ecohegemony

Replicating Sustainability - But off scale

Working on an article on simulated sustainability, and I came across this article on Treehugger (link to original article).  It talks about a "temporary" classroom built out of shipping containers - all the rage in sustainable design.  Cute huh?

Problem?  The building is only designed to look like it was made from re-purposed shipping containers.  See comparison below.

The designer of the project said:  the ConHouse system of small-size housing container units, which takes the housing/office ISO container to the next evolutionary level. As opposed to the other container projects, which mostly feed on the excess of available cargo containers, ConHouse pushes the development of containers manufactured especially for housing and office purposes.

So it is an homage to shipping containers - I suppose in the same way that Monsanto is an homage to sustainable agriculture.   

When we replicate sustainability the scale needs to be 1:1.

 

Ripping off Ideas: How access to information stifles creativity.

In high school, a good friend's mom used to remind us that nothing ever changes and it never gets any better.  This piece of childhood memory, made me think about creativity and how difficult is has become when faced with access to too much information. 

Case in point:  Check out this blog You Thought We Wouldn't Notice - it's great chronicle of people ripping off other people's ideas. Technically, it is about Art Law in the U.S., but it also exposes how difficult it is to create new ideas. 

Without the right process (a careful mixture of seclusion and external stimulation) you end up surfing and copying.  And, of course, as the point of the blog, it is easier to get caught when you do this.  We are constantly cataloging the visuals of our internet surfing, which creates many more moments of "familiarity."  Today, we are rarely uncomfortable with our surroundings because we are constantly create and filtering our surroundings. 

But on the creative process, too much stimulation leads to "all the good ideas have been taken" thinking.  Too much seclusion leads to lack of relevance.

I'm working on an article about Sustainability as a Simulacrum (a copy without an original) so reproduction and simulation are top of mind these days.

Coincidentally, I have been looking at Battle Jackets quite a bit as a cultural badge, and the blog mentioned above has a post about Nike ripping off designs from this site: TShirtSlayer

That's how it works these days.  Our worlds are folding in on each other.

 

campus speaking tour

Last week I stopped in Dave Weinberg's Desktop Cross Media Publishing and Design Class at the University of Southern Maine.  Great Lab in a new LEED building.  We talked a bit about the design process (and process design) and how design is a business tool to facilitate engagement. 

Next week, I'll be at Mara Einstein's Media class at NYU.  Mara's asked me to come talk about innovation and marketing strategy, so I'll be sharing some notes from More Than Promote at the recent Green Language Study completed by SOAP.

There are several events coming up this summer too: Good and Green, LOHAS Minneapolis, Sustainable Brands and LOHAS Boulder.  All great events.  More on those as they unfold.

 

Inventing space as promotion

One of the more elegant projects we do at SOAP is publish the White Pine Monographs, a collection of architectural renderings, designs and examples of how to build with Eastern White Pine.  The original monographs were published in the nineteen tees and twenties.  For our client NELMA we brought them back.

In April 1920, the publisher of the Monographs (the White Pine Bureau) published a story on Stotham, MA. It was a fictional town.  The fiction went undiscovered until the late 1940s when staff at the Library of Congress’ Department of Fine Arts was unable to locate the town.  April Fools, the publisher said.

Who could resist pulling that off again?

In April 2010, we published a Monograph about New Milford, NH.  On April 1st, 2011, we were busted by the Milford Cabinet, a newspaper that had been researching this fictional town and running into dead ends left and right.  Of course, we had to make sure that the town burned to the ground.

To keep the facade up, we created a blog written by the Author or the New Milford article, Gideon Leonard.  Lots of people emailed Leonard for directions to the site.  The blog Chronicles town history, townspeople and other insights by Gideon.

It's appropriate that we get busted this close to April fools.

 http://www.cabinet.com/cabinetcabinetnews/914158-308/tale-of-milford-history.html

the language of sustainability: the "prestige" of LEED

I'm in the heat of reviewing our latest survey of green language.  I'm behind.  It should be in design later this week and it will not be.

But it's on my brain, so when I saw this release from Bacardi come across CSRwire, I paid attention.

The headline:

Bacardi Americas Headquarters Awarded Prestigious LEED Green Building Certification

It's a great example of a PR person's excitement at getting to write a green release.  There's nothing really "prestigious" about LEED Gold is there?

PR folk are notorious for hyperbole and it does their client's a disservice.  Way to go Bacardi, but "prestigious"?

I'm nitpicking.

 

 

collaboration, completixity, simplicity and #applicomhq

They say collaboration is the new competition.  Well, someone said that.  It's an odd twist and that is perhaps why it is getting play (not unlike Authenticating Real).

Over at SOAP, we are very good at managing complex programs.  And things are getting more complex.  It's part of our technical background.  Most of us come from writing about or managing large environmental projects, compliance programs, software builds, employee engagement programs, sustainability departments, etc.  Understanding complexity is a good skill to have these days.  Making it simple to manage is the key.

We have tried most Project Management software programs out there, and have outgrown most of them as well. 

We recently migrated over to a new one called ApolloHQ.  I'm digging the simplicity of its architecture with smart UI to access things like Time Tracking, nested task lists within milestones, internal and external user designations...  It's overall UI kicks Basecamps ugliness to the curb.

It's pretty slick.  The goal is that it will help us collaborate more with our clients without being intrusive to the relationship.  I'll keep you posted as we put it to the test.

 

an incomplete picture of the problem: the problem of priorities

Yes, this is an incomplete diagram.  And that's the point.  There is no complete picture anymore.  As soon as you see the whole, the whole has changed.  How do we solve social, environmental and economic problems (nationally and within a single company) when we can't see the entire picture.  We can pick one and focus on it, but that often compounds the problems associated with the others.  We are a culture who loves to prioritize and this must change.

 

click to enlarge:

 

Focusing is this complexity is something I love.  It's why SOAP's culture is focused on the intersection of: culture and sustainability.  It's complex.

being popular is about to become unpopular

Much has been made about popularity these days. 

Google returns are based on popularity.  SEO is based on link popularity.  Facebook is one giant popularity contest.  Twitter, same.  Context Marketing is about relevance and relevance is code for popularity.

Hipsters are about being unpopular.  This backfires, of course.

Punk was about being unpopular.  This backfired as well.

Trends are things about to be popular.  Trend spotting is big business....it's about preparation as advantage.

None of this is enduring.  Pretty soon, being cool will no longer be cool.  We will return to the individual.

What will marketers do then?

Is Cause Marketing a noble distraction from CSR?

The last in my 3-part series for Environmental Leader on the noble distractions of csr came out yesterday.  I imagine this one might raise some hackles.  I imagine this because Cause Marketing is the strategy darling of the Capitalism with a Human Face crowd.  Simply, it is one of the best and most current marketing tools out there.  It is loved because it is effective and noble.  But it may not be the best CSR strategy.

And maybe it doesn't claim to be.  Maybe it's not supposed to be.  Maybe Cause Marketing is icing on the cake of CSR.  I'd be ok with that if it were true, but most of what I see as Cause Marketing are bolt on marketing programs (hence the name).  The winners of this years HALO awards will not likely fall into that category. And participants at this year's Cause Marketing Forum will disagree with me for sure.  And they will hold up examples of how wrong I am.  But I think it would be easier to find examples of Cause Marketing that are CSR veneers.  These veneers actually distract companies from activating Authentic CSR programs with (not for) their companies.

Read the fill articles here.

 

 

The American Dream: love your job, constant enertainment and disaster relief

I'm working on a chapter for an upcoming book that gathers essays around the theme - how not to run a start up.  My for my part, I'm deconstructing the Passion Myth - that bit of "business advice" to follow your passion into business.  "Liking your job" is how most of us mediate work-life-balance.  That, more than others, is the American Dream - to love your work.

But it seems there is another dream.  That dream is to be entertained at all times. 

• Reality TV
• Gamification of everything
• Social media
• Advertising
• Booze and Drug
• Sports
• News 

When the earthquake hit Japan, the news quickly picked up on America's response: 

After Japan Earthquake, Americans Show Their Support With Facebook Paper Crane Campaign

This is not meant to belittle the efforts, just to point at them and see how they reflect (and are reflect in) our culture.