Rob Cottingham's Blog

Twestival: using Twitter for good

Rob Cottingham — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:10:40 -0700

If you thought Twitter was just for inane memes and eye-rolling self-promotion ("Just met with a terribly important person and they were terribly impressed with me!"), have a look at the Twestival phenomenon.

Started just under a year ago in London, Twestivals are local get-togethers organized via Twitter - and geared to raising funds for worthy causes.

Vancouver's Twestival is coming on September 12, organized by the amazing Rebecca Bollwitt, aka Miss604. It promises to be a lot of fun... but you don't have to wait until then to get in on the action.

Rebecca has launched an online poll to decide which local non-profit should be the beneficiary of the Twestival's fundraising efforts.

Voting closes tomorrow (Friday), so by all means - head on over and vote now! (I'm doing a lot of work with the fine folks at BC Children's Hospital, so I'd be delighted if they won - but do choose your favourite cause!)

Five reasons the Change Everything community has earned the Webby

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:33:00 -0700

Change Everything keeps on astonishing me.

First, it was the amazing clothing drive for the homeless of Vancouver's downtown east side that self-organized on the site during a late 2006 cold snap.

Then it was the saga of EnviroWoman, a Change Everything member who decided to forego plastic for a year and blogged about it on the site. It made it to the big time, even garnering a mention on The Guardian's UK web site.

And now Change Everything is a finalist for the social networking Webby, one of the most prestigious Internet awards out there. Its competition: huge communities like Bebo and, oh yes, a little site you may have heard of named Facebook.

Exactly what is going on here? What puts a 3,000-member community into the same league as a 70-million-member behemoth like Facebook?

I've been talking about it with Alex. And here are five reasons we think Change Everything should win that Webby:

It's a community committed to social change. As someone who scours the Internet Movie Database obsessively, I'm the last person to complain that so much of the web is devoted to the trivial and inconsequential. But when a site weighs in with a substantive mission and becomes a real success, it encourages others to follow suit, pursuing real-world results – and for those of us convinced of the social web's potential as a tool for social change, that's powerful stuff.

By the way, among those real-world results for Change Everything: a warm clothing drive that self-organized on the site in its early days, after a particularly nasty cold snap threatened the poorest and most vulnerable residents of the Downtown East Side. Within a few days, the drive had netted more than 70 garbage bags filled with hats, gloves, scarves and coats – and triggered several spin-off initiatives.
It embraces the open-source spirit. Change Everything is built on the Drupal content management system in a sector (financial institutitons) where closed-source software is the near-universal rule. And yet, in contrast to its closed-source Webby competition (with the notable exception of open-source browser Flock), Change Everything isn't just built on Drupal – it regularly contributes back to the development community (most recently releasing the Nudge module).

What's to stop another credit union or (gasp) bank from using Nudge as part of a site designed to steal Change Everything's thunder? Not a thing... and the fact that Vancity isn't letting that fear stop them is a clear sign they've embraced the community ethos that underlies the open-source movement.
It's a Vancity project... but not the Vancity project. Social networking may not be your business, the way it's Facebook's business, but it's not Vancity's business either – and that's why Change Everything is such a success. What Vancity does know is how to serve the needs of its members: not just their banking needs, but their needs for a vibrant, sustainable community. If you're part of an organization with a distinct social mandate, approach and values, your social smarts are needed in the social networking world.

It's small and focused. How can Change Everything's 3000 users hope to beat Facebook's 70 million? In sheer numbers, they can't. But there's a quality to be had in a small, focused community: intimacy, shared interest, and perhaps a little more willingness to trust a fellow community member. (Not to mention the fact that you're much less likely to be tracked down by people you've been trying to avoid since grade four.)

There's room online for both the online giants and the nimble niche or hyper-local communities; each serves a different purpose. But it's about time we started paying a little more attention to those niche communities – while the Facebooks and MySpaces of the web may provide utility, it's the niche communities that are more likely to capture users' passion.
The content, in all modesty, kicks ass. Feeling a little tired of pokes, vampire bites and which of your friends is the hottest-looking? Change Everything can give you the often-hilarious story of EnviroWoman, who went a year trying to live plastic-free (and mostly succeeding) – told with wit and humility. It can give you posts like Alex's on plastics and BPA, posted nearly a full year before the media started really taking notice and the Canadian government announced a ban. And it can give you stories like this one, about the difference a simple bicycle ambulance design is making in Malawi and Namibia.

But the best way to understand why Change Everything is to explore the community itself. We've put together some links that represent highlights from the site's life so far:

Got Hats
It all started with one blog post. Kate wrote a post sharing her vision to get a car donated and do a round of collections to transport warm things to local shelters. Within 48 hours, over 4000 articles of clothing were donated.

EnviroWoman
EnviroWoman gave up plastic in 2007. That means not buying/accepting products that contain or are packaged in plastic. Sounds simple? Think about it….shampoo/deodorant in plastic bottles, toothpaste with plastic lids, toilet paper wrapped in plastic…

Vancity's BikeShare Experiment
One of the first 'changes' on ChangeEverything, posted by Senns, outlined a vision for a bike share program here in Vancouver. In response, Vancity launched a successful bike share program last summer.

This year's resolution contest winner
1 in 5 of us will have a mental illness in our lifetime. Using comedy, Stand Up For Mental Health empowers those with a mental illness and educates and empowers the community at large, helping to remove the stigma surrounding Mental Illness.

Degan's inspirational marathon training
Degan signed up to run the Joints in Motion marathon in Athens, Greece. It's a charity fundraiser that's put on by The Arthritis Society of Canada, where her mother worked before she died a few years ago.

Thanks to radio, you can tell the people of Burma you're with them

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:36:40 -0700

Radio Netherlands is doing something amazing:

Every day we broadcast via Short Wave into Myanmar, also known as Burma, and that means our independent news is getting through.

Our frequencies, transmitted from Irkutsk in Siberia, Madagascar and
other sites, have not been jammed and for three hours a day we offer an
alternative to the military junta's propaganda. Internet may be down
but via Short Wave we can punch a hole in the information stranglehold.

Pro-democracy dissidents are having their say and we've broadcast the
comments of world leaders telling the military junta to stop its
attacks.

You can have your say too

Let us know what you think of the push for democracy as people in Myanmar/Burma confront the military dictators.

We'll publish your comments here on our Internet page. Please include
your phone number too so we can call you back to record your comments
as we prepare a special 'Shout via Short Wave' programme.

Let your voice be heard.

I've left a message - I hope you'll add your voice as well!

Veggie Booty recalled due to salmonella threat

Rob Cottingham — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 23:50:56 -0700

This just in: the FDA and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are warning that Veggie Booty, a popular kids' snack made by Robert's American Gourmet, poses a salmonella risk:

There have been numerous illnesses in the U.S., but none in Canada, associated with the consumption of this product....

The importer is voluntarily recalling the affected products from the marketplace. The CFIA is monitoring the effectiveness of the recall.

For more information, consumers and industry can call the CFIA at 1-800-442-2342 / TTY 1-800-465-7735 (8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, Monday to Friday).

Here's the company page about the recall.

On May 16th, I'm turning off...

Rob Cottingham — Fri, 11 May 2007 12:57:23 -0700

My iPod. Those podcasts will just have to fend for themselves for a day.
Elevators and escalators. (My thighs will be as mighty oaks! My calves will be as powerful bulls! My ankles will be... sore, I'm guessing.)
Our Mac mini and TV. I can watch our (perfectly! legal!) Bittorrents another time.

I've pledged. Have you?

Die, holiday card - die, die, die!

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:24:16 -0700

Here was the environmental footprint of the Christmas card in 2005, according to the UK government:

One billion Christmas cards, weighing 20,000 tonnes and equivalent in volume to at least 20 Olympic sized swimming pools, will end up as waste this Christmas.

That's only the tip of the (rapidly melting) iceberg. Consider the energy involved in transporting those cards to a billion addresses – energy expended all the more inefficiently because postal services have to ramp up each year for a huge surge in mail, and then ramp back down again.

There are so many alternatives to cards, from phone calls to email, that you have to wonder: isn't it time for this tradition to die a quiet, dignified death?

Some people will object that all that needs to die is the obligatory greeting card, that huge bulk of cards that individuals and (especially) businesses send just to be polite. But it's hard to see how that can happen without the whole tradition taking at least a several-year-long sabbatical.

Urgent action request: Piccadily Hotel residents facing eviction

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:00:31 -0800

This just came into my inbox, and sounds urgent enough that I wanted to pass it along:

DTES Housing and Homelessness Action: Piccadilly Hotel Eviction - write a letter by Tuesday! CC it to CCAP [the Carnegie Community Action Project] (wpederson@look.ca) for our files:

Bad news. The Piccadilly Hotel will evict its tenants this coming Wednesday, February 28, 2007. City inspectors say it's not up to code and it needs to shut down because the owner is not fixing it up. This is the perfect time for the City to use its bylaws to protect the last housing before homelessness.

Please email city councillors and ask them to do the repairs. Council voted to look for a test case for the Standards of Maintenance Bylaw in February 2007 that lets them pay for hotel repairs and bill the owner. The City could also buy this hotel. In 2005, Council voted unanimously to support the DTES Housing Plan which says the City will buy 1 hotel a year. Sam Sullivan and Peter Ladner voted for this plan then. In February 2007, council agreed to look for a hotel to buy. So far, not one hotel has been purchased. At the February meeting, council blamed the Province for causing homelessness by not increasing Welfare rates. Council minimized their own power to help. But small actions to save existing housing will make a big difference. Buy hotels, fix them up and stop creating homelessness. We must continue to hold them to account.

Five minutes to write a quick letter with your name and address signed. This pressure works! We delivered 100 letters to mayor and councilors in February for the SRA (SRO) Bylaw meeting. CCAP and other community groups pressured them relentlessly with action, extensive media coverage and presence at council meetings. We won the promise of city councilors not to allow conversion or demolition of SROs. Let's keep the pressure on.

sam.sullivan@vancouver.ca
clranton@vancouver.ca
clrlander@vancouver.ca
clrdeal@vancouver.ca
clrlouie@vancouver.ca
clrlee@vancouver.ca
clrcadman@vancouver.ca
clrball@vancouver.ca
clrchow@vancouver.ca
clrstevenson@vancouver.ca
clrcapri@vancouver.ca

Backgrounder/press release from Pivot Legal Society:

City moves to close another SRO, Pivot calls for use of initiative approved yesterday
For immediate release - February 16, 2007

Vancouver - The City of Vancouver is moving to close another low-income single room occupancy building, this time the Picadilly Hotel, also known as the Pender Place Hotel, located at 622 West Pender Street. A notice to tenants from the City of Vancouver tells the building's occupants that if the owners fail to remedy deficiencies in the building by February 28, 2007, the building will have to be vacated. The Picadilly has 39 rooms, 12 of which are currently occupied by low-income residents at high risk of homelessness.

The remainder of the rooms remain empty because welfare has refused to issue cheques for tenants who wish to rent those rooms. "The twelve tenants have been given 19 days notice of their potential eviction," says David Eby, lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society. "While this is an improvement on the half hour eviction notice the Burns Block residents received, it is hardly the approach that we want the City to take in this type of situation."

Yesterday evening, Vancouver's city council instructed staff to identify a "test case" low-income building for use of the Standards of Maintenance By-law. This by-law permits City officials to enter residential buildings and make repairs to ensure the safety of tenants, and then bill those repairs back to the owner of the building. A 1990 decision of the B.C. Supreme Court called Carline Holdings v. City of Vancouver determined that the City's powers under this by-law are well founded in the Vancouver Charter, refuting a defendant's argument that the by-law only permitted "cosmetic" repairs.

"The timing is perfect for the Picadilly to be the City of Vancouver's building maintenance test case," said Eby. "Instead of punishing the tenants by sending them out into the street, the City could punish the owner for letting this building fall into such disrepair by making the necessary repairs to ensure tenant safety and sending the owner a bill. It's a win win situation: the tenants stay housed and the building is improved at no cost to the city."

The tenants have been advised by the Notice to contact the Tenant Assistant Program of the City of Vancouver for assistance relocating. Eby says that this is no remedy at all. "The Burns Block residents were supposedly offered relocation as well, but several of my clients from that building were homeless for periods of days, weeks or months. The one tenant who was assisted was homeless for two days first. The rest had to find their own housing, and those that are housed now live in even worse buildings. At least one former Burns Block resident is still homeless."

The Burns Block building, which was closed by the city in March of 2006, would have been another perfect candidate for the new initiative. Unfortunately, instead of making the minimum necessary repairs and billing the owner, the City closed the building, sending the 18 residents from that building into the street with half an hour's notice. The building is now up for auction and will be sold on March 1, 2007, the day after the scheduled closure of the Picadilly.

I'm switching off for five minutes tomorrow morning.

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:17:21 -0800

There's this French initiative that has caught on well beyond the country's borders: turning off our lights for five minutes in the evening on Thursday, February 1st. (That's 10:55 am to 11:00 am our time here in B.C.)

It's meant to draw attention for the need for action on climate change:

Why February 1st? Because the next day, in Paris, the latest report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be released. This event will take place in France; we can't pass up this opportunity to focus attention on the urgency of the global climate situation. (my translation)

The idea has taken hold, passed along on blogs and email lists around the world. The idea isn't to save the world by reducing energy consumption by a tiny amount (although, hey, every bit helps) – it's to raise awareness and signal just how broad support is for urgent, coordinated action.

At a time when even the Harper Conservatives are realizing they need to make some changes, this is an opportunity to push the powers that be all the harder. So vote with your fingers: switch off the lights, shut down your laptops, turn off the radio... and let's find out just how much power there can be in powering down.

Snow, again

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 22:40:25 -0800

It's starting to snow again in Vancouver – the latest in a series of unseasonable events this winter in what's supposed to be Canada's mild West Coast.

Few things take me back to childhood as much as the sight of white flakes in the sky. I see them, and I'm suddenly transported back to the living room window of our house on Bearbrook Road, wondering if this would be the snowfall that closed the schools for the day. Or the front passenger seat of my parents' car, with my dad driving, windshield wipers urgently dialing slush off the windshield, and the snow doing that swooping-toward-you thing it does when you're in a moving car – a feeling of danger barely held at bay by the reassuring presence of a parent. Or walking home from a friend's house at eight or nine, when the sky turned orange with reflected streetlight and the tires of passing cars crunched grooves in the road.

Up at the cottage, a snowfall meant a tense crawl approach along the 20 kilometres or so of gravel road that led to the cabin on Big Mink Lake – and three or four big, winding hills I would be convinced would be the last sight I ever had on this Earth. Then we'd park at the entrance to the driveway and load the toboggan for the first of three or four portages: clothing, toys, meals, various staples and, if it was Christmas, presents and Mom's baking.

It's been more than 25 years since my last hopeful gaze at the flurries outside our living room window; nine years since my last Christmas at the cottage; and three years to the day since my mother died – three years minus five days since my father joined her. Then, too, it was an unseasonable winter, but in Bancroft, Ontario, colder-than-normal weather is vastly more frigid. The last month or so of their lives was spent entirely indoors, except for a brief few moments as my father was transferred to hospital.

I wish I could find a way, other than through memory, to be back in the car while Mom or Dad drives home through a snowstorm. I've come now to recognize that danger can be held back at best temporarily, and that uneasy feeling of contingency as a glimpse of what life really is. Permanence is an illusion, and warmth, cold, pain, tenderness, the feeling of a hand cooling slowly in mine – these all melt away into memory, as surely as does every snowfall.

A great place to find events

Rob Cottingham — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 21:07:55 -0800

Look Who is Talking is a blog devoted to listing upcoming lectures and talks in Vancouver. It's a fantastic resource... one that deserves a place in any Vancouverite's RSS subscriptions.