I’ll be posting at Core77 this year, starting with this observation about some of my favorite people and their addiction AND repulsion to social media:
In her annual Christmas Message, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlandswarned of the dangers of too much virtual friend making. She encouraged people to put down their phones and laptops and re-establish physical connections. “We tend to look the other way and close our eyes and ears to what’s going on around us. Nowadays even our neighbors are strangers,” said the Queen. Real, not virtual friendships are needed to create a feeling of solidarity and to express compassion.
Image Courtesy of rnw.nl: The Queen in Her Golden Carriage
All of this from a culture that seems to be one of the most socially connected on earth. More than half of the country’s population, over 9 MM people, have a profile on popular social network, Hyves.nl. The Dutch are the most prolific bloggers in Europe, with 15% of internet users taking part in this activity. Habbo Hotel, a Dutch-created social network for kids, is taken so seriously that cops have attempted to arrest thieving teenagers for stealing virtual furniture.
While Dutch-based commentary on the Queen’s message was negative (referring to her as a Luddite, suggesting that she lives in a Golden Cage, and other un-translatable name-calling) a Rotterdam-based media lab had already turned her pronouncement into an app. Moddr launched theWeb 2.0 Suicide Machine last year (via TechCrunch). Just give the app your social network names and passwords, and it will purge your presence on Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites. In late breaking news via the company’s website, Facebook just banned the service, but that may not stop an emerging trend of rampant virtual anti-social behavior. All of this designed by the Dutch to make you wonder - is all of this social networking a force for good, or are we hiding behind our screens?
January 11th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (1,834)
Dec 18, 2009 -
Take a look at your meal. I’m looking at mushroom ravioli, parsley, olive oil, Italian bread, and parmesan cheese. But I can’t accurately tell you where these tasty food items come from, how far or wide reaching their impact. I do not know my meal’s “foodprint,” a concept discussed at last weekend’s NYC Food and Climate Summit.
What is a foodprint? A foodprint is our food system’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change, according to Jacquie Berger, Executive Director of Just Food, one of the conference’s organizers. The impact of your food may be far greater than those incandescent light bulbs you replaced with fluorescents, or even your hybrid or gasoline-powered car. It is estimated that one-third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally derive from our food system, the way we cultivate, process, package, transport, and dispose of our food.
San Francisco residents have a longer history and deeper connection to the land that surrounds them. Order a steak at one of San Francisco’s foodie establishments and you will be told a story about how the cow was raised, the farm where it lived, and what combination of grasses was fed to your cow for optimum health and happiness. Even SF’s recent composting initiativefocuses on fertilizing farms within a known radius of the city, “to make the food taste better.”
How will New Yorkers, the largest, most populated, and densest city in the US, ever conceive of a sustainable food system? Professors, chefs, nutritionists, students, gardeners, community organizers, farmers, designers, and sustainability activists are collaborating locally to envision a prosperous and healthy regional food system. Local politician Scott Stringer, the Manhattan Borough President, launched a The NYC Sustainable Food Charter in advance of the summit. Christine Quinn, NY City’s Council Speaker has followed suit with a program called “FoodWorks New York,” turning NYC’s Department of Education and its immense buying power (over 860,000 meals a day, second largest to the US Military) into an opportunity to create fresher, healthier meals, and jobs along the way. Lettuce would be bought in New York state, shipped and packed to the city to a retrofitted industrial space used as a fresher processing facility.
Meanwhile grassroots projects are being prototyped by creative, curious, and concerned citizens: projects like urban windowfarms, rooftop farms,vertical farms, and brownfield reclamation through composting are popping up all over the city as demonstration ideas of a sustainable future. How is your region rethinking the food system?
January 4th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (607)
Dec 17, 2009 -
Foursquare is open for business at the right price for mom and pop and larger businesses that want the benefit from a highly localized social network. For those that haven’t heard of Foursquare, the company describes itself as “50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game.” The mobile-based social network is currently available on the iPhone and Android handsets, and is known for bestowing badges on people who discover new restaurants, travel to new cities, and frequent their favorite bar or coffee shop.
I had the opportunity to sit down for coffee with Tristan Walker, a man who wears two hats: a full time Stanford MBA student and Foursquare’s business development representative. Tristan has been busy meeting with brands eager to experiment in the fast growth social network, because of Foursquare’s proximity to the action. Foursquare has the opportunity to link virtual social experimenting to real world online “behavior change,” in Walker’s view, such as redeeming an offer or coupon at a local venue, tracking a loyalty system at a retailer, or associating a brand with the overall experience.
At 160,000 total users in several cities, the social network launched at less than two years ago is about to experience explosive growth as it plans for near term upcoming releases. In the coming weeks and months, expect Foursquare to become available on handsets like the Blackberry, synchronize updates on Facebook (not just Twitter), and prepare for moving beyond a fixed city-based experience and launching “everywhere, including Antarctica if you want to,” according to Walker.
So if you have a business with a real world call-to-action, how do you engage with Foursquare? Walker suggests three ways based on the size of the business you are in. Large brands are looking to creating innovative engagement marketing ideas pay an overall fee to Foursquare for programs like the current cause marketing initiative with Pepsi, donating $0.04 toCamp Interactive for each “check in” in exchange for a branded presence on the system. At the mid-level, retailers can suggest smart ways to “drive to retail” either through a loyalty system integration (Foursquare has an open API or Application Program Interface for developers).
The mom and pop opportunity is where smaller scale entrepreneurs should seek out Foursquare as a place to reach the digital influencer crowd that is obsessed with the social network.
Foursquare sees these local venue offers as a value-add for their user base, and restaurants and stores are offering rewards based on the core experience, such as free coffee for each newly crowned mayor, or free WIFI for anyone who checks in. Adding these offers is currently free of charge to local venues for the time being, so learn more about Foursquare and add your venue now, before the big brands find out about this emerging network.
January 4th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (2,035)
Dec 07, 2009 -
Most non-governmental aid organizations like UNICEF rely on hand-written, hand-collected data and forms, sent to country capitols, and entered into national databases. Months pass before information is fully recorded and transmitted back to those who make decisions about critical food distribution, medicine, and other life-supporting help.
UNICEF’s innovation team is changing the way governments and aid organizations respond to crisis by utilizing the accelerated adoption of hand-held mobile phones to collect malnutrition data in real time. RapidSMS was developed in partnership with the government of Malawi and Columbia University using basic, mobile phones to collect information from health workers, data such as child weight and arm circumference. The data is then used to generate web-based spreadsheets and graphs to visualize the challenges, providing critical info needed for the government and UNICEF to respond immediately to nutritional crises.
RapidSMS is such a significant improvement for UNICEF that similar products have been developed, on an underlying open-source code-base, open to anyone for use to build their own tools. UNICEF supports any aid organization interested in working off of this code base, and continues to collaborate with Columbia University, and with NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program graduate school in a course designed to address UNICEF challenges. Columbia University and UNICEF were awarded the top prize in USAID’s Development 2.0 challenge earlier this year, but the real accolades come from the repeated use of this tool for applications in malawi, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and beyond.
December 8th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (1,511)
I’ve been attempting to leverage all of my social media networks to highlight this important project.
First - Tweet “@yule_log” and money will be donated by my agency, Drillteam, to Darfur Stoves, Dec 1-25, 2009. Up to $1000.
Second - as a donation suggestion on Core77, their Holiday Gift Giving Guide.
Third - on American Express Open Forum - a post on Darfur Stoves as an Appropriate Technology:
Nov 27, 2009 -
Every day in Darfur refugee camps, women leave to travel on six to seven hour missions to collect fuel wood for their meals, and every day these women increase their risk of violent attack. When Ashok Gadgil, a physicist at Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory, visited Darfur to observe how families were cooking their meals and foraging for wood, he launched a project with Ken Chow through Engineers Without Borders to contribute to solving this problem. The Darfur stove is a ten pound metal stove which requires only one quarter of the amount of firewood used in a traditional cooking fire, and is also more cost effective than firewood cooking.
More »
December 2nd, 2009 | Category: Eco Impact, Social Impact | Comments (2,221)
Nov 09, 2009 -
“We cannot stand, but we stand for something,” is the rallying cry forSeventh Generation’s latest marketing campaign, an effort to give babies a virtual voice in upcoming legislation about chemicals and kid safety. In a social media marketing effort, the company has partnered with Erin Brockovich and Safer Chemicals to draw attention to the Kid Safe Chemicals Act. Seventh Generation’s message is that, “babies everywhere are crawling to Washington to say no to toxic chemicals found in our homes.” A website, a series of viral videos, and numerous social media efforts are designed to educate parents and to invite them to influence politicians in Washington, D.C.
In an effort borrowing from non profit organizations like the Environmental Working Group and The Ecology Center, Seventh Generation asks its fans to behave as citizens, not just consumers. Advocates of the brand are asked to create virtual baby avatars who then crawl to Capitol Hill, where they will “rattle” legislators for toxic chemical reform. Seventh Generation has everything to gain from the passage of the Kid Safe Chemical Act, since their product line has eliminated potentially toxic substances prevalent in more mainstream household cleaners and products. Seventh Generation has also conducted the necessary research and legwork to comply with the basic premise of the proposed legislation, and would have a head start over competitors who have not yet invested in public-facing communication about product safety. So, are Seventh Generation’s advocates comfortable with the company taking such a stand?
A glance at the Twitterverse reveals that the most passionate Green Mommy Bloggers and anti-toxin crusaders have embraced the campaign. Whether or not the message moves from extreme greens to more mainstream consumer citizens remains to be seen. Over 10,000 virtual babies have been created on Seventh Generation’s site, leaving 990,000 to go. What do you think? Do companies with a strong environmental or social mission have a place to play in political movements?
November 10th, 2009 | Category: Brand | Comments (1,503)
Oct 28, 2009 - If we can get three home runs, that’s terrific,” announced Steven Chu, the DOE Secretary at a press conference on Monday, October 26 at Google’s campus in Mountain View, CA. Chu was at Google to deliver 37 energy technology projects funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program (ARPA-E), the DOE’s first effort at funding $151 million in experimental energy technology grants, focused on high-risk, high-payoff projects. Read more…
October 28th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (817)
Recent Posts for Inhabitat at OpenForum.com inspired by my travels and conversations with people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. From VC and Google focus on smart home energy meters, to SF’s new composting bins, the smart money is on individual, personal behavior change:
Google Wants You to Know Your Own Power
Oct 14, 2009 - If you could know the energy usage of all of the appliances and gadgets in your home, right now, on your handheld device, would you look? Would you care? Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, believes that you would care, and that you would change your behavior to lower your household environmental impact. Google.org developed a free, Web-based tool that visually shows your personal home power consumption, the Power Meter. However, unless you draw your power from the few public utilities that allow for “smart” energy monitoring, you have no window into how your home consumes energy in real time. Until now.
October 28th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (281)
Product Transparency, XRay Style: the recent effort from The Ecology Center to take an XRF scanner to hundreds of consumer products yields not so surprising, but accurate data about “how things are made.”
Entrepreneurs Movement: Can entrepreneurs be organized? The Kauffman Center will soon find out, as they attempt to start a movement of business owners, who are credited with job growth during all previous turn-arounds. Can the famously individualistic bunch join together into a self-organized group? We’ll soon find out.
October 8th, 2009 | Category: Backstories | Comments (3,262)
