By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Demographics/Psychographics, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , ,

At 72, Lily Tomlin is biologically old enough to be my mother.

I had the good luck to see Tomlin perform Friday night at the Calvin Theater in Northampton, MA (a venue where I’ve seen many great shows). She is not slowing down. She’s still hugely funny, passionate about her work and her beliefs, and very athletic on stage. She’s able to create fleshed-out characters just by changing her body posture, voice/accent, and stage lighting—needing neither costumes nor props to “channel” acerbic Ernestine, the schizophrenic savant bag lady Trudy, a Texas-accented suburban housewife doing vibrator infomercials, or a mother calling her son to put down those assault weapons and landmines and go wash up for supper. And she had obviously spent some time researching the town where she would perform one night and be gone; she incorporated a surprising number of on-point local references that went beyond the obvious.

It was one of the best comedy shows I’ve ever seen. 36 hours later, I’m still rolling some of her routines through my head and laughing.

Pete Seeger, who turned 93 last week, is old enough to be Lily’s dad. His voice doesn’t have the power it had when he was Tomlin’s age, and he’s backed off from the multi-octave, almost operatic singing of his peak years (go listen to his soaring “Wimoweh” from his 1963 Carnegie Hall concert). These days, he doesn’t perform as often, and when he does, he spends a lot of time teaching songs, talking/chanting them, and letting the audience do much of the actual singing.

But at 93, he’s still living at home in his little cabin in Beacon, New York with his wife Toshi. Last I heard, he’s still chopping firewood for his woodstove. Certainly he still devotes prodigious energies to his many environmental and social justice campaigns. In fact, he performed at an Occupy rally in New York just this fall. There’s even a grassroots movement to nominate Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize (note: as of this writing, the site is experiencing technical problems but claims more than 32,000 signatures).

I’ve been lucky to have great models for growing older all the way back to my childhood. I even worked as a paid organizer for the Gray Panthers for a year and a half in my 20s. And these two are only two of hundreds of people about whom I could say, “I want to be like that when I’m old.” But they’re both very public, and I happen to be thinking about them today. Here are a few lessons I take from Tomlin and Seeger:

  1. Doing what you love and are good at keeps you young
  2. Staying true to your values keeps you young
  3. Being appreciated by others  keeps you young (but note that Seeger was blacklisted and obscure for more than a decade during the McCarthy era)
  4. Finding the fun in life and enjoying the ride keeps you young
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By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business Tagged with , , , ,

I’ve heard of Health Care Without Harm, but this press release reminded me of them. Isn’t it ironic that the people who are supposed to keep us from getting sick have, in general, some very UN-eco-friendly practices? I hope HCWH becomes a catalyst for change, and in three to five years, doing healthcare in environmentally sensitive ways will be the norm. We’ve seen it in other industries, after all.

Meanwhile, congrats to the group on receiving this impressive award:

HCWH President Gary Cohen and Regional Director Bill Ravanesi Accept EPA New England Region
Environmental Merit Awards
Awards for Health Care Without Harm Work on Sustainable Health Care

(Boston, MA) Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) President Gary Cohen, of Jamaica Plain, MA, and Bill Ravanesi, HCWHBoston Regional Director, of Longmeadow, MA, today accepted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) New England Region Environmental Merit Award for their work in the region on behalf of Health Care Without Harm. The awards, which are the highest awards bestowed by the EPA in the New England Region, were presented for “extraordinary accomplishments to protect New England’s environment” in the Environmental, Community, Academia & Nonprofit category. A
Nonprofit

In its commemoration of Cohen and Ravanesi’s work, the EPA stated, “Health Care Without Harm, dedicated to helping create a more ecologically sustainable health care industry, consistently has been a leading advocate for green chemistry in the health care industry, locally and nationally. The organization, with Gary Cohen as its founder and executive director, was a major force behind the decision of one of the country’s largest health care providers to convert its intravenous equipment to more eco-friendly alternatives.”

The EPA noted HCWH’s support of the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI), a coalition of major health systems and organizations committed to improving sustainability and safety across the health care sector. Partners Health Care, of Boston, MA, is a founding sponsor of HHI.

“We are honored to receive this award,” said Cohen. “We are proud of the hospitals in the New England region of the country who in many ways have been leaders of the sustainable health care movement. Even though the work of Health Care Without Harm is international in scope, the idea is to make communities healthier for families, and our work in the region, we hope, will make New England healthier for all of those who live here.

The agency praised the work of Bill Ravanesi, who is responsible for working directly with hospitals in the area and is currently working on an initiative organized by the Boston Green Ribbon Commission on extending sustainability throughout the city. “Bill Ravanesi . . . helps New England hospitals in toxicity and waste reduction, green building services, energy efficiency and climate change programs, focusing on sustainability and resiliency,” said the EPA. “He is responsible for organizing program development and implementation, legislative and regulatory advocacy and policy reform initiatives and has engaged hospitals all over New England in adopting new ways of doing business that meet the challenge of environmental responsibility.”

The awards were presented today in Faneuil Hall in Boston, Mass.

HCWH is an international coalition of more than 508 organizations in 53 countries, working to transform the health care industry worldwide, without compromising patient safety or care, so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment. For more information on HCWH, see www.noharm.org.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Innovation, People Helping People, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with ,

Guest post by Seth Godin and Michael Bungay Stanier.

The blog connected with endmalariaday has more content than anyone could ever ever want. And that’s a bit of a problem, because more content is not going to help us sell more books, because it solves the problem “what’s in this book” rather than creating a problem “I wonder what’s in this book.”

I think what we need the authors to do is create a different problem: “You’re a good person and good people are buying this book”. There’s no shortage of stuff to read (with or without our book) but there is a shortage of easy and cheap ways to demonstrate your goodness, to be part of this tribe, to participate in a meaningful, efficient way that one can be proud of.

The big win, then, is for authors to be relentless in pushing this obligation/opportunity. “Here’s the book, take my word for it, it’s fabulous, and it’s important. It has content that will stick with you at the same time it has a benefit that you’ll remember for a long time. Buy a book, save someone’s life. How often do you get to do that?”

I fear that if we try to sell this merely as a book worth reading, we will not move enough fingers to click.

Bullet point summary of the project
The book is called: End Malaria: Bold Innovation, Limitless Generosity, and the Opportunity to Save a Life
$20 from every sale will go to Malaria No More. That’s 100% of the Kindle price, and 80% of the hard copy (The remaining $5 covers production costs.)
None of the contributors or the publishing house are taking any money from sales, and Amazon makes no profit
The book has 62 thought leaders (download PDF list of contributors) writing around the topic of Great Work – how to do more of the stuff that matters and less of all the other stuff that fills up your day
Includes such luminaries as Tom Peters, Gary Vaynerchuk, Sir Ken Robinson, Brene Brown, David Allen, Sally Hogshead and Mitch Joel
Divided into eight key areas of insight, including: Create Freedom, Disrupt Normal and Take Small Steps
End Malaria is edited by Michael Bungay Stanier and published by The Domino Project. It has an introduction from Scott Case, Vice Chair of Malaria No More
$20 sends a mosquito net to a family in need and supports life-saving work in the fight against malaria
Malaria No More’s mission is to end malaria in Africa by 2015
A child dies every 45 seconds from malariaEnd Malaria, https://www.EndMalariaDay.com,/a> , is an astonishing new book by more than sixty best selling business authors and social thought leaders who joined together to share information in a book whose entire profits go to buy malaria bed nets. Malaria is a disease that causes more childhood death than HIV/AIDS. 

Malaria bed nets are simple nets that hang over a window or a bed. They’re treated with a chemical that mosquitoes hate. The mosquitoes fly away, they don’t bite, people don’t get malaria. 

Every single penny spent on the Kindle edition goes to Malaria No More, giving them enough money to buy one or two bednets and to deliver them and be sure they’re used properly. Low overhead, no graft, no waste. Just effectiveness. None of the authors or anyone at the Domino Project receive money to be part of this project.  

Wait, there is one ulterior motive: We hope you are inspired. One of the sixty plus contributors might share a gem or spark an idea. The book is a collection of essays from 62 business and social thought leaders about the key drivers to live a life of meaning and impact. Contributors to the book (all of whom donated their work) include David Allen, Tom Peters and Keith Ferrazzi; TED speakers Brene Brown and Sir Ken Robinson; New York Times’ best-sellers Jonah Lehrer, Gary Vaynerchuk and Dan Pink; Daymond John and Dave Ramsey; and leaders from organizations such as Google and GlaxoSmithKline.

There’s a second motive: Stepping up feels right. It’s a few clicks to buy a book and for the rest of the day, or even a week, you’ll remember how it felt to save someone’s life. 

END MALARIA was born out of a passion to save lives by author and Senior Partner of Box of Crayons Michael Bungay Stanier. Teaming up with marketing and publishing innovator and creator of Squidoo.com Seth Godin, they found a way to sell a book and give away all of the profit in the fight against malaria.

” This is the power of authors working together, the power of ebook distribution and most of all, the power of people who care to make a difference. Over and over, we’re seeing that a new generation cares about business not just as a way to make money, but as a way to make a difference. These authors (and their readers) are making a difference at the same time they’re saving lives.” – Seth Godin.  

End Malaria Day is April 25, Twitter #EndMalariaDay , www.Facebook.com/endmalariaday

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

Testifying before the Japanese House of Councilors, Mitsuhei Murata (Japan’s former ambassador to Switzerland) raised a disturbing threat: 85 times as much radioactive cesium-137 as was released at Chernobyl is at risk of being released into the atmosphere. This is not within a containment vessel, and the risk is fairly serious.

Japan, by the way, is down to just a single operating nuclear power plant from a high of 54–many of these shutdowns a result of the accident at Fukushima that made nuclear power unacceptable.

And the US is still extending licenses on decrepit worn out old nukes, and trying for the first time in decades to build new ones. What kind of madness is this?

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Green Marketing, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

A blogger on Sustainable Business, Marc Stoiber, wonders why a major sustainability milestone achieved by Translink, the Vancouver, British Colombia transit system, went almost unnoticed by local and national media.

The funny thing is…transit systems control their own media, one that reaches the two most important audiences they have. If I were the company’s marketing director, I’d put inside placards on the front and back of both sides of every bus and subway (four signs in each car) to reach the actual riders—and exterior signage to reach the next-most-important constituency: Vancouver-area residents not yet using public transit.

The interior placards would not just brag about the accomplishment—they’d say thank you to the riders for their part. And those exterior signs would recruit new riders to join the tribe, e.g., “become part of the greenest commute in North America.” And I’d supplement this with a nice social media campaign, which itself could be a subject for exciting press releases, etc.

Then, the local media and perhaps the national media would almost certainly pick up the story—but even if they didn’t, the message would be out there, and if done right, ridership would grow.

Stoiber goes on to discuss the very creative marketing of another transit advocate, Jason Roberts—who put up a website for the a nonexistent light-rail transit line in Dallas, Texas called the Oak Cliff Transit Authority—and was able to organize so effectively around this public vision that the project actually got funded! You might call Roberts’ story “If You Dream It, They Will Come—IF You’re a Marketer and Organizer Who Can Create and Gather a Tribe.”

Vancouver Transit execs: I’d love to consult with you on how to build big awareness. I already have one Vancouver-based green company as a client.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

Harvey Wasserman has been a staunch and public opponent of nuclear power since the 1970s (as have I, BTW).

He just posted an article on Huffington Post explaining how the loan guarantees the US is offering the proposed Vogtle nuclear plants in Georgia put U.S. taxpayers at risk for many times the amount lost over Solyndra…how the power company has almost no skin in the game, financially, with all the risk on our shoulders…and how even the very earliest stages of site preparation and construction have been fraught with mismanagement and flawed concrete.

His article goes on to give a quick world-wide wrap-up of the many countries abandoning nuclear, and a glimpse at the better alternatives.

And he links to a petition to stop the loan guarantees, to which I added the following comment when I signed:

These loan guarantees are a terrible solution to nuclear’s failed economics. Closing existing operating nukes and putting he money into *real* clean energy is a far better option.

Help maintain our country’s economic and energy prosperity. Read his article, sing the petition,and get others informed.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Copywriting, language, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , ,

Yesterday, I blogged about the combination of vision, engineering, and marketing that made Apple and some other companies so successful. And for years, I’ve been a champion of putting reasons in your marketing.

This TED talk by Simon Sinek goes a step farther. Again using Apple as an example, he says it’s not enough merely to include the because; you want to lead with it. If you put your reasons why—your higher purpose—right at the top you immediately attract the people who are falling-all-over-themselves-eager to be part of your dream and your mission. This, he says, is why we don’t buy MP3 players or tablets from companies like Dell, but we salivate at Apple’s every product release—because Apple leads (and has led, since at least the original Macintosh introduction in 1984) with the deeper why.

Another of his examples is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech; King, he notes, did not say, “I have a plan.”

However, King’s speech actually had a bit of a slow build. The first 351 words (of 881, total) are about the plight of black people in this country from the Emancipation Proclamation to the day 100 years later when he gave his speech. Only then, more than a third of the way into his speech, does he move into his vision of the race-neutral future.

Still, I think Sinek is right—but I think it also has to hit on the benefits to the individual, unless you’re speaking only to the driven. I’ve often used this technique in my copywriting without consciously thinking about it. From now on, I will do it consciously.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Energy & Sustainability, Green Marketing, Innovation, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Networking, People Helping People, Technology, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, I asked for your comments on three inspirations for innovation and creativity. If you missed the original, please take a moment to go back and read it first. If you didn’t, be aware that I give away the ending to the Caine film below.

I’m writing this on Sunday, immediately after posing my question to you, and posting it on Tuesday, as promised. Hopefully a few of you have added your wisdom. And here’s what I think:

1. Chris Brogan is spot on when he says you don’t achieve greatness by following the existing paradigm. You conceive the ultimate goal—hopefully something big and bold—and then engineer a path from today’s world to that goal.

Examples:

2. A number of lessons to be learned from “Caine’s Arcade”:

  • Caine’s parents were wise enough not to interfere, not to assault their son with messages that what he was trying t do was impossible, useless, or even misdirected. They gave him room to follow his dream.
  • For Caine, it was enough to build it even when people didn’t come—just as for me, I’m driven to write my blog, my monthly column, and my books even though my audiences are small. Because I know that a few people do passionately pay attention to my ideas, it gives me a lot of juice to keep going. Of course, if I had the fame of a Chris Brogan or Seth Godin, I’d reach a lot more people. And that would harmonize with my own goals to change the world. But just knowing that I have changed the lives of a few people and the course of a few communities helps me keep going. I’m not sure I’m as brave as Caine, though. I’m not sure I could do it anymore if I didn’t think anyone at all was listening.
  • The missing ingredient in both Emerson’s “build a better mousetrap and people will beat a path to your door” and director Phil Alden Robinson and writer W. P. Kinsella’s “if you build it, they will come” is marketing. While Caine says he doesn’t care if anyone comes to play, he tells us of feeling excluded and teased when he tried to share his accomplishment at school. And his reaction when his lone customer brings a crowd to play shows that while just the achievement had been enough for Caine, sharing it with others is so much more. Nirvan, that solitary customer, did the marketing for him, and did a fabulous job. The happy ending is as much a testament to Nirvan’s social media prowess as to Caine’s creativity and ingenuity—just as the rise of Apple needed both Jobs’ vision and marketing skills and Steve Wozniak’s engineering genius. The lesson for entrepreneurs is that if you don’t have all three elements—vision, engineering, and marketing—you need to partner with someone who has the pieces you lack.

3. The actual ad featured in the going green video is a brilliant example of using big-picture thinking to convey a message. Take a walk—and find your true love. Yes, it’s absurd. But it’s also very compelling. and it talks most elegantly to the way people can change behavior and become greener—achieving both a planetary and a personal good.

Much traditional advertising of for-profit products and nonprofit causes focuses on one or the other: buy this car or smoke this cigarette and you’ll feel sexy, that sort of thing—or “only you can prevent forest fires,” give money to cancer research, etc.—helping-others messaging without a clear direct benefit.

As a green marketer, I constantly say that marketers need to hit both the self-interst and the planetary interest, especially if they want to reach beyond the deep greens. In fact, I wrote my last Green And Profitable column on this very theme. The ad is a nice example, and the opening slides give us some very good framing about the power of art to influence thought, in many contexts.

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By Posted on Posted in Green Marketing, Innovation, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Technology Tagged with , , , , ,

Without starting with that intention, I’ve been immersing myself in “creativity juice” this morning. A whole bunch of the e-mails I’ve opened have, by random chance (if there is such a thing), forced me to think about how creativity happens,  what it means, and whether “if you build it, they will come”—a/k/a, in the pre-“Field of Dreams” world as the better mousetrap aphorism—has relevance in today’s world.

Today, I’ll share three of these inspirations with you: the raw material. And I’ll write down what I think about this confluence, but set it to post on Tuesday—because I want your reactions before you see mine. Please comment below.

1. This quote from @ChrisBrogan:

When I think about all that a business can do to succeed (or all that an individual can do, for that matter), I start from the mindset of forgetting about the path that someone else has forged. Why? Because innovation rarely (never?) comes from following an established path. If I were going to design a hotel, I wouldn’t try learning what worked and didn’t work for the Four Seasons, I’d think through (and then interview others about) all the details that matter to me as a traveler, and then consider what I could do better.

3. This 3-minute TED talk about creativity, green messaging, and climate change (suggested by TED after I followed an e-mail link and watched a different TED talk)

While I won’t give away my reactions yet, I will tell you that my response cites Steve Jobs, energy visionary Amory Lovins, and some game-changing, category-inventing products.

Meanwhile, you have the floor. I’m eagerly awaiting your response.

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