http://www.companywekeep.net South Mountain, Employee Ownership and the Business of Community and Place Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:02:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I rode the boat from the Vineyard to Woods Hole a few days back to see the energy efficiency work we’re doing to Katharine and George Woodwell’s house.   George is the founder of the Woods Hole Research Center, where we are currently in the middle of construction of a major Deep ... http://www.companywekeep.net/tough-work-worthy-goal/ In 1980, when Hurricane Bob ripped through Martha’s Vineyard, it tore down a big hickory tree alongside Humphrey’s Bakery in West Tisbury.  We took the butt log, hauled it to our yard, and milled it into planks.  Until a few months ago they sat on stickers somewhere deep in our ... http://www.companywekeep.net/shop-class-deep-energy/ I was meeting with some clients with whom we’ve had a long, ongoing relationship (designed and built their house, then an addition and a barn/garage, maintained both through the years) to review a just-completed inspection report.  The house is 20 years old so we had produced a document outlining the ... http://www.companywekeep.net/making-the-leap/ I love to buy books and read books.  I don’t often use the library.  I don’t own a Kindle.  I buy books.  But I’ve noticed that I end up reading only about two thirds of the books I buy.  Not a good percentage.  Each of those I don’t read wastes ... http://www.companywekeep.net/buying-books/ While the eyes of the world focus on Copenhagen, here at home on Martha’s Vineyard wind energy has been receiving a mighty dose of attention - more than ever before.  Are we making progress?  Maybe some. You be the judge. Wind has been in the local news in four distinctly different ... http://www.companywekeep.net/windtrigue-on-the-vineyard/ I’m still excited about the budding alliance between the United Steelworkers (USW) and the Mondragon Cooperatives – and the general awakening consciousness about worker co-operatives and co-operative business in general that I wrote about last month. And there’s more. Rodney North of Equal Exchange (the Massachusetts-based worker owned co op fair trade ... http://www.companywekeep.net/co-ops-on-the-rise/ My friend David Smathers of the TeamWorks Cooperative Network in California writes: “The Mondragon cooperatives and the United Steelworkers have announced an historic partnership through which they will buy or start manufacturing businesses in the U.S. and Canada that will combine Mondragon's democratic structure of ownership and governance with collective bargaining. It ... http://www.companywekeep.net/an-historic-alliance/ In the autumn issue of Strategy + Business Magazine, editor Art Kleiner interviews Tim Brown, CEO of the legendary design firm IDEO.  Kleiner tells about IDEO’s first great protoype, which  was created when the company consisted of eight scruffy designers crowded together in an upstairs studio on University Avenue in ... http://www.companywekeep.net/design-thinking/ Awhile ago I gave up on doom and gloom.  I’ve learned enough to know the problems, and I tired of reading 250 pages of meticulously researched how-bad-it-is-and-how-bad-it's-gonna-get followed by 25 pages of generalities about the solutions.  But I broke my rule when I saw David Orr’s new book, Down to ... http://www.companywekeep.net/orr-brand-to-save-our-civilization/ I have about half a dozen posts half done and about half as much time as I wish, so for the moment I'm just going to tell a short story paraphrased from Tim Brown's new book Design Thinking. But coming soon there will be more about that book (and ... http://www.companywekeep.net/cool-biz/