Is a blog sweeter than Twitter?

On the first day back at work in 2024, I am keen to follow up the interesting conversation that Cal Newport has been developing for some time, but most recently in this essay on his site.

He quotes Neil Gaiman: “I miss the days of just sort of feeling like you could create a community by talking in a sane and cheerful way to the world.” Gaiman then goes on to note how Twitter et al are not delivering on the notion of "sane and cheerful' in any meaningful sense. I agree with this, as anyone on Twitter would.

In discussing Neil Gaiman's view that the blog may return due to the failure of social media sites, Newport identifies a clear value difference: the importance of engagement of followers as opposed to the numbers of followers (or equivalent expression). 

Deep or deeper engagement with followers (or supporters, as we say) is a key focus for Greenfleet. It is not just a quirky choice - it is a clear outcome of valuing community involvement in climate action and, thence, sustainable development. 

This kind of action does not come from people who are skimming between screens. It comes from a more profound place of wanting to align values with organisations and then taking the required action.

Xmas reading the first

Forestry, operations, supporter engagement: the stuff of Greenfleet

Reflecting on a big year at Greenfleet...

In forestry, we built on a review report early in the year, and developed the Technical Advisory Committee, revamped our site identification approaches, mapped our paper files across to our digital system, became a member of the international Gold Standard Foundation and employed a new General Manager, Re-vegetation. There are great plans for new approaches to monitoring, an innovative approach to blue carbon and the implementation of the land pipeline.

In our operations, we focused on our systems and how they enabled our staff and supporters to be better served. We took the next step of increasing the effectiveness of Salesforce by providing a direct path for our supporters to donate, launched a new clear and useful web-site, trialled a change to out accounting system from MYOB to Xero, ensured that Board papers are developed in a timely manner, communicated more regularly to all stakeholders and oversaw some staffing changes to better align skills and tasks. We will continue to build our systems through the coming years.

In our supporter engagement, we focused on the need to integrate our corporate supporters, our workplace giving and our individual supporters in a deeper engagement with Greenfleet. We re-developed our certificates, co-branded stickers and other marketing collateral, more methodically connected to our corporate supporters through email and phone calls, increased our social media presence significantly, conducted the inaugural Chairman's Lunch with corporate supporters, tried some new campaign approaches and reached out to new sectors such as superannuation and insurance to develop new products. Next year will have a major focus on new products and supporters.

Complexities and challenges remain. We face some interesting policy debates on forestry and biodiversity over the coming months. Climate change will be in the focus of our global community in Paris at the end of next year. And we struggle with the endless policy reversals of governments, as well as the naked ideology of some governments. But I think we can be fundamentally optimistic about our organisation’s future.

Three things that I have learned in a year at Greenfleet

Number One:

Carbon offsets play a critical role in climate adaptation

Number Two:

People connect very personally to the notion and action of planting trees

Number Three:

Diversity in supporters and forests provides a sustainable platform for the future

From the riches of Twitter

 

Beezus, Darling‏@MissObdurate

A real sentence I just read on the real internet and if I've ever been happier in my whole life I can't remember it pic.twitter.com/QJ1mb5R4h2

•  Reply 
•  Retweeted 
•  Favorite 

• RETWEETS1,295
• FAVORITES1,304
• 

9:49 PM - 8 Jun 2014

Eight years ago these girls planted trees for Greenfleet

I wonder where they have got to in their lives and whether they remember what they have contributed?

Lifting Our Game 2013: Thriving Neighbourhoods in Action

Last year I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Auckland City Council to discover the many ways they were tackling the balance of the efficiencies of larger scale and the need for local and neighbourhood complexity. Appropriate for the largest local government authority in Australasia.

A new start

After seven months as Greenfleet CEO, I feel that I can re-start this blog, feeding on the many new insights that working here has created: as well as building on approaches from elsewhere that I absorb as I continue to read, research, develop and try new things.

The grim side of cities

In the USA, continued financial pressure on those cities that missed the urban renewal process...

In his first public meeting, Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr said On Monday the city has a 50/50 chance of filing for bankruptcy.
Speaking to an audience at Wayne State University, Orr delivered a message of fiscal discipline but offered few details of his plan for negotiating with Detroit's creditors, public employees or retirees.
Detroit is believed to owe about $17 billion in debt and other liabilities. When he released his first official report on Detroit's finances last month, Orr said the city will have enough cash on hand to meet its existing obligations through at least the fourth quarter.
Asked about the possibility of a bankruptcy filing, Orr said: "I'll take a dive and say 50/50.

100 years of Stravinsky's Rites about to be celebrated including my younger daughter

A new take on the Royals

A green wall inside a cafe in Jakarta - surprise!

Auckland waste: the organic solution

The view from my study on a cold winter day

Keeping the momentum

An issue for those local governments that led the climate change debate over the past decade or so is: how do we keep the momentum up? Toronto is proving their success by measuring reductions - can those cities in Australia that have done so much over recent years do the same? And this is a recent short overview from a wonderful USA leader, the City of Berkeley:

In its efforts to secure the future of its community, the city of Berkeley has decided to effectively combat the present threats triggered by climate change. In 2006, recognizing the costs to society, the voters of Berkeley demanded a critical change by endorsing the “Berkeley Measure G.” The measure proposed reducing the community’s greenhouse gas emissions.  To achieve this goal, the government led by then-mayor Tom Bates started a local climate change campaign that resulted in the 2009 Berkeley’s Climate Action Plan. By creating value in sustainability and the future; Mayor Bates was able to engage the population into moving forward progressively.
Tom Bates was a “Greenie” before pushing for the Climate Action Plan. He was already recycling his garbage and composting the organic disposables from his own house inside his garage, taking public transportation and walking to his meetings. In 2009, he was able to scale the reach of his actions to a bigger level by taking the lead on the development of the Berkeley City Climate Action Plan.
To move this idea forward, local government established an ambitious goal of reducing the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent by 2020. The project consisted of a sequence of behavioral change measures distributed over five different important areas:

• Sustainable transportation and land use

• Building energy use

• Waste reduction and recycling

• Community outreach

• Adaptation and resilience

To monitor the progress and ensure the results were achievable, the key performance indicators (KPIs) and impact measures were carefully planned and designed to involve all the important stakeholders, from city residents to local companies, during the process. Every opinion and thought was seriously considered.
To date, Berkeley has already achieved outstanding results such as decreasing commercial electricity usage by seven percent, and reducing solid waste disposal by 43 percent, which equals approximately 48,000 tons. Unfortunately, like every long-term plan that quickly achieves success in its initial stage, the biggest concern the city faces now is how to move forward and keep the same high level of achievement.
Ever since its implementation, enthusiastic citizen engagement has been credited as a crucial part of the plan and the determining factor for achieving success as well as a solid functional and sustainable financing system. Some strategic events were developed not only to attract the contribution of locals but also to measure the efficiency of the project as a whole. The city used monetary reward systems, especially in the area of waste reduction and recycling, to stimulate companies, local businesses owners and residents to adopt new habits when disposing their garbage. In the first year of the project, a “Cash for Trash” contest granted up to $2,000 dollars to citizens that demonstrated strong recycling policies and local businesses would get up to 30 percent off the fee of standard garbage collection.