How the Office Sustainability is helping Miami go green

At Sustainatopia the other day, Angela Sager, an Energy Management Specialist in the Office of Sustainability at Miami-Dade County, describes how her office works with companies devoted to energy efficiency, renewable energy and community energy campaigns.

While the federal government may be at the forefront of funding innovative programs that will take us to our shared energy future, it’s the programs at the local level that will get us there. Miami’s Office of Sustainability, for example, is administering a $12.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and is welcoming enterprises that are demonstrating innovative approaches to energy.

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

Miami-Dade recently unveiled a very cool site, green.miamidade.gov, which highlights green businesses, showcases best-of-breed projects and offers sustainability tips and rebates for some simple high-efficiency changes in the home.

Angela describes how her office is working on private-public partnerships to develop relationships to grow the market in south Florida for renewable energy or renewable fuels.

Related

• Outtakes from Sustainatopia (Socialbrite)

• Fighting poverty by enhancing social entrepreneurship (Socialbrite)

The post Sustainability starts at the local level appeared first on Socialbrite.

This week marks the launch of the Hub Bay Area, a co-working space that’s part of a global networks of Hubs.

If you’re not familiar with the Hub, you should be. In places like Toronto, London, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Cairo, Madrid, Stockholm, Bombay and elsewhere, social entrepreneurs, nonprofits and innovators have come together in 18 cities on five continents to collaborate and share resources. (Kevin Jones, who ran this week’s SoCap09 conference and is on the Hub Bay Area’s executive board, invited me to hold the Traveling Geeks’ tweetup at the Hub in London, but it was a bit too small for the gathering.)

The Bay Area has long had the venerable Citizen Space in San Francisco’s SOMA as well as Berkeley Coworking. Now the Hub brings coworking to another level. It’s located at the David Brower Center at 2150 Allston Way near the Downtown Berkeley BART station and across the street from UC Berkeley. The brand new building is one the Bay Area’s most advanced green building, exceeding LEED Platinum certification standards. The building also houses many local social and environmental change organizations.

Here’s a more detailed description of the space, designed “to support innovation, optimize productivity, and supply an abundance of tools for working, meeting, learning, and connecting.” Here’s a short list of upcoming events. And here’s a wiki with more information about coworking.

Here’s how to join — today is the deadline for the Hub Berkeley accepting founding and charter members. There are plans afoot for a second Bay Area Hub location in San Francisco.

Congrats to Kevin, Alex Michel, Amy Benziger, Tim Freundlich, Rosa Lee Harden and others for making it happen.

The post The Hub Bay Area launches appeared first on Socialbrite.

National Wildlife Federation from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Recently I had the chance to sit down with Danielle Brigida, social media outreach coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation, the enormously important nonprofit organization that inspires Americans to protect wildlife for our children’s future. They do that by combating global warming, protecting wildlife and wildlife habitats and connecting people with nature.

NWF (which is not a government agency, as some think) has been a leader in the use of social media over the past year, and a major reason for that has been Danielle’s work within the organization as well as outside, interacting with supporters and putting a human face on the institution.

“We have a new wave of members and donors coming in — people who want to get their hands dirty,” Danielle says in this 6-minute video interview conducted along a busy street in Berkeley, Calif. “Social media is a great way to start the conversation — and then you have to take it offline. You’re not having a big giant brand tell you what to do anymore. All of our members have a say in what we do.” Many of NWF’s program managers are using Twitter to connect with people and to use it as a sort of instant focus group.

Until our talk, I hadn’t realized the number of Twitter accounts that NWF has, including:

@nwf
@starfocus (Danielle)
@campusecology
@greenhour
@wildlife_watch
@wildlifeaction

Watch or embed the video on Vimeo
Download the original H.264 video from Archive.org

Related

• A Day of the Life of NWF’s Social Media Outreach Coordinator Danielle Brigida (by Michael Solla on Beth’s Blog)

The post How the National Wildlife Federation uses social media appeared first on Socialbrite.

Here’s a 4 1/2-minute video interview with Deborah Kaplan, executive director of Zerofootprint.net, an amazing organization based in Toronto and devoted to help organizations, cities and individuals recognize their carbon footprint and take specific measures to help reduce climate change. The interview was conducted at the Stanford Summit in July 2008.

They’re working with the cities of Toronto, Seattle, Edmonton and Ottawa to help citizens reduce their carbon footprints. For starters, check out their One Minute Calculator.

Watch video in H.264 (QuickTime) on Ourmedia
Watch video in Flash on Vimeo

Cross-posted to Socialmedia.biz

The post Reduce your carbon footprint appeared first on Socialbrite.