Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

March 23, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Girl (Scout) on a Mission: Motivated to Sell, Sell
BYLINE: By MICHAEL WINERIP.

E-mail: [e-mail]

SECTION: Section CT; Column 0; Connecticut Weekly Desk; PARENTING; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 1230 words
DATELINE: UNIONDALE, N.Y.
''GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!'' bellowed Ayazhia Lee, 11.

''THREE-FIFTY A BOX!'' yelled 13-year-old Katherine Aanensen.

Shanna Mena was rushing by at the Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City when the words registered and she came to an abrupt halt. ''Girl Scout cookies?'' said Ms. Mena, who works at Macy's. ''Oh my God, Girl Scout cookies.''

She made a sharp pivot, hurried to the booth and started picking out boxes. ''I need one of these,'' she said, grabbing a box of Thin Mints. ''And you know what, I need these'' -- Samoas -- ''and I need these'' -- Do-si-dos.

Ms. Mena loves those cookies, but cookies aren't the half of it. ''It's those Girl Scouts,'' Ms. Mena said. ''They just twist your heart.''

They know it, they know it, and no Girl Scout knows it better than Ayazhia, who sold 1,333 boxes last year for Troop 1077 of Uniondale. This year her goal is 1,500.

''I'm very outgoing, so it's very easy to talk to people,'' Ayazhia explained. ''I go up to everyone, I take cookies everywhere. Sometimes people say they're too fattening. We tell them they're not that big -- GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!''

''THREE-FIFTY A BOX!'' Katherine shouted.

Ayazhia's sales pitch? ''I just basically say they're good for you and they're only on sale once a year and they freeze well, so there's never enough.

''To be a good salesman,'' she continued, ''You have to talk clearly, you have to look them in the eye. It shows respect. That way, they think you don't care about anything else but them -- GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!''

''THREE-FIFTY A BOX!''

Ayazhia has sold to most everyone at her church and three boxes each to all nine of her teachers at Lawrence Road Middle School in Uniondale.

By the time the other Girl Scouts at school asked, they heard those immortal words: ''Ayazhia already got me.'' She's been door to door twice in her Uniondale neighborhood -- first in January, then again in March.

Some girls go with an order slip, then come back two weeks later with the boxes. She takes orders in the morning and delivers that afternoon. ''If you deliver right away, in a few weeks, they eat them all,'' Ayazhia said. ''They might want more.''

Peek behind most great cookie salesgirls, and you'll find a network of family support. Ayazhia's mother, Marissa, 30, always keeps 15 cases of cookies handy in the living room to ensure same-day delivery.

Her father, David, 31, a union electrician, and her maternal grandmother, Carrie Hendricks, 56, a social work supervisor, take orders at the office. Sonia Oxford, 54, her other grandmother, who's been a troop leader for 20 years, and Simone Oxford, her aunt, also a troop leader, accompany the girls selling.

PEOPLE buy cars despite the salesmen; they buy cookies because of those little salesgirls. ''Sweet, very sweet,'' said Chemar Smith, who was not referring to the Do-si-dos she had just bought at the mall. ''These girls -- I know it takes a lot to be out here selling in the evening, after a long day of school, and they need our support.''

As to why Ayazhia in particular gets so much support, her friend Katherine -- no slouch herself at 120 boxes so far this year -- said: ''She's just so outgoing. It's the face, the voice -- ''

''I'm not shy,'' Ayazhia said.

''She's definitely not shy,'' said Katherine.

Kimberly Figueroa, Ayazhia's troop leader, said, ''She's irresistible.''

For those who haven't been steamrolled yet and seek to stay out of harm's way: Lay low, there are only a few weeks left to the national cookie drive. However, few escape unscathed. Last year Girl Scouts sold 1.18 million boxes in Nassau County. That's about one box for every man, woman and child in the county, netting $2.4 million, according to Donna Rivera-Downey, the organization's Nassau marketing director. Cookie sales are the county scouts' biggest revenue source, she said. And as good as Ayazhia is, two Girls Scouts in the county were better last year: Margaret Edelman of Hicksville (1,584) and Tara Philippou of Lawrence (1,500).

Girl Scouting began in 1912, and there have been cookie drives since 1917. By 1933, the Philadelphia Girl Scout Council was selling boxes of 44 cookies for 23 cents. These days Americans buy 200 million boxes annually, spending $700 million.

The same web of family support that keeps Ayazhia in front of the cookie-buying public helps keep her parents going. At age 11, Ayazhia is the oldest of six children and the only girl born to Mr. and Mrs. Lee. She has five brothers: Ajahni, 7; Amahri, 6; Isaiah, 4; Alijah, 2; and Alexander, 3 months. The Lees are not rich -- the eight of them live in a four-bedroom house here. Mrs. Lee, a teacher by training, stays home full time, and the family lives on Mr. Lee's $40,000 salary as an electrician.

But they had confidence they could manage a large family because Mr. Lee and his mother, Ms. Oxford, who immigrated to the United States from Jamaica, both come from big families. He is one of 8; his mother, one of 10. Many of these aunts, uncles, great-aunts and great-uncles live nearby and help out.

''We've never had to hire a baby sitter or pay for day care,'' Mr. Lee said.

The Lees are not churchgoers, but Ms. Oxford takes their four oldest to Grace Lutheran here every Sunday; Ayazhia is active in several church youth groups. John Johnson, a great-uncle, takes the three oldest boys to museums and cultural events in the city; Mrs. Lee's mother baby-sits and drives the children to school.

When a reporter visited, and the Lees needed quiet in the house, a great-aunt, Maggie Clough, took the three oldest boys out. Even so, Mrs. Lee stood during the entire interview, rocking the baby; Mr. Lee had 2-year-old Alijah in his lap. ''This is about as free as we get,'' said Mr. Lee. ''Everything in our life revolves around kids.''

To fill the gaps that family can't, there's also a network of godparents, including Ben and Debbie Williams, as well as three women who graduated with the Lees from Uniondale High in 1995: Aisha Boothe, Aisha Jarmond and Danielle Hurdle.

The Lees like the values their daughter learns through scouting; she's earned the Please and Thank You merit badge.

She's also done a truckload of community service. With her troop, she ran a bake sale to raise money for a nearby homeless shelter, put on a carnival for underprivileged children and took part in a cancer walk.

For every 300 boxes sold, girls earn a $75 credit toward scouting activities like summer camp. As a top seller last year, Ayazhia also won a $100 gift certificate for her mother to attend a spa.

The parents like the business skills cookie sales teach.

''She's learning customer service,'' said Mrs. Lee.

''Looks good on the resume,'' Mr. Lee said.

''Entrepreneurship,'' said Ayazhia.

While most girls have finished selling by now, Ayazhia says these last weeks of the national drive are actually the time to clean up.

''I tell people it's their last chance until next year,'' she said.

Indeed, when first observed at the mall in early March, Ayazhia had sold just 717 boxes; by a return visit last week, she was over 1,000.

Claudia Levy, who was pushing her daughter Jada in a carriage, had passed the booth when the sales pitch registered. She switched into reverse and bought a quick box of Samoas.

As she headed off toward the Disney Store, she could be heard saying, ''I really don't need these.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: YOUTH CLUBS & ACTIVITIES (89%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (84%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CONNECTICUT, USA (59%) UNITED STATES (59%)
LOAD-DATE: April 1, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: MOTIVATED Ayazhia Lee, 11, selling Girl Scout cookies at Roosevelt Field mall

last year she sold 1,333 boxes. Below, Ayazhia at home in Uniondale with her parents, David, 31, and Marissa, 30, and her five brothers: Alijah, 2

Ajahni, 7

Amahri, 6

Isaiah, 4

and Alexander, 3 months. PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUSAN FARLEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

954 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 22, 2008 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

On an Island Paradise, Seeking Global Warming's Silver Lining
BYLINE: By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN; Andrew Ross Sorkin reported from Necker Island and added updated information from New York.
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1324 words
DATELINE: NECKER ISLAND, British Virgin Islands
Richard Branson was lounging under the starry midnight sky on this palm-dappled speck of an island recently when he popped a sobering question.

''So, do we really think the world is on fire?'' Mr. Branson, the British magnate and adventurer, asked several guests as a manservant scurried off to fetch him another glass of pinot grigio.

What he wanted to know was whether his high-powered visitors, among them Larry Page of Google, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia and Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain, thought global warming threatened the planet.

Mr. Branson does -- and so did most of his guests. So on this recent weekend they assembled here, on his private hideaway in the waters between the islands of Tortola and Anegada, to figure out what to do about it and perhaps get richer in the process.

Some of them, like Mr. Page, jet-pooled in from Silicon Valley, where the financiers who bankrolled the Web boom of the 1990s are chasing the new New Thing: green power. In an era of $100-a-barrel oil, venture capitalists like Vinod Khosla, another invitee, are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into young companies that cook up biofuels and harness the power of the sun.

Mr. Blair, now a senior adviser to JPMorgan Chase, squeezed in a few idyllic hours here between assignments (he flew in late from California and left early for Jerusalem). Another attendee only sort-of showed up. The Medusa, the 198-foot yacht owned by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, was moored off Necker Island all weekend, but Mr. Allen never made an appearance.

Mr. Branson hopes the Caribbean getaway weekend will be the first of many, an intimate, enviro-version of the annual media gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho, sponsored by Allen & Company. It was the brainchild of Richard Stromback, a former professional hockey player who has remade himself as a clean-technology entrepreneur. Mr. Stromback, who was host of the weekend and is the chief executive of Ecology Coatings, joked that a gathering like this might seem nefarious to some people.

''In James Bond movies, evil-doers meet in exotic settings to plot the destruction of the planet,'' Mr. Stromback said, puffing on a cigar before dinner. ''This is the opposite of that.''

So far, however, the hopes and dreams of alternative energy have far outstripped reality. But for Mr. Stromback and many others here, a confluence of two powerful forces -- soaring oil prices and growing concern over global warming -- means the era of economically viable green power is finally at hand.

Many executives and financiers, including some in attendance, have a lot of money riding on global warming. Mr. Branson, for example, has invested in a host of alternative energy enterprises, including recently flying the first biofuel-powered plane engine for Virgin Atlantic. He also put up $25 million in prize money to challenge scientists to find a way to extract greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Mr. Khosla, the founding chief executive of Sun Microsystems and one of the most successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, has at least 33 investments in clean tech, including new fermentation technology to make fuel-grade ethanol.

Much of the weekend was spent hashing over ideas in Mr. Branson's new open-air yoga pavilion in between massages, kite-surfing lessons and meals on beaches around the island, which Mr. Branson said he bought for $:180,000 in the late-1970's and now rents for as much as $250,000 a week to outside guests. (He's trying to make the island carbon-neutral and has erected a test windmill.) Talk ranged from the practicality of electric-powered cars to how much money would have to be invested in biofuels to reduce the price of crude to $35 a barrel, a prospect Mr. Khosla said he considered ''totally realistic.''

But the big question that hung over the meeting was whether the world could ever work together to tackle climate change and emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

''We have an agreement that there should be an agreement,'' said Mr. Blair, dressed in a white polo shirt, blue cargo shorts and Nike sneakers. ''But there's no agreement on what that agreement should be.''

Mr. Blair, who last week announced his Breaking the Climate Deadlock Initiative, predicted that the United States would soon adopt a so-called cap and trade system for carbon emissions, as the European Union has done, with mixed success. But, he contended, ''I'm a little skeptical that it will work unless it's part of a global deal.''

As an alternative, Shai Agassi, the former president of SAP's product and technology group, suggested having companies buy carbon insurance. Insurance companies, after all, price all kinds of risks. ''They know how to put a price on it better than the bookies,'' said Mr. Agassi, whose start-up, Better P.L.C., is trying to support the use of fleets of electric vehicles in Israel and elsewhere. (Stanley Fink, the deputy chairman of the Man Group, the world's largest hedge fund, with $72 billion, suggested that insurance companies often misprice risk -- as in the subprime debacle.)

Everyone, it seemed, had some project in the works. Elon Musk, the co-founder of Paypal, talked about his latest project: Tesla Motors, a Silicon Valley company that makes sexy electric sports cars retailing for $100,000. Mr. Page has ordered one.

D. Hunt Ramsbottom, the chief executive of Rentech, talked about his plans to make biofuels for airplanes. William McDonough, the designer, showed renderings of recent planned projects: a building in Abu Dhabi with solar panels built into the windows and a distribution center with a grass roof. And Mr. Page, who was married on Necker Island a few months ago, talked about problems with permits that Google has faced in trying to use solar energy.

With no naysayers on the island, the weekend, which was organized in part by the Climate Group, a nonprofit, was filled with hopeful talk about the ''war against carbon,'' as Mr. Branson put it. But there was also talk of money, which most of the attendees had plenty of. And to make any of these technologies successful, they all agreed the solutions had to be profitable without subsidies.

''It can't work any other way,'' Mr. Khosla said.

Mr. Page of Google complained that it is still too easy to make a profitable environmentally friendly product that does not go far enough. ''We need to give people permission to think really big,'' he said. He recounted how when an engineer told him he could produce electricity at 10 cents a kilowatt, he asked if it could be brought down to 3 cents.

After a breakfast of scrambled eggs with salmon on the deck outside the main house Sunday morning, Mr. Branson spent most the day talking about his next big idea. He wants to create a coalition of the most respected people in business to help champion environmental ''best practices'' -- a resource for governments and multinational companies looking for help as they develop environmentally sound policies.

He is tentatively calling the group the War Room. He wants to model it after another group he formed last year, the Elders, with Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, to help solve the world's political and humanitarian problems.

Mr. Branson was canvassing for names to run it. Someone wondered: what about Warren Buffett?

Of course, there was plenty of time for fun and games. After lunch one afternoon Mr. Branson suggested the entire group sail off to Mosquito, a nearby island he also owns, aboard a dozen catamarans. He said there was a party over there.

One of Mr. Blair's security personnel trailed behind in a motorboat. Mr. Page, an avid kite surfer, struck out alone.

As the catamarans beached on Mosquito, music was blaring and women in bikinis were dancing. Mr. Branson deadpanned, ''Normally the girls would be naked, but the prime minister is here.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: GLOBAL WARMING (90%); RENEWABLE ENERGY (89%); ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT (89%); ISLANDS & REEFS (78%); ACTION & ADVENTURE FILMS (72%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (71%); VENTURE CAPITAL (71%); ECOLOGY & ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE (67%); OIL & GAS PRICES (66%); SPONSORSHIP (62%); BIOFUELS (51%); PRIME MINISTERS (75%); BRITISH PRIME MINISTERS (77%)
COMPANY: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO (67%); GOOGLE INC (57%); MICROSOFT CORP (54%); ECOLOGY COATINGS INC (52%); ALLEN & CO INC (NEW YORK NY) (64%); ALLEN & CO PRINTERS INC (53%); ALLEN & CO INC (64%)
TICKER: JPMC (BRU) (67%); JPM (NYSE) (67%); JPM (LSE) (67%); 8634 (TSE) (67%); GOOG (NASDAQ) (57%); GGEA (LSE) (57%); MSFT (NASDAQ) (54%)
INDUSTRY: SIC6022 STATE COMMERCIAL BANKS (67%); NAICS518112 WEB SEARCH PORTALS (57%); SIC8999 SERVICES, NEC (57%); SIC7375 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES (57%); NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (54%); SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (54%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING & WEB SEARCH PORTALS (57%); NAICS551111 OFFICES OF BANK HOLDING COMPANIES (67%); NAICS523999 MISCELLANEOUS FINANCIAL INVESTMENT ACTIVITIES (67%); NAICS522110 COMMERCIAL BANKING (67%)
PERSON: LARRY PAGE (72%); TONY BLAIR (71%); JIMMY WALES (57%); VINOD KHOSLA (55%); PAUL ALLEN (54%); RICHARD BRANSON (86%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (75%); IDAHO, USA (73%) UNITED KINGDOM (92%); WALES (92%); VIRGIN ISLANDS, UK (79%); CARIBBEAN ISLANDS (79%); UNITED STATES (75%)
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Richard Branson, at right

Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia (in yel-Continued on Page 7 low shirt)

and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW ROSS SORKIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. C1)

Lunch at Richard Branson's private island, where executives and other leaders recently came together to discuss entrepreneurship and ways to improve the environment. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW ROSS SORKIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. C7)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

955 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 21, 2008 Friday

Late Edition - Final

Storming the Campuses
BYLINE: By BRAD STONE
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1220 words
This winter, the armies of Yale invaded Massachusetts and conquered Harvard. Cornell's troops turned Dartmouth's militia into a vassal force. Columbia allied itself with Yale and occupied Long Island, before getting routed by the Princeton-Cornell alliance.

The historic rivalries of the Ivy League have reached the Internet.

Eleven thousand Ivy League students and alumni have played out these scenarios as part of an online computer game called GoCrossCampus, or GXC. The game, a riff on classic territorial-conquest board games like Risk, may be the next Internet phenomenon to emerge from the computers of college students.

GXC more closely resembles an intramural or interscholastic sport than the typical online video game, where individuals or small groups are pitted against each other. GXC teams, made up of hundreds and sometimes thousands of players, play on behalf of real-world dorms or schools -- even presidential candidates -- by jostling for hegemony on maps of their campus or locale and conducting their campaigns as much in the real world as online.

''This kind of game is a product of how people live and interact today, with the offline aspect as part of the draw,'' said Jonathan Rochelle, a New York product manager at Google who discovered the game as an adviser to the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute. He views it as similar to software like Google Calendar and Google Docs -- tools that enhance real-world collaboration.

''Rather than isolating us in an online world, it enhances our interactions in the real world,'' Mr. Rochelle said.

The game, founded by four Yale undergraduate students and one Columbia undergrad last September, has spread to 24 universities and high schools. The students have formed a company based in New Haven that is now spreading the word to corporations about what they see as a 21st-century Internet version of the camaraderie-building corporate retreat. Next month, Google will bring GoCrossCampus to its New York office, pitting sales departments against engineering groups over a map of the company's Manhattan campus.

Two early-stage venture capital firms, WGI Fund and Easton Capital, have provided an undisclosed amount of seed money, and the students hope to raise more capital next year, when three of the five founders graduate and will commit themselves to building the game full time.

No one is claiming this is the next Facebook, the social networking phenomenon that began on the Harvard campus. But GoCrossCampus represents the new kind of online games that unite the participants of real-world communities in a common online cause.

The rules of GXC are relatively simple. Every player is allocated a number of armies each day and must coordinate attacks, troop movements and defensive maneuvers with teammates. Players can move their armies once each day, and the game software calculates the result of clashes with an algorithm that gives a slight edge to defenders.

Some of the most significant moves occur offline, as players gather in the real world to elect commanders, recruit other players and discuss strategy and ways of spying on opponents as they formulate battle plans.

For example, at a recent battle between the residential colleges at Rice University, one team gathered in the cafeteria during a particularly dire point in the game. Once assembled, said Jim Deyerle, a junior at Rice who coordinated strategy for his team and now works on the game, ''one of the commanders delivered Morpheus's speech,'' referring to the stirring oration from the second ''Matrix'' movie. ''Then we brought out our laptops to sign more people up,'' he said.

Recruiting is as important in the virtual world as it is in the real world. A large army of devoted players can sweep over an opponent's territory with ease.

In February, at St. Paul's, a boarding school in New Hampshire, more than 200 students battled across a map that included the school's dormitories, dining halls, hockey rink and chapel.

''Some people took it very seriously, sitting in the common room all afternoon signing people up and making accounts to spy on other teams,'' said Emi Alexander, a sophomore. Ms. Alexander, who says she is not a video game fan, introduced GXC to her school after watching her mother, a Yale alumna, reconnect with her old college friends during the Ivy League championship.

The company's four Yale founders, who met at the student-run Yale Entrepreneur Society, have a clunky phrase to describe their game's quirky genre: multiplayer locally social gaming. It is a reference to the online connections that are created between players who typically also know one another in the real world. The founders stress the notion that players need to spend only a few minutes each day, checking in with their commanders and allocating their armies.

''We try to harness the feelings of various competitive groups in order to create really intense and enthusiastic groups of online gamers, essentially out of people who have often never played an online game before in their lives,'' said Brad Hargreaves, the chief executive of GoCrossCampus, who is also a senior at Yale and an economics and biology major.

Mr. Hargreaves and his co-founders -- Sean Mehra, Jeffrey Reitman, Matthew O. Brimer and Isaac Silverman, the sole non-Yalie -- started the company last year and have spent much of their time refining it, and dashing off to classes after sleepless nights of coding. The Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, a two-year-old university organization originally set up to commercialize faculty inventions, is providing the founders with an office across the street from campus.

James Boyle, the institute's director, describes GoCrossCampus as one of his organization's most promising spawns. ''If there is any aspect of social networking that has not been as fully exploited up until now, GXC has found it,'' he said.

The founders say they are considering a move to Silicon Valley. To make money, they hope to sell sponsorships of games and charge for corporate versions, like the one coming to Google.

The company will inevitably face challenges. If the game continues to show signs of promise, deep-pocketed video game companies might start massing on GXC's borders with their own versions.

The founders say their advantage is relationships with student governments, who help in soliciting cooperation from university administrators. ''It would be really easy for someone to go out and build something like this,'' said Mr. Brimer, who is also the company's chief marketing officer. ''But it's very hard to get people to adopt it without having those relationships in place.''

If anything, GoCrossCampus is demonstrating that the game's appeal ranges beyond universities. One of the most popular offshoot games on the site now is called GoCrossPoliticalBash08. It pits 2,000 supporters of presidential candidates against one another over a map of the United States.

Could such a game augur the outcome of the next presidential election? Probably not. The armies of John McCain and Barack Obama have already been routed, and Hillary Clinton's forces are trapped in New England.

Jockeying for control of the rest of the country are the armies of Representative Ron Paul of Texas and the comedian Stephen Colbert.