Tag Archives: online video

Living Sustainability

In this presentation (video*) Dr. Robin Kimmerer clearly and beautifully teaches us the relationship of living The Honorable Harvest to our quest to live in balance with Mother Earth; how to save ourselves by coming into relationship with Nature. She is Distinguished Teaching Professor and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York (SUNY), College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

Indigenous Peoples from all four directions of our planet are calling for a change in our consciousness, a move from head to heart guided by the Laws of Nature. The Honorable Harvest is a “covenant of reciprocity” and a guide to living sustainability in all aspects of our life. Dr. Kimmerer reminds us that in the indigenous way of thinking matter and spirit are mutually reinforcing whereas in the scientific world they are mutually exclusive.

What makes her voice so important to all of us is she speaks the language of reciprocity as a scientist (botanist) and Indigenous leader (Potawatomi Nation) drawing on “the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability.”
Dr. Kimmerer is a voice you may not have heard yet, but need to hear now especially if you are asking yourself, what is sustainability and how do I live it?

Her most recent book is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.

*This video presentation was published on YouTube on Aug 6, 2014 by the Center for Humans and Nature and recorded at their 2014 Forum on Ethics & Nature held at the Chicago Botanic Garden. The theme was A Cascade of Loss, An Ethics of Recovery. The Forum explored the topic of extinction, balancing information with ethical reflection about the possibilities of biodiversity and bio-cultural recovery.

Sustainability Awareness and the Content Requirements of Social

A recent study by the folks at Chief Marketer supports my experience with clients when it comes to social media.

The content requirements of social media outpaces even measurement issues as an obstacle. On the positive side it’s rare to find a CEO or Executive Director who does not understand that social media is very relevant to their core audience.

Our search engine to the curated collection of sustainability leaders and citizens, EarthSayers.tv, provides a wealth of quality content for social media. See how we use our curated video channel on EarthSayers.tv to seed our social media network – here on LinkedIn, YouTube, Sustainability Advocate blog, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter using not only the content we create, but more importantly, content we aggregate then curate for relevancy and quality. This is particularly relevant for organizations who invest heavily in events, the source of invaluable content in terms of video from both the sessions as well as interviews at the Conference. It’s content that needs to be carried well beyond the sponsoring organization’s Website in order to impact search rankings and to significantly advance leaders in both thought and action.

We are able to private label this search engine for organizations with a commitment to increasing sustainability awareness, be it for their sustainability initiatives or for an environmental, social, cultural, or economic cause. As a sub-domain to their Website, the EarthSayers.tv affiliate provides a premier advertising and sponsorship platform, like keyword driven Google, to generate revenues for organizations working towards a sustainable future. Video content advances the unfiltered voices of our sustainability leaders and citizens and, practically, the EarthSayers content management system (CMS) manages both the original and aggregated content and is the driver for seeding the Web, increasing awareness, using all channels both social and direct.

A reading of Noam Cohen’s article, As Online Video Surges, the .tv Domain Rides the Wave, in the New York Times, supports leveraging the CMS and content of Earthsayers as “yourorganization.tv,” or wisdomkeepers.tv or oceansadvocacy.tv as the most effective, efficient, and affordable way to ride this wave for the benefit of environmental, social, cultural, and economic objectives today; to generate income for years to come from sponsors and advertisers who share your goals through their programs, products, events, and initiatives; to begin to seed the Web with relevant and quality content, emphasizing leadership, using both social and direct media; and to be found with top page rankings on Google and YouTube, the top two search engines, on hundreds of keywords our citizens are using to find your content. Here is the sustainability taxonomy we created as part of our search strategy and may be useful in putting together keyword categories and subcategories.

Click here to download a short presentation featuring examples of how one video interview of Roz Savage for EarthSayers.tv is used to seed the Web – LinkedIn, blog post, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. While this is original content, it works pretty much the same, except it generates clicks to the YouTube channel hosting the content. In this respect all of us benefit on what my friend, Barry, calls “networking the Web of life” and it leverages the free hosting service of YouTube.

P.S. I want to take this opportunity to thank my brother, friends, colleagues, and neighbors for supporting my work with EarthSayers.tv through kind words, cash, pro-bono camera and production services, consulting, technical support, software design, lodging when I go out of town to cover events as press (another positive attribute of a .tv) and friendship.

Making Video Work Again and Again for Your Cause

Get on-board with Creative Commons License

It will be in the best interest of the sustainability community to adopt the practice of using a Creative Commons license to increase not only the sharing of content, but the mixing of content to seed the Web with messages to educate, inspire and motivate our citizens. Seeding increases page rankings, advances the visibility of sustainability leaders, and is critical to educating the majority of our citizens who use the Web to find information on topics of interest including the 2.1M on sustainability, 1.8M on climate change, 2.2M on Global Warming and 246,000 on pure water.

Re-purposing content and seeding the Web

Incorporating video from a download or screen capture, in whole or part, depending on the length and message, is relatively easy and can be thought of as a video quote or clip. Another way to express it: one producer’s video may be another producer’s B–roll, the supplemental or alternate footage inter-cut into another interview or documentary.Just this last week I received an email from AmazonWatch about their recently uploaded video on YouTube that is part of a petition campaign to oust the CEO of Chevron and to “Please tell the board of directors to FIRE John Watson.” This video was edited by the Amazon Watch folks and re-purposed from a January 2010 video, Message from Ecuador to Chevron CEO John Watson, part of another petition campaign.

Obtaining permission is highly recommended and nearly always granted for non-commercial purposes. However, producers are encouraged to use Creative Commons licensing to encourage and speed the process.

EXAMPLES

Here is an example of how I incorporated clips from a documentary, Screams of the Amazon, produced by Siegmund Thies and Joke Baert of Pachamama Ecuador into a radio interview, Oil over Water: Ecuador’s Indigenous Peoples Threatened by Barry Heidt. I converted the “radio” to a video having added clips and images and then posted to YouTube and here on our site, EarthSayers.tv.

This is an example of a ‘video quote’ from the same documentary that stands on its own and is posted on YouTube and Earthsayers.tv, voices of sustainability, titled as Easy Money in the Amazon – At what cost? by Patricia Gualinga.

A bit more on the Creative Commons License I used in connection with the above videos:

Selecting a License

Creative Commons offers six different content licenses. The first step to sharing your work is to select the license that’s right for you. The Creative Commons license chooser helps you select a CC license that matches the conditions you want. It also provides you with a snippet of code for your website to signal which license you’ve chosen.
Example of using Creative Commons
License work and encourage the seeding of your message:

For our work in connection with EarthSayers.tv, Voices of Sustainability, we use Creative Commons licenses. If you wish to incorporate our video work into your work, we encourage it, but only for non-commercial use. We ask you attribute the work to Ruth Ann Barrett, EarthSayers.tv and send a URL so we may see your work. For permission issues around modifications of our work, call 415-377-1385 or email ruthann@earthsayers.tv.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, May 16, 2013, Cleveland, Ohio.

One Billion Rising and Three Voices of Sustainability

This is nearly the same title of a blog post I wrote in the last week of December. What I am writing here, however, updates you on the One Billion Rising, February 14, 2013 campaign and gives you three fresh faces of sustainability, a small sampling of those speaking on behalf of women and this campaign.

First, a reminder of what One Billion Rising is all about.

On 14 February 2013, V-Day is inviting ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to violence against women and girls.

Secondly, why this campaign is a model of cause marketing as outlined recently in an article by Cone Communications which cites three attributes of how this campaign manages “to shine a spotlight on an age-old issue.” They are: (1) it offers a simple, unifying message; (2) it provides an easy way for people to get involved; and (3) it uses a beloved holiday as a unifying touchpoint.

I would elaborate slightly on the three to include people or social issue, multiple ways for people to get involved, and it uses a related, beloved holiday.

One of the easy ways for people to get involved is the use of online video where individuals from all walks of life can express their support by appealing to viewers to participate in the February 14 events. Because they are on YouTube, we were able to create a special collection on EarthSayers.tv, voices of sustainability around the campaign thereby increasing the reach and longevity of the message as well as increasing the visibility of these sustainability thought leaders.

Here is a small sampling of the videos we included in the special collection. There is a conspicuous absence of business leaders even those who count women and girls among their best customers from among the over 200 individuals highlighted on the V-Day YouTube channel.

Congresswomen Jan Schakowsky

Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky asks you join in on February 14, 2013 in One Billion Rising event in Chicago and she addresses her experience in the East Congo and understanding “rape as the low cost weapon of war.” The event is at noon at Daly Plaza, February 14, 2013. Here is her video.

In this video she references the United Nation. This is an excellent site to get more information on the United Nation’s ongoing role to end violence against women visit this site: endviolence.un.org

Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council

Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council, is RISING with V-Day on 14 February 2013. He talks about non-discrimination and gender equality in a union of values and references the statistic that one in three women will be raped, beaten or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Here is his video.

For more information on the statistic cited by Mr. Van Rompuy, visit this site, oneinthreewomen.com.

Eve Ensler, Founder of V-Day

Eve Ensler is the founder of V-Day the sponsor of the One Billion Rising campaign. In this video she extends her gratitude to all of you who are practicing and preparing, organizing, singing, dancing, and writing for an end to violence against women with one week left until we rise! Here is her video.

Ms. Ensler’s experience performing THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES inspired her to create V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. She has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive.

The path to sustainability from One Billion Rising is easily understood in light of the sustainability taxonomy we use everyday in archiving hundreds of sustainability videos:

One Billion Rising>women’s rights and role>human rights (social justice)>People (Social)>Sustainability and

Violence Against Women and Girls> Violence, Structural> Peace, War, Violence, Security>People (social)>Sustainability.

To find a location of the One Billion Rising event nearest you, click here.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, February 12, 2013, Portland, Oregon and at the One Billion Rising Event, February 14th at 3PM, PST, at Director’s Park, Downtown Portland, Oregon.

Santa’s View

Yes, I believe in Santa. And I never thought of him as a toy maker but a distributor. One who spreads joy and goodwill, connecting us all. So today I watched one of my favorite videos, The Known Universe, I added to the EarthSayers.tv collection this last year. It was created and then published on YouTube by the American Museum of Natural History. It was part of the exhibit, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, held at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan in 2010.

I thought about Santa when I first saw it, so see our Universe from his perspective.

What is Sustainability?

The 1.2M citizens per month* searching Google on the term, sustainability, very often ask, as we do here, What is Sustainability? It shows we have some work to do to raise awareness by starting with the basics. The definition I use most frequently comes from the Constitution of the Iroquois Nations:

Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground – the unborn of the future Nation.

Here are thirteen other voices, some you may recognize, others, until you listen, are strangers, but all are sustainability advocates. We begin with Dr. Stuart Hall of Cornell University, Sustainability Has Many Definitions, 1:37

Larry Merculieff (Aleut), Alaska Native Science Commission, Use of the Term Sustainability 4:52. This is one interview of a series conducted by Dr. David Hall on Native Perspectives of Sustainability.

Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt of The Natural Step, Defining Sustainability:Business Insights, 1:39 and The Responsibility of Civic and Business Leaders, A Personal View 5:56. No better source for sustainability than Dr. Robèrt.

Dassault Systemes, Definition of Sustainable Innovation, Elementary Style, animation, 2:50

Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism Solutions, What is Sustainability? A Nest of Issues 9:26

RealEyes, Definition of Sustainability, animated feature 2:02. More videos on their YouTube channel such as Sustainability in Turkish.

Dr. Albert Bartlett, Sustainability 101: Exponential Growth, 59:12 Even the first 3 minutes is worth the listen especially about percent growth rate, but this is really stuff we should have all learned in arithmetic.

Chris Farrell, Being Frugal: The Original Sustainability, 5:34 He makes a good point.

Christoph Lueneburger of Egon Zehnder, Definition of Sustainability by Corporations, 3:01. Biggest barrier is just starting with the definition.

People 4 Earth, Consumer Awareness of Sustainability, animation, 2:50. More of this kind of education and we further consumer and sustainability awareness.

Allison and Bud McGrath, R&K McGrath & Associates, What Is Sustainability? (audio only) and a father-daughter team.

Professor Julian Agyeman, Tufts University, What is Just Sustainability? 38:11. This is Julian’s keynote speech before the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).

Professor Nikos Avionas, What is Your Vision for Sustainability, 4:56

These voices of sustainability on EarthSayers.tv will give you more to talk about, new people to reference, and great quotes when the topic of sustainability comes up as it does often. We hope you will be inspired to do your own definition and “broadcast yourself.” When you do post it to YouTube to let us know about it and we will add it to our special collection, What Is Sustainability? If you want to do more online video around sustainability to increase sustainability awareness for you and your business, call us. With over 1,000 voices now in our collection, all curated for relevancy and quality, we have learned a bit about sustainability and online video.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, March 12, 2012, Portland, Oregon, 415-377-1835.

Note: *This is about the same number for those searching on corporate social responsibility and those wanting to know the price of an iPhone.

Reach Out and Educate with Your Voice

And make sure you are on YouTube.

Why?

In October 2011, 201.4 billion videos were viewed online, with the global viewing audience reaching 1.2 billion unique viewers age 15 and older. Google Sites led as the top global video property with nearly 88.3 billion videos viewed on the property during the month, accounting for 43.8% of all videos viewed globally. YouTube.com was the key driver of video viewing on Google Sites, accounting for more than 99% of videos viewed on the property. Source is comScore Video Metrix as reported in MediaPost’s Research Brief, Media Research Center, Tuesday, January 3, 2012.

Of course putting content out on the Web regardless whether it is text or video requires seeding the Web to increase page rankings and the probability of your content being found, viewed, and judged as relevant and of quality.

Lots of work ahead of us in 2012 to get the voices of sustainability out there and heard. We will exceed the 1,000 voices mark this month and look to 2,000 in 2012.