Month: September 2009

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , ,

Remember that old bumper sticker, “Trees are America’s Renewable Resource”? It’s true. You can regenerate a harvestable forest in 20 years or so: a nanosecond compared to the millions of years necessary to create fossil fuels.

However, and it’s a BIG however—biofuels such as timber or scrap wood, or for that matter, corn-based ethanol, are for the most part not sustainable. They are far from carbon-neutral, and in fact generate large amounts of carbon and other pollutants. Think about it: coal and oil are fossilized carbon that originated from plants and animals; wood and corn haven’t fossilized the carbon, but they are very much carbon-based life forms, and we add a lot of carbon back into the air when we burn them.

So the effect of these fuels on climate change is negative: they push us more in the direction we DON’T want to go.

Add to that such effects as habitat destruction from clear-cutting, food shortages resulting from diversion of protein crops into energy that powers machines instead of humans and animals, and toxicity from burning chemically treated wood scraps, and it’s pretty clear that this path isn’t sustainable.

Are there biofuel technologies that actually are sustainable? Maybe. The Q microbe certainly seems to have promise. As a non-scientist, I leave that answer to those who know more than me.

In the meantime, let’s focus on those technologies that clearly ARE sustainable. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute estimates that we could easily save 70 to 80 percent of our energy by simply designing for maximum energy utilization and eliminating the considerable waste of our present systems. Beyond that, truly sustainable technologies such as small-scale solar, wind, and hydro generated at or very near the point of use hold out a lot more promise than either biomass plants or centralized coal, oil, and nuclear.

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By Posted on Posted in Networking, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

Inspired by a Tweet from Susan Harrow, I’ve decided to post my Twitter policy every once in a while.

Some of this may sound harsh. Please keep in mind that as a somewhat public figure, I am absolutely bombarded with messages not only on Twitter but through many other channels. I have to cope with about 300 emails on a typical day, plus a three-inch stack of postal mail, plus the 1454 people I’m following on Twitter. 2390 are following me, and I recognize the disparity—but I also do have a business to run, a family to be with, and a physical need to be off the computer for half an hour or so after I’ve been on for about an hour.

I did seven Tweets outlining my policy, and I think they’re worth repeating here (slightly modified with the benefit of “but I MEANT to say” hindsight and spelling out the contractions/not needing to cram it into 140 characters):

1. I don’t follow you just because you follow me (on Facebook and LInkedIn, BTW, I pretty much do). I check out a few each profiles from new followers day (somewhat randomly, but if your follow notice includes a keyword I pay attention to—see #5, below—it ups the odds substantially). If your feeds interest me, I follow. I don’t unfollow you for not following back, since I followed you in the first place because I found your profile interesting and not because I expected reciprocity. And I don’t track whether or not you unfollowed me; it doesn’t matter in the way I sue Twitter unless you’re someone I have an actual friendship with.

2. You can drastically increase odds that I follow back by sending me an @ (NOT a spam), naming me in #followfriday, or Retweeting me; this will get me to look at your profile .

3. Having watched with horror as spammers killed e-mail, I zealously protect Twitter as useful tool. Spam me and I make it public/block/report. (I will tolerate a clueless auto-DM when I follow, unless it links to something scummy. If your auto DM or an @ message sends me to a game-the-twitter-system-get-more-followers site, porn, dating or gambling site, I’m gone. If you did it as other than an auto-DM on follow, I report and block you too.

4. The first time your account gets hijacked and you involuntarily spam me with “join my mafia family,” I cut you slack and tell you I’m not interested. If it happens again, I assume you’re not smart enough to change your password and that spammers will bother me through you. At that point, I block you.

5. I tend to follow: Green/eco/ethical, soft-sell marketers, book publishers and authors, social media people, folks into progressive social change, quoters, people who post interesting links, people who tweet leads from reporters looking for sources. If you fall into one of these categories and you @ me telling me so, I’ll certainly click on over for a look.

6. I always like to say that I became a writer because I’m interested in almost everything, but don’t forget the almost part. If you have a great profile about stuff that I’m simply not interseted in, now matter how good it is, I won’t follow. A few subjects I find uninteresting: online gaming, hard-sell interruption marketing, get-rich-quick stuff, football, super-techie computer coding…and schemes to get more followers you haven’t earned.

7. I tend to follow people who offer a mix of glimpses into their personal lives, interesting tidbids they find online, dialogue with the community, and no more than 20% blatant promotion. And I try to keep my own Tweets in this pattern. I try to be helpful, friendly, useful in my Tweets. Follow me because you like my posts, not to game the system with one more well-connected follower.

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By Posted on Posted in Networking, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , ,

Yesterday, I co-hosted a teaching call with the amazing George Kao, a social media trainer who specializes in highly productive techniques for using social media (and who is socially conscious, too.

George gave me permission to share his very informative handout: his slides are at https://georgekao.com/socialslides

I also want to share a few of the takeaways

* Find the actions that provide the greatest benefit for the least work (he lists many of these in the slides)
* Balance the human and the professional/expert
* Find easy ways to show you care, like spending one second to click and say you like a comment on Facebook
* Multiple approaches increase likelihood of connecting
* Twitter is not only indexed by Twitter, but searchable on Google–BIG reach! Easy way to spread ideas
* Make your last comment of the day (or in a batch of posts) count–it has more staying power because it will be at the top of your page all night

This was the fourth call with George I’ve been on since June. I always learn so much! In fact, it was the incredible value of his content that made me reach out to him, form a friendship (we and our wives had dinner when I was in San Francisco this summer) and partner with him to deliver this call to my network.

I’m going to be participating in his 12-session coaching program on social media, and also his program on running webinars for fun and profit, and eagerly looking forward to both. I have *never* encountered a better social media trainer, and I’m an avid consumer of coaching calls.

You may want to as well. There’s a signup link at the end of the slides. Each course is usually $720, but I’ve arranged a discount–you can learn form this “Jedi Master of Social Media” (my term–he’s much too modest) for $480. Mention my name. If you order both of George’s programs (normally $1440) with the one-payment option, it’s $920. Mention my name (Shel Horowitz), and George will paypal you a $200 rebate on this double package.

Full disclosure: yes, I make a commission on this. But more importantly, you get a tremendous education in social media that can knock months or years off your learning curve, set you on the path to profitability, and save you hours per week.

Will I see you on the calls?

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , ,

Fascinating interview with Jonathan Porritt, long-time environmental activist and outgoing environmental advisor to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

I find this statement particularly worthy of discussion, and would love to hear what y’all think on this:

Still, he says there are also too many examples of corporate responsibility deployed by companies with fundamentally amoral business models that cannot stand up to scrutiny. He says a particularly stark example is the UK banking industry.

The corporate responsibility teams of UK banks have strong reputations, he says. “They were seen as extremely professional parts of those financial institutions … who used to win lots of awards.

“But the reality is they never, ever got close to the business model of those banks. They were never given access to the decisions being taken about changing the investment strategy, about rethinking approaches to risk, or about the balances of portfolio or a different approach to asset management.”

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , ,

Social Media & Webinar Expert George Kao: Free Teleseminar on Success with LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook in 15 Minutes Per Day

In addition to being very socially conscious and eco-aware (he was an administrator for the largest Green MBA program in the US), the amazing George Kao is a social network trainer who knows social media better than anyone else I’ve encountered. I’ve been marketing seriously via social media since 1995, and it’s been my primary source of clients all the way back to 1996. And yet, I learn so much from listening to George that I not only sat in on *three* of his calls in the last two months, but also made a point of seeking him out for a dinner meeting when I was in San Francisco.

I’m absolutely thrilled to be co-hosting this call (with my friend Allison Nazarian). If you only pick one teleclass to attend in the next few months, make it this one.

Mark your calendar: Tuesday Sept 22, 5 pm ET/2 pm PT. And dial in early to avoid being closed out. (There are only 250 seats.)

Sign up at https://georgekao.com/922s . Note: the call will be recorded, but the replay will cost $80.

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By Posted on Posted in Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized

Talk about death panels! Physicians for a National Health Program is calling attention to a just releases–and very shocking–Harvard study that found…

Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.

The new study, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” appears in today’s online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

The Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.

In an e-mail blast, the doctors group calls for President Obama to “start from scratch”: to ditch the unpopular, badly thought out, solves-nothing proposals floating through Congress and bring the US into alignment with the rest of the developed world: a single-payer health care plan.

And the group’s leader, Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. of Harvard University, gave a great interview on this on Democracy Now.

Retired Senator (and former presidential candidate) George McGovern notes in a recent op-ed that all it would take is a one sentence law, extending Medicare coverage to all Americans.

I think all these folks are correct. I’ve been saying for months that the time for single-payer (something I started supporting in 1979, when I was a community organizer for the Gray Panthers and this was their main plank) is NOW.

If you’re in the US, tell your Senators and Congressional representative. And tell your state government to push for it.

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By Posted on Posted in Politics, poverty

Not only did George W. Bush preside over the largest destruction of wealth in history, he also left the poor and middle class reeling, even before the Wall Street collapse. So says a new Census Bureau report that shows, according to the Atlantic Magazine article about it:

While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country’s condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton’s two terms, often substantially.

The article goes into substantial detail about all of these. It makes for vital, if sobering, reading. And adds up to yet another reason why I believe George W. Bush was the worst president in US history.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics: General, Web 2.0/Social Media

Here’s an odd thought: Could viral videos actually change the culture? What are the implications, long-term, for our culture in the widespread visibility of cross-species animal friendship, animals figuring out difficulties and solving a way around them, animals responding to music—or even playing music—, etc.?

When you see “enemy” animals forming friendships, what does it say about humans who can’t figure out any better way to resolve differences than to go to war?

When a herd of buffalo join forces to chase off the large group of lions that attacked their calf, what does it say about the power of cooperation in humans?

When a bird is so familiar with a piece of music that its dance moves actually anticipate the song occasionally, what does that say about animal intelligence and memory?

Over time, these windows into animal capabilities may cause shifts in our global consciousness. It wouldn’t shock me if vegetarianism became much more common; could you really eat animals after seeing how smart and caring they can be? Perhaps cruelty toward animals will be reduced. And perhaps more of us will find ways to listen when the animals in our lives try to talk to us.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Shel's Personal Life

If you don’t count my toddler rebellion against smoking at about age three, I’ve been an environmental activist for 37 years. And yet the Green Work conference tomorrow in New Haven is only the second actual environmental conference I can remember speaking at (I did speak at a couple of anti-nuclear events in the 1970s, but the emphasis there was on protest, not learning).

Anyway, I’ll be speaking at 3 pm on marketing your environmental commitment, and exhibiting both at Green Work on Friday and at the folk festival/Green Expo on Saturday. Say hi if you’re in the neighborhood.

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