It’s a very exciting day today as the new laws that Digital Eskimo helped usher in take effect. The agency put its support behind the Raise the Bar community campaign, providing branding, design and our campaign engine (and initial funding) to the project. In just three months we were able to help galvanise public opinion and change laws that had been stagnant for 25 years due to political influence and a lack of vocal community support for change. Our campaign, coupled with strong leadership by Clover Moore changed all that.

It’s no overstatement to say NSW will never be the same again. Small bar legislation takes effect July 1 and recent changes to the entertainment planning laws mean you’ll likely see a real person playing real music in that bar.

I was personally involved in the strategy and tactical team and worked with a seriously talented and motivated group who deserve all the kudos the campaign has received. There were many contributors and supporters but special mention goes to the core team being: John Wardle, Jonathon Larkin, Mimi Daraphet, Adele Winteridge, Damian Cerini, Andrew Cox. Full credits here

btw If you were one of the many thousands who also made this happen by sending virtual drinks you will know about the exclusive party tonight to celebrate. So i’ll see you there for a drink or two.

Recently I enjoyed a forum at the Nextwave festival in Melbourne in which Mark Pesce, spoke on the impacts social networking technologies are having on our interactions with each other and power structures in society generally.

Mark’s talk (above) in particular was most intriguing as he described how his twitter network informed him of the Sichuan earthquake’s epicentre, impacts and ‘ground truths’ as he calls them well before the global mainstream media networks were able. Quite amazing when you think this is one mans’ twitter network. He made the point that these networks are one of the biggest threats to global news media. Another two examples of how social networks are changing and challenging the power structures of society follow, one in which he describes how a blogging site played a pivotal role in bringing down a US Attorney General (no less!).

More on Mark’s blog

The Digital Eskimos moved studios last weekend and are now set up in a large 320 sq metre open plan space just down the road at 44 Foster Street, Surry Hills. The move involved a lot of hard work of course, made worse by a landlord that reminded me of what happens when one focusses on the negative aspects of life rather than the positive. However our new landlord is cool and the new space with it’s freshly installed bamboo floors and north westerly aspect is even more sustainable than the last place. There’s a really lovely energy in the building and we’re looking forward to filling it with good vibes and beautiful designs!

The weeks just gone reminded me that optimism plays such a huge part in a successful business and indeed in the great journey we’re all on towards a sustainable society. This quote sent to me by a dear friend sums it up so well …

EVERYTHING CHANGES by Bertolt Brecht

Everything changes. We plant
trees for those born later,
but what’s happened has happened
and poisons poured into the seas
cannot be drained out again.

What’s happened has happened.
Poisons poured into the seas
cannot be drained out again, but
everything changes. We plant
trees for those born later.

Special thanks to the eskimos who mucked in on the move (Duncan, Amanda, Rob, Fieke and my brother Mick) for their hard work and of course our friends at GreenMove. The data guys Joel, Troy and the lads at A1 deserve a special mention as does Meitar our in-house eskimo techno genius who kept the network up and running so seamlessly.

Once we’re settled and the space is looking good we’ll post some photos and describe many of the new initiatives we can now implement for a more sustainable and happy studio.

.. and we are into sustainability even more … so when we see them together as in this article in City of Sound post we get pretty excited.

This kind of real-time information delivery is vital for the uptake of mixed mobility transport solutions and public transport generally. As we can see in Helsinki if it’s done properly people use it. There’s no reason (other than political) why we can’t do this here in Australia. Clover Moore has proposed her sustainable city vision for Sydney which should include this level of wired transport.

I note with some optimism Chairman Rudd has confirmed his support for a nationwide cities policy of some kind - perhaps this will lead to financial and political will to make it happen here as we are seeing in other cities. Ultimately of course all major cities on Earth will need to run on these types of systems with minimal car use (if any).

This is assuming we have enough energy (read oil!) to support it of course by the time they are implemented.

The tag line this year is ‘Social Media and Public Relations: are you ready for the audience to jump in?’, a timely topic for the PR industry to grapple with no doubt. Actually the conference is a bit broader than that as it will focus on the importance of on-line communications strategies for Public Affairs Professionals and engaging the media in this dynamically evolving multi-user environment. Some damn fine speakers and panelists attending as well so should be a good one, i hope to attend a fair whack of the conference actually it’s that good.

My particular presentation is titled ‘Is your website an effective communications tool?’ in which i will be discussing what we learnt working on the Raise the Bar and Your Rights at Work campaigns (and other campaigns time permitting!)

If you don’t know the Walkley Foundation they are ‘the peak industry body representing Australia’s media and is aimed at supporting and encouraging professional and ethical journalism.’

Visit Conference web site.

This months, Nett magazine includes an article on Digital Eskimo’s day to day operations as a (hopefully inspiring!) example of how to run a green business. We’ve been dreaming up and implementing a unique set of approaches for years now so as you can imagine we had a bit to say.

The article mentions an initiative we are very excited about which is our decision to buy carbon credits to neutralise the entire footprint of the agency since we began in 2001. We see it as a way to cleanup the mess we’ve left in the atmosphere (albeit while doing mostly sustainable projects!) rather than just offsetting recent or current emissions and we’ll be challenging other companies to do the same.

Go buy the magazine or Download the article (PDF).

We are happy to see a definite theme emerging this year as design, technology and sustainability gets picked up (finally) as part of the bigger picture across the board. Digital Eskimo has quite a few opportunities lined up already to share and engage in our design and sustainability conversations (and hopefully actions).

First up is the greening of CHI 2008 where I have been invited to be part of the panel Beyond the hype: Sustainability & HCI in April. The growing interest in sustainability at CHI, and as part of conferencing in general is exciting, and I hope to participate in this one remotely and save some air miles.

Closer to home …

May brings us the Pervasive Persuasive Technology and Environmental Sustainability Workshop at Pervasive 2008 here in Sydney 19-22 May. Duncan and myself both hope to attend this local one. Our submission, “Understanding Motivation and Enabling Action Towards Change” focused on how Considered Design enables us to both understand what motivates people make change, as well as design technology to support that.

We will be spending the air miles (offset of course) to attend Ezio Manzini’s (a true leader in the field) Changing the Change conference in Torino, later in year. The conference focuses on the role and potential of design research in the transition towards sustainability - we hope this marks a major step in the re-defining of designers as facilitators of significant, positive change.

Now the Casulo Mobile Living Furniture project is one fine piece of design! It meets the needs of people who move around regularly (probably half the younger population of cities like Sydney!) and should see the wasteful practice of throwing out cheap temporary furniture that’s too hard to move minimised.

Whilst we love the design and elegance of the execution we’d be keen to know more about the sustainability of the materials (sourcing and toxicity issues for instance). We’d also want answers to our questions on durability as well as full life-cycle (who is responsible for the product after its serviceable life?) before rushing out and ordering one.

Having said that a big Deskimo thumbs up to the designers at the Casulo project for a fantastic prototype design.

Image above: We’ve just taken delivery (courtesy of Sheriff) of two new recycled Ansett Airline trolleys to add to our fleet which we use as storage units around the studio.

I stumbled across this well written article by Kristen Le Mesurier on blogging in The Age Innovator archives recently which has a nice clear explanation of what blogging is and why it’s relevant to business.

The article references our blog and specifically makes mention of our willingness to share our successes and failures related to sustainability initiatives in the studio. Like most businesses i think, blogging isn’t always our first priority and we’ve been a bit quiet lately while we focus on client work and evolving our Considered Design methods. The article has definitely inspired me to get our blogging house in order …

We have created a roster for staff to ensure that we share the load, keep it regularly updated and provide a diverse range of voices (Unlike some design agency heads i’m pretty sure it’s not all about me!). We are also adding blogging to staff job descriptions and including it in KPIs to further reinforce the importance sharing our stories has for the company.

You should see a difference as we ramp up the posts and renew our commitment to inspire other organisations and people through our own actions on the road to a sustainable world.

.. ok ok so i’m sharing it with 20 other people. So B&T recently hosted an evening through Holly at Pearl PR for innovative digital business owners as part of a cover story for their Digital Media magazine. It was an interesting night listening to a range of passionate people talk about their little babies and how they were growing.

The mag is out now so i guess this is how they sell a lot of copies, put a stack of people on the front cover! Less motivated people can read it online on a rather annoying flash magazine simulator.