As promised: My notes from the “L.A. Blogs, Green Blogs; New Media and Social Change” panel, organized by Green L.A. My ideas mostly had to do with local blogs, since I run what’s primarily a v. LA-centric blog.

My overall suggestion: Consider web writers / reporters / bloggers not just as people who might write about your work, but as members of your local community — and potential supporters and participants in your organization.

After all, many local bloggers directly write about groups they’re involved with. For example, LAist broke the cyclist vs. motorist with road rage incident on Mandeville Canyon Road story because one of the site’s contributors, Stephen Box, is v. involved with the cycling community. Similarly, BREATHE LA’s efforts to organize at California Air Resources Board’s public hearing and TreePeople’s Citizen Forester Class both got great first-person blog coverage — the kind that “demystifies” nonprofits and their activities to encourage first-timers to check out orgs’ initiatives.

To that end, I suggest that activist organizations use the very resources that bloggers / writers themselves use in order to network and gather information. Some tips:

1. Get a website. A no brainer, but something Green L.A. still hasn’t done — though I hear there’s a test site somewhere. Having a site up — even it’s just a basic “about us” page with contact info — is more important than constructing a gorgeous site. Otherwise, the new media doesn’t know how to contact you, and even if you do get press, the people reading said story have no way of contacting you for further involvement or info. Your story then has little chance of spreading.

2. Think beyond the traditional email newsletter. Because in case you missed it, we all have too much email, which is apparently “creating anxiety in the workplace, adversely affecting the ability to focus, diminishing productivity and threatening family bonds.”

An easy way of doing this is keeping a blog — one of two types, depending on your resources (or lack thereof):

>> Unique content blog. Having a blog alone will not automatically tap into a new, young population of potential members / supporters — which is why when an already cash-strapped, under-staffed nonprofit asks me if they should start a blog, I usually say a blog prolly wouldn’t be a good ROI for them.

If you decide to invest in a blog, you really do have to invest in it — meaning you’ll need frequent updates with unique content and interesting perspectives. You also have to be comfortable giving the blog’s writers permission to express opinions; bland regurgitations of what other news outlets wrote about you won’t get particularly popular.

Some of the ones I like and read: Carl Pope of Sierra Club’s Taking the Initiative, Environmental Working Group’s Enviroblog (run mostly by Amanda Hanley, a full-time employee dedicated to blogs), and most recently, Mark Gold of Heal the Bay’s Spouting Off.

>> Barebones blog. If you don’t have the money or time to write a blog with unique content and an interesting voice(es), consider using a blog — with an email signup option — in lieu of the email newsletter. Such a blog wouldn’t require any more time than you currently spend putting together a newsletter, but would let you:

1) provide timely content for visitors who haven’t signed up for a newsletter,

2) automatically archive info re: your org’s activity, making it easy for any blogger / writer to find out what you’ve been up to both recently and in the past,

3) allow people to get timely info re: your org in the way they want it, whether that’s via direct blog reading, rss feed, or email.

For example, most people who read green LA girl rarely visit the green LA girl page, except to leave a comment when so moved. The vast majority of green LA girl readers either read it via an rss feed reader (Bloglines, etc.) or via email digest (automated via Feedblitz) without ever visiting the site. This means that by writing a blog post, I reach at least 3 different types of readers with distinct web reading preferences.

3. Use the tools new media people are using. Facebook, Twitter, and most things Google are the way to go. Get on them, and figure out how they work — then make them work for you.

What you should NOT do: Waste time convincing people to use your own unique tools. People on the web have already signed up for a lot of stuff and learned a lot of new apps — and are rarely willing to sign up for and learn about another one. Thus, it’s generally a bad idea to try to create your own community site via Ning or other apps (or even worse, building one from scratch — both a time and money wasting effort).

For example, the Westside Permaculture group — which BTW doesn’t have a website — keeps sending me emails to join its “Wiserearth” group page. I like what the permaculture group’s doing, but the signup’s not gonna happen. In contrast, when I got an invite to add Heal the Bay as a cause on Facebook, I hit “add” — and apparently have recruited two more people to boot (see image above; they saw it on my page and hit add without my asking them to do so).

Twitter’s a newer tool that’s getting some press for its social media potential. A recent NY Times article mentions how Whole Foods, Zappos, and Southwest Airlines are all tweeting. I follow Whole Foods in an attempt to win gift certificates –

The key is to find ways not to be intrusive by using methods people use anyway, instead of forcing them to adapt to your new method (no matter how cool you think it is).

Second lastly — A few blogs on nonprofits and social media you might find helpful:

>> Beth Kanter’s Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

>> Britt Bravo’s blog at NetSquared: Remixing the web for social change

Lastly: Here’s a post on “50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing,” which could be helpful for activist organizations too. This post also illustrates how social media’s used — I found the post by way of Felicia Sullivan’s tweet.

0 Comments

Part of the reason for the light blogging: Yesterday I was part of a panel titled “L.A. Blogs, Green Blogs; New Media and Social Change,” organized by Green L.A. and Liberty Hill Foundation.

Intended for an audience made up primarily of local enviro and social change orgs, the panel drew people from Heal the Bay, Coalition for Clean Air, Santa Monica Baykeeper, and the like.

Pre-event, we (the panelists) were told we’d be given 4 minutes “to lay out [our] thinking on how advocacy groups can best build relationships with internet reporters, editors and bloggers. Concrete illustrations are especially welcome.” However, the actual event ended up being much more loosely organized.

For one, Margot Roosevelt replaced Tami Abdollah to represent LA Times’ new enviro blog Greenspace — and Margot had to leave early. So she kicked off the panel by saying little about blogging but instead emphasizing that the LA Times won’t survive unless all of us buy the print version of the paper.

Hmmm…. I’d like the LAT to survive, but I’m pretty happy reading it online — and just don’t think readers’ll be reverting back to the 90s anytime soon.

Still, what came across for me during the panel is that many of the audience members — like Margot — were relatively unfamiliar with new media (few had even heard of Greenspace) and / or the perspectives or potential benefits coverage in these mediums could provide for enviro and social change orgs. Thus, the Qs from the audience tended to focus on stuff like whether new media coverage could actually incite bigger changes, how many eyeballs blogs attract (and how to find out this info), etc. as opposed to actual tips and advice on working with the new media.

Because of this, I started to wonder if much of what the panelists said even made sense to the audience members, who may or may not have known even what a blog reader or rss feed is, let alone Twitter or the Causes application on Facebook….

Perhaps due to the lack of structure, the discussion sometimes rambled and went off topic. Much of the panel focused on advice not specific to the web medium, i.e. targeting your news pitch to publications / people who may actually be interested in it. Some of the convo went over to how to write better blogs — advice more useful to the panelists than to the audience members.

In any case: I think Zuade Kaufman of truthdig and I were the only people who actually prepped said 4-min speeches — or at least the only ones who insisted on getting ‘em in at random points during the event :P

I hope the attendees got something out of the discussion. For my part, I’ll put up my notes — along with a couple additional resources for enviro and social change orgs — in the next post. Feel free to critique it — or ask additional questions, which I’ll try to circulate to the other panelists too.

Most notable distraction of the event: The styrofoam cups on the panelists’ table.

I’d like to note for the record that I did not take, nor use, a styrofoam cup — one was just set down before me. In the Q&A section, Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, noted his disapproval of said cups before asking his question. I agree with the disapproval, but can’t resist pointing out the fact that Heal the Bay gave out disposable plastic bottles in each and every shwag bag at its last fundraiser dinner….

Overall, I enjoyed being part of the panel — especially meeting people from the many enviro orgs in LA. I just hope the audience got as much out of it as I did. Thanks to Green L.A. for including me –

Update: My notes are up!

Photo by maxgladwell

6 Comments

Today’s the fourth green LA girl giveaway in celebration of the Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival. The freebie: A DAKINE Channel backpack for women, courtesy of project Blue.

project Blue’s a partnership between big surf brand companies and the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit “dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of our world’s oceans, waves and beaches.” Basically, six brands — Billabong, DAKINE, Electric, Nixon, Reef and O’Neill — have created products for project BLUE, with $2 from each item sold going to Surfrider Foundation.

Since the $2 is a flat donation regardless of the price of the product, the dealio’s sounds pretty decent for the less expensive items — like the $29.95 organic cotton T-shirts from O’Neill — but a lot like greenwashing for the expensive stuff — like $160 sunglasses from Electric. DAKINE Channel backpack’s somewhere in the middle; 4.5% of its $44 sticker price’ll go to Surfrider.

Features of the backpack: contoured shoulder strap designed specifically for a girl’s frame, an insulated cooler pocket, and multi organizer pockets. 19″H x 12″W x 5.5″D. No eco-features, unfortunately — Though Project Blue says next year, the backpack will contain some recycled content.

You can shop for the DAKINE Channel backpack as well as other project BLUE products via the project Blue website or Swell.

Comment on THIS POST — Yes, the one you’re reading right now — by Saturday to get into the drawing, which’ll happen Sunday. US addresses only.

195 Comments

>> An interview with On Guerrilla Gardening author Richard Reynolds. “Etiquette rules: Don’t steal plants, leave a mess or be a smartass with passersby. And be polite to the authorities.”

>> Urban farms and victory gardens are sprouting up all over the US, reports TIME magazine, and provides an accompanying photo essay to boot.

>> Lazy locavores are a growing population — one NY Times reporter thinks. “Call them the lazy locavores — city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty.” Instead, these locavores hire gardeners. (via grist)

>> Luxe locavores are even lazier than lazy locavores. Wall Street Journal reports that these rich people own landscape architect-designed elaborate vegetable gardens with “manicured beds of baby bok choy and Japonica maize” — but may not stay around to eat their stylish produce. (via grist)

Photo of urban garden in Santa Monica by Siel

0 Comments

A twice-weekly sharing of eco-shwag.

Today’s freebie is a copy of Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet, a 120-page booklet written by Eric Sorensen and others at the nonprofit think tank Sightline Institute and published by the Sierra Club.

All seven “wonders” covered in this book — from the condom to the clothesline — are ALL uber-efficient objects that are both affordable and readily available. While all seven of these items are eco-friendly, efficient inventions in and of themselves, each also serves as a synecdoche for larger environmental issues.

Read my review of the book here, then comment or email by Sunday to get into the drawing, which’ll happen Monday. US addresses only.

This freebie’s the third green LA girl giveaway in celebration of the Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival.

37 Comments

>> Higher walkscores better for waistlines. “People with a lower body mass index – a measure of obesity – tended to live in areas with older buildings and where a higher proportion of people walked to work.” Earlier: Walkscore and Google Maps.

>> The LA City Council’s considering a moratorium today on new fast food restaurants in South LA in an effort to encourage healthier food options in the area. “A report released last year by the county’s Department of Public Health found 30% of children in South L.A. were obese, compared to 25% of all children in the city.” Update: Moratorium passes!

>> Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger hits snafu: “a federal appeals court overturned a lower court ruling that allowed the deal to go though.” The case goes back to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia now.

Screenshot from Walkscore

0 Comments

>> Our sewage-y oceans. “The L.A. and San Gabriel rivers are like ‘big latrines’ that dump into Long Beach harbor, a city health official says. Severe sewage contamination has forced four beach closures so far this summer.”

>> “For the fifth year in a row, Los Angeles County is home to the dirtiest beaches in the state, with repeat offenders Avalon on Santa Catalina Island and Santa Monica among those with the highest levels of fecal bacteria in ocean water, according to a Natural Resources Defense Council report to be released today.”

>> Possible solution: Get poo power from oceans? Vancouver’s getting a pilot project that “will produce biogas from from human waste and pump into into the area’s natural gas distribution system.”

Photo of Santa Monica sewage drain by Malingering

2 Comments

Thanks for the emails, everyone. I’m alive — didn’t even bother getting out of bed until it was all over….

Zach has more details at LAist.

1 Comments

Today’s the second green LA girl giveaway in celebration of the Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival. The freebie: An organic cotton lunch bag from Hero Bag, which I wrote about here.

The cotton’s grown in Texas, and the machine-washable bag — complete with a name tag area you can fill in — is made in the US in a fair trade factory. All in all, a $24.95 value!

Comment on THIS POST — Yes, the one you’re reading right now — by Thursday to get into the drawing, which’ll happen Friday. US addresses only.

178 Comments

The Clif Bar 2 Mile Challenge is back! The main idea of the challenge is to make all trips under 2 miles by bike, but this year’s message is simpler and easier: Bike Once a Week to Fight Climate Change.

Still don’t have a bike yet? The 2 Mile Challenge site features a Bike Builder, which lets you, you know, build your own bike — then sends you a gear list and info on where to get the stuff.

I built myself a cruiser with a cute basket and blinky lights (above) and was v. tempted to buy it — except oh wait — I own one –

If you’re lucky, the 2 Mile Challenge biodiesel tour bus‘ll come to your town, “loaded with trip-mapping and Bike Builder kiosks, an inspirational cycling video and the market’s best commuter bikes, along with CLIF BAR samples.” Unfortunately, the bus won’t be coming to my town, but will apparently be hitting “hotspots in the Midwest.” There are hotspots in the Midwest? This is news to me –

No, those Clif bar wrappers still aren’t recyclable in the traditional sense — but Clif has teamed up with eco worm-poop company Terracycle to turn those wrappers into “unique accessories and other upcycled products.” Sign up to collect the wrappers — and a nonprofit org of your choice can get 2 cents per wrapper you send in!

Afraid a biking habit will mess up your ‘do? Summer has a nice guide to looking hot while biking on BTC blog — from the side-parted low hairstyle to bamboo denim trousers — complete with diagram (right). Read and learn.

Top image courtesy of 2 Mile Challenge; bottom photo illustration by Summer Bowen

[crossposted on BlogHer]

1 Comments