Archive for October, 2008
Interview with Dan Gill, CEO and Co-Founder of Huddler
October 30th, 2008 by Amie Vaccaro“Giving passionate, knowledgeable people a platform and a voice”
Combine people, products, and passion… mix in user-generated content, product reviews and discussions… and you have an ambitious web site called Huddler, that aims to create a “social commerce” community.
In this interview, “chief Huddler” Dan Gill shares with us how he started the business and his vision for the growth of their Green Home Huddle, which focuses on products and content connected to sustainability. Hear the inside business scoop on lessons they’ve learned along the way, how their business is funded, and how they engage their community.
- Huddler’s unique efforts to build communities to provide a more informed and social shopping experience
- How Huddler develops partnerships to get new green products in consumers’ hands and boost site activity
- How Huddler monetizes traffic to its site
- Lesson learned: The “release early, release often” approach allows users to guide web site development
LISTEN NOW (press play below)
TRANSCRIPT
AMIE VACCARO, GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: This is Amie with Green Business Innovators and I am here with Dan Gill, CEO of Huddler.com. Do you want to introduce yourself quickly?
DAN GILL: Hi everyone out there in the green blogosphere world. This is Dan Gill. I’m the co-founder and CEO of a site called Huddler.com. I guess most specifically we’ll be talking about our site, GreenHome.Huddler.com, which you can find a link to directly from Huddler.com and we’ll talk all about it and tell you a little bit about what we’re up to.
GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: Great. So do you want to tell us a little bit about Huddler.com and what you do here?
DAN GILL: Sure, sure. Huddler was actually, the concept that my brother… My oldest brother and I founded Huddler together. And the impetus for Huddler comes from “old school” discussion forums. Some people are really familiar with them, some people are not, but they’re pretty well unchanged from the mid-90s. So if you’ve ever seen the discussion forum at some point where someone can post a question and anyone can come back and respond and a conversation begins in a threaded fashion. There are some wildly popular sites out there that are great resources for people. And they’re always very topical.
The sites that we used the most, they are sites focused on cell phones and mobile technology, and they are sites focused on home theater equipment and really, really deep diving into those topics because they are specific to a given interest. The really knowledgeable, passionate people, they gravitate towards those sites. But from a technology perspective they’re very, very broken from a content creation perspective and from a content distribution perspective. So the original impetus for Huddler was, we wanted to build a platform that really empowers those knowledgeable, passionate people who have all this knowledge and they want to share and they want to interact with other like-minded people, but provide a much better interface, so that we can distribute that content and make it broadly available. Because if you have ever seen a discussion forum before, my mom couldn’t use it if her life depended on it, and that’s not to say there’s not information that would be really valuable to her in there, but the interface is just really hard to use.
Interview with Kindley Walsh-Lawlor, Senior Director of Social Responsibility and Environmental Affairs with Gap Inc.
October 24th, 2008 by Amie Vaccaro
If you’re ever shopping for a new article of clothing at Gap, Banana Republic or Old Navy (all brands owned by parent company Gap Inc.), on the way to the cash register you may be wondering in the back of your mind how much progress the company is making toward reducing the environmental impact of the clothing you just purchased.
With the sheer size of Gap Inc., moving toward sustainability is a huge task, but even small changes can make a large impact. Banana Republic started communicating about its sustainability efforts last spring with the tagline “Greener. One step at a time.” In this interview, Kindley Walsh-Lawlor, Senior Director of Social Responsibility and Environmental Affairs with Gap Inc., shares her insights into Gap Inc.’s next steps in their journey toward sustainability.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
- Kindley’s personal path to becoming a sustainability leader inside a large corporation
- How Gap Inc.’s environmental initiatives layers on and connects with its social responsibility practices
- An overview of Gap Inc.’s ECO-strategy
- Insights on how to best communicate environmental initiatives to customers
- One reason why marketing Gap Inc.’s “green initiatives” to customers is difficult - most of Gap Inc.’s sustainability practices are behind the scenes and not glamorous
TRANSCRIPT
AMIE VACCARO, GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: I am here today with Kindley Walsh-Lawlor, Senior Director of Social Responsibility and Environmental Affairs with Gap Inc. Kindley, do you want to briefly introduce yourself?
KINDLEY WALSH-LAWLOR: Sure, Hi good morning. I’m Kindley and I work in Gap Inc. Social Responsibility and Environmental Affairs. I’ve been with the company about 11 years, but in this space only for about 18 months. I had the opportunity to work at two of our brands, Banana Republic and Gap for the first 9 years at the company, which gave me a great education on what the brands were up against and what kinds of challenges they face day-to-day especially as we dig deeper with the brands on operational, sustainability, opportunities to redesign product, etc. So it’s been a great thing to bring into this role.
Interview with Jared Blumenfeld, Director, San Francisco Department of the Environment
October 17th, 2008 by Amie Vaccaro
“Mobilizing San Francisco to be a More Sustainable City”
80% of the world’s CO2 comes from cities. So strong action by cities is required to reduce the carbon emissions that they produce.
In this interview, Jaren Blumenfeld, Director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, explains some of the innovative legislation and actions that San Francisco is initiating as one of the world’s greenest cities.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
- Why the biggest sustainability challenge is sustaining people’s attention
- How the SF Department of the Environment is encouraging more sustainable business
- San Francisco’s cutting edge “Eco Map” project
- How San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom contributes to the green agenda
LISTEN NOW (press play below)
TRANSCRIPT
AMIE VACCARO, GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: This is Amy Vaccaro with Green Business Innovators. I am speaking today with Jared Blumenfeld, who is the Director for the San Francisco Department of the Environment. Hi Jared.
JARED BLUMENFELD: Hi.
GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: So my first question today, I’m interested about your background, how you got here, and kind of the snippets of bios I could find about you…Talk about your work in animal welfare campaigns and then moving into this job. It seems like a huge transition. I’m curious how it came about.
JARED BLUMENFELD: So, I started doing international environmental law and I went to law school and it was the time of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. So we, with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, did this big report on the connection between human rights and the environment. If your rain forest is chopped down do you have a legal right against the company who did it, because your livelihood depended on those trees? So that was kind of how I started. Then I worked for Cambridge University doing international environmental law. Then I went to work for NRDC, the Natural Resource Defense Council and we did all these campaigns and reports on what countries had done to follow-up on the Rio Earth Summit.
Upcoming Green Business Events 2008
October 11th, 2008 by Patrick Dominguez
Save the date - many exciting green and socially responsible business events and conferences are just around the corner! To keep you, our audience, in the know, Green Business Innovators has put together a diverse list of green/socially responsible business events, forums, festivals and conferences happening throughout North America over the next couple of months. Get out there, and get green!
If your green business event is missing from this list, please share the details of your event by submitting a comment below. Cheers! (And a special thanks to Kate Krueger for compiling this list)
October 13, 2008
Social Capital Markets
San Francisco, CA
At SoCap08, attendees will learn what works and what doesn’t in this new world of social capital and social entrepreneurs, which hybrid social & business models reach sustainability and which don’t, and where this emerging industry is headed. Attendees will be able to network with their peers, discovering a whole new realm of people they had hoped existed - organizations, groups, and individuals who share the same intention to launch and support sustainable businesses designed to impact global and local problems. Investors and entrepreneurs will find themselves helping to build a new community, gaining encouragement as they realize that they are not alone, but are part of something big, important - and rapidly growing.
Event Website: http://socialcapitalmarkets.net/index.php
Speaker Lineup: http://socialcapitalmarkets.net/speakers.php
October 14, 2008
Sustainable Industries Economic Forum
Portland, OR
In a stormy and unprecedented economic climate, businesses large and small are pursuing economic advantage through ambitious environmental innovation and social responsibility. The West Coast — Portland, Seattle and San Francisco in particular — is home to successful business thought leaders who have long understood the economic potential of sustainability. Still, tough viability questions and real economic context are sorely lacking, as are authentic, inspirational events that capture the true opportunity in going “beyond green.” Sustainable Industries helps address this need with our annual, reputable Sustainable Industries Economic Forums.
Event Page & Speaker Lineup: http://www.sustainableindustries.com/forums/portland
October 14-16, 2008
Associations and Social Responsibility: Carrying the Movement Forward
Online Summit
Hosted by ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership, the Global Summit on Social Responsibility united more than 800 association professionals and stakeholders in Washington, DC and 19 connected locations around the world and online to co-create a social responsibility agenda for the future of the association profession. The Project Action Teams that emerged from this pioneering event have refined their goals, outlined necessary action steps, and broadened their recruitment of colleagues and other organizations ready to move beyond conversation to actual identification of the business opportunities and substantive impact of positive change-making for a just and healthy world. Join ASAE & The Center, Appreciative Inquiry creator and Professor David Cooperrider, Ph.D.; and the iCohere/OvationNet Team as they facilitate an always-available, online-only summit, Associations and Social Responsibility: Carrying the Movement Forward, that marks the next leg in our sector’s journey toward greater sustainability.
Event Page: http://www.icohere.com/gssr/index.htm
Speaker Lineup: http://www.icohere.com/gssr/presenters.htm
Interview with John Borg, Founder of Eco Imprints
October 7th, 2008 by Patrick Dominguez
“Green Your Swag”
As a veteran of many trade shows and conferences, it is appalling to me to see to the huge amount of swag and cheap freebies given away at events that seem destined to be thrown away almost immediately. So it is great to find a company carving out a new approach to more environmentally friendly product promotions in the $18 billion promotional product industry.
Eco Imprints is a San Francisco-based company that sells eco-friendly promotional products (i.e. products you can put your logo on) for you to use at trade shows and as gifts for clients. In this interview, Eco Imprints founder John Borg shares insights about how “eco-friendly swag” is different, and the compelling story of how following his personal values led him to start this business.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
- “A landfill is not really where you want to see your logo, that’s for sure!”
- What are the in-demand eco-products for trade shows and corporate gifts
- How to rethink the environmental impact of an $18 billion industry
- Marrying passion and skill sets: the business owner’s Holy Grail
LISTEN NOW (press play below)
TRANSCRIPT
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ, GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: Hello. This is Patrick Dominguez from Green Business Innovators, and today we’re interviewing John Borg, who is the founder of Eco Imprints. Welcome, John.
JOHN BORG: Thank you for having me.
GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: Okay, so let’s start off by, John, why don’t you tell us what Eco Imprints does?
JOHN BORG: Eco Imprints is a corporate merchandising firm, and we try to bring a fresh approach to the promotional products industry, which is an $18 billion industry. In an industry of 20,000 distributors, we’re among the first to focus on more responsible ways of doing business.