In the process of building EarthSayers.tv I have become an advocate of sustainability. An advocate is “a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy. Early on in my career I was hired by the National Association for Community Development in Washington, D.C. We were advocates for community action and community action agencies across the country. It amazes me how long it took me to come full circle, back to advocacy – over thirty years. It wasn’t even part of a plan. It just happened.
Sunday Morning
Meeting this morning with the visual artist, Torben Torp-Smith, to review his portfolio and look at how we might collaborate on future projects. Torben does mostly theater design and sculpture so a morning with Torben is always visually stimulating and leaves me with asking him the question, How did you make THAT? This photo is from Torben’s MFA thesis presentation for the opera, Billy Budd. It is a cross-section of an armed Man-of-War navigating in the two fluid media of wind and waves. It is a metaphor for deck levels of class identity rigidly regulated by an unmoving and inflexible matrix of law and custom. Wow! For more inspiration visit, www.torpsmith.com.
It’s the 30% that count!
When we started to query the Blinkx database on the term, sustainability, we were not sure how many we would have for review. We hoped for 2,500 to work with by the time the prototype would be ready (May) and expected 25% of that number to be of relevancy and quality. We did set an objective to include at least 250 programs in the prototype.
Over 300 (31%) are now in the database and we have more to review than expected.
Here is how we got to the 300.
We are now working with a pool of 3,200 programs and have reviewed for the prototype 1,052 (32%). Of that number, nearly 70% were rejected primarily because of duplication, no connection, or they were not appropriate (sustainability used in a different context): a full one third because they were duplicates. One reason for duplication is because Blinkx is aggregating from over 250 channels and many videos are posted to multiple channels, not always with the same title and description.
Finding the Voices of Sustainability
Since relevancy and quality are crucial to keeping people using the Web to explore and learn, rather than just be entertained, it is very worrisome that the U.S. is #8 in search volume on the term sustainability.
Today if you do a Google search on the term sustainability you get over 33 million results, up from 15M just a few months ago. If you want to hear what people are saying (video and audio) about the subject go to Blinkx and you’ll find 54,000 videos selected, up from 20,000 four months ago. If you do a Google search on a subcategory of sustainability, climate change for example, you get over 72M results. We are drowning in a sea of results.
This is why we created the EarthSayers Website as a “front door” to the voices of sustainability. We aggregated videos by hooking up to the Blinkx database and did a very narrow query on the term, sustainability. Then we began our review process to determine relevancy and quality of content – our value add. For the prototype we have reviewed over a 1,000 videos, out of 3,200. Over half of the 1,000 were duplicates another 17% did not connect to a page. We guessed at the start that about 20% of the content would be enough to form a major sustainability video collection, catching the eye of those who have recognized a need, are curious, and beginning to search.
We now feel confident in the 20 to 25% number to quell concerns that user generated content is all that’s out there. Weeding is definitely necessary, but the 20% left each of us on this project motivated and inspired to make a commitment to change our lifestyles – at home, work, and community levels.
We now know the site will yield a rich content of over a 1,000 programs to start, more than enough to be a compendium of voices (audio and video) and a running mate to Wikipedia (now the number one listing in organic search on the term) as the premier destination for increasing sustainability awareness and education.
We need sponsors to help drive traffic and build out an EarthSayers Community .
The Art of EarthSayers
The artwork on Earthsayers.tv is by my friend and colleague, Rose Cassano, who is an illustrator and designer. Visit earthsayers.tv to see other “stamps” Rose has made for EarthSayers. Join Sustainability Advocacy group on LinkedIn and Sustainability Awareness on Facebook. Thanks.
Launching EarthSayers.tv, voices of sustainability.
About to announce launch of Web site dedicated to sustainability movement, earthsayers.tv, the voices of sustainability. Voices are of teachers, experts, students, can citizens from all walks of life. Asking folks to set their browser to EarthSayers.tv for two weeks and listen to a program each day. One can do review email while listening or pay close attention.
Time to pay attention to the many facets of sustainability, climate change being one, the green consumer movement another, but unless we educate ourselves, scientists are telling us we may have run out of time to reverse the damage being done to Earth, and, ultimately, us.
The Response Edge
SPAM
From DM News:
Slowing the Flood
A recent survey by the University of Maryland says spam costs U.S. businesses $22 billion a year in lost productivity, while a Stanford University study says Internet users waste 10 full workdays yearly dealing with spam. I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to believe that people spend 20 minutes a day deleting spam from their in-boxes, writes editor in chief Tad Clarke. A few seconds here and there, but does that really add up to 20 minutes?
Well, folks, does it?