Dubai World Central ~ Emergent Aerotropolis!

Check out promo video for Dubai World Central, a ginormous master-planned and emergent aerotropolis and translogistics center!

African Tech Hubs ~ Mapping Creative Hotspots...

WhiteAfrican spotlights map of African Tech Hubs...

Aberdeen ~ UK Center for Subsea Engineering...

Fascinating to read NYTimes piece by Stanley Reed on Aberdeen, With a Foot on the Seafloor about a Scottish city that's blossomed into offshore industry boom town...

"Since the early 1970s, when oil was discovered in the British North Sea, Aberdeen has evolved from a fishing town, to an oil boom town, to the world’s center of innovation and execution for the technology that makes the modern offshore energy industry possible. “Scotland has been the home of subsea engineering,” Mr. Blake, a Scot, said in a conference room in Chevron’s European headquarters on a hilltop overlooking this city and its many dark granite buildings. “The expertise generated by the North Sea continually influences undersea work across the globe.” That expertise, with a resurgence of investment in natural gas and oil fields in and near the North Sea, means that Aberdeen, with 468,000 people in the city and surrounding area, has been able to nearly escape the economic doldrums that have plagued most of Britain and Europe. Aside from central London, Aberdeen is the wealthiest place in Britain..."

See also sister-city Stavanger in Norway!

LabCentral ~ Shared Bio-Bench Venture Space

Excellent to see MIT-related LabCentral open!

"LabCentral supports creation of innovative startup biotechnology companies by providing a world-class environment for entrepreneurs, and a fully functional life sciences laboratory within the Kendall Square innovation hub."

Grand Central @ 100 ~ Stunning Station Inspires

This February marks 100 years since inauguration of Grand Central railway station in Manhattan, NYC. The BBC just published British historian David Cannadine's homage A Point of View: Grand Central, the world's loveliest station...

"...an extraordinary amalgam of technological sophistication and architectural wonder. [...] It was -- and still is -- located at the very epicentre of midtown Manhattan on 42nd Street and Park Avenue [...] At the time of its construction, Grand Central was acclaimed as an engineering marvel. In the subterranean depths of Manhattan, a huge space was carved out, where trains could be boarded from platforms at two different levels, which were approached by gently sloping ramps rather than inconvenient stairs [...] Above ground there arose a spectacular beaux arts creation, all marble and chandeliers and sculpture and glass, the centrepiece of which was a huge and lofty passenger concourse, which drew the eyes of awe-struck passengers heavenwards, where they could marvel at a vast, barrelled ceiling, painted blue and decorated with the signs of the zodiac."

Read the rest. Cannadine also comments on the first boom and then bust of railways, including the destructive consequences on stations like rival-sister Penn Station. And here Sam Roberts excerpts from his book Grand Central in NYTimes 100 Years of Grandeur...

"When Grand Central was finally finished, the only thing lacking was adjectives. The Times produced a special section of the newspaper and hailed the terminal as “a monument, a civic center, or, if one will, a city.” “Without exception,” the newspaper said, “it is not only the greatest station in the United States, but the greatest station, of any type, in the world.” A full century later, the journalist and novelist Tom Wolfewould write: “Every big city had a railroad station with grand -- to the point of glorious -- classical architecture -- dazzled and intimidated, the great architects of Greece and Rome would have averted their eyes -- featuring every sort of dome, soaring ceiling, king-size column, royal cornice, lordly echo -- thanks to the immense volume of the spaces -- and the miles of marble, marble, marble -- but the grandest, most glorious of all, by far, was Grand Central Station.”

Timelapse Jets ~ Compressing Airport Landings!

Thanks to Michael Zhang at PetaPixel for spotting fascinating views of jets approaching San Diego International by Cy Kuckenbaker... And another of jets approaching London Heathrow...

MIT PWNs SXSW ~ We Might As Well NXNE;-)

See here three MIT Media Lab-related teams own half of the SXSW Accelerate awards. We might as well run the true NXNE confab here in Boston instead of flying to Austin...

Fertile Turf ~ South Boston's Innovation District...

Very nice Globe piece by Michael Farrell spotlighting how many key High-tech firms find fertile turf in South Boston...

"Two years after Mayor Thomas M. Menino branded a swath of the South Boston Waterfront as the Innovation District -- a bid to lure big Web companies and start-ups alike -- a healthy crop of technology companies is moving in. Office rents are low, at least for Boston, and the neighborhood is catching on; any company looking for space in the city is looking there, real estate brokers say. As Menino mentioned in his State of the City address last week, 100 companies and 3,000 jobs have come in, bringing a laptop-toting crowd to an area long known for its gritty working seaport and artist studios. [...] The Innovation District umbrella covers a disparate collection of smaller neighborhoods and development clusters, including Fort Point, which is a dense section of industrial buildings developed in the 1830s, parts of the Financial and Leather districts, Channel Center, Fan Pier, and Liberty Wharf. Within that urban landscape -- home to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Marine Industrial Park, and the Bank of America Pavilion, as well as numerous vast parking lots -- there are plans to add more than one million square feet of new construction."

Fantastic boomzone! Also check out my posts on Fraunhofer CSE moving in, my helping kickoff the Greentown Labs incubation space, and my visit to Ginkgo BioWorks, and our MIT classes on Living Labs and Urban Ventures.

NFC Cluster ~ RF ID & Payments Boston Hub...

Very interesting to see what friend and colleague Damien Balsan has been up to with his NFC Cluster initiative...

"...a cluster of Boston-area groups and individuals that support the development, adoption and commercial success of Near Field Communication (NFC). The NFC Cluster Boston hosts educational programs, workshops, competitions, and exhibits. Our goal is to stimulate Innovation through the rapid development of NFC Technology in most smartphones and other electronic devices. We welcome the participation of anyone looking to apply NFC to their industry, business, application or research."

Congo Harborage ~ Potential African Hong Kong!

I'm hugely keen on both current and emerging African hotspots and hubports. Places such as Namibia's Walvis Bay, Nigeria's Lagos, Ghana's portcities, Liberia's Monrovia, Sierra Leone's Freetown, Morocco's Ceuta & Melilla, Eritrea's inland Asmara, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mo'bique, and most recently Cabinda. Looking more closely at Cabinda enhanced my interest in the greater-Congo region and most especially the high-potential harborage at the Congo River mouth embracing the Bas-Congo province seaports of Matadi, Boma, Banana, and Angola's Soyo... Beyond this cross-Congo River bridge at Matadi... ... there's not much heavy infrastructure currently built. From this flight you can get a sense for the landscape and situation... Perhaps the most compelling case for the Congolese seaports is made by none other than supercarrier Maersk and their dredging partnership with CVM (Congolaise des Voies Maritimes) to deepen the Congo River for larger vessels to access Boma and Matadi... Just upstream from these seaports are these amazing rapids......and the prospective Grand Inga Dam, a 40 Gigawatt goliath! If you combine the various factors -- gas & oil discoveries, natural resource export, hydropower aplenty, and more -- this underappreciated Congo harborage zone could be a rivermouth freeport conurbation to rival Hong Kong or Shanghai!

Techub Israel ~ BBC on Startup Nation Factors

BBC's Katia Moskvitch on Israel High-Tech Hub...

"Israel is a world leader in terms of research and development spending as a percentage of the economy; it's top in both the number of start-ups and engineers as a proportion of the population; and it's first in per capita venture capital investment. Not bad for a country of some eight million people -- fewer than, say, Moscow or New York. [...] there is a whole blend of factors responsible for turning Israel into a start-up miracle. [...] But there is more to this start-up scene than certain aspects of Israeli culture -- the lack of hierarchy, a constant drive for individualism, regular risk taking. The government played a key role in the rapid rise of this start-up nation."

The Hub ~ Epicenter of Innovation and Universe

I'm sitting in this Hoffman talk listening to people going on about how things happen in "the Valley" -- meaning Silicon Valley, SF Bay Area, California, USA. Just "The Valley". What do we call things coming out of the Boston-metro area? This used to be Route 128 and the Massachusetts Miracle, and then for a horrific nanosecond, the dot.Commonwealth, but no compelling moniker seems to have stuck. But why do we actually need to reinvent this?

We have been and simply are "The Hub" -- the epicenter of invention, venturing, innovation, and the Universe!-)

Djibouti as Dubai or Singapore?

Nice Economist article entitled St Tropez in the Horn? A tiny country makes the best of a bad neighbourhood spotlighting Djibouti, a former French colony and its prospects. With some wise governance and good management, concentration on trade and import-export, and a bit of investment (and a gigaproject or two), this nation should thrive much like Dubai & Singapore. And, by the way, Djibouti is only "tiny" in comparison to the Sudan (the size of Western Europe) and all of Africa (almost equal in size to North & South America combined). Djibouti is about the size of Massachusetts or El Salvador.