NetTuesday: An Evening of Green Web 2.0
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
Posted by Jenn Lowther
Last night Dario, Nadia and I went to Net Tuesdays: An Evening of Green Web 2.0. This is the second event hosted by NetSquared. The gathering was located in WorkSpace who donated the space to us for the evening. There was a great spread put out for us to snack on, provided by WriteImage - in keeping with the evenings green theme, all of the plates and cutlery were made of recycled and food materials that are totally biodegradable. Once we’d chatted and filled ourselves with tasty treats, we all sat down and got ready for the evenings talks. We sat with our good friend Dustin Sacks from Silly Soft.
The first speaker was an extra surprise arranged for us - Owen from the Small Energy Group. He gave us a quick overview of Earth Hour (check out their FaceBook group its got over 725,000 registered members to date) which is hosted by the World Wildlife Fund. Owen detailed how they are working on quantifying the impact of Earth Hour so that people can gauge how their consumption habits affect the environment. I think this is a great initiative to show how people can work collectively to make a difference. The key to this
initiative however, is going to be getting people to translate this small effort into their everyday lives.
Next up was Ron Williams from Happy Frog. Happy Frog is a locally based sustainability directory to help make it easier for consumers to make green choices in their everyday life. The site has been live for about 5 months now and has had an awesome response. The information on the site is generated through user generated content ie/ people and businesses can submit products and services to the site and users are also able to find, rate, and review companies within the directory. This service will help us all in making environmentally friendly choices.
Following Ron, was Rex Turgano from the Green Pages. He went to university with Dustin Sacks who was sitting next to me, so I got to hear a bit of the back story. He went through the evolution of his website and all of the different technologies that he’s used over the years. His site has been live for over 10 years now, so it was a great trip down memory lane. The Green Pages is a website dedicated to sharing stories and events related to the environment.
The final speaker of the evening was Darren Barefoot. It was really great to meet him finally IRL, as we’ve only ever communicated online. He reviewed the various social media marketing tools that he’s utilized to promote DeSmogBlog, a site dedicated to “clear the PR pollution that is clouding the science on climate change”. Darren decided to go low tech with his presentation and taped a laminated tag cloud to the back of a chair. Some of the campaigns that he’s implemented for DeSmogBlog are digg, widgets, blogger outreach, YouTube, social networking sites, and a flash game. He’s found that green companies are targeting a younger demographic and seem to be more open to trying out innovative new social media campaigns. He also mentioned the first video contest that memelabs held - windblows.us.
To finish off the evening, Dario, Dustin, and I decided to go for a cocktail and appy. We walked down the street and hit The Black Frog. Bad call. The service was horrible and the food was close to inedible - I’d highly recommend avoiding it next time you’re in Gastown. But the company was great and we had a great chat about the new SDK that Apple has released and the various implications that this has in the development world. This was a great night and I’m looking forward to the next NetTuesday event, well done Joe.
April 12th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Hi Jenn,
Great recap. I also live-blogged it. I am sorry to hear about your bad experience with The Black Frog. By definition, I try to avoid any places in Gastown. Only potential face-saving places - Steamworks for a quick bite, or The Alibi Room. Anything else in Gastown, I’m scared off. Although truth be told, someone told me that the deli at So.Cial at LeMagasin is cool.