Mark K, Author at yCITIES

09Jan 2013 by Mark K No Comments

December Mini-Hack Recap

The December Mini-Hack (held 12/13/2012) featured a venture idea centered in the international travel industry. Our presenter's idea is to feed on travelers' love of language and offer a unique lodging/accommodation experience. Think hostel-cum-language-school. The Mini-Hack set out to discuss how such a business could be structured - who is the target market?, what is the revenue model?, where in Boston?, etc. We vetted a number of ideas, discussed risks, and came up with a number of great ideas to help the venture progress. The team assembled generated a list of operational steps to guide our presenter in navigating legal issues (like zoning and commercial real estate options) and building interest among the target market of international undergraduate students.

12Dec 2012 by Mark K No Comments

Entrepreneurship & Sustainability in the Christmas Tree Industry

General

Eliminate Waste - that is one of the key objectives associated with current sustainability thinking and teaching. Some organizations, like Terracycle, strive so far as to eliminate the idea of waste. Yet, whether in practice or in principle, the goal is to examine existing waste streams (outputs) and find ways to make them inputs into some other useful process. It may sound easy, but it’s not, which is why we do not yet have ways to reuse and recycle everything we throw away today. This week’s post was inspired by the reality TV show Shark Tank (Episode 409). [As a general rule, I dislike reality TV. But, I make an exception for Shark Tank simply because I love to hear the creative business ideas of regular Americans. I find many…

30Nov 2012 by Mark K No Comments

Greater Boston Meets TED

General

No, I don’t mean Mark Wahlberg’s talking teddy bear. (Though, we could make this a topic for a future blog post;-) This is a long awaited post for me. Two weeks ago, on November 17th & 18th, I attended a series of locally organized TED Talks. TEDxBeaconStreet featured more than 90 talks by innovators, teachers, scientists, businesspeople, thought-leaders, and others tied to Greater Boston. [I was holding off the blog entry until I could share this highlight reel with you.] At the two-day conference, I got a chance to listen to intriguing and inspiring presentations on topics ranging from music & food to science & technology, including one talk about flexible computer chips you can wear on your skin!! Of course, a favorite talk of mine was by given by…

12Nov 2012 by Mark K No Comments

Engagement with Enthusiasm

Mini-Hack

For the November Mini-Hack held last week, Youth CITIES was visited by the Events & Logistics Coordinator of the Cambridge Science Festival, Sung Kim. The Cambridge Science Festival (CSF) is a multifaceted event that offers STEM-related lectures, exhibitions, concerts, workshops, and more over a ten-day period at a variety of locations. CSF seeks to make science accessible, interactive, and fun by highlighting the impact of STEM in all our lives. Sung Kim posed the following problem to the students, teachers, and entrepreneurs present: How do we best engage the teenage (12-18) audience in STEM? Throughout the course of our brainstorming, one thing became quite evident – the teenagers who came to CIC to participate in the Mini-Hack needed no extra push or prodding from adults to be fully engaged in…