Conference Room Reception on Flickr.

Dinner for 26 #FrontierLive on Flickr.

The Conch for this evening’s dinner. #FrontierLive on Flickr.

Not best evening for an event. #FrontierLive on Flickr.

How much do you know about the full life cycle of plastics? How much do you care?

Indeed, it is about time we had this conversation and at the second annual Plasticity 2013 forum, which kicks off today in Hong Kong, attendees will open the dialogue. By engaging industry experts, government officials, and even the madmen in the branding and marketing world, maybe we can all start to think big about the future of plastics.

Just think about your life. The smartphone on which you may be reading this column, the 3D glasses through which you may have seen Star Trek, and the waterproof boots that you wear on stormy days—they all use plastic. Even airplanes and cars are increasingly made from composite plastic materials.

Now think about your work. Most product prototyping relies on plastic because it is cheap. This is not just about 3D printers. To attain the look of stainless steel, one insider revealed, firms spray weighted plastic with chrome.

…. Read the rest HERE!

ibrahim

OMsignal’s video made me cry. As a recent new dad (for the second time) there are a lot of reasons and applications for wearable quantified self tech that seem clear. Imagine a maternity ward that does not have the mother constantly hooked up to so many wires to keep her and the baby’s vitals? That was enough for me to perk up and pay attention. 

Looks like the VC’s are too.

ibrahim, nYc. 

Recent news of CMS’ release of hospital charges has prompted discussion among woks, patients and healthcare administrators. Although the reality is, charges don’t tell us much.

Contractual prices, however, do tell a lot about the cost of care.

This is where things start to get interesting.

Is your hospital considering a patient-centered price transparency option? We think it’s an emerging best practice. How those prices are presented will matter too.

Steven Sonenreich, chief executive of Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, isn’t afraid of controversy. As the Miami Herald reported, this month he announced on a radio talk show that the hospital will start publishing what it charges insurers for procedures. “We will post our prices relative to Blue Cross, and Aetna, our contractual prices,” said Sonenreich, during an appearance on WLRN 91.3-FM. He challenged other hospitals to do the same.

A hospital competing on price? That’s virtually unheard of. And the impact is likely to be felt nationally.

{ Devin Leonard | Bloomberg Business Week }

-Nick

Last night I watched Inside Out - the documentary on HBO - about JR the social instigator, wall-tagger, interventionist or just plain “artist” who is literally changing the world using wheat pasted portraits and a silly idea: that people actually CAN change their world —- totally blew my mind last night.

Inside Out’s impact on post revolution Tunisia transforming a wall that used to have only the omnipresent image of the king into a cascade of images of regular people was true political, artistic, and cultural transformation. His interactions with Haitian artists who may never see his level of fame and money but who were every bit his intellectual equal was astonishing. JR also exposed the sadness and hope at the very fringe, the frontier, of America by bringing you into the home of a Native American family whose son had ended his own life. 

In each instance the Inside Out project created more discourse, shed more light, broke down barriers and inspired me to be better. 

Simple and crude and elegant; his insistence on listening and getting ordinary people to see themselves as extraordinary has resurfaced in me a yearning to be more committed than ever before to the basics: find, in every client and every engagement, the net positive benefit. Expose ways to push people to be their full selves. Uncover the tools to remind them of what they already know but have somehow forgotten. Bring back community and fellowship around an idea… a feeling. 

Above all, listen, you will be amazed at how much you need to learn. 

ibrahim

scottxwayne:

Meditation going mainstream? In Europe’s largest department store (Selfridges) on the UK’s busiest street (Oxford Street), the reintroduction of quiet space.

And they didn’t just stop at medical record data… “To study [how] hospitals’ track records…”

They also focus on right relationships: “…to discover conflicts of interest among their caregivers.”

Way to go Cleveland Clinic - that’s a patient centered mission!

How transparency has become part of @clevelandclinic’s mission | ow.ly/l89mR twitter.com/ClevelandClini…

— Cleveland Clinic (@ClevelandClinic)

May 17, 2013

-Nick