Next week, I’m planning to visit my nieces and nephew in New York City.  I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.  For those not familiar with distances between U.S. cities there are about 3000 miles (4,800 km) between NYC and S.F.  I plan to fly there.  Previously, I worked out all of my travel arrangements except for getting from my home to San Francisco Airport.  I left that task for today.

My main goal was to find a low cost, low impact on the environment, high probability way of getting to the airport on time.  Although the politicians claimed credit for interconnecting various public transportation systems between where I live and the airport the reality is a bit different from the claims and explains why people in the area take more expensive less environmentally friendly ways to the airport.  Below I list the options I discovered:

Only a small bit today: A colleague of mine, Joy Marchionni, recently started the blog Cosumptuous.  I've always enjoyed Joy's facebook notes, which made me aware of the situation in Zimbabwe, and I'm very excited that she's started this blog!

Rob Dorfman is a consultant, who works with executives to turn strategic plans into executable road maps.  At UCSCU-Extension, he teaches the class “Managing Projects and Young Companies.” Rob held the roles of Director, Strategic Initiatives, Director, Network Operations Center, and Director, Sustaining Engineering.  Rob has a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Stanford University..  His invaluable volunteer work for Awareness to Action is as Strategic Advisor and Volunteer Coordinator.  In his role as Strategic Advisor, he has taught us to traverse the levels of abstraction in order to get from point A to point Z.

Reinhold Wagnleitner and Tom McDermott will give two formal presentations at San Jose State University and also collaborate on other projects between SJSU, the University of Salzburg, and the Salzburg Global Seminar.

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I'd like to share a few quick A2A updates with you this week:

• In February, we will start working with a group of students at the Paris-Lodron University in Salzburg, Austria.  That means, among many other things, a German version of the site coming soon!
• Our new volunteer coordinator, Rob Dorfman, is making it easier than ever to start volunteering for A2A, so send him an email at rob.dorfman@gmail.com if you'd like to work with us.
  
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The reason I took this hike to take this picture was because, scribbled on a beam in black sharpie, were the words "Free Tibet."  These two words made me wonder: is that the best we can do?

We are proud to launch a micro-grant program designed to help people with big ideas jump into the world of global citizenship and social entrepreneurship....

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