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I took a holiday and that included not blogging, so there.

Published on October 27, 2010 in Australia, Twitter, blogging, environment and social media. View Comments

Well it’s been pretty quiet around here for the past couple of weeks hasn’t it? I took a couple of weeks off for a beach holiday with the fam, up the coast in Port Stephens. Beautiful spot! (see pic).
Port Stephens

Obviously I didn’t blog while on holiday, and I didn’t pre-write any posts and schedule them to be published while I was away, as many would advise. I just had a much needed holiday and I’m not apologising for it, just explaining where I’ve been. It was good. I think taking some time off to recharge and reflect on life is important.

If you follow some of my tweets you’ll know that I didn’t take a holiday from tweeting. I just tweeted less, and about holiday activities, and on thoughts mostly stimulated by holiday reading. Holiday tweeting is different from usual tweeting, so there.

I’m back now. What did I miss?

How to get people involved in climate change action: blow up children [video]. Hilarity ensues.

Published on October 4, 2010 in environment, politics, social media and video. View Comments

Dear oh dear. Here’s a lesson in how not to get people involved in taking action on climate change. The embedded video, which is no doubt supposed to be hilarious, depicts some sceptical people including school children being blown up for not wanting to participate.

I’m not sure how or why the makers thought this might help to convince sceptical people to participate. Apart from being in really poor taste, this kind of thing only gives ammunition to those who are vocal in their opposition to action.

The video was written for the 10:10 campaign by Richard Curtis of Love Actually, Blackadder, Four Weddings, Bridget Jones’ Diary and Notting Hill fame. Epic communication fail this time, Richard.

Needless to say, the organisation involved has removed the video from their website and replaced it with an apology. But hey, this is the internet, so it can still be found pretty easily.

The web and the emerging paradigm shift toward sustainability.

Published on September 27, 2010 in business, clean tech, environment, social media and technology. View Comments

I want to pick up on an idea in a recent post I read over at GreenBiz.com. It’s a very brief interview with Tim O’Reilly on How the Web is a Sustainability Platform. The post is a precursor to their Innovation Forum being held in October.

Partly, I want to pick up on this concept because it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now too, and let’s face it, we do tend to gravitate to ideas that we agree with.

I think the idea of the web as an emerging sustainability platform also relates to my recent post The great human hive and the road not taken, which discusses increased connectivity in relation to an emerging global civilisation.

Earthrise NasaSeeing the whole Earth from space in images for the first time– the seeds of a paradigm shift? Earthrise image courtesy of NASA.gov.

In the interview Tim O’Reilly states,

One (parallel with the open source and Web 2.0 paradigm shifts) is that the Web represented a complete sea change in the media world. People were in denial for a long time and most companies completely missed the opportunity because they tried to marginalize it. In a way sustainability is an even greater change in the world of consumer products. People are still in denial. I think one of the big lessons from the Web is that things that seem to start small can actually be utterly transforming.

Well said. Furthermore, I have come to believe that sustainability is going to be THE key driver of business innovation this century. With every day that goes by, this seems clearer and clearer to me. This will involve a huge transformation – in the way we move around, the way we work, the products and services we buy, how products are produced,  how we create and deliver energy. With all the advances in technology we have made so far, it will not mean taking a step back to pre-industrial times as some people fear. Far from it.

I think it’s way bigger than the transformation brought on by the Internet and the digital revolution in general, but it will most certainly involve these too. How could it not? There was a time when I thought the internet would be the biggest innovation and transformation I’d see within my possible lifetime. I was wrong.

By the way, if you are interested, here’s a recent article from Harvard Business Review, The Sustainability Imperative, May 2010 (most of which is behind a paywall sorry). This article articulates this emerging paradigm shift in some detail.

In short, the two external references I’ve pointed to here (as well as many other voices around the world) are saying, get on board now or face being left behind as this paradigm shift gathers pace.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree or do you see it going another way altogether?

20 reasons why Earth Hour social media has worked so far.

Published on September 20, 2010 in Australia, environment, social media and video. View Comments

Last Monday evening I gave a presentation at Social Media Club Sydney, along with another presentation by Dae Levine, Head of Communications with Greenpeace. The topic of the event was “Lessons Learned from Not for Profits: Local Effort, Global Effect”.

I’m not going to give you a summary of the whole event here, as there are already decent summaries here and here if you are interested.  As has been noted by various people, the two different campaigns demonstrate how quite different approaches can yield successful results, depending on the objective of the campaign.

One of the most obvious and perhaps biggest differences in the two approaches is the ‘more party than protest’ approach taken by Earth Hour, compared to the more confrontational protest approach taken by Greenpeace.

Yesterday I blogged about another Greenpeace campaign which takes a similar approach in confronting Facebook. The campaign takes aim at the company’s inadequate measures in relation to addressing its growing carbon footprint. After the success of Greenpeace’s Nestle ‘Killer’ campaign, it’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.

For those of you who might be interested, I thought I might break down my presentation into a list of points identifying  the approach taken by Earth Hour, especially in relation to social media. In short, this is how and why I think it has worked so far.

  1. Good timing: climate change action is needed and wanted by many people all over the world.
  2. It’s a simple Idea and message. It’s positive, fun and hopeful. It’s more party than protest, which encourages a lot of people to get involved.
  3. Turning off lights is a powerful visual to help deliver the message worldwide.
  4. It involves people power, with a  grassroots driven campaign.
  5. Earth Hour is an open source brand. It’s available for anyone to use.
  6. The use of social media and user generated content fits well with the grassroots driven and open source nature of the campaign.
  7. For Earth Hour there are thousands of events organised worldwide, both official and unofficial.
  8. Earth Hour social media started organically and has grown as social media has grown since 2007. In 2007 Twitter was not mainstream, Facebook was smaller, YouTube was only a couple of years old.
  9. Earth Hour has access to, and the support of the global WWF Network to help with campaign organisation. For instance, in social media there are numerous official and unofficial social network profiles worldwide, in multiple languages and on multiple networks.
  10. The network is asked to respect the open source nature of the Earth Hour brand, to let go of the brand so anyone can use it.
  11. There are numerous unofficial Earth Hour supporter profiles and an overwhelming amount of  supporter generated creative content, which organisers encourage worldwide.
  12. Local agency generated creative content is encouraged worldwide.
  13. Numerous official and unofficial partnerships are developed with companies and organisations worldwide, to help spread the word and lend support.
  14. Throughout the year, bloggers are engaged and encouraged to write about Earth Hour  – from popular, influential blogs to environmental bloggers, to regional bloggers (in different countries and languages) to any and every bloggger. Earth Hour assets such as videos, images and logos are made available for use by bloggers when possible.
  15. The rewards of an open and available brand have so far, far outweighed the risks of letting it go.
  16. The approach by organisers to social media conversations is mostly “hands off”, letting conversations flow and letting supporters argue the case when there is criticism.
  17. Interventions are based on highly ‘offensive’ content only.
  18. Traditional and social media have worked together to make the campaign a success – from print to radio to tv to websites to mobile to social.
  19. Supporter–made creative content is showcased through official Earth Hour networks.
  20. On–the–night image and video uploads, live blogging and status updates are encouraged, to help support the event itself, in real-time.

Here’s the official Earth Hour 2011 video if you haven’t seen it yet :)

Greenpeace campaign takes aim at Facebook’s coal–fired servers [animated video].

Published on September 19, 2010 in Facebook, Google, clean tech, environment, social media and video. View Comments

Following the recent social media driven success of Greenpeace’s campaign to get Nestlé to stop using palm oil linked to the destruction of rainforests, it seems the activist organisation is now taking aim at Facebook’s massive new data center. Apparently, the new facility is not powered by clean energy.

Greenpeace wants Facebook to “drop coal and commit to 100 percent renewable energy, cutting its carbon footprint and helping in the struggle to prevent catastrophic climate change”

Greenpeace has released the embedded animated video, which is a bit of a spoof on the new feature film The Social Network – another movie Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will not be particularly happy about.

Earlier this month, Facebook responded (in the comments section) to a Greenpeace open letter to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, maintaining that their massive, new Oregon data center is quite energy efficient, although not run on renewable energy.

Perhaps Greenpeace feels Facebook is a good target for this kind of campaign as it’s getting pretty huge, with over 500 million users now. In addition, Facebook is increasingly in competition with the likes of Google, which is doing substantially more to address its carbon footprint, and even making investments in renewable energy technology.

What are your thoughts on what Greenpeace is asking Facebook to do? Could Facebook be doing more, given its huge size and growing revenue? In any case, It’s certainly going to be interesting to see how this one turns out.

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