. I was perplexed at first, but then I noticed that the side that the bag was on was heavier than the other side, and realized that it was being used as a weight. I asked my father's friend and he said it was filled with rocks so that the bucket doesn't bounce on the surface of the water, but rather falls to one side and is easier to scoop water quickly. Simple. And it reused a plastic bag.

Another thing I have always loved about India is the transparency of things. When you go to the store to buy chicken, you select a live chicken from a coop and then they slaughter it and prepare it for you, asking if you want all the insides or not. Though it may be a little tough on the stomach to watch, it makes the process of where your food comes from completely transparent. If I asked a 5 year old in the US where chicken comes from they would say "the grocery store" and may be completely in the dark about how it gets there.

Another thing I love about India is how there are no real fences to pen in animals, or not many. Animals interact with one another which to me is more natural. Goats play with dogs and cows roam into marketplaces. Perhaps it can at times be a little harrowing when one slowly clops its way in front of your taxi, but the dirt roads don't allow you to go very fast in the first place. The pacing seems more humane.

One thing that is troubling, though I'm not sure that as an American I am categorically able to criticize this, is the number of cars on the roads now vs. 13 years ago. Because the regulatory systems there are not as strict on emissions as ours are here (which in my opinion should be even stricter), the streets are a very smoggy place to walk. When one gets home, rubbing one's face with a towel turns the towel grey. There are more and more single occupants in cars and the status associated with owning a car (and even more so, having one's own driver) causes concern. In a country of a billion people there is a huge market for auto-owners and petrol consumers. What will happen in 5 more years when the country's economic status climbs higher and more and more people will have financial access to owning a private car?

All in all, for me, a trip to India gives time to contemplate the influence, both positive and negative, of American society and "way of life" on the Indian society. l appreciate the life that my mother's family lives in the small village of Bundu. They get up when the sun rises and go to bed soon after it sets, get their water from a well, use a solar panel to charge a lantern for the evening when the power goes out every night, have a large garden behind their house, have cows for milk and a rice patty down the road, and use their flat roof to dry their laundry. They live right next to the town marketplace and have lived on their land for over 50 years. It is a straightforward way of life. I appreciate it more and more each time I visit.

As for our project, Sam returns on the 18th of Feb and I will head back down to NY next week. We found out that we did not make it into the 3rd round of the Stern/NYU Business Plan competition, and will find more resources for financing in the weeks to come.

Other than that, our utility patent was filed as of Jan 19th, and we have a lot of work to do with our prototyping team once Sam gets back to get our working prototype done in the next 6 months.

We look forward to those 6 months and I, for one, am glad that this recent trip to India proved to be the first one on which I did not contract any stomach virus!

All the best.
Namaste.
-Sita.

Preparing for month in India

2007-01-09T11:01:00.000-05:00

This is my last week in New York before a month long trip to India for the wedding of our cousin, Nupur Shekhar. We will be travelling all over India...Mumbai, Pune, Jamshedpur, Bundu, Ranchi, Kolkata, Patna, Darjeeling (maybe?), Delhi, and perhaps Goa.

I look forward to the peace and quiet of Bundu, where our mother grew up. I can already imagine myself walking down the dusty path to our family's house, past the cows and the flowering trees. I fear that the town is growing rapidly and I may not recognize parts. But our house will be the same. Garden in back, well on the side, laundry drying in the courtyard.

I look forward to seeing my great aunt and my uncles and their wives and my cousins in Bundu and Ranchi. I look forward to packing into cars and drinking freshly brewed teas with cows milk.

And before we leave the US, we are finishing up the last bits of our patent and sending the signed documents needed by our patent attorney so that he can file it in our absence. We will let you know when it is filed. We are also meeting with Andrew Sharp this week to finalize what we are going to say for the third round of the NYU Business Plan competition so that he will be prepared to speak as SMIT while we are out of the country. We look forward to hearing how that will have gone upon our return.

Until then,
-Sita (& Sam).

Nearing the end of 2006...

2006-12-28T23:03:00.000-05:00

Belated Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate this holiday. I (Sita) spent the holidays traveling between small New England towns and between my husband's and my families. It was an eventful and wonderful day spent with people we love. Sam spent the holiday in Montana with his girlfriend and her family.

Our grandmother, Elizabeth "Betsy" Cochran, has been admitted to a rehabilitation center after a mini-stroke that resulted in a fall and a light injury a couple weeks ago. She is doing better under the care of the people at the Pleasant Bay Rehabilitation Center who she says have been very kind to her and "useful." I was able to visit with her for an hour on the 27th and she seemed lucid though not as peppy and witty as I have known her to be in my life. She is doing much better than she was, I am told, and she *did* recognize me, which makes me happy. I hope to see her again before the New Year. She will be turning 89 on January 9th, 2007.

Since we are inching closer to the start of 2007, I thought it might be nice to update where we are currently, going into the New Year.

- We made it through the first round of the Stern NYU Business Plan Competition.

- We are ready to order parts through our NCIIA grant as of now, having been approved by the Purchasing Dept at Pratt and with Purchase Orders in hand. Our list will go out on the 3rd of Jan 2007.

- Our ITP/NYU intern worked on our data collecting program which will be used on the prototype once it is built by Sam, Jamie, Ben and Ebbin this coming spring.

- Our Pratt work study student is working on a 3-D rendering of how the prototype will look which will act as a map for the construction.

- Sam is fine-tuning 2 different final working prototype designs...we will build the one that is most likely to produce the most energy, or both if our budget permits.

- Sita is working on Business Plan competition applications going into the New Year and on the SMIT website.

- Patent details have been combed through and a set of revision notes were sent to our attorney the week before the holidays. We are hoping that as of the beginning of the year, we will be ready to file ASAP.

2007 will be a busy and fruitful year. Sam and I are going to be traveling to India for part of Jan & Feb for our cousin's wedding, and will also be able to travel a bit around the country. We plan a trip to Auroville, a sustainable village that uses solar panels, solar ovens and has a large organic farm that a few of our friends have been to and have raved about. Perhaps we will make it to Agra, Jaipur and Goa, but we're not sure that we will have the time.

We also plan to incorporate in some fashion as of 2007 and bring on some of our teammates as more permanent parts of SMIT.

There is a lot of planning to do, but we look forward to what 2007 has in store for us.

May your holidays be green and healthy.
Happy New Year from SMIT.
-Sita & Sam

Interesting Article in Fast Company Magazine...

2006-12-11T15:24:00.000-05:00

I don't know if I am supposed to have permission to post this here; hopefully it's ok to have the name and issue information of the magazine that this article is from. Anyway, this is a very pertinent article for the kind of sensitivity that SMIT intends to inform our designs and education projects.

-Teresita.

Fast Company current issue from which this was read.

-----------------------------

Dec 2006/Jan 2007 Issue of Fast Company Magazine:

"Feeding the Beast" By John R. Ehrenfeld
More about John R. Ehrenfeld.

Sustainability is about more than eco-friendly burger boxes.

It has become fashionable in business to celebrate one's progress toward "sustainability." Hewlett-Packard wins plaudits for its focus on recyclable computers and printers, and reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. McDonald's trumpets its efforts to forge a "socially responsible supply system" encompassing everyting from healthy fisheries to redesigned Happy Meal boxes.

All of which is fine. There's nothing wrong, per se, with strategies that leave the world more fish and less cardboard. But those corporate efforts have little to do with true sustainabaility. In fact, they're missing the point--and the bigger opportunity.

I spent four decades as a chemical engineer in industry, pursuing technological solutions to clean up environmental problems. In the late-blooming academic career that followed, my research came to suggest that those very solutions were in fact part of the problem. What most businesses do in the name of the environment really amounts to an effort to reduce unsustainability. Solutions such as emissions trading and carbon taces are new means to old ends, modifications of the current economic process that its proponents claim need not cause the destructive consequences of the past.

Real sustainability is a vision both more positive and less simplistic: Not merely the opposite of unsustainability, it embraces the possiblility that humans and other life will flourish on the planet forever. Sustainability is, like beauty, a property of an entire functioning system; it's evident only when everything is working well in relation to everything else.

And the problem for business is, in fact, systematic. It has less to do with what we toss out than with what we consume, which is why it's so difficult to fix. Simply put, we buy and use too much; consumption has become a form of cultural addiction--and it's that addiction that has the most profound impact on the environment. All of their well-intentioned programs to reduce waste notwithstanding, most companies are just feeding the beast.

Business should be wondering why the promise of consumer satisfaction always seems just out of hand, always an iPod or Xbox away--why we have lost, in the sense of Erich Fromm's To Have or To Be?, the part of human being, reduced instead to the diminished form of having. Roy de Souza, founder of the new Web site, Zebo.com, which collects and displays lists of everyday possessions from mostly young users, told The New York Times, "For the youth, you are what you own." Tellingly, he notes, "They list these things because it defines them."

And that's the thing about consumption: It's essentially a myopic, self-centered pastime. Addictive consumption submerges our concerns about ourselves, others, and the Earth. The things we buy and use become extensions of ourselves; we use them mindliessly, with little awareness of why. The challenge for business should be to reverse this pattern by offering goods and services that, beyond merely adding to our posessions, actually restore and maintain our ability to care and flourish.

Such products exist today. My favorite example is the two-button toilet, still a rarity in the United States but increasingly popular in Nothern Europe and New Zealand. In place of the usual single lever or button, the toilet offeres two buttons or levers, one small and one large, actuating a smaller or larger flush colume. Beyond its obvious "green" credentials, this toilet actually forces users to engage with it on more than a utilitarian level, and to make a choice. It creates presence in place of mindlessness.

Likewise, German designer Sven Adolph has created a space heater with movable ceramic panels that must be adjusted to conform to the placement of people in a room. The operator actually engages with (and takes care of) the occupants. Imagine extending that dynamic to a range of everyday products. Our cars could remind us, in real time, of the fuel we're consuming and the emission we're producing--and suggest walking or taking a bus.

Instead, automakers just give us more fuel-efficient vehicles, which limit the damage but miss the root of the problem. (Perversely, gains in efficiency tend to encourage more consumption.) And we drive around talking into our Bluetooth-connected phones, engrossed in conversation but absent from the rest of the world. The result is what Linda Stone, a former Microsoft researcher, calls "continuous partial attention." We lose our sense of engagement, ultimately compromising our awareness of underlying concerns and our ability to take care of them. Hence, obesity, family violence, and pollution--unsustainable outcome, to be sure.

Consumers are not just economic bundles of desires; they are hman beings whose concerns can't be satisfied merely by having lot of things. Sustainable businesses will help us escape addiction by offering carefully designed products and services that bring the world present--and nudge us toward responsible choices.

John R. Ehrenfeld, a former faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is executive director of the International Society of Industrial Ecology.

Beginning of December '06

2006-12-05T14:18:00.000-05:00

We just got word from Lance Redford (Director of Institutional Advancement at Pratt) that our vendor list was approved by Pratt Purchasing as of last Friday (the 1st of December '06), which means that finally we are able to buy needed parts to build our prototype of GROW. We have been putting together our purchasing list for the past weeks so hopefully things will start to pick up pace on the hands-on building soon.

On that note, Ebbin Martin, our Pratt work-study graduate student is working with Sam on producing a computer rendering of the latest designs of GROW so that they can be used in building accurate prototypes. Ebbin will also be working with us on building the wind testing tunnel to be used in the spring for data collecting and durability testing.

Our advisor, Deb Johnson, is in India right now part for business part for touring around. Deb is hosting a trip to India in January called "Design for Necessity" with Victoria Kirk and is there planning that as I type.

We are currently reviewing our patent application to be filed before the end of the year. I am reviewing the last bits of it tonight. With luck I will return the draft to our attorney tomorrow and it will be filed in the next week.

Also, we are looking at a number of Business Plan competitions to enter over the next 4 months. There are several that have been brought to our attention. We will enter as many as we can! Also our Stern mentor, Ellen Fish, has been sending a lot of grant and competition information our way and we are going to try to enter/create applications for as many of them as we qualify for.

It's also possible that we will bring Ryan Applegate on board as a Sustainable MBA consultant or team member on future grants or competitions. It will depend on what Andrew Sharp's availability and interest is down the line.

Off to read our patent,
-Teresita.

Post-Thanksgiving

2006-11-28T13:34:00.000-05:00

Sam and I spent Thanksgiving with our family on Cape Cod.

Our 88 year old grandmother, Elizabeth Cabot Cochran (we call her Takuma), joined us with her son (our uncle), Moncrieff Cochran, III, a professor of early childhood development at Cornell University. We had lively discussions and tried to stay dry and warm with a wild Nor'easter blowing and raining around the house. There were 10 others at dinner, including ourselves, our amazing parents, significant others, and close friends, and we were thankful for the opportunities we have been given to share our time and love with such inspiring and compassionate people.

I got back to Brooklyn yesterday and had a deadline to submit our Venture Concept to the NYU Business Plan Competition by 3pm Monday the 27th (yesterday). We got it in on time, but it is not at all as complete and well-written as we would have hoped.

Unfortunately, I left all my wise and pertinent notes from Andrew Sharp at the Lower East Side Girls Club (LESGC) last Tuesday before I left town, and had to pull information from my brain to get the 2-pg document started. I was able to get the notes faxed to me the Sunday before it was due, thanks to Lyn Pentecost, the director of the LESGC, who went in to work on Sunday especially to salvage my notes. Sam and I sprinted through writing the document, leaving out a lot of really great information that Andrew provided us with because we were far behind. It did get in on time, however, and with any luck the reviewers will understand what our concept is and want to hear more about it. We'll let you know if we make it to the next round.

I have been reviewing the meager postings of our progress over the past year and there are *many* details that have been left out.

Most glaringly left out was the trip that we made to the wind element manufacturers in Norfolk, VA. We cannot be specific about who they are and what they manufacture as it would jeapordize our patent application. I will be general about it, but wanted to make sure that our trip there was mentioned.

After emailing back and forth with the Head Engineer of the wind element company, we scheduled a date and time for our team to come down to Virginia and meet with their engineers and researchers. We emailed a list of questions about how their product is manufactured and how it is best used the month before we went down to their company.

On Sunday, October 16th, 2006, Sam, Jamie Allen and I drove from Brooklyn, NY to Norfolk, VA and stayed that night at a motel about 15 mins away from the manufacturing plant. We met with Jeff, the Head Engineer, the next morning, Monday at 10am and prepared a 20 minute presentation about GROW to give to both him and the Head of R & D.

When we arrived, we discovered that their company was much smaller than we anticipated and they were very laid back. The Head Engineer, Jeff, sat down with us and told us the history of their company, then showed us a lot of demonstration boxes that highlit various traits about their different lines of products.

He then gave us a very in depth and thorough tutorial answering all of the questions that we asked in our preliminary emails to him. We took lots of notes and then gave our presentation. Jeff and the Head of R & D discussed our product with us and then gave us a tour of their facilities and showing us some of the other products they had invented prior to the element that we are using for our wind generator.

We were invited out to lunch with the entire office including the President of the company! We ate lunch with 4 of their team and the 3 of us and got to ask about the family who founded and still runs the business. Very personable and very generous people! They gave us a lot of their time and attention, and after about 4.5 hours with them, we headed back to NYC. It was a very informative and successful trip.

Another bit of news since our November 7th posting...we finally have a new Pratt work-study student!
His name is Ebbin Martin and he's a grad student in Industrial Design. He has a strong background with metal fabrication and SolidWorks. We have met with him a few times and are excited to get him working on building the wind element testing set-up that will put Avani Patel's (NYU intern) testing program to use. We will continue to post on their progress.

We are constantly looking for more grants, and have come across some competitions that we may enter as well. (One in Texas for $50K, one from Rolex for $100K). We also entered a design for a contest over at D3O, but have not been able to find out about their sustainability history. Deb is applying for a grant that is being sent in at the end of the month, so we are helping her with that as much as we can.

We are also working on creating a robust website that can be a little more informative about what GROW is and what we do. Currently there is a placeholder image there and a link to our email address on gmail.
Click here to see it.

Also, we have been approached by one of Sam's friends and former classmates, Jeanie Cho from DesignCan who also works for Core77, about putting together a narrative about our mission as SMIT with a focus on GROW, for a special section highlighting new companies. We're working on our website before we complete that so we can have an actual URL to send them to with more information.

Lastly, we are continually working on the design of the ivy and are always brainstorming other product ideas.

That's pretty much all I can think of right now.
More in December.

-Sita & Sam.

NCIIA, prototyping, patent, NYU and LESGC

2006-11-07T17:17:00.000-05:00

Hello, friends...
We are already at November 7th of 2006 and there is a lot going on. To be efficient I will do this list style to ensure that everything gets mentioned:

- We received a $14,700 grant from NCIIA on July 31st, 2006 and received the check last week to buy prototyping materials.

- We have a final draft of a provisional patent to file for our combination solar and wind apparatus for GROW from our attorneys at K&LNG.

- We are competing for a $100,000 Social Venture Business Plan Award with a mentor from Stern Business school, Ellen Fish, and a current 2nd year MBA student, Andrew Sharp, whose focus and expertise is in finance.

- We are working with our engineer, Jamie Allen, and an intern from ITP at NYU, Avani Patel, to build a data collection and data logging mechanism for GROW using an Arduino USB board (Arduino is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple i/o board and a development environment that implements the Processing/Wiring language) connected by USB to a datalogging program on a PC.

- We have been working with the Lower East Side Girls Club (LESGC) to create a sustainable design after-school program to begin Nov. 14th, 2006 and be taught every Tuesday evening until the end of December 2006 (until winter vacation). The program would bring real-world designers who work in "green" design fields to the girls, and also bring the girls to designers' offices and to places that were designed to be "green."

- We are putting posters up for work-study students from Pratt to work with us on prototyping...mainly the metal-working, computer rendering, and modelmaking side of things.

- We are constantly looking for grants to apply for...have been a little slacking on this because of the various things that are going on simultaneously right now.

That's about it for now.

More soon,
-Sita & Sam.

july update

2006-07-24T15:23:00.000-04:00

hello folks,
it's monday, july 24th, 2006 and a lot has happened since our last post on april 26th, 2006. we have been in active search for engineers to work on GROW and have been given a lot of contacts' names. we are going to meet with John Foster this coming sunday up in saugerties, ny at his cohousing community to talk about the possibility of him being an advisor on our project. we'll update again after we meet with him.

Grant-writing fury

2006-04-26T03:25:00.000-04:00

First off...today is Sam's 24th Birthday, so...
HAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPY BIRTHDAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, now that we've gotten that off our chests...an update.

We are ferociuosly writing grants right now. It's consuming our lives. The first one is due May 12th and is for $20,000 from the NCIIA ( http://www.nciia.org ) The other is from NYSERDA due on May 23rd and is for $40,000. We clearly would like to get them both. mostly they will pay for our prototyping and patent process so that we can get the ball rolling.

Anyway, the prototyping that we were doing with Jamie Allen, our electrical engineer, has come to a slow stop because of funding. We are doing what we can with the money we have but are hoping that a surge from the two grants will speed the process up exponentially.

Other than that, we have been in communication with a company that we are very excited to have found called DayStar Technology. We had a conference call with the Senior Business Consultant there, Dave Buemi, today and were able to gleen a lot of information about their product line and our possible compatibility with thier "LightFoil" line. ( http://www.daystartech.com/lightfoil.cfm ) This particular product is very light and has a high efficiency rate per gram, so it seems like a good match for us as of now. We are hoping to meet with Dave when he comes to NYC next week.

We have also re-connected with the wind element company after a few months hiatus. We spoke with our contact, Jeff, there last winter and he gave us extensive information about their product which led us to purchase and experiment with it. We have had some small successes with it and ar eexcited for further testing and prospects.

There is more, but it will have to wait for another time.
All the best,
-Teresita Cochran, SMIT co-founder.

office: 718-399-4452

March Madness @ SMIT 2006

2006-03-20T14:04:00.000-05:00

So, we're all together again. Teresita was away for half of Feb and half of March in Brasil and Mexico and is now back in Brooklyn, NY working on the patent pursuit aspect of the Solar/Wind Hybrid Ivy project.

Things here in the Basement in Brooklyn are going well...we have been busily applying for grants and pursuing our patent on the connection between the photovoltaics and the wind generators. We have an awesome patent attorney, Kelly Talcott from K&LNG here in NYC who has a background in electrical engineering. We are working on the patent abstract, technical drawings and preliminary narrative for our provisional patent application with Kelly.

More news later...
-Sita and Sam

End of the year...2005

2005-12-12T18:16:00.000-05:00

So, this will be an update of the whole winter...even though I know that it is nearly 2006. We're a little behind!

To catch up to where we are now...we have had to slow down a bit over the past months. Winter is slower in the incubator since it is cold in the office, and all of the campus is snow covered and quiet. It requires us to brew pots of tea to warm our hands over and jump up and down every once in a while to get the blood flowing and to keep ourselves amused.

But the news is that we sent in our first grant in the requested amount of $20,000 to the NCIIA with the never-ending help of Pratt grantwriter, Diane Carillo.

We have also met a few times with Jamie Allen, our electrical engineer, and he has helped us put together a capture circuit for the wind element of GROW to see how much energy can be generated by our device. We have had some promising results in as much as we have been able to get a LED to illuminate with very light movements on the device.

We have been interviewing different patent attorneys to see who will be best for us to work with. Most attorneys in NYC are over $500 for this type of work, so we'll see if we can afford any of them! We'll keep you up to date on that front as it unfolds.

We are so happy to be in the incubator space at Pratt and look forward to building GROW into a working device in the next 2 years!

-Sita & Sam

First Blog Entry

2005-11-08T01:24:00.000-05:00

Samuel Cabot Cochran and Teresita Cochran here. We are the brother/sister team that makes up SMIT, or Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology, which is a sustainable product design company.

We have been fortunate enough to receive a year of working out of the Pratt Design Incubator space at Pratt Institute and are currently in the process of prototyping our first product: GROW. GROW is a combination solar and wind energy creation device that is modular and attaches to the side of a building to produce readily available electricity. Currently we are in the design, patenting, prototyping and testing phases.

This blog will be where our progress is logged as a diary of sorts. Feel free to check-in on us over the next year.

- Sam & Sita.