Now knowing that blood is bought and sold, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that the vast majority of blood donations are purchased by hospitals. Here in San Francisco, my pint of donated blood commands a value between $500 – $600. But in a place like Omaha Nebraska, even the blood of the wealthy Warren Buffet (naturally he’s reading this) is only worth between $250 – $350. What could so drastically impact the price of blood? Interestingly enough: the cost of living. Diving into the fine print, the American Red Cross is quite particular to point out that they do not in fact sell the blood that was graciously given for free. They sell a service.

“Since 1960, the Red Cross has been reimbursed by hospitals for the costs associated with providing blood to hospital patients. The Red Cross does not charge for the blood itself that you have so generously donated. The Red Cross only recovers the costs associated with the recruitment and screening of potential donors, the collection of blood by trained staff, the processing and testing of each unit of blood in state-of-the-art laboratories, and the labeling, storage, and distribution of blood components.”

Because the salaries of employees, cost of real estate, cost of gas/shipping, and most every cost associated with the collection, storage, and distribution of the donated blood are higher in San Francisco, the cost of a pint of blood is higher as well. If you’re reading from New York and Hawaii, congrats, your blood also rings up as more expensive.

The logistical side of the business of blood is astounding. Less than 3% of people in the United States donate blood each year. From that small percentage, the Red Cross managed to collect 5.3 million units of blood from 3.1 million people in 2014. [3] What I find remarkable in terms of motivating a volunteer force at a grassroots, local community level is when you break down the numbers to find that 80% of blood donations (or 4.24 million units of blood) are collected at more than 200,000 mobile blood drives set up within local communities across the country – in corporate office parking lots, high school gymnasiums, college student unions, places of worship, and military facilities. Furthermore, let’s not forget the necessary logistics to keep the blood properly refrigerated and transported to approximately 2,600 hospitals across the U.S. [4]

On average, a heart surgery patient consumes up to 6 units of redblood cells + 1 platelet transfusion. A liver transplant recipient needs up to 20 units of red blood cells + 25 units of plasma + 2 platelet transfusions. Cancer patients account for nearly 20% of all blood transfusions, requiring up to 8 platelet transfusions per week. [5] A single car accident victim may require as many as 100 pints of blood. [6]

It is safe to say that the demand for blood isn’t going away any time soon. However, as a business model that relies solely on donated blood, significant risk exists from outside forces. No artificial substitute for blood currently exists. Far-fetched, but if/when someone invents a manufactured “grown” type of blood, the act of donating blood will be a thing of the past. Relevant today, the demand for blood is actually decreasing and technology and innovation play a major role. Despite the largest elderly population the United States has ever seen as the Baby Boomer generation now spans between ages 51 – 70 years old, technologies that allow for minimally invasive and microscopic surgical techniques (such as the da Vinci System or the Endolumenal Surgical Platform) are impacting the demand for blood. For example, previously, a total hip replacement would commonly result in the loss of over 1.5 pints of blood. Today, that same surgery requires less than half a pint of blood. Additionally, advances in medical knowledge as well as changes in practices and guidelines have resulted in an approximate 33% decrease in the number of transfusions performed over the past 6 years. [7]

A few vials of blood are collected in addition to the pint. I always assumed these vials were drawn for certain safety tests, which is true. After all of these years of donating, I was surprised to learn recently that the Red Cross has been conducting blood research for years into finding treatments and hopefully a cure for sickle-cell disease, plus the development of vaccines for the measles, malaria, polio, and the Ebola virus. Somehow this work never seems to be emphasized in informational material. Each year, the Red Cross invests more than $25 million into a research lab they operate just outside of Washington D.C. Research from the Red Cross has recently revealed fascinating data examining blood types across race and ethnicity. For instance, the Red Cross found that a staggering 53% of people who identify as Hispanic in the U.S. have O positive blood type. [8]

Before dissecting their business, I hadn’t particularly thought about a very visible aspect behind the business of blood: partnerships. Specifically edible partnerships in the form of snacks, juice, and water to replenish, revive, or simply incentivize donors after the fact. For the last 20 years, I can remember having Cheez-Its and a hit of orange juice after every donation. Cheez-Its held a prominent place in my youth, so perhaps nostalgia is why I remember this, but they are the perfect guilty pleasure for me after doing something “uncommonly good.” Keebler (owned by parent company Kellogg) sponsors the snacks and clearly coordinates with the Red Cross marketing department in reference to emphasizing the good deed you just did saving a life and donating hundreds of dollars worth of your very own blood. While I could argue that perceived healthier options, such as granola, raisins, and nuts, might fit the Red Cross brand image better, I’m fairly confident that Keebler has been committed as a sponsor/partner to the Red Cross for at least the past 20 years, and through 3 different corporate sales to 3 different parent companies. In the world of partnerships, that length of commitment is rare, even more so when you consider the return on their investment is likely nonexistent and untraceable back to the Red Cross.

If only for the snacks or to learn your blood type, consider finding the nearest blood drive near you within the next week.

I have had the fortunate experience of being involved with several startup competitions in the past, but there’s an intangible quality about the Extreme Tech Challenge that I’ve only just now been able to put into words.  It sits underneath the surface as everything public about the competition seems to over-eclipses itself in grandeur and excitement: an unrivaled panel of celebrity judges, 2000 startup applications from 150 different countries in our first year,  the Top 10 semifinalists presenting on stage at CES garnering worldwide media coverage and the eyes of the 200,000 CES attendees, as well as the Top 3 finalists presenting on Necker Island, Sir Richard Branson’s private island.  Oh, and did I forget an overwhelming emphasis and injection of lavish fun? Just check out the video.

The unwritten truth that I’ve noticed from being on the Extreme Tech Challenge Team is the relentless focus on people and their passions.  What may only look like silly boys having fun in the sun, is unrestrained acknowledgement that startups, technologies, and companies that change the world don’t build themselves and certainly don’t succeed on their own – that the people behind these next waves of innovations and technologies are REAL people, with real lives, magnificent highs and devastating lows, families, interests and experiences outside of one sole passion, and an absolute awareness that we all need help and mentorship along the way to make our dreams come true.  There is a resounding respect and earnest recognition for the sacrifice, commitment, and heartfelt passion for people pushing an inch forward day after day to execute their vision for the world.

I personally struggle with the advantages famed celebrities enjoy, yet all too often do so very little.  I’m astounded by how hands-on everyone is with the Extreme Tech Challenge.  But if you look at the history of each person involved, their deep interest makes sense.  They are all intimately familiar with the struggles and determination it took to achieve whatever it was that made them “known” and “notable.”  And every single one of them had help along the way.  Yes, the wealth and resources of the individuals and corporate partners involved is ridiculous and advantageous to those who receive it, but those are true of any startup competition.  The extent of which sincere empathy and compassion to help others exists as natural virtues within those at the Extreme Tech Challenge – I’ve never experienced it quite like this before, and I can’t wait to share in it over the next several months.

(Nods to the eloquence and panache of Aaron Sorkin’s Sam Seaborn.)

Elon Musk’s SpaceX team have already successfully achieved something incredible and improbable.  They have also failed with style and grace.  With constant and diligent experimentation, SpaceX has shown it is possible to launch a re-usable rocket and return it “mostly” vertical back to a relatively precise point.  Elon Musks’s vision to launch  and safely land a Falcon 9 “reusable” rocket will be put to the test again today.

Nearly 11 months ago, we witnessed the historic test flight of a Falcon 9 rocket launch and successfully land on the same launch pad.

On January 10, 2015, after successfully delivering a payload into space, a Falcon 9 rocket exploded during the first-ever attempt to land on a floating barge (drone ship) in the Atlantic ocean.

A second attempt on February 11, 2015 was unable to successfully land due to aggressive sea conditions in the Atlantic.  In a press release, SpaceX noted “waves reached up to three stories in height crashed over the decks [of the drone ship],” and only 3 of the drone ship’s 4 engines were functioning.  Using every moment as an opportunity to learn something, the SpaceX team still attempted to vertical land the Falcon9 rocket in the ocean very near to the drone ship.

Rocket soft landed in the ocean within 10m of target & nicely vertical! High probability of good droneship landing in non-stormy weather. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2015

Regardless if it is a plane, a rocket, or even a person strapped to a parachute, no landing is “easy. ” These last several meters landing back to Earth remain the most giant of obstacles to overcome.  In every moment during launch, flight, and landing, the slight mistake can have disastrous consequences.  This is especially true when trying to land on a drone ship in the ocean that is pitching and rolling much like an aircraft carrier.  Without any insider knowledge, I would venture that a significant amount of risk for failure still exists “within 10 meters of target.”

Attentively following SpaceX’s trials and tribulations and in thinking of how to reduce risk in this situation, I realized a team has already solved this problem: successful vertically landings of an un-maned, automated flying vehicle onto an extremely precise target.  The team who solved this same problem, for drones instead of rockets, is a startup named Skycatch.

In their very early days, I helped Skycatch build a strategic partnership with Autodesk and witnessed their progress first-hand over the years.  I sat down with Chris, Co-Founder of Skycatch, to discuss how the team stumbled upon the ingenuity of their landing solution, and to discuss if this idea could be transferable to SpaceX’s own attempts to land a rocket at an exact location and position for later re-use.  Similar to SpaceX and every innovator out there, it was one of those ideas that found success only after many, many experiments, trials, errors, and crashes.

Skycatch works with large industrial clients in the mining and construction industries, and utilizes drones to gather aerial visual data around the sites in the form of thousands of HD photos that can be stitched together to deliver a highly accurate 3D computer model of a building half-built, a mining pit being dug, or even the volume of materials such as a fresh delivery of gravel.  From this data, accurate measurements can be taken to better understand workflow, progress benchmarks, and material resource management.  However, having someone on-site flying drones on-demand is inefficient and expensive.

Skycatch developed drones that fly autonomously around a construction or mining site, without any human interaction, and lands on a proprietary ground station.  The Skycatch ground stations are a landing platform that can be deployed at any site where Skycatch drone flights will be frequent and speedy capture and re-deployment of the drone are a necessity.

Towards the end of an aerial data-collection flight, the drone guides itself to the ground station, where the rechargeable batteries are automatically swapped out, any data collected is download, and the drone is prepared for its next flight.  In order to land in the exact location and position necessary to enable this complex series of logistics, the ground station was developed with a conical receptacle in which the drone lands.  Even with variations in wind and allowances for positional errors of several inches, the drone is forced into the exact and proper landing position every time by landing in this cone.

As to whether SpaceX would find success landing a Falcon 9 rocket into a cone, our conversation immediately spiraled into what materials would one use to create this rocket-exhaust-fire-safe cone.  Interestingly enough, Chris is an experienced fixed wing pilot (and obviously an experienced drone pilot) and knows all to well the dangerous circumstances that can occur during a landing – even a sudden gust of wind can be dangerous in those critical moments.  With that knowledge, Chris wondered how a cone shape would alter the blow-down force of the rocket or would any hazardous blow-back occur.

You can watch the SpaceX launch launch live below out of Cape Canaveral in Florida. We’ll be watching and wishing the best for a successful launch and historic landing.

If you’re interested in similar but different scenarios, a previous post “Medication Errors, Hamburgers, & Flying at 10,000ft” explores High Reliability Organizations (HROs) which operate in environments where the slightest mistake can have overwhelmingly tragic consequences.

I’m tab happy.  And apparently so is Google.

Upon opening the 100th tab in Chrome on your mobile device, you are greeted with a smile face instead of a tab count.  You’ve officially exceeded the digits available to designate the number of tabs open.  For a moment, I gave my best efforts to stay under smiley face status, but I soon lost that battle and found myself indefinitely smiled upon with no hope of returning to a “countable” number of tabs.  My Chrome tabs are always happy to see me.  Recently challenged to determine how many tabs were actually open on my phone, I slowly counted my way to 180 tabs open in Chrome on my phone.  I admit I have a problem.  A tab problem.

(Snapshots from my phone.  I am not promoting any site or company shown.  Though Sketchfest was awesome!)

Regardless, in the heat of March Madness, I’m most disappointed my alma mater, Virginia Tech, missed out on getting a cool emoji.  So, I created one myself.  Enjoy.

This HokieBird emoji is 100% inspired by Julia Heffernan’s illustrations.  Please be awesome; visit and support Julia’s work.

As tempted as everyone is by the advances in 3D printing and rapid prototyping, as a “professional innovator,” the experience of learning how to hand-craft an object of my design and imagination was truly valuable.  While I am no longer the CAD junkie in the design department making sure products will pump out of the mold correctly, I still find myself looking for the remnants of mold seams and punch marks from ejector pins launching plastic pieces out of molds.  You’ve all felt the tell-tale marks on mass-produced plastic pieces, whether you realized it or not.  Less valuable was the time spent coughing up yellow and nearly sanding off my own fingerprints, but even to this day – every day – I find myself relying on the application of “the creative process” and the breadth and depth of experience that comes from planning the creation of something new.

I wouldn’t trade in my experience learning how to build prototypes and ultimately finished products by hand, but this 3D foam cutter surely would have been fun to use.  Noteworthy, is that the inventor, Fablab013, is a collaborative hackerspace, similar to TechShop, in the US.  Typically, these creative spaces earn revenues from membership and workshop fees, yet, here we see Fablab013 expand beyond a service model into an organization developing products that can be sold on a larger scale.  Congratulations to the Fablab013 team on their successful Kickstarter campaign!

“3.4million people die from water related disease.  But the even bigger problem, most of them don’t even know their water is unsafe to drink in the first place.“

The pages of The Drinkable Book themselves are powerful water filters that can be ripped out and used to remove deadly waterborne diseases and bacteria.  Each page can provide 1 person with clean water for up to 30 days, and each book can provide someone with clean drinking water for up to 4 years.

Credit: Brian Gartside

In partnership with Dr. Theresa Dankovich from Carnegie Mellon (as well as a post-doc at the University of Virginia), WATERisLIFE (WiL) introduced The Drinkable Book.  The book provides safe water tips, but more importantly, each page is literally packed with chemical and filter technology to kill deadly waterborne bacteria.  Clean, drinkable water can be achieved from each and every page.

WiL is still working towards full production of The Drinkable Book, and needs help (donations) in order to distribute the books globally to save lives.  They plan to print the book in a variety of languages.  In addition, WiL is developing teaching methods and ways to share the message through training, storytelling, and discussions in communities worldwide.

Though The Drinkable Book is not currently available for purchase, WiL does currently sell a water filtration straw, similar to the popular LifeStraw.  However, what I particularly like about WiL’s The Straw (besides the oh so clever and original name) is that it solves the problem that even your fancy home Brita filter has not: beyond some arbitrary number of weeks, how do you know know if the filters are actually still effective or not?  The Straw by WiL can clean more than 800 liters of water total, or 2-3 liters of water per day. As a comparison for those in the US, 64oz of water = 1.9 liters.  And, and! When the filter is no longer effective, the filter will automatically clog internally, preventing anyone from using an ineffective filter.  Brilliant!

Update:  The WATERisLIFE team sent me a note that they hope to begin production of The Drinkable Book by the middle of 2015, with the first distribution of the books arriving in India, Haiti, Kenya, and Ghana.

This particular pi day is numerically “special” as 9:26 (and 53 seconds) on March 14, 2015 otherwise written 3/14/15 9:26:53 matches precisely to the first 10 digits of pi.

As I began to expound about pi, serious dilemmas presented themselves quickly:

• I can’t schedule a post to hit the web at a precise second, do I schedule this to post at 9:26 or round the 53 seconds up to 9:27?
• AM or PM, or both, or any given moment of the day?  After all, it is 3/14/15 9:26 somewhere.
• Or do I choose 6:26 am to catch the East Coast of the US?
• Unlike Kim Kardashian’s assets, will pi Day actually break the internet and it won’t matter what time I actually scheduled this post for?
• Do I even know how to calculate pi?  Apparently people are still calculating pi into the trillions of digits.  At just 3.14, I must be taking some shortcuts.
• What else don’t I know about pi?
• How many times will I need to mention Winnie Cooper, The Wonder Years, and Danica McKeller in conjunction with pi day for Google to index this page within a few minutes?

Since this post is simply for fun, I’ll skip to what is perhaps the most relevant and shocking reason pi still fascinates so many.  Despite calculating the decimal places of pi into the trillions of digits, NO apparent pattern has ever been found and the strings of numbers have passed every statistical test for randomness thrown at it.  With today’s computing power, finding ever more numbers of pi is no longer a grandiose challenge.  The questions mathematicians are now seeking solutions reference large sequences of numbers in a seemingly random mass of more numbers.  In other words, if a random sequence of 100 numbers were shown to you, are there sequences that exist within to positively identify that these 100 numbers are in fact from pi and not just any other random string of numbers?

While I can imagine instances where mathematics to this extreme precision are useful: bioinformatics, advanced computing, chaos theory, unraveling the mysteries of the universe… I failed to find a single real-world “useful” application or innovation that owes itself to the modern-day study of pi.  Danica McKeller from The Wonder Years might argue with me here.

With that said, in honor and in humor of this great pi day, here are 10 interesting bits about pi:

1. pi has been studied for roughly 4,000 years, and we are still calculating it.
2. By 2000 B.C., Babylonians calculated pi as 3.125. [1]
3. Ancient Egyptians found the value of pi to be 3 1/7, approximately 3.143. [2]
4. In 1650 B.C., Ahmes, an Egyptian scribe, wrote the value of pi on a piece of papyrus that has amazingly survived to this day.  Ahmes wrote “Cut off 1/9 of a diameter and construct a square upon the remainder; this has the same area as the circle,” approximating pi to be 3.16049. [3]
5. Fast forward to modern times, Tsz-Wo Sze, calculated the two-quadrillionth digit of pi.  While a Yahoo! employee, he utilized 1,000 Yahoo computers crunching numbers for 23 days to arrive at the digit.  It is a zero. [4]
6. The Guinness world record for reciting the digits of pi from memory is held by Chao Lu from China.  In 2005, Lu took 24 hours, zero food, zero toilet breaks, recited 67,890 digits of pi. He practiced 4 years before attempting this record breaking achievement. [5]
7. There’s a tool that allows anyone to search for sequences in pi (such as the digits of your birthday).
8. Here are 2 of the most recent formulas to calculate pi:
9. Below, Cristian Vasile has expressed pi as a connection from each digit of pi to its successive digit.  This design is based on transition paths for the first 10,000 digits of pi.

Credit: Cristian Vasile

10. Perhaps the most useful outcome from studying pi in modern times comes from actress Danica McKeller (Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years).  She has published videos and books in an effort to encourage young women to succeed in mathematics.
    

Not so long ago, bringing a physical product into existence was a challenge, especially for a bootstrapped young company with an unproven product concept.  The plunging costs and increased accessibility to rapid prototyping tools such as 3D printers have certainly helped to overcome some challenges.  But, building molds, buying raw materials, and even managing inventory are still extremely expensive undertakings for any company, especially a new one.

Have you ever wondered why similar software-driven companies come into existence at a similar moment in time?  It is typically due to the recent development of necessary technology combined with a growing demand in the marketplace.  Advances in computer programming led to Microsoft (1975) and Apple (1976), a hurting economy and demand for deals on a daily basis led to LivingSocial (2007) and Groupon (2008), and the growing existence of a “sharing” economy allowed for Zipcar (1999) and Flexcar (2000).  Advances in mobile technologies such as extended battery life, mobile e-commerce, and location-based services have driven the extensive development of even more similar startups and services being built in recent times.

Similar to software technology advances, there are reasons why a seemingly exhaustive amount of new products have been created in the last few years.  Crowdfunding sites, such as Kickstarter, have dramatically changed the resource mix and environment for product developers and tangible dreamers.  Beyond the advancement of money earned via pre-sales, the most constructive help crowdfunding provides to hopeful founders is early customer feedback and concept validation.  This isn’t to say that a successfully funded campaign, even an outrageously profitable one, is an indicator of a successful product and company, nor an unsuccessfully funded campaign representative of an undesirable product.  Intelligent product developers and founders are able to quickly see and hear the response from customers and act quickly even before a product goes into its first production run, hopefully producing an even better product.

Thus, it is with little surprise to see 2 companies pitching at HardwareCon3 who both had successfully funded Kickstarter campaigns.

Oru Kayak is likely the most well known of the bunch, due to their appearance on Shark Tank and a successful investment from Robert Herjavec.  The design ingenuity is impeccable, and I can imagine how much fun I’d have in one of these things.  I can’t wait to see future innovations from this duo.

The aquarium industry draws in $1.7 billion per year in the U.S. according to Current Labs, creators of FishBit.  Who knew?  I don’t personally own an aquarium, and taking care of fish in my youth didn’t turn out too well for the little guys, but FishBit sounds like a dream to assist with the regular, commonplace, and likely annoying maintenance tasks that come with owning fish.  The device and app allow for constant monitoring, regulation, and mobile alerts as the FishBit tracks the water’s pH, salinity, and temperature in your aquarium.  Lighting, water pumps, and heaters can also be connected, controlled, and automated through customized triggers and actions you set within the FishBit app.  For the competitive spirits out there, FishBit also walked away with First Place in the 2015 HardwareCon Pitch competition.

While not among those startups pitching at HardwareCon3, one can’t help but be drawn to SOLS 3D printed shoe.  SOLS has previously made headlines for capturing images of your feet to create 3D printed customized insoles, but the ADAPTIV takes footwear technology to a whole new level.  The ADAPTIV shoes manipulate air pressure and fluids in various pockets to adapt to your body’s movements, creating support for your ankle and foot when and where it is needed most.  These hightops are not your Reebok Pump from the 80s.  This shoe is embedded with a system of gyroscopes and pressure sensors to pump you up.  Because the insoles and shell of the shoe are 3D printed, SOLS has built a footwear system that is truly customized and tailored to fit your comfort and style.

In addition to $120,000 in investment capital, startups will gain “access to resources, relationships, and characters from across The Walt Disney Company, such as The Walt Disney Studios, Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, ESPN, ABC, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Disney Consumer Products, and Disney Interactive.”

Just in its 2nd year, Disney Accelerator, powered by Techstars, has assembled an impressive cast of mentors including Chairman and CEO Robert Iger, executives from the many various Disney entities, respected founders from the media and interactive entertainment industry, a handful of interesting investors, and of course several mentors from the Techstars network.  It’s always fun to see a few familiar faces on the panels!

Likely the most recognizable from the first class of Disney Accelerator is Sphero.

Deadline for applications is April 19th, 2015.  Details found at Disney Accelerator.