Longfellow Bridge Disruptions

Listen my children and you shall hear 

of the three year project that is now near.

T'was the 16^th of May in 2013 

when KSA leaders helped MassDOT come clean.

A bridge with pedestrians, bicyclists, autos and trains

The innovation capitol of the world, a creative disruptor in its own right, got confirmation of a different kind of disruption coming into our ecosystem soon. Yesterday the Kendall Square Association hosted the design-build team from MassDOT. They shared with the community the range and duration of the Longfellow Bridge Closure over the next three years and the impact it will have on commuters and employees. What was less clear was the potential impact it will have on visitors and our business community as a whole.

 

Thanks go out to Sara Spaulding and Microsoft for providing the meeting space and to Alexandra, Janneke and the transportation committee of the KSA for arranging an informative meeting that merits more followup.

Kudos to MassDOT for continually taking the time to vet the project and gain community input. You can find the information going back to 2010 here but check out their excellent slide deck and a fabulous animated video (we're all visual types at Kendall Press) that helped attendees understand the magnitude of the work that will be done to restore and improve the Longfellow Bridge connecting Kendall Square to Boston. The results of which will deliver improved transportation for all involved –from bicyclists (a growing trademark of the Kendall Square area) to pedestrians and automobiles.

We also want to absolutely recognize MassDOT for their excellent and correct use of QR codes on their printed handouts. These folks got it right. Here's the website listing as it was printed in our handouts http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/charlesriverbridges/LongfellowBridge.aspx

 

The chances of typing it all correctly aren't good – but this QR code brings you right to the page. What a great enabler for the many mobile device users around the square.

Feel free to add your comments and questions here and stay tuned for updates on some questions that were raised but not yet fully answered:

• Who will be the one designated point of contact for project and jurisdictional issues?
• Will the DOT produce a revised set of travel time expectations for (motorists- particularly from Cambridge to the airport)
• With the Red Line already at MAX during rush hour, how will additional passengers be handled?
• How will season ticket holders for Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics get the word as North Station commuter traffic and game days take their toll?

There are six traffic stages that are needed to complete this project and you can see a great animated video of the project here.

There are going to be 25 weekends between July 2013 and Sept 2016 that there will be major disruptions but how about the day the day business travel needs?

 Public outreach is going to be critical – particularly in a community that spans multiple generations in the work force and is a destination city for Innovation. Paper, pixels, print and real time web communications will be one key to getting the word out; reaching out to the many constituencies in their individual preferred modes of communication and transportation.

We need our MassDOT and love our MBTA Red Line for moving large numbers of people timely and reliably. This is substantial business communications task. Stay tuned.

Keith

Wordless Wednesday - be relax Signs and Posters

be relax Wordless Wednesday photo by Keith Spiro

Wordless Wednesdays - direct mail stacked to ship

Boston's Bio SuperCluster part 1: The Boston Foundation Report

On March 26, 2013, The Boston Foundation held a major public event to mark the release of their new printed report; Understanding Boston, "Life Sciences Innovation as a Catalyst for Economic Development." Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick was there to make opening remarks as the Commonwealth reached the halfway point of a ten year, one billion dollar investment in this sector. 

A panel of distinguished stakeholders participated in a discussion and Q & A. 

Why is this report and this bio/pharma sector important to all businesses in Massachusetts?

Kendall PRess takes a close look at how business communications is changing and how the business, government, and education partnerships leverage paperNpixels^TM  to communicate their messages and engender public and private sector support for these long term investments.

Just after the release of this report, Xconomy held a standing room only forum called Boston Biotech Seizes the Momentum and that same day, the Governor cut the ribbon at new shared lab space in Cambridge, just up the street from Biogen Idec, host of the Xconomy forum.

The report was heralded through the media, with an emailRSVP to the public event and a complete sellout as media picked up on the report findings and the presence of the Governor to make some remarks. The document itself is a printed 56 page saddle stitched booklet of which most all attendees took home a copy. There was also a webcast and now a downloadable PDFfrom their website.

We gleaned much of the information that follows from The Boston Foundation report which was prepared by the Dukakis center for Urban and Regional policy at Northeastern University. The  authors were Barry Bluestone and Alan Clayton-Matthews.

Massachusetts Life Sciences employment numbers outperform the US by a margin of 2:1. This sector has seen a 27.3% increase in jobs between 2001-2011 and the programs are just starting to pick up traction. The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center invested or committed $300 million dollars in state funds which they have successfully leveraged more than $1billion in 3^rd party investments by private businesses, fed and foundations.

In 2008, Governor Deval Patrick and the Legislature passed the 10-year, $1 billion Massachusetts Life Sciences Initiative and charged the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center with overseeing it.

The goal? To make the Bay State home to the most successful life sciences cluster in the world: one that attracts investment dollars, creates well-paying jobs and functions as an engine of innovation that will propel the Commonwealth into a prosperous and productive future. Here are some of the strong results just halfway through the ten year project.

The Center directly invested or committed more than $300 Million in state funds and leveraged more than $1 billion in 3^rd party investments by private businesses, federal government and foundations. There is a New Growth Theory that states tech progress is at the epicenter of all growth and that innovation is even more important than capital, labor and resource inputs.

Innovation based growth is so powerful because it avoids the classic problem of diminishing returns in what Seth Godin calls "the race to the bottom." The first to create is the innovator, all that follows is manufacturing, repetition and cost reductions as margins contract and work flows to low cost labor centers.

Innovation is king. Innovation happens in clusters when word gets out, creatives are energized and synergy occurs across multiple sectors. Start-ups need bootstrapping and exit strategies.

In Bio, they often need larger organizations to buy their technology out and take it the next step.

Massachusetts is increasing the rate of innovation by encouraging more R&D in the Life Sciences and helping small firms in this supercluster convert basic research into marketable products and services.

Results of this initiative to date:

2500 jobs created

Average $105,00 salary

Generate more than $266 million in wages and salaries during the next 5 years with these workers paying more than $93 million in state personal income and sales taxes during that period

For every tax incentive dollar invested, $1.66 will be returned.

Boston area supercluster performance 2001-11:

Mass life sciences employment outperformed US by 2:1 27.3% vs. 11.9%

For the size of our population – Massachusetts wins hands down with 13, 300 Life Science jobs for every 1 million residents.

In the next installment we'll look at the five key components to this success and how Kendall Square and Boston have long been preparing for these opportunities that are now unfolding with increasing speed.  Xconomy's forum gathered CEO's from Bio/pharma and confirmed that Boston's Biotech sector has huge momentum. Our last installment will explore new startups, lab spaces and the buzz around Boston's Life Sciences where Innovation, density and many early stage startups create economic development and client engagements.

Keith

Art Can Change the World - a KSA third Thursday event

The Kendall Square Association's Third Thursday's are a monthly gathering after hours for networking and an opportunity to showcase a non-profit in Cambridge

This past month's event had us all at Voltage Café, courtesy of MIT and our KSA board member Sarah Gallop. Showcased was the very cool Community Art Center which provides for "at need" kids by focusing through art. 

Their organizational values are values we share: We believe in the power of young people, we believe in the power of artistic expression, we believe in taking care of ourselves and each other and we believe in creating positive change in our neighborhood and beyond. 

Founded in 1932, the Community Art Center is a neighborhood institution committed to cultivate an engaged community of youth whose powerful artistic voices transform their lives, their neighborhoods, and their worlds. They provide "creative, challenging learning opportunities to low-income, high-needs youth in the context of a family-like environment with intensive social and emotional supports including academic help, mental health and transportation services and up to three full meals a day." 

At our Third Thursday event, they shared examples from their artistic vision  and showed off a collection of Videos and films they made over the past year.  Nurturing, communicating, collaborating - all good things for all of us to think about in business communications.

They also were excited to announce the next installment of their not to be missed film festival. DIYDS.

May 18, 2013

7 pm

Do It Your Damn Self (DIYDS)

At Microsoft's NERD Center.

See below as Cambridge Art Center Executive Directory Eryn Johnson talks about their successful evening sharing their mission at KSA's Third Thursday event.

Keith

for the team at Kendall PRess

PAX East Boston; let the Games Begin!

Last night, we attended the @MassTLC 4^th annual Made in MA party 2013 that kicks off PAX East. The house was packed with more than 1200 guests packed into three full floors of the NERD center in Cambridge.

To say it was standing room only would have been an understatement. To say that there were enough candidates to fill all the open software engineering positions in Kendall Square right now would miss the key reason to assemble.

From barely-teens to golden agers, the common ground was gamers and gaming. MassTLC welcomed all exhibitors for PAX East and game developers to celebrate the local Massachusetts gaming industry and all it has to offer. MA has become a leading gaming hub filled with an amazing community of game developers, gamers, investors, students and lovers of the gaming world.

With adaptive technology successes fueled by computers and high tech, I was particularly drawn to look at 7-128 software. These were family friendly computer games with an emphasis on blind and physically challenged gamers.

Looking across the crowded tables, all covered with cool looking table cloths,

I never saw so many pull up banners, stickers, postcards and buttons. Who said print was dying? Certainly not the 10 foot tall transformer.  He was kinda cool the way he strode up to a gaming booth and asked – "hey, so what have you got here.

PAX is mostly sold out but you do have a great opportunity to attend for free, the Boston Festival of INDIE GAMES, taking place September 14^th at MIT. Check them out.

We're happy to have been able to support a good number of new game launches and exhibitors in getting ready for this, the largest gaming event, on the east coast.

Decades ago there was DECworld and they had to bring two ships into the harbor to provide overnight space for the 3,000 attendees over two weeks. NOW, with the Boston Conference and Convention Center and many new hotels, the first Pax East was able to be held here in 2010 with 52,000 attendees, while 2011 drew upwards of 70,000 people. What will this year's numbers look like? We'll soon know. Meanwhile, in honor of PAX East 2013 and their exemplary deployment of the art of  paperNpixels , we have crafted a very special commemorative from bits and pieces of a package from SAPPI paper.

Because we can imagine a gorgeous coffee table microsite, a hand bound email blast, a dot for dot gloss varnish on a dull coasted PDF and the tactile experience of a triple stitched website..........

Let the games begin!

Keith

all photos ©KeithSpiroPhoto