sit at the table

I had a friend send me this TED video on Why we have too few women leaders. It's SUCH an encouraging and empowering video to not just women but people who doubt their own capability and think they don't really have leadership capacity.

study break 2 - stockholm

I finally got some time to going back and watching some TED videos. Except this time, I didnt really get that much out of TED. Instead, there was an ad at the end of one of the TED videos for IBM.



It was talking about how there is so much pollution being caused by traffic jams that they felt they had to do something. So they set up cameras at the 19 main entrances of the city and started charging a congestion fee. This, also, was all voted by the people.

The result? hehe you have to watch it to find out but its pretty amazing what a couple of high tech cameras (which technology we already have) can do for the environment.

Stockholm actually has a couple of really interesting things that they do. Ive actually never really read much about the city or really had any interest IN learning about them. But then I found some pretty cool things about Stockholm:

• it's built on 14 islands aka "Venice of the North"
  
• they have a public transit system that's linked throughout the country and uses one ticket system for the entire transit system
• the subway system is also "the world's longest art gallery"
  
• was ranked most innovative European city in 2006
• "top ten honest cities", "greenest" and "most livable city" by Reader's digest
• they also have no heavy industries which probably helps with the green part
  

Man.. I'd love to live here. They're also the people behind the "piano stairs"



What about their healthcare?

• one of the top systems
  
• public system (98% = gov't funded) with some fees applied for physicians
• governed by 21 county councils where 90% of their responsibility is in health care
• travel costs to clinic/hospital are all reimbursed by the state
• maximum wait: 3 days for physician, 14 days for dietician, 10 days for specialists

One more place for me to travel!