As co founder of the Low Carbon Communities Network, I’ve been asking myself the same question as Erica - how do we use the tools available to us in the best way to reach the most people and make our message clear and succinct? There are so many communications tools open to us now, community groups simply don’t have the time, knowledge or resources to sort through the most useful tools. I’d like to come to 2gether08 to find out more and chat before then about how we can support low carbon communities and communicate effectively.

Hi Erica

I really think you are onto something here. People tend to communicate with each other like trusted ‘mates’… their ‘homies’ (my son’s word when on social network sites, as if they are equals! (Cos they are?!)

Then folk go back to MBA speak and cold language when interacting as competing professionals ‘at work’.
There’s no time for the luxury of that nonsense anymore. We need warm whole hearted cooperation.

I love your words about radical whole hearted heart pumping change!! Read it out loud. Go on! maybe you are creating an

And I agree its time for a fresh new term for SD…

sustainable change
or
sustainable redevelopment!
sustainable evolution
sustainable interdependency
sustainable …progress

sustainable discovery?

Finally got round to putting up my post on GeeKyoto 2008 and I couldn’t agree more. Enviromentalists we can shy away from “mass” communications and can come across as worthy & tree hugging out of touch hippies. All of the networks you’ve named are important for reaching kids, lots of adults cheaply & freely and also getting your word out to the mainstream media.

Blogs can influence the media & corporates because they are extremely grass roots and get followed & engaged with by all sorts of people in a way that mass media can’t really do. Well unless that mass media decides to address the online world too.

Clay Shirky http://www.shirky.com/ the man most people in this area talk about, discusses this far far better than I ever could - “Here Comes Everybody” is certainly the new “Tipping Point”.

Erica - have you seen how 50,000 Estonians cleaned up their country in one day?

Just what 2gether will be about!

Can we achieve real development and heart pumping change without more of a vision for the world we want in the future? If not, where is such a vision and how can we help create one? How can we harness new communications tools to help build a shared vision around the globe?

A few easy questions to get things going???

I like where Dave is coming from on this …the language we use is crucial, too glib and no-one “gets it” too scary and everyone is left feeling disempowered. We should chat more about this.

It’d be useful to break down the issue into two categories: what’s 1. government and 2. businesses are doing to improve the quality of, and collaboration towards–more Sustainable Change! Very good recommendation Dave Hampton!

1. Will the creation of the Climate Change Bill be enough? There are numerous government-funded bodies such as Envirowise, Defra, the Energy Saving Trust, the Carbon Trust, the Environment Agency and many others. How are such organisations working to ensure plausible change? Can they work in conjunction with innovations to create even larger change? What’s been happening thus far?

2. Social enterprises and businesses generally, have an obligation to recognise the importance of climate change issues today! However, the language that politicans and academics frame much of the language is not only confusing but boring and doesn’t offer ways citizens can proactively initiate change in their own–and their surrounding communities’–lives.