cameron burgess

Social media channels – like global media generally – have a tendency to be dominated by the US – due almost exclusively to their sheer volume of users. In the world of social and environmental enterprise – where global participants are located in some of the world’s poorest countries – i suspect the disparity is even more obvious.

It’s not that they are necessarily smarter (although some of the smartest people I’ve ever met are US citizens), nor is it that they’re more innovative, effective or impactful (although many of the most in all three also live stateside). It’s simply that there are more of them, and they’re all hyper-connected.

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For the past week or so, every now and again – and completely without warning – I’ve found tears pooling at the corners of my eyes and sliding down my cheeks. Sometimes I’ve been unaware of them until cool air, or the taste of salt, or a slightly quizzical look brings my attention to the sensation. The tears are sometimes the prelude to something else … at times, a deep laughter rolls its way up from my belly … at others, I am racked with silent sobs … sometimes the tears simply vanish as quietly as they arose and yet at all times there is a deep and abiding stillness that underscores it all.

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As #occupy, #socent and the #socmed savvy socialists sharpen their pitchforks and coil up the rope, I rest secure in the knowledge that here, in a friend’s house on the coast north of Byron Bay, it’s too windy for the blazing fires of indignation to stay alight for long.

After all wasn’t this missive:
- delivered via the net
- through a network of electronics
- created by the world’s largest manufacturing companies
- (in partnership with the largest mining and energy companies)
- developed in economic exclusion zones
- that skirted fair labour laws
- so that this missive could be delivered via the net?

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i got asked recently to provide my brief thoughts in response to this question

while i don’t consider myself to be an expert on either the history or the near-term prospects of social media(and have my own challenges, frustrations and rants that run in counterpoint to my active-engagement with it), i did find that putting thought into form has me wondering what others think about where it’s all headed

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This article was originally written for beyondprofit and originally published here.
It’s shorter than i would have liked, however, and so I’ll be expanding upon this further shortly

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In the seventeen years I’ve been working with sustainable ventures I’ve made some bad decisions. Decisions that have cost me time, money and friendships.

I don’t think that makes me bad at what I do, or fundamentally inexcusable as a human being. If anything it makes me very much the same as most other people – we do what we think is best, and sometimes, upon reflection, we realise that the suffering our choices have created for us is a direct consequence of ‘jumping over’ what we knew at the time.

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I certainly wasn’t an early adopter of Facebook – not in a global sense, definitely, although, perhaps, amongst my peers, I was one of the first to stare into the abyss of the world’s most highly monetized relationship database (I’m from Australia, in case you forgot, where some things take a little longer to catch on …. like Vegemite with Americans … lightly spread on toast with lots of butter).

I’ve been on it for maybe five years, and relatively active too, and now, after collecting a whole pile of friends i’ve never met, reconnecting with people i ceased to have anything in common with more than three decades ago, and watching the lives of people i either don’t know, don’t care to know or can’t be seen to know cascade before me like a storm of well-intentioned but manic locusts, i’ve drawn the conclusion that, for me, the cost-benefit ratio of engagement with Facebook is definitely well out-of-whack.

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note: this is a long one – and a genuine request for assistance – so make yourself a cup of tea, put on some krishna das and put your feet up – you might be here for a while ….

Building a game-changing sustainable enterprise requires much more than yet another ‘good’ idea. It requires a combination of genius, pragmatism, and sheer bloody-mindedness. It requires a willingness to sacrifice certainty and short-term financial gains for the long-term benefits the project will bring to the individuals, organisations and communities you are seeking to serve (including yourself). It requires enormous flexibility and agility and the willingness to make use of whatever tools are immediately at your disposal – trading up to new ones as you can afford them, or the existing ones have been worn out through over-utilisation.

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For years I’ve been wondering what the iFart app has done for the betterment of humanity …. it’s easy of course, to think me a wowser (an Australian term for which I’m not really sure there is an equally succinct US word; roughly translates as ‘overly-serious-individual-known-for-sucking-the-joy-out-of-life-and-requiring-chiropractic-assistance-with-removing-head-from-ass’), and in part, perhaps, that’s true.

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So it turns out that gaia.com is shutting down.

While this doesn’t really surprise those of us who’ve been around for a while – after all, there’s a trail of media acquisitions behind Gaiam that didn’t really go the way many hoped they would (for those who don’t know, gaia.com was originally zaadz.com – one of the most interesting online communities built in service to social entrepreneurs …), what’s interesting is the response that members are having to the news.

Bewilderment, frustration, disappointment, grief.

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Close to two years ago, on January 8, 2008, I posted the below rant on a facebook discussion board for The Greens – an Australian political party with typically strong social and environmental sustainablity policies. The idea on the table at the time – from which there has been a significant departure, was that the end user could opt out of the proposed filter by registering with their ISP (now, it seems, there is not even going to be an opt-out option).

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In Australia there are, at times, some remarkably good ideas. Despite the fact that the rest of the world hasn’t yet figured out Vegemite, the platypus or that thongs are things you wear on your feet, we are a country as known for its oddness as its innovation.

For some time now, our federal government – under the (dis)able(d) direction of one Senator Conroy has been seeking to introduce a system of mandatory internet filtering.

Not surprisingly, the good folks over at Amnesty International have had a little to say on the matter of civil rights, as have at least 120 000 Australians who have signed a petition hosted by GetUp! – an organisation with more members than any political party in the country.

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Having spent two days hot-housing with Waylon and then opening up both him and elephant to (lots of) feedback from the community, I feel compelled to offer him the deepest of bows.

Because as much as he’s taken a beating through the last post (which confirmed my belief that many people don’t bother to comprehend what’s being asked of them before they comment), he has continued to remain open, available, and thoroughly vulnerable—you know, human.

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If you’ve read either of my other two posts regarding this project regarding elephant’s future, you’ll know that months ago I offered to assist elephant turn itself around on a pro bono basis.

Yet, for a whole bunch of reasons—despite confirming availability—the meeting never happened.

As much as elephant excites me, and as much as I genuinely believe it holds a place in the blogosphere that (generally) operates in service to all beings…I’m also keenly aware that I only get one crack at this life, with this consciousness (no apologies to the rebirthers, reincarnationers or rapturers out there)—and I want to know that I genuinely did everything I could to contribute toward a safer, saner, fairer and healthier world for all.

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Religion’s getting a bad rap these days – and with good reason. Between the Jihadi’s, the Israelis and the fundies on their compounds, the world is increasingly looking like something out of Dante’s inferno (and yes, I did just have a crack at Israel – and no that doesn’t make me anti-semitic; just as criticising the USA doesn’t make one ‘anti-American’).

Of course, the arguments are that the conflicts in Palestine, the Middle East and just about anywhere outside North America where the US military is stationed are purely political (or related to energy security).

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A follow-up to How Do You Eat an Elephant, Part 1 — reinventing elephantjournal.com.

It’s not my style to show up to a client meeting in combat pants, boots and a t-shirt — regardless of the fact that it might be my daily attire (so much of my work is done over the net that most of my clients often only see me from the shoulders up). I had misplaced my tentative lunch date with the elephant team, and left home prepared to bang out a series of reports for clients both here in the US and back home in Australia…

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elephant journal has been around for a while — almost eight years (I think). I first discovered them in 2003, when the magazine was still growing and being published. I have no idea how — it was a random trawling-around-on-the-net-at-2am-still-awake-from-the-late-afternoon-coffee-I’d-been-promising-myself-i-was-going-to-give-up kind of thing.

And then —

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Just in case you’ve been hiding in a cave with bin Laden, Elvis Presley and the tattered remnants of a global democracy, LOHAS (Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability) is the next big thing.

With a global market value in excess of $300 billion, and growing at a rate of between 20 and 300% (depending on who you talk to, and which sub-section of the market you’re looking at) it seems that times couldn’t be better for the organic-sprout eating, hybrid-car driving, Fair-Trade wearing moral collective-barometer.

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The blog title is not mine – it’s drawn from an article by Derrick Jensen in the latest issue of Orion Magazine – the thinking person’s sustainability journal if ever I’ve seen one.

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One could be forgiven for thinking there was no financial crisis. So many business owners are doing business-as-usual – operating without a clear strategy, and presuming that the way to weather the storm (if they even believe there is one) is to simply whittle back expenses, sit tight and hope for the best.

Regardless, in tough economic times the first sacrifice to be made is the marketing budget ….

I really thought that, by now, EVERYBODY would understand that there is a synergistic relationship between marketing and sales. No matter the size of the business, we are seeing such a consistent pattern it’s the kind of thing you could comfortably fall asleep to  – it’s that consistent, that boring – and of course so consistently disappointing.

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