This week, we highlight three new titles from the ASPA Series in Public Administration and Public Policy.

Market disruptions, climate change, and health pandemics lead the growing list of challenges faced by today’s leaders. These issues, along with countless others that do not make the daily news, require novel thinking and collaborative action to find workable solutions. However, many administrators stumble into collaboration without a strategic orientation.

Using a practitioner-oriented style, Strategic Collaboration In Public And Non-Profit Administration: A Practice-Based Approach To Solving Shared Problems provides guidance on how to collaborate more effectively, with less frustration and better results.

Linking collaboration theory to effective practice, this book offers essential advice that fosters shared understanding, creative answers, and transformation results through strategic collaborative action. With an emphasis on application, it uses scenarios, real-world cases, tables, figures, tools, and checklists to highlight key points.

The appendix includes supplemental resources such as collaboration operating guidelines, a meeting checklist, and a collaboration literature review to help public and nonprofit managers successfully convene, administer, and lead collaboration. The book presents a framework for engaging in collaboration in a way that stretches current thinking and advances public service practice.

A guidebook through the minefield of government contracting and procurement, Government Contracting: Promises and Perils describes the dangerous practices commonly applied in the development and management of government contracts and provides advice for avoiding the sort of errors that might compromise their ability to protect the public interest.

It includes strategies for increasing profits for government contractors, rather than incurring burdensome costs, through compliance with government mandated subcontracting and financial management systems.

Drawing from his in-depth investigation of government agencies across the country, the author examines present-day scenarios that regularly lead public servants and government committees to manage contracts with tools that are less than optimal and to select contractors that may not be the best qualified. He then delineates practical processes, contracting documents, and contract management tools to mitigate detrimental outcomes and alternative approaches to supplant the imperfect methodologies.

The author includes a CD-ROM with the book that provides a number of practical tools that you can apply as well as examples of contracts and templates that are the best he discovered during his research. The book also outlines an approach for performing advance contract planning, conducting contract negotiations, and administering contracts useful when planning for the management of the contracting process throughout the contracting cycle, negotiating a contract that protects the interest of all contracting parties, and ensuring successful contractor performance.

Filling a gap in project management literature, Managing Public Sector Projects: A Strategic Framework for Success in an Era of Downsized Government supplies managers and administrators—at all levels of government—with expert guidance on all aspects of public sector project management.

From properly allocating risks in drafting contracts to dealing with downsized staffs and privatized services, this book clearly explains the technical concepts and the political issues involved.

In line with the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) and the PMBOK^® (Project Management Body of Knowledge), David S. Kassel establishes a framework those in the public sector can follow to ensure the success of their public projects and programs. He supplies more than 30 real-life examples to illustrate the concepts behind the framework—including reconstruction projects in Iraq, the Big Dig project in Boston, local sewer system and library construction projects, and software technology.

This authoritative resource provides strategic recommendations for effective planning, execution, and maintenance of public projects. It also:

• Highlights the differences between managing projects in the public sector versus the private sector
• Explains how to scrutinize costs, performance claims, and the backgrounds of prospective contractors
• Presents key safeguards that should be included in all contracts with contractors, consultants, suppliers, and other service providers
• Details the basics of project cost estimation, design and scheduling, and how to hold contractors responsible for meeting established project standards

In an age of downsized government and in the face of a general distrust of public service, this book is a dependable guide for avoiding management practices that are common to projects that fail and for adopting the practices common to projects that succeed in terms of cost, schedule, and quality.

In 1920, as its population began to explode, Los Angeles was a largely pastoral city of bungalows and palm trees. Thirty years later, choked with smog and traffic, the city had become synonymous with urban sprawl and unplanned growth.

Yet Los Angeles was anything but unplanned, as Jeremiah B.C. Axelrod reveals in this compelling, visually oriented history of the metropolis during its formative years. In a deft mix of cultural and intellectual history that brilliantly illuminates the profound relationship between imagination and place, Inventing Autopia: Dreams And Visions Of The Modern Metropolis In Jazz Age Los Angeles (Berkeley: University Of California Press, 2009) shows how the clash of irreconcilable utopian visions and dreams resulted in the invention of an unforeseen new form of urbanism--sprawling, illegible, fractured--that would reshape not only Southern California but much of the nation in the years to come.

At 401 pages, it could seem like a daunting read, but those interested in Los Angeles history, urbanization, or the rise of the automobile will find this enjoyable. It's a great compliment to the Metro Library's historic transit and transportation studies collection. Many of these documents, which date back to 1911, have been digitized and are available on our website in full-text PDF.

Axelrod focuses on the 1920s when Los Angeles was growing at a fast clip. As we noted back in July, the number of automobile registrations in Los Angeles County quadrupled between 1914 and 1922 - making it very clear that the city's embrace of the auto would set the stage for decades of congestion and other issues.

Going back further in history is another equally seminal story about transportation in the West. Acclaimed historian Walter R. Borneman has written a dazzling account of the battle to build the first transportation system across America.

Rival Rails: The Race To Build America's Greatest Transcontinental Railroad (New York: Random House, 2010) is an action-packed epic of how an empire was born—and the remarkable men who made it happen.

After the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, the rest of the country was up for grabs, and the race was on. The prize: a better, shorter, less snowy route through the corridors of the American Southwest, linking Los Angeles to Chicago.

Borneman lays out in compelling detail the sectional rivalries, contested routes, political posturing, and ambitious business dealings that unfolded as an increasing number of lines pushed their way across the country.

The author brings to life the legendary business geniuses and so-called robber barons who made millions and fought the elements—and one another—to move America, including:

William Jackson Palmer, whose leadership of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad relied on innovative narrow gauge trains that could climb steeper grades and take tighter curves;

Collis P. Huntington of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific lines, a magnate insatiably obsessed with trains—and who was not above bribing congressmen to satisfy his passion;

Edward Payson Ripley, visionary president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, whose fiscal conservatism and smarts brought the industry back from the brink; and

Jay Gould, ultrasecretive, strong-armer and one-man powerhouse.

In addition, Borneman captures the herculean efforts required to construct these roads—the laborers who did the back-breaking work, boring tunnels through mountains and throwing bridges across unruly rivers, the brakemen who ran atop moving cars, the tracklayers crushed and killed by runaway trains.

From backroom deals in Washington, D.C., to armed robberies of trains in the wild deserts, from glorified cattle cars to streamliners and Super Chiefs, all the great incidents and innovations of a mighty American era are re-created with unprecedented power in this new work destined to be a classic.

Turning now to urban planning, author Patrick Condon discusses transportation, housing equity, job distribution, economic development, and ecological systems issues and synthesizes his knowledge and research into a simple-to-understand set of urban design rules that can, if followed, help save the planet.

Seven Rules For Sustainable Communities: Design Strategies For The Post Carbon World (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2010) clearly connects the form of our cities to their ecological, economic, and social consequences. This book takes on a wide range of complex and contentious issues and distills them down to convincing and practical solutions.

Of particular importance is how city form affects the production of planet-warming greenhouse gases. The author explains this relationship in an accessible way, and goes on to show how conforming to seven simple rules for community design could literally do a world of good. Each chapter in the book explains one rule in depth, adding a wealth of research to support each claim. If widely used, Condon argues, these rules would lead to a much more livable world for future generations—a world that is not unlike the better parts of our own.

In Last Exit: Privatization And Deregulation Of The U.S. Transportation System (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2010), Clifford Winston reminds us that transportation services and infrastructure in the United States were originally introduced by private firms.

The case for subsequent public ownership and management of the system was weak, in his view, and here he assesses the case for privatization and deregulation to greatly improve Americans satisfaction with their transportation systems. How can this be done?

Writing in the New York Times, Harvard University economics professor Edward L. Glaeser points out that:

Because the public sector controls almost all roads, airports and urban transit, we see the downsides of public control on a daily basis, but we don’t experience the social costs that could accompany privatization. A private airport operator might try to exploit its monopoly power over a particular market or cut costs in a way that increases the probability of very costly, but rare, disaster.

The complexity and risks of switching to private provision means that Mr. Winston is wise to call for experimentation rather than wholesale privatization. An incremental process of trying things out will provide information and build public support.

Yet many of Mr. Winston’s recommendations are incremental and can be done without privatization or much risk.

The book covers privatization and deregulation of roads, airports, air traffic control, mass transit, intercity buses and railway networks.

Beginning today, Northwestern University's Transportation Library begins its Google Books Digitization Project.

The University Libraries and Google are partnering to digitize hundreds of thousands of print volumes from their collections, rendering the contents readily available to scholars and researchers worldwide.

This is no small undertaking. The Transportation Library alone is one of the most extensive in the United States, containing over 500,000 items.

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a consortium of the Midwest's Big Ten Schools' plus the University of Chicago, signed on to digitize their libraries in June, 2007 but the process is just getting underway this Fall.

The project is expected to take several years, but the Transportation Library is one of the first campus libraries to send library items to Google for digitization. Google covers the transportation and digitization costs and Northwestern has received a generous donation from the Office of the Provost to help cover other technical costs.

We are told that books sent to Google for digitization may be off the shelves for up to three months. Once everything eligible for converting into electronic format has been digitized, those searching the library catalog will have the choice of borrowing the original print item or accessing the full-text document online.

Results from Google Book Search show up in both general Google searches as well as through the dedicated Google Books site.

The entire Google Books project has been a source of controversy over the last decade. Some hail the initiative's capacity to provide "anytime, anywhere" access to all of human knowledge. Others question the application of copyright laws for works published in one place but accessed around the world.

The Google Books enterprise is a complicated endeavor. While access to the ever-increasing (and increasingly digitized) world of knowledge is great, how can Google maintain a high-level of retrievability from a growing pool of millions of items? A recent article in The Atlantic highlights this challenge, with a concise overview of "Rich Results," Google's latest search algorithm that helps users find what they're looking for...even when they don't specifically ask for it.

Last month, Google speculated that it had scanned more than 15 million books from more than 100 countries in over 400 languages since 2004. Google Books' Engineering Director James Crawford went on to state:

"Our shared vision of bringing all the incredible content stored in the world's books online depends on working with libraries, publishers, authors and book lovers.

The greater the diversity of content on the web, the more useful it becomes. And the more people who can access the information cataloged in books, the more enlightening those works become."

Our goals are the same. Here at Metro's Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library & Archive, we have embarked on a digitization project of our own (sans Google) as outlined here. We want to provide greater access to our rich collections, make items more easily findable and retrievable, and preserve information and knowledge for generations to come.

There is a wealth of research and literature explaining suburban sprawl and the urgent need to retrofit suburbia. However, until now there has been no single guide that directly explains how to repair typical sprawl elements.

This is so beautiful...spreads love all around.

Wow beautiful projects there Nima. Peacock is one of my fav subjects to stitch too.

This is quite a project to finish! And you did! Impressive! Merry Christmas and the best to you in 2020!!!

Enjoy the new year and let's leave the pressure of life to others! I'm taking one day at a time...no more stressing and just enjoying my artwork, life, family and friends.

Welcome to Menu Plan Monday! Affiliate links are included in this post. This means I make a small commission should you purchase product using these links. This is at no extra cost to you. Hi friends! I hope you all had a nice Easter weekend and made the best of the circumstances. We had a […]

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Welcome to Menu Plan Monday! Affiliate links are included in this post. This means I make a small commission should you purchase product using these links. This is at no extra cost to you. Hi friends! How many of you are still menu planning while in isolation? I am but it’s a pretty flexible plan […]

If you're seeing Menu Plan Monday ~ April 20/20 Weekly Dinner Inspiration anywhere other than on I'm an Organizing Junkie (or via my email list or a feed reader) it is being used by someone else without my permission. Please let me know, thank you!

Welcome to Menu Plan Monday! Affiliate links are included in this post. This means I make a small commission should you purchase product using these links. This is at no extra cost to you. Hi friends! How are you? We are still doing okay here. The good news is our snow melted away so fast. […]

If you're seeing Menu Plan Monday ~ April 27/20 Weekly Dinner Inspiration anywhere other than on I'm an Organizing Junkie (or via my email list or a feed reader) it is being used by someone else without my permission. Please let me know, thank you!

April 2020 Monthly Recap Hi friends, thank you so much for visiting me here. I so appreciate you supporting me and my blog with your post shares, social media likes and comments. It really helps to allow me to continue to do this. It’s hard to believe this blog will be celebrating 14 years in […]

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The following is a guest post about how to set up an emergency preparedness binder from regular contributor, Kristin at The Gold Project.  Being prepared in case of an emergency is never a bad thing. When I think of an emergency, the first thing that pops into my head is losing my house to a […]

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Strategic communications agency Portland has won the PRCA 2020 'Best IPO' campaign award for its support to Baladna's IPO on the Qatar Stock Exchange.

Are you an American who has lived or worked outside the US and own Foreign Trusts?

Paulson brings more than 30 years of commercial real estate brokerage experience, including investment sales, and landlord and tenant leasing.

Titan Funding has secured funding for acquisition of a 327,000-square-foot property to be redeveloped as a Cannabis Campus

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has shown the dire need to have essential health goods manufactured in the United States, rather than places like China. Startup company SerraeX is aiming to change this with their ambitious new crowdfunding campaign

Boutique Style of Managing Properties Equals Measurable Results

"Controversy" over COVID-19 and fertility treatment reveals investor-led interest pushing for more control in the IVF field

Don't wait for the Bull, don't be afraid of the Bear.. hunt for profit in ANY MARKET!

New leadership with Jeff Orr and Marisela Lewis to continue the innovation in the impact and value for clients and products

B+E, the first brokerage and technology platform for net lease real estate, announced the listing of the Codale Electric Distribution property located at 50 East 1300, Price, Utah for $4,200,000.

Latest research aims to understand advances in natural language capabilities and its impact on business

WorkParrrots brand people online persona as Goal Achievers by providing social tools to set goals, collaborate and track Schedule. Employers Swipe resume Video Pitch to hire

Announces Marshall Heitzman to Lead New Program Efforts

Lots of huge Xbox news to discuss this week, from Ubisoft games that are now coming to Xbox Scarlett (Watch Dogs Legion, Rainbow Six Quarantine, and Gods & Monsters) to Scarlett games we'll have to wait a bit longer for (Battlefield 6, Battlefront 3). Plus: our hands-on impressions of Diablo 4 (!!) and Overwatch 2, and more!

Huge week of Xbox news! Project Scarlett's lower-cost option, Lockhart, is back in play. We discuss what it means for Xbox's next-gen efforts. Plus: the Xbox finally gets a proper Major League Baseball game, and it's...Sony's?! Also: 2K opens a new studio to make a new BioShock game, IGN's Game of the Year winner Control miiiiiight be coming to Xbox Game Pass, Resident Evil 3 Remake is official, and more!

4 Steps to ensure your AI/Machine Learning system survives COVID-19; State of the Machine Learning and AI Industry; A Key Missing Part of the Machine Learning Stack; 5 Papers on CNNs Every Data Scientist Should Read

This post will cover how testing is done for the coronavirus, why it's important in battling the pandemic, and how deep learning tools for medical imaging can help us improve the quality of COVID-19 testing.

Also: Math for Programmers!; If #Programming languages had honest slogans #humor; 5 Papers on CNNs Every Data Scientist Should Read; Why Understanding CVEs Is Critical for Data Scientists

Also: Should Data Scientists Model COVID19 and other Biological Events; 5 Papers on CNNs Every Data Scientist Should Read; 24 Best (and Free) Books To Understand Machine Learning; Mathematics for Machine Learning: The Free eBook; Find Your Perfect Fit: A Quick Guide for Job Roles in the Data World

Learn how to develop a LSTM neural network with PyTorch on trading data to predict future prices by mimicking actual values of the time series data.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected everything, and building predictions during this time is difficult. Data science teams need to update their models to prepare for the recovery, and know how to properly train 2020 data models to learn from the coronavirus anomaly.

The book Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments: A Practical Guide to A/B Testing by Ron Kohavi (Microsoft, Airbnb), Diane Tang (Google) and Ya Xu (LinkedIn) is available for purchase, with the authors proceeds from the book being donated to charity.

Also: Should Data Scientists Model COVID19 and other Biological Events; Learning during a crisis (Data Science 90-day learning challenge); Data Transformation: Standardization vs Normalization; DBSCAN Clustering Algorithm in Machine Learning; Find Your Perfect Fit: A Quick Guide for Job Roles in the Data World

Also: A Concise Course in Statistical Inference: The Free eBook; ML Ops: Machine Learning as an Engineering Discipline; Learning during a crisis (#DataScience 90-day learning challenge) ; Free High-Quality Machine Learning & Data Science Books & Courses: Quarantine Edition

You walk down one aisle of the grocery store to get your favorite cereal. On the dairy aisle, someone sick from COVID-19 coughs. Did your decision to grab your cereal before your milk possibly keep you healthy? How can these unpredictable, near-random choices be included in complex models?

Here is an overview of another great natural language processing resource, this time from Microsoft, which demonstrates best practices and implementation guidelines for a variety of tasks and scenarios.

This article demonstrates how building a smarter API serving Deep Learning models minimizes the response time.

Also: Coronavirus COVID-19 Genome Analysis using Biopython; LSTM for time series prediction; A Concise Course in Statistical Inference: The Free eBook; Exploring the Impact of Geographic Information Systems

This online course is available – for free – to anyone interested in building practical skills in using data to solve problems better.

5 cool Python libraries for Data Science; NLP Recipes: Best Practices and Examples; Deep Learning: The Free eBook; Demystifying the AI Infrastructure Stack; and more.

Check out this curated collection of coronavirus-related projections, dashboards, visualizations, and data that we have encountered on the internet.

Train a "blackbox" GBM model on a real dataset and make it explainable with SHAP.

What are Some 'Advanced ' #AI and #MachineLearning Online Courses?; 24 Best (and Free) Books To Understand Machine Learning; Top 5 must-have #DataScience skills for 2020

Also: Introducing MIDAS: A New Baseline for Anomaly Detection in Graphs; The Super Duper NLP Repo: 100 Ready-to-Run Colab Notebooks; Five Cool Python Libraries for Data Science.

A successful path for brands means they must keep the platform’s content standards top of mind as well as make regular posts and participate in what’s trending.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

With the workforce at home, a rise in agile adoption, and organizations making major pivots in strategy, the need for these types of platforms is likely to continue.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.