Ten percent of sick days each year are faked. This does not seem like the best day to do so. -- ZW
MON, NOVEMBER 30
Fake It
Stay At Home Because You're Well Day
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Last year, Verizon became a green pioneer in the telecom world. It publicly pledged to purchase more energy-efficient telecom equipment and launched a pilot project to turn off idle computers and monitors. That may sound modest, but the savings in energy will be enough to power 88,000 homes for a year. Such initiatives will be a major topic of discussion at this annual symposium, especially since going green can help companies save a whole lot of that other kind of green. A recent study from Insight Research shows that if businesses embraced green telecom solutions, they would cut their power consumption costs by up to 30%. -- SS
MON, NOVEMBER 30
Improve
IEEE Globecom 2009
Honolulu
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Black Friday and Cyber Monday may steal the spotlight, but how about some love for the day before the really big day? Thanksgiving eve is the second-biggest sales day for many grocery chains; travel volume is high, although the Sunday after Thanksgiving has surpassed it as the year's busiest; and the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line racks up the second highest-number of calls (9,000 last year, versus 11,000 on Thanksgiving). Maybe we should call this economic bridesmaid Runner-up Wednesday. -- DL
WED, NOVEMBER 25
Be Thankful
The Day before Thanksgiving
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The Princess and the Frog is Disney's first traditionally animated feature film since 2004's Home on the Range, which eked out just $50 million at the domestic box-office; the first fairy tale we've heard of in which a princess (voiced by Dreamgirls' Anika Noni Rose) kisses a frog, then becomes one; and features a Disney cartoon's first black leading lady. Is this departure as risky as it sounds? "No," says Jeff Block, a box-office analyst with the movie-tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. "Disney pushed the envelope even further with Up, a kids' movie centered around an 80-year-old, and got its biggest hit since Finding Nemo." -- DM
wed, november 25
Watch
The Princess and the Frog
Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker
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For its 50th anniversary, the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design is going cross-disciplinary, inviting experts in fields as varied as architecture, technology, and global energy to delve into areas that you might not imagine to be typical design fodder, including entertainment, health, and transportation. They've been prepping for the meet by redesigning the way we think in all these fields. So, for instance, MIT Media Lab professor Bill Mitchell is heading up the "studio" on electric vehicles, "Reinventing the Automobile 2050." Drawing ideas from team members in various industries, they've come up with the stylish two-seater CityCar, a collapsible, stackable car designed to be deployed much like cycles in a bike-sharing program. Which is great, except that we hope we don't really have to wait until 2050. -- ACL
mon, november 23
Collaborate
ICSID World Design Congress Singapore 2009
Singapor
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When selecting a site for the WCD's 10th annual conference, accessibility was an obvious issue. Of the hundreds of convention centers in the U.S., "there are only about 14 exhibit halls where the meeting space and the show floor are on the same level," says WCD president Bill Schwaninger. So all credit to Jacksonville, which, he notes, also has a monorail system that gives disabled riders an 80% discount off its usual 50-cent-a-ride fare. "What they have done in this city," he says, "just makes sense." -- ZW
thu, november 19
Access
World Congress on Disabilities Expo
Jacksonville, Florida
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Firms spent $5.5 billion on firewalls, virus scanners, and biometric ID checkers last year, but one vital business asset remains woefully hackable: employees. "Humans are the weakest link in the security chain," says Sharon Conheady, director of the U.K.'s First Defense Information Security, who'll teach corporate geeks at this summit how to deflect "social engineering" swindles. These low-tech, highly effective scams take advantage of people's naturally trusting (read: gullible) behavior to access sensitive data. So a trickster might call an employee pretending to be an IT engineer and ask for passwords and user names, or befriend smokers outside a building and follow them to their offices. The take-home message? The paranoiacs (see November 6) are right: Never talk to strangers. -- TB
tue, november 17
Hack
Deepsec In-Depth Security Conference
Vienna, Austria
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There are more than 400,000 brownfields in the United States. (Brownfield, n., a property abandoned because of the presence of a contaminant.) That's nearly $2 trillion of underused or undervalued land. The investors, developers, and officials at Brownfields 2009 will discuss ways to revitalize these sites. Doing so can add a punch of green to both the environment and the economy. For example, with an EPA cleanup grant, the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana is building a new lab facility on a Shreveport brownfield. The $25 million project will eventually create 300 new jobs. -- SS
mon, november 16
Restore
Brownfields 2009
New Orleans
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"Four adjectives in search of a noun." That's how former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans once described Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the loose association of 21 countries around the Pacific Rim. Glancing at the agenda for this year's summit -- where Barack Obama will make his APEC debut -- it's easy to see why: There's a leaders' meeting (to set "the strategic direction of APEC"), an unveiling ceremony for a Berlin Wall installation ("to commemorate the founding of APEC," which also happened in 1989, though nowhere near the Berlin Wall), and a 20th anniversary symposium ("to reflect on the founding of APEC"). We'd pat APEC on the back for setting this up, but we're pretty sure they've got that covered. -- DM
sat, november 14
Pontificate
APEC Singapore 2009
Singapore
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Public officials seem to spend lots of time -- and public money -- jetting here and there, attending this conference or that, networking with one another. What good does it do? Quite a bit, says Mayor Ted Ellis of Bluffton, Indiana. A few years back, Ellis met Charles Penny, assistant city manager of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, at this National League of Cities convention. Rocky Mount had just recovered from a flood. Later, when Ellis found his own city facing a flood, he remembered Penny. "As a mayor, the first thing you really want to do is jump in and start picking up sticks, but I sat down and called Charles," Ellis said. "By taking his advice, we saved tens of thousands of dollars and better utilized our own resources and time." That's community. -- SS
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