Three ways to save that 10%

To make good on that 10:10 committment of reducing your CO2 by 10% by 2010, how are you going to do it?

Here are three things you can do to get started:

1. Sign up to 10:10

If you haven’t made a committment to the 10% reduction, go to the 10:10 website and sign up.  That’s important.  It adds to the volume of people and business that have signed up, and makes it harder for the government to ignore, so there’s something useful for them to take to Copenhagen.  You can sign up as a person or as a business or as a school or an organisation.

2. Look at the Guardian G2 guide to get ideas where to make changes

The Guardian published a really clear guide to personal carbon reductions, with simple actions and real numbers.  They start with averages of  CO2 per year then lists lots of actions you can take to make CO2 savings.  It begins:

Every year, each person in the UK is, on average, responsible for about 14 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. (The government’s published figures suggest a lower amount, but they omit things such as international aviation.) So, if we want to make a genuine cut of 10% across the board, we need to reduce our emissions by about 1.4 tonnes each. Let’s call it 1.5 tonnes, just to be sure.

And goes on with useful savings you can make by tonnes per year.   This is the best short reference I have seen so far.

3. Start an EcoTeam, measure and reduce

Gather your neighbours or online friends and start measuring, learning and reducing your Rubbish, Energy, Water and Travel.  Sign up and create an EcoTeams online — invite friends, and start measuring and learning and reducing your usage.

You can sign up online now and get started gathering your team together.

EcoTeams is one of my favourites, perhaps because I’ve been working on several releases of the EcoTeams website over the last couple of years.  This latest version makes fully online EcoTeams easy, and support you a lot in taking measurements and inviting others to get involved.

Here are three ways to get started. I’ll do an update article in a few days with a few more online resources to have a look at, incluing using power saving plug adapter things, energy monitors and turning things off.

Reduce 10% by 2010: 10:10 lauches today

The 10:10 campaign, born out of the Age of Stupid film, launches today, September 1st.

Great film.  Please go and see it or put on a screening if you haven’t seen it already.

It puts the case for doing something to avoid a future climate disaster.    But what can you practically do now?  That’s the question that 10:10 answers.   Reduce your carbon footprint 10% in 2010.  Not that hard, just takes a small behaviour change or two and there you are, part of the (positive)  future.

Sign up, take on the future and Do Something:

http://1010uk.org

One of the actions you can take on as a part of you 10:10 action is to join an EcoTeam, to work with you community or group of friends to measure and reduce your energy, water, waste and travel in a small group working together.  By measuring your resource use, and making your results visible, you get to see how you can change your behaviour.  Doing this in community helps you make a change and feel good about it, by doing it together.

I spend most of my days building and enhancing the EcoTeams website and measurement and reporting tools, so I’ve seen it work and have seen the positive, carbon saving, money saving results that people get from it.   10% is achievable and worth doing. You save the planet and save money and feel good. Beat that.

Intro to Online Social Networking

Interview with Mums in Control magazine – out this summer. MIC is a fast growing network of mums in business or mumpreneurs. A fast-growing phenomenon I am part of, and keen to support. Not sure about the “in control” bit, but hopefully in balance more often than not.

Mothers are increasingly fed up with jobs that do not allow them to spend enough time with their children. So instead, they are starting their own businesses. The number of women working for themselves has leapt by nearly 20% since 2000, according to official figures, and now tops a million.

And an opinion poll commissioned by the government shows that the most significant factor in the increase is a desire among women for a better balance between work and family life.”

From BBC News

Clarification: my services extend beyond online social networking. See here for more.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Making Social Networks Your Business…

by Miranda Glover

The social web changes the marketing game by making it participative. LIBBY DAVY, inspirational social web expert, artist and mother, offers insight into becoming SMART (specific, measurable, achieveable, realistic and timely) when marketing your business.

Read this article carefully, it’s the new holy grail for all aspiring mumpreneurs…

An Australian communications and PR specialist with an engaging smile, Libby Davy now lives with her technology-savvy husband, young daughter and dog, in Brighton, West Sussex. She’s a web champion with a social conscience, who is hugely enthusiastic about the way women use the internet today. “We are natural social animals,” she explains, “Women love to communicate, to collaborate, to create connections. The internet’s our natural home.”

A few years ago, terms like ‘googling’ and ‘surfing’ may have felt alien, but today we all do these things with the same ease as hanging out the washing. The web’s become invaluable and not just for doing the supermarket shopping. We’re also communicating with old friends and ex-colleagues and keeping an eye on our kids through the social websites they use, like Bebo and Facebook, too. Oh! and of course some of us are using it for dating, as well. Even so, are we really taking full advantage of the internet’s social dimension to support our business needs? Libby shakes her head; clearly thinks not.

She and her husband run a technology company called, Nodestone, which combines middleware development (her husband’s bit and a techy term you don’t need to understand) with a social networking consultancy (the bit we are interested in). Through it, Libby runs workshops to explain how the web is a social network that enables you to do far more than keep in touch with your mates. Whilst traditional media can still be useful for promoting your business, the web is SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely). Libby encourages us to, “Try not to fear the jargon. There are a few new terms worth understanding, as they will give you confidence to harness all the values the web has to offer.”

She points me to her website for some clear advice. It tells me that “vast numbers of people are using blogs, social networks, photo and video sharing sites as important marketing and engagement tools.” Libby explains further, “Building your buzz in these spaces is a good way to find your market. Getting the right bloggers to write about your activities (blog outreach) is also a good way to reach interested people.”

These activities will help build traffic to your business’s website. This is critical if you want to raise your search rankings. (e.g when someone keys your business type into google or Yahoo search your company to come up towards the top of the results). Libby explains that to achieve this, “exchange links with relevant blogs and other sites, and remember that a personal request works best. A good way to start is by commenting on other blogs that are writing about your topics. It’s also a good idea to have a blog as part of your site; it’s an easy way to keep the content fresh and the site alive.”

You can use social networks to build a list of ‘friends’ who you can message in a similar way to email and so promote your website. Social networks also have a viral aspect where people sign-up to your cause because they’ve seen it appear in a friend’s newsfeed or on their profile. You can make it easy to sign up by adding links to your Facebook, Myspace, Bebo or other social networking profiles on to your website homepage.

“Social networks work best when you put a lot of time into them, sending messages, responding to friend requests, commenting on other people’s profiles,” Libby warns. “But the results can be really worthwhile. They are informal social spaces, so the more personal and friendly you can be, the better. People in social networks will tend to ignore corporate communications.”

She advises that you think carefully about who you are trying to attract using social networking sites, in some societies they are mostly used by a younger audience, however they are increasingly gaining popularity with different communities.

Twitter is the most recent term on everyone’s lips, since Barack Obama used it so successfully for his presidential campaign.

“It’s hard to describe Twitter well,” laughs Libby, “Except as a mixture of micro-blogging (160 characters per entry as in mobile phone text messages) and social networking. It works across the web and with mobile phones and feels ‘live’.”

People are using Twitter to share interesting content, especially to respond to things that are happening at that moment or to share snippets of and links to interesting articles and blog posts.

Evaluation

I ask her how you can you see if all your social marketing is working?

“A simple tool you can use for free is Google Alerts,” she says. “You can set this up through going to the main google website and specifying which key words you want it to alert you about when they are used on a website. Google Alerts then emails you when these keywords are mentioned in online media and blogs.”

“The mantra of online marketing is ‘measure everything’. For your site, the main tool will probably be Google Analytics, it’s free and provides a lot of detail on your website statistics; who’s using your site, where they are coming from to reach your site and what they are looking at. For your social networks you’ll largely be relying on the stats you can get from them, such as number of friends, number of comments, and number of video views. The web promises what traditional PR & marketing never could – the possibility of measuring engagement.”

The social web changes the whole marketing game by making it participative. You don’t just want to get people interested, you want to get them involved. Encourage people to bookmark your site in social bookmarking services like Delicious and always encourage friends and supporters of your initiative to and encourage your friends to promote your cause.”

With this Libby takes a breath. “There’s so much more to say,” she laughs, “but perhaps this is enough for one day. “

10 new web terms your business should know….

Blog

A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse time order. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject; some function as more personal online diaries. Blog software (eg. Wordpress) is often used to build websites for organisations now, as it is easy and free to use.

Syndication

Syndication means that anyone can subscribe to your blog and receive automatic notification that it has been updated. It uses RSS feeds.

RSS

Really Simple Syndication is a technology that allows Internet users to receive ongoing, constantly updated information from many sources through a simple reader or aggregator (eg. Google Reader). This is supplied through an “RSS feed” that users can subscribe to.

Aggregator

A feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader or simply as an aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.

Social bookmarking

The ability to save and categorise a personal collection of bookmarks through services such as Delicious and share them with others. Users may also take bookmarks saved by others and add them to their own collection, as well as to subscribe to the lists of others.

Web rings

A group of websites with a common theme, built in a loop, allowing a surfer easy access to subsequent sites in the ring by clicking on links. There are thousands of web rings around in all sorts of categories and issues.

Social networking

A broad class of websites and services that allow you to connect with friends, family, and colleagues online, as well as meet people with similar interests or hobbies. Popular examples include MySpace, Facebook, Linked In. Even photo sharing websites like Flickr have become places for social networking through shared interests.

Online Media Storage

Websites that allow you to store, share and view a range of media such as digital photographs (see Flickr), audio files like podcasts, video (see YouTube).

Carnivals

Weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly roundups of blogs on a particular issue or topic.

…………….

Note: things have already moved on, and this would not still be my essential list of terms.

What is the Internet? Nice intro / reminder

Nice advert by BT, giving us a sense of what the Internet is. We use it in training sessions sometimes.

Now you need never wonder what that little groove called under your nose in called…

How many people in your organisation / community could do with understand what the Internet is? Tailored, experiential training sessions available.

You are a Neuron — Slides

Here are the slides from my talk this evening at Twitter Dev Nest.  It was great fun writing and delivering this talk, and thanks for the great feedback in person and over Twitter.

Speaking at Twitter Developer Nest London

24 March, 2009
6:00 pm	to	10:00 pm

I’m giving a talk at the first Twitter Developer Nest in London next Tuesday, with a talk titled You are a Neuron, on something that has been floating around in the back of the old mind for a bit.   It is less of a technical ‘how to make this’ or ‘how I made this’ developer talk, and more of a call-to-arms or provocation to developers.

I’m going to step back from Twitter and look at the whole of it.  And draw some parallels with other things in the world, like your brain.

It ought to be a bit of fun and provoke some new thinking.  I’m thinking we need to go a bit deeper with these social utilities and really think about why something like Twitter is attactive and interesting.   I’m quite sure it is not just about my friends and I having a chat.

Anyway, I’ll post slides and stuff as they come together.

(How) can Web 2.0 help save the human race?

Via YouTube, via Twitter, via WordPress… to you.

Participation culture, creativity & social change – by Prof David Gauntlett (Age: 37), Professor of Media and Communications, at University of Westminster, UK.

Reduce carbon emissions by 90% by 2030 (or sooner)? How are we going to do that!!? David Gauntlett says, through encouraging more creativity in education and everyday life.

By moving from a “sit back and be told culture” (ie. school) to a “making and doing / connection” culture (assisted by web 2.0 participation and mass creativity).

Ivan Illich is yet again quoted (why do I so love defrocked catholic priests) and our friends at School of Everything will already know David I’m sure.

Richard Sennett’s wonderful book The Craftsman is also referenced.

I’m with them all the way…

But will we have the guts to offer our Bea (8) the South Down’s Learning Centre rather than mainstream factory-style high school, or maybe the local high is not as bad as it might seem…

Ahh – the personal and the political. But back to packing… we’ve got some carbon to burn (sigh). Train next time…

More from David Gauntlett here and here.

Alan Watts v South Park – Meaning of Life

Love Alan Watts. Interesting that the South Park guys wanted to team up to do this.

And on that note, we’re off on holiday for a week’s food, love and snow in Bardonecchia, Italian Alps.

Many thanks to Bea’s outstanding school Down’s Junior for approving of the extra holiday. No doubt it will be highly educational, in the deepest, funnest (is that a word?) sense of things.

Many thanks also to the 16 Guidelines to Happiness / Essential Education folk for sharing the video. More good clips and resources on their website.

Communities of Practice: Conversations To Collaboration

Lots in this fine presentation, but well worth flicking through and pondering.

Communities of Practice came up when I began an MA in Person Centred Education. I believe they have profound implications for lifelong learning.

Google pushes for open Energy data, launches PowerMeter

Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, has today announced Google PowerMeter, a tool that will take energy consumption data from smart household energy meters and make the data available and easy to understand.

This will be very useful to bring social energy measurement alive, where you and I can compare our energy use and work out how to reduce it.  It helps that Google.org are also pushing for free and open access to energy data for consumers.  This from their December submission to Californian energy regulators:

Accordingly, Google urges the Commission to include the following principles in its smart grid policy, discussed in greater detail below:

• Consumers should have direct access to real-time electricity usage information.
• Electricity usage information should be freely available to consumers.
• Electricity usage data should be made available in a standardized, open format, freely available to third-parties with permission from the consumer.

Freely available, standardised, open access to real-time energy data.  Once consumers have that, they can close the loop and easily reduce consumption.

The Google PowerMeter looks like access to smart meter billing information placed into some energy visualizations tools, and what also looks like some detection of the signature of particular appliances energy use.

Here’s an introductory video:

That all looks very cool.

The part that really interests me is that this gives a big push forward for open access to energy data, which then allow a whole ecosystem of tools and applications to develop to aid people in reducing their energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and money spent on energy.

Once we can make these energy measurements available, we can make them social, compare with each other, learn and save energy.

For a long time the big energy industries haven’t been too interested in opening up and giving us information, especially real-time information.

Let’s hope PowerMeter comes out of testing soon, and we get to see it operating here in the UK.  And let’s get these open standards up and running ASAP.  We’ve got a lot of measuring to do and changes to make to bring our energy consumption down.

Next Page »