Horseshoe Falls...

 

From the Canadian side of the Niagara River.

Appointed to search committee...

I was just appointed to the committee that will search for a new Vice Provost for Information Technology at Penn State. First meeting is on 29 March. This Vice Provost is one of three. The others are the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Vice Provost for Educational Equity. These Vice Provost positions organizationally are under the Executive Vice President and Provost.

Should be interesting, or at least I will have good meals.

Three retired racing greyhounds for adoption...

Three of the eight racing greyhounds that arrived today at PETCO in State College, Pennsylvania. They are up for adoptiopn. See Nittanygreyounds.com for more information.

I am writing a prospectus as I prepare to fly to San Juan...A few other chickens came home to roost, too...

I am writing with Rose Baker a prospectus for potential partners and underwriters for the Penn State Idea Futures Market. Off to Puerto Rico at about 1:00 pm today.

Rose Baker and I had three invitations arrive last night:

• Human Resource Planning Society (HRPS), Tucson, Arizona--We are invited on 23 April to make a presentation about information markets at the HRPS "Thought Leaders" breakfast. This is a session that occurs prior to the HRPS conference. The audience is about 70 "Thought leaders", HRPS corporate sponsors, and other selected guests. Here is a precis of our talk. The conference plan and venue look great!
• Patient-Focused Care Symposium , Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania--We will present a lecture about applications of information markets in health care on 23 June at Magee Women's Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The symposium is sponsored by the AMD3 Education and Research Foundation and The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. A summary of our lecture:

  Title:
  Potential Uses Of Economic Markets For Aggregating And Diffusing Information About Patient-Focused Care
  
  Abstract:
  Information markets are stock markets—not stock markets for commodities and securities, but stock markets for ideas. In an information market, contracts about ideas are bought and sold. An example of a contract: “The US will capture Osama Bin Laden while George Bush still is President.” Or, “Google will turn over search data to the US government.” Another example: “Sales revenues for the new printer model will total $350 million by 1 August 2006.” Buyers and sellers arrive at a market price between $0.00 and $1.00 for a contract, with the price reflecting the probability that the idea eventually will occur. The market price can change continuously, reflecting changing opinions about the idea.
  
  Information markets have performed spectacularly in, for example, predicting the outcomes of political elections, sales revenues for Hewlett Packard, delays in Siemens Austria software development projects, and drugs that Eli Lilly brings to market. Information markets are applied in such industries as consumer appliances, display technologies, steel making, advertising, packaging, and media. According to James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, “Market predictions often outperform those of even the best-informed expert.”
  
  After a brief review of market concepts, provided in this presentation is a demonstration of information markets that currently are active. These demonstrations provide examples of market concepts in operation, and they establish a basis for understanding the practice for using information markets in decision-making. Current applications of information markets in health care and policy are reviewed. Potential applications of information markets in policy and planning of patient-focused care are considered.

• Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology: A Symposium of Faculty Excellence, Penn State--This one is close to home. We will present a session on Wikis in Instruction. A summary of our session:

  The Wikipedia defines a wiki as "a type of website that allows users to easily add and edit content and is especially suited for collaborative writing" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki). A wiki enables documents to be written collectively in a very simple markup using a web browser. A single page in a wiki is referred to as a "wiki page", while the entire body of pages, which are usually highly interconnected via hyperlinks, is "the wiki," in effect, a very simple, easier-to-use database.
  A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. Generally, there is no review before wiki modifications are accepted. Most wikis are open to the general public without the need to register any user account. Many wiki page edits can be made in real-time, and appear almost instantaneously online.
  At the time this presentation was proposed, Penn State did not provide wiki technologies for student use through ANGEL or as general web tools available through personal web space. We applied free wiki technologies available from PBwiki.com ("Peanut Butter wiki" through which a user can "make a free, password-protected wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich.") to provide a wiki for our students and external collaborators to plan the structure of a book about information markets. This book is one of the products of this Spring Semester 2006 course.
  We demonstrate in our presentation the design, use, and editing of our wiki at http://infomarkets.pbwiki.com/. We also discuss the procedures for integrating our wiki into our ANGEL course web site.

Busy, as always!

Off to Puerto Rico on Saturday...

We are off to Puerto Rico on Saturday. My daughter, Ann, and her two friends, Emily and Magdalena, are traveling, too. We stay until Friday, 10 March. Flying from Newark, New Jersey, at 10:00 pm on Saturday night (!). Newark is about five hours driving from here in State College, Pennsylvania.

 

We are staying for a brief time in San Juan, the capital. Then, we are off in a rented car to the Casa Cubuy Ecolodge in northeastern Puerto Rico. Casa Cubuy is perched on a hill above a river with many waterfalls. A short uphill trek from the house on a paved road brings you to the El Yunque National Forest. The El Yunque is a cool, mountainous, semi tropical rain forest. The abundant rainfall is shed down the mountain through rocky rivers creating many cascades of waterfalls and pools. At the higher elevations the waters are rumored to be clean enough to drink and delightful to swim in. The forest hosts a number of unique plant and animal species such as the endangered Puerto Rican Parrot and the tiny coquis (indigenous tree frogs) that serenade the evening hours.

Then, we stay at the Ceiba Country Inn, a small private inn nestled in the quiet foothills of the Luquillo Mountains of northeastern Puerto Rico. Perched on a ridge crossing a valley, it offers commanding views out to Culebra Island and inland to the jungles of El Yunque. It is only 15 minutes from the fishing village of Fajardo.

 

The last day or so we will return to San Juan and back to the mainland.