So far, a great day here at the Cleantech Forum 2015. I'm seeing lots of great startups and committed corporates trying to connect the dots between old-school energy issues and new-school, software-driven solutions.
I've attached a few sketches of the problem spaces from the sessions for your commentary, and I look forward to reporting back with more tomorrow!
I keep coming back to the question of "how does nature handle IP?" The closest I can think of is our creation of APIs. Organisms don't walk around with their genetic code sort of displayed for everyone to see, what makes them unique. But there is massive and constant interaction between organisms and their environment, and exchange of information. I think APIs, in a way, are sort of an interesting way of thinking about that. You display enough information about your internal code that others can really interact [with it], and build upon it effectively, without giving away the whole farm—which probably wouldn't even be useful. The other organisms don't even need to know your entire code. That piece is interesting to me.
The creation of a kit—literally, as in the Maker world, or figuratively, as in the software world’s APIs and application frameworks—serves as a magnet to whatever industry offers it. Make: magazine’s Project Editor, Keith Sammons, offers why:
