In the hours and days that followed, I remember feeling the amazing shared sadness across New York City. It was both the worst of times and best of times, when our individual experience became shared across worlds.

What if we had chosen peace?

No where was this sense more prominent than in Union Square, where a memorial emerged and there were intense conversations about what our response should be as a nation. For that first week, I remember thinking, "What would be possible if the United States chose to take a deep breath and choose a non-violent response to this act of terror?"

Eli Pariser had started an email list called 9/11 Peace that gathered hundreds of thousands of email addresses of those calling for restraint and peace. Imagine a 21st century defined by such a profound choice inspired by Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Henry David Thoreau, and one of the original crew - Jesus of Nazereth.

Radiohead Idioteque: This is Really Happening

Of course, the Bush administration chose the more expected and less inspired path, which led a team of us to create the video below, inspired by the prophetic Radiohead song Idioteque, which we completed in November of 2001.

Now a decade later, reflecting on my time away from ground zero, having lived internationally in France, Singapore, and London, and now based in San Francisco, I still feel deeply connected the New Yorkers and others who have felt the impact of war over these years.

We Have Always Been at War, Our Time to Rise

Because I grew up without experiencing any violence towards me, I know it's naive for me to tell those impacted by war to choose peace. But the recent movements across the world, particularly the true non-violence leadership in Egypt, give me hope in the face of the institutional breakdown and extreme weather. I offer the song below as a tribute to those continuing to build.

The first inspiration for the song below came the night of 9/11, on the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, where I experienced New Yorkers singing together outside for the first time. Over the years, as I continued to listen to both old and new voices of those impacted by war, this song has continued to evolve and grow. This morning, on the tenth anniversary of that day, I put the finishing touches on the lyrics and finally discovered the name of the song, "Our Time to Rise."

For all of those who felt and continue to feel the sadness and loss that comes from acts of war and terror, and all of those who are building towards the dream of a world that chooses non violence, thank you and keep building.

It's Thursday night during a tough week in early December. The rainy winter has begun, but it's nowhere near as cold as it's been in Brooklyn or London. I haven't sat and written much since March, but it's been an amazing 2010.

Beginning the year with our time in India, and then moving our life to the Bay Area was a huge step. I have struggled with choosing the morning or doing improv Sunday Sessions as much as I committed to back in February, but the big victory in my life is that 2010 was the year that I actually chose a project.

Thanks to the ever lovely and powerful Christie George, a summer MBA intern and his amazing cousin, we finally moved LoudSauce from an idea that I talk about to an actual crowdfunded ad platform that funded a national TV ad and real posters on real bus shelters in San Francisco.

I've been told great advice for years about what it takes to actual create what you envision. But 2010 was the year that I finally chose to follow the advice of people like my friend Huned and the wise young startup leader Eric Ries: just build the closest thing to what you envision. Even fake parts of it if you have to. Go through the full cycle. Then listen, learn, adapt and repeat.

So as I look forward to the holidays, in a time where there is a lot of depression and transition in the air and in the weather, I feel privileged to be able to slow down with my parents, my brother and sister, and our broader family. I'm particularly looking forward to remembering the spirit of Christmas Eve and Jeko, and reconnecting with the 2009 Club to look forward into the always evolving next chapter.

Now off to sleep and back to work.

Over a beer last night with friend and supporter juzmcmuz from Made By Many (who brought 18 people from London), we talked about our overall impressions of SXSW Interactive this year. It was his first time attending, and it was my first since 2005, when Interactive was still relatively small compared to the thousands from startups, agencies, major and emerging brands, and independent bloggers and artists who blew up Austin this year. Here are a few highlights and recommendations for an even better 2011.

1. Fully Embrace Geo Experimentation

In some ways, Interactive has never been about talking, but rather about testing and iterating real tangible services, and SXSW's eager early adopters are able to demo great emerging services better than any. With Twitter and this year's rising stars FourSquare and Gowalla, the fun was in the participation. To keep in touch with friends and digerati alike during the conference, especially at night, FourSquare was best way to find people whose party you wanted to join. (Mashable even reported Foursquare has had 100,000 new users in the last 10 days.) I felt a bit lame that there isn't yet a FourSquare app for my Nokia N900, so was left back in time to 2009 browsing Twitter and Facebook for the latest info.

Other event driven startup services like Hot Potato and SitBy.Us tried to introduce their services through the conference. Unfortunately, they both would have needed a stronger initial base and some promotion by the organizers to be used by a critical mass. It would be great if the festival leveraged these event based start ups more intentionally into some kind of festival long user competition.

This is particularly important when realizing that most of the panel audiences were only about 50% present while tweet heckling or passing links during the talks. For those addicted to ever flowing Twitter hose of new tech and social innovation information, it's tough to find something truly new and innovative at the conference. But testing digital services with a bunch of other people in the same city for a week, now that's something you don't get every day. With additional support from the conference (like they did with special Foursquare badges for SXSW this year), we could pioneer and demonstrate what's possible with the amazing location based services of 2011.

2. Make Interactive Sustainability Leadership a Reality

A highlight for me was hearing Valerie Casey's keynote of the Designers Accord call out the Interactive community for being largely absent from our culture's drive toward a sustainable economy. While I'm unsure how much her presentation made an impact on the thousands of people in the room, I was so happy to see such a prominent venue for what I've been arguing are the best opportunities for people and agencies that build interactive experiences to demonstrate digital sustainability leadership.

The overall SXSW festival organizers have made a decent sustainability effort, having reduced shwag significantly, highlighting some innovate green design, and installing garbage cans with easy to understand icons for waste, recycling, and composting (the whole city of Austin needs them!). But the breakthrough behavior change, as with the rest of society, just hasn't really happened.

I would love to be happily surprised at SXSW Interactive 2011 when the next big competing social platforms are mashups of FourSquare and Mint.com that drive social behavior change toward #zerowaste and #transparency. For all the work that government, non-profits and businesses are already doing around sustainability, until there is a world class Nike+ style service that successfully incentivizes mainstream sustainable behavior, then interactive leadership has not yet stepped up to the plate.

3. HackDays for Great Music & Social Innovation

While the panel format will inevitably continue to unfortunately dominate conferences, SXSW Interactive should continue to innovate on the platform to generate more results out of our time together.

A good example of a session designed for more than talking was CauseLab's full day session dedicated to Ending Hunger. I only attended the tale end, but the group sessions generated 9 tangible ideas that could create breakthroughs toward solving hunger. Hoping for strong follow up as well.

The next level for SXSW Interactive 2011 would be if we were to do something similar to Music Hackday (see image from Music Hackday Boston) for innovating on APIs to either create great music apps or solve social and environmental problems. Especially given that the conference is a full 5 days long, it would be amazing if there could be a thread similar to the Seed Accelerator program, but focused on hacking existing APIs for social and environmental impact data to develop innovative solutions.

While I know that designing and coding for 12 hours at SXSW is not the most fun way of enjoying our time in Austin together, it is getting easier and easier to prototype ideas, and how cool would it be if we could connect talent like @infoharmoni and R/GA with social problem solvers like @seeclickfix and @expertlabs, to create actual tangible output on big screens and big attention of SXSW Interactive 2011?

Now that would actually be worthy of Valerie Casey's call for sustainability leadership from the SXSW Interactive crowd. What do you think?

Over the past few weeks, between conversations with people and agencies at the intersection of digital strategy and sustainability, the LoudSauce team team has been preparing for the WeMedia PitchIt Finals in Miami, and talking with potential partners and supporters of LoudSauce, a new social way to buy ad space for your favorite causes.

WeMedia is gonna be the best opportunity we've had so far to share our vision for LoudSauce, and receive feedback and coaching from experts in the areas of venture funding, social entrepreneurship and media.

We'll have some workshops with the judges and the other finalists, which should be collaborative and helpful for everyone, and then on Thursday morning we'll each have 10 minutes to pitch our venture to what I hope will be a room full of media innovators, producers, funders and fans.

Crowdsourced Creative Partners

Over the last few weeks of preparation, a few key new learnings have emerged. First, I had a conversation with James Sheratt, the CEO of the crowdsourced creative service Adhack. Since I have always seen LoudSauce as a compliment and not a competitor to crowdsourced creative sites, I had researched sites like 99designs, Crowdspring, and Zooppa. We even experimented with 99designs to create the LoudSauce logo (which I got a lot of flack for from my designer friends).

After talking with James, he made a clear distinction between the contest driven services like 99designs, where everyone works and only one person gets paid, and Adhack which partners buyers and creatives for each job, paying designers along the way variable to their input along the path to a particular piece of creative. I think the Adhack model is more sustainable and will attract better talent, recent partnerships with major agencies like Crispin, Porter & Bogusky and DDB are a good sign. I'll continue to talk with James about how LoudSauce and Adhack could partner on one of our campaigns in the coming months.

Gathering the Best Existing "Good" Ads

Secondly, I have discovered the amazing quantity of social TV and print ads already online at the Ads of the World archive. While it needs to have better filtering for ratings and issues, the public interest collection is the strongest I've found to date, and hopefully we can partner to offer Ads of the World users an opportunities to "Go Loud" once the LoudSauce service is up and running. I will be talking with someone from the AdCouncil later this week to see if they would be interested in leveraging the LoudSauce community to help extend the life of their ads, which they already get placed for free across the United States.

The Google TV Revolution Begins

Lastly, and perhaps most exciting, I spent some time digging into the new Google TV Ads service, which is already starting to revolutionize Television advertising. Not only does the service make targeted TV Advertising drastically more affordable for small businesses and nonprofits, but they also partnered with Spotmixer to make it easy and affordable ($150) to make a reasonably professional 30 second ad that can be submitted.

It seems like some small and medium sized businesses have already taken advantage of the service, but (as usual) non profits and social groups have yet to jump on board. One exception is the Hanley Center, which has an amazing success story about what their Google TV Ad has done to the success of their business. Hopefully LoudSauce can help social organizations start using the service.

At LoudSauce, we believe that many non profits and social causes will be similarly surprised by the amazing support and credibility they will receive through traditional offline advertising. For all of the criticism that digital folks (myself included) have thrown at the old ad model, it still is a great way to reach a big audience to create awareness. For all the power of our social networks, the reality is that most people in the United States still have never heard of innovative projects like Kiva and Green for All.

Imagine if Green for All could edit a 30 second or 1 minute version of their great "New Sound" video, and we could put it on TV during March Madness through Google TV Ads. Understandably, Green 4 All's current funders would not appreciate "wasting" money for TV advertising, but what if we chip in to help make it happen?

According to Google, in order to make a reasonable impact, we would need to run an ad for 4 weeks, and spend about $750 per week. That's about $3,000, or only 150 people giving $20 each. What do you think? Would you help make it happen?

This morning begins the month of March, the third month of 2010 and the fourth week of being in the Bay Area. As usual, after a great first week of "choosing the morning," the second week was at about 50% follow through, and then the third (last week) I didn't even do any stretching, sit ups or push ups. There's always part of me that judges myself, and feels bad about it, like there's something wrong. The reality is that each night and morning are another new fresh opportunity.

So after a good weekend that included our first gathering of friends in our new home (with the couch moved into our main room), an amazing mixed party of happy people and great music and dancing with thePeople, and the first good quality Sunday Session, last night around 10:30 I decided to wake up at 6:30 this morning, and begin this week as I wanted to begin it.

Now, around 7:15, with a cup of tea and no internet connection, I'm thinking clearly about the weeks ahead. With a combination of ongoing conversations and interviews exploring digital opportunities for sustainability leadership, the week to complete our LoudSauce finalist pitch for next week's WeMedia conference, and the everpresent cost and benefit of daily social activities, I look forward to a week of productive creativity and focused conversation.

With thoughts of my sister's family in Chile, those in Haiti and New Orleans, and the rest of whose time is coming soon, I begin the work of communicating why LoudSauce is an important new social venture that transform advertising into a medium for good.

As people and brands begin their long term journey towards becoming truly sustainable, what are appropriate and effective ways to use digital to share data and engage stakeholders? Overall, even award winning brands are still over-spending efforts on static sustainability reports that are relatively useless to the digital generation. Below are some opportunities for agencies and brands willing to lead.

Last June, I attended the 2009 Sustainable Brands conference on behalf of a client. The experience talking with brands, sustainability consultancies and agencies confirmed two things:

1. While major brands are slowly making progress, most are embracing digital engagement and sustainability strategies in separate silos with different teams and different agencies.


2. While sustainability consultancies and marketing agencies are both serving clients, there is an opportunity for digital agencies to proactively develop platforms for engaging customers, employees and shareholders to accelerate the evolution towards sustainability.

These lessons got me interested why agencies weren't more aggressively exploring these opportunities. So after completing a major project with Nokia and Rihanna in November, I chose to leave my job as an Account Director at R/GA in London, spend the month of January in India, and move to the Bay Area to further explore opportunities to apply lessons of digital marketing to sustainability.

Social media's influence on sustainable brands is already well documented by sources such as the Gort Cloud, and I won't spend time here discussing that in depth. Instead, I will focus attention here on opportunities for digital agencies and brands to drastically improve the way they create digital experiences for their customers, shareholders and employees.

From Sustainability Reporting to Data Storytelling

Due to the nature of sustainability, most major brands have rightfully focused their energy on evaluating the social and environmental impact of their products and services. Particularly for manufacturers and distributors of physical goods, the vast majority of the improvements they can make are in the physical life cycles of their products. Therefore, the question from a digital perspective is: How can digital media engage stakeholders to share progress more dynamically, and also accelerate the momentum of those improvements for the company and its stakeholders?

As part of the 2009 Ceres/ACCA Sustainability Reporting Awards, which highlight best practices in reporting on sustainability issues by North American organizations, the General Electric pdf report won top prize for how it communicated the strategic alignment between their sustainability and overall business strategies. And Seventh Generation received a special award for making their report a flash based e-book with links and videos.

However, comparing these prize winning reports to even basic digital user experience expectations in 2010, the reality is that sustainability reporting is still extremely poor on interactivity and utility. In a joint research project by the Global Reporting Initiative and Radley Yeldar evaluating trends in online sustainability reporting, they were similarly unimpressed:

"Few companies are taking advantage of the more innovative uses of technology. No company in our survey used XBRL to tag data; none used Web 2.0 technologies to create engagement and dialogue with users of their primary report; and even where other online functionalities are being used, these tend to focus on 'design' rather than functionality."

There is a major opportunity for brands and leading digital agencies to make a step change that goes from simply reporting to long term dynamic storytelling. Instead of static pdfs and e-books with lots of photos and text designed to impress advocacy groups and shareholders, imagine amazing data visualizations of historical, current, and future projected social and environmental impact based on tangible, implicit data. Some early explorations of life cycle storytelling at the product level are Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles, and so many creative opportunities are yet to be explored. Also see TED International speaker and friend Manuel Lima's post on the subject of data visualization and sustainability.

The Need for a Strong Sustainability API

Beyond being product and brand specific, useful sustainability data eventually also needs to be intelligently shared through APIs that enable stakeholders to visualize, compare, and innovate on the data. In order to gain wisdom across products, companies and sectors, brands will need to become comfortable opening up their data, some of it proprietary, for customers and even competitors to build on and mash up effectively.

One of the most forward looking projects has been the GreenXchange project with Nike, Creative Commons and other partners, which opened up some of Nike's patents for innnovators to build on. I am curious to see what results are created out of the open innovation, but the long term strategy is spot on.

Similarly, some smart technologists have been working on open standards on environmental impact data to enable the kind of innovation we've seen in web 2.0 in the green economy. Walmart's efforts to create a Sustainability Index have major potential, and it would be great to see the UK retailers like Marks & Spencer build on their already strong leadership to formalize standard data sharing through an API.

According to Programmable Web's API Directory, for example, there are some noteworthy independent APIs such as the Carbon data measurement standards AMEE, Open Eco, and Carma. Of the three, the UK based AMEE, which stands for Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine, seems the most aware of its potential role in driving innovative mashups for sustainable choices.

While independent organizations may be in a better position to gather and process data, sustainable brands and the agencies that serve then have an opportunity to be pro-active about leading or participating in these platforms, and will improve their brand reputation strongly by doing so.

In the second part of this series on Digital Opportunities for Sustainability Leadership, I will evaluate some of the best digital sustainability experiences that brands and agencies have produced to help people and communities to improve their life and buying choices, and live more sustainable lives.

We just found out that our social venture LoudSauce, a social way to buy ad space for your favorite causes, was selected as a finalist for Ashoka's WeMedia Changemakers Pitchit competition, which means I will be pitching on March 9-11th in Miami for a chance at $25,000 to start the social enterprise.

A little less than a year ago, during another yearly beginning of reflection, I engaged in an excercise to find a new name for the social venture I had been discussing over the past few years. In 48 hours, a group of professionals and amateurs alike suggested names for a "crowdfunded media buying service for social enterprises," and the name that emerged as the winner based on NameThis.com's algorithms, was LoudSauce (suggested by non other than a previous Nokia client and hip hop karaoke master Dan Goodall.

The excitement of the interest from friends and supporters was contagious, and we ended up applying to a few venture competitions including TechStars and Ycombinator, and found a developer in the Bay Area who was interested in joining as a co-founder. We were happily surprised to be invited by Paul Graham and the friendly Ycombinator team for a final round interview in April, which perfectly coincided with a trip back to the US from London for my 10 year Duke reunion.

After one of the most efficient 10 minutes of communication I've ever experienced, they handed us a check to cover our travel expenses, and later that night we eagerly awaited their decision. While the discussion during the interview had focused on the model - we showed an early prototype and were asked what kinds of causes would attract the most funding - the email from Paul gave us the main reason they chose not to invest.

He said they liked us and they liked our idea, but they felt that LoudSauce would be "open to criticism on the grounds that you were encouraging people to spend money on advertising instead of giving it directly to charities." He wrote that advertising is criticized heavily anyway, and that as a for profit, we could be accused of channeling dollars away from solving problems and into advertising for our own profit.

While we understood his point, we were frustrated because we hadn't discussed that during the conversation. The appropriate causes that will benefit from LoudSauce are not causes like disaster relief in Haiti, which are well publicized and well served (at least initially) by current funding channels. The right causes for LoudSauce will be those that groups of friends or networks think are under-exposed for certain target audiences (like the Atheist bus campaign in London). We're essentially developing the tool to automate what groups like MoveOn and Repower American have been using with their users already, so that the rest of us active citizens can fund ad campaigns that we think are worth focusing attention and investment towards.

For too long, many conscious people have understandably criticized advertising as largely trying to get us to buy more plastic stuff that we don't need. In many cities, some graffiti and murals seem to do a better job at providing a positive vision for communities than billboards and television. However, now it's time to leverage some of the talented designers and culture jammers of our generation, and put our money where are vision is.

Over the coming few weeks, I'll be working on my 10 minute pitch for the WeMedia PitchIt session in Miami. If you have ideas about how you think it can be the strongest, please do let me know. Thanks so much for your attention and your support.

Note: I've also posted this on the LoudSauce blog.

I woke up this morning at 6am to the sound of my Nokia N900 alarm, still searching for a sim card in this new old American land. While we were spending the last month in India between our most recent life in London and our new life in the Bay Area, we spent a week in a small coastal spot in the state of Kernataka called Gokarna.

While the rest of our month was filled with Mumbai chaotic excitement, motorcycles through Hampi boulders and temples, and family time in Kerala, our week in Gokarna was kind of like an extended New Years Day of resolutions and visions for 2010. We also spent time over four days practicing a morning ritual that will become a key part of our 2010 back in the United States.

When I reflected on the last few phases of my adult life since college, I saw that while I have been someone with strong vision and ideas for the future, my 7 years in Brooklyn and 3 years in London haven't seen much actual progress on putting finishing polish on any of ideas or creative work.

Especially during in my time at R/GA in London, I gave most of my waking energy to work and projects with clients and colleagues on the global Nokia Account. I don't regret the time I dedicated toward promoting the online & mobile launch event Rihanna Live for example, but at times it felt like I misplaced part of my soul at home.

There are words, music and images that I have been gathering on my journey over the last 10 years, stories that I feel compelled to share, applications that I want to create. And instead of pretending that I will work on these projects when I get home at night, with my head full of the inevitably chaotic day, I have decided that I will be keeping the clearest part of the day for myself and my priorities. I will be "choosing the morning."

So good morning to a great 2010 here in the Bay Area. Good afternoon to folks in London and good evening to those out in Mumbai and Singapore. I look forward to sharing some of these words and images and stories in the coming days and weeks and months. Now onto sit ups and push ups before breakfast.

The first ones were pretty random, like the first, Thunder Bay Flyover.

Then, a few months ago, I got a pretty interesting one where user comments were upset cause the song was used on top of a popular video from one of their favorite artists. The users of course weren't that happy, but it was interesting to see some of the comments were positive about the song.

Then today I realized did a search and realized that the song had been used a lot, so did a search on youtube for "Destination Non-Specific" and it came up about 50 results on Youtube.

When I was browsing, I noticed a user named annamaisa had even made an actual music video for the song, and it's actually pretty beautiful (and viewed over 10,000 times). See here.

Overall, people continue to validate my belief that many of us are living in the emerging gift economy. While I still have not leveraged any my life long social capital for actual tangible cash capital, I think that day might be coming soon.

Thanks all for the collaboration. Let's keep building the new economy. Check out "350 Make a Choice" from MuskokaDreamscape, which uses an alionsonny remix of my CCmixter track Everyday Choices to promote 350.org's climate action campaign.

With 172 names suggested and 1,192 votes cast over the 48 hour session, it was an amazing experience that put vastly more energy towards launching this venture than I could have ever put in alone.

When I first received word about the three winners, I was a little shocked (Loud Sauce and seedjar seemed completely random). But after writing some draft proposals using the name LoudSauce, and hearing back from some of you in my larger community, I am starting to seriously consider it.

Not only is it a great first story to begin a venture rooted in trust in the participation of the crowd (and a name submitted by one of my current Nokia clients), but it may be a name that designers may find interesting potential in exploring a brand identity (more on that in later emails). Let me know if you feel strongly that it works or doesn't work.

Lastly, please join me online for feedback and discussion, as I will continue posting refined versions of the vision and plan for the venture: for starters at the Global Social Benefit Incubator and the Changemakers.net Power of Us Competition.

I hope you will continue to spread the word and share your thoughts via email or the comments below. Enjoy this amazing week for the world honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the new leadership in the United States.

Using their own money or credits through viewing partner ads, crowds vote with their dollars to fund strategic ads that promote products, companies, and causes that they believe in. Users collaborate to push video and banner campaigns through dynamic Ad serving networks to the front pages of major media outlets online (and eventually offline). Media is only bought if the money is raised, and users see the difference they've made through analytics, with an incentive to invest in more campaigns to help build a sustainable culture and economy.

Important themes: open innovation, crowdfunding, radical transparency, measuring social and eco progress.

Useful metaphors: (1) Youtube + Kiva + Google Adwords. (2) like CarrotMob for Advertising. (3) A MoveOn.org Ad platform for everyone.

Suggest a name or follow progress at:
http://tinyurl.com/axjnkw

]]> http://www.activefreemedia.com/2009/01/help_name_activ.html http://www.activefreemedia.com/2009/01/help_name_activ.html Crowdsourcing Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:42:15 +0000 no 4:49 Crowdsourcing While I had heard of DARPA inventing the internet somewhat, this is a pretty good animation of how the actual evolution happened from computer to internal network to international standard that we now take for granted.

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

Personally:

Looking back through my iPhoto collection over the last year, I was struck by two things.

1. First, the sheer quantity of places I had traveled in the last year: from the snow in upstate NY, a ski trip to the Alps near Geneva, a Brit/Turkish wedding in Istanbul, a week in Berlin (my new favorite European city), a summer in London, an adventure to Tanzania including a seemingly near death moment on top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, a musical wedding and look forward in San Francisco, not to mention numerous trips to Helsinki and NY.

2. I was struck by how disconnected I felt to the places and people in my life, especially some of the people I care most deeply about. Not only have I not shared many of the photos via Flickr or Facebook (why isn't there a better Flickr app for Facebook?), but also, in a year of typing on laptops and sharing via mobile phone,my shoulders felt the aches of a hunched back, my eyes and brain experienced the pains of screen fatigue, and my relationships felt as scattered as the 300+ 'friends' on facebook.

I seriously am starting to question the value of our evolution towards quickness of information, and wonder if I have actually appropriately digested this year. (Now after a week in a lake house with ongoing conversation, as well as slideshow of images, about the year with my close family, and without access to mobile or internet access, I have definitely digested a bit more).

Professionally:

The year of 2008 was my first full year behind the for-profit firewall, and I think it has taken it's toll. As those of you who know me beyond my time at R/GA, I am a full time sharer who believes in and practices the value of open thought and collaborative process. While my current employer also theoretically believes in the same, the reality of signing Non-Disclosure Agreements with global brands nervous about trade secrets and yet to be announced products creates an awkward situation that I don't think I've managed very well personally.

I want to be able to share the collaborative story both inside and outside the firewalls of my office and the offices of my clients, to connect people, resources, and inspiration to leverage our collective attention and culture to change the world for the better. I want to be more specific about what I intend to do, without leaving my job and my clients. I go into the holidays unsure of how that will play out in 2009.

Worldly:

Being based out of London in 2008, I generally felt a little disconnected to the events in the United States. However, while I mostly 'watched' the events of the presidential and congressional election, I was proud to have close friends with shared political history who worked on the ground to bring about the election of Barack Obama as the President of the United States.

Beyond that campaign, 2008 witnessed additional breakthroughs in awareness and interest in sustainable living, with nearly every major publication online and off dedicating at least one 'green' issue to the cause. Despite the growth in awareness and interest, and a general shy away from gas guzzlers due to the increase in oil prices, life continued pretty much as it has for the last century, with the quantity of plastic waste flowing nicely every time I bought pretty much anything. In the UK, some noted improvements were moves away from plastic bags and Pret-A-Manger's innovative inspiration for waste disposal in store.

Looking forward to 2009 and 2010

I predict that 2009 and 2010 will be the years that the leading cultures in the United States, Europe, and possibly in India, China, and Brasil, will struggle to realize the tangible shift in behavior required to make the necessary transformation of manufacturing and waste cycles. Despite the large scale events like Katrina, the fact is that most of us haven't yet felt the impact of our personal choices. Therefore, I personally will be contributing to the evolution by using digital media and data visualization to put powerful mirrors up to our choices (including my own) in order to cause the breakthroughs in behavior.

I also predict that from the ashes of the Economic breakdown, we will see the rise of one or two major new brands by the end of 2009 or mid 2010, in the like of the early days of Microsoft or Google, that will leverage the economic and ecological cost effectiveness of the Cradle to Cradle manufacturing model. Hopefully, that company's innovations will be able to be applied to revitalized transport industry and energy sector that will seriously challenge and inspire the likes of General Motors, Toyota, British Petroleum and Shell.