New members, come learn how to use your new website.

Tips, tricks and valuable insight shared about the sustainable web platform that power the Hawaii Island Sustainable Web Community. The first hour is dedicated to beginners. An open QnA forum follows the class.

Non-members pay $25 bucks either online during registration or before class.

Google filed a patent for a pod-like data center that runs off wave energy and cools down in the sea. Good combination and maybe no need to pump the cold water?

“The patent filing says the data centers would be located 3 to 7 miles offshore, which may signal that Google’s  interest in undersea cables goes beyond connectivity between land-based data centers.”

http://greencollartech.com/attend-green-class-workshop

New members, come learn how to use your new website.

Tips, tricks and valuable insight shared about the sustainable web platform that power the Hawaii Island Sustainable Web Community. The first hour is dedicated to beginners. An open QnA forum follows the class.

Non-members pay $25 bucks either online during registration or before class.

Five Critical Success Factors

Let’s continue outlining what we need to promote and strengthen our digital economies in Hawaii. Any help is greatly appreciate. Uhm, actually, your participation is required. Please pay particular attention to #3 below and comment below.

1. Availability – bandwidth, training and the affordability of these resources will dictate any need to improve our digital economies. If the Internet isn’t highly available and affordable in Hawaii, there’s simply no need to pursue a digital economy. Therefore, we believe that keeping our systems affordable and available are the highest priority.
2. Understanding – our ability to “get it” will be directly proportionate to our ability to harness the disruptive nature of the Internet.
3. Personal adoption – We need to embrace our digital economies at all levels including, age, demographics, government, schools, universities, businesses, non-profits and individuals. This includes public officials and community leaders at the highest levels. While adopting at the organizational level is important for availability within an organization, the leaders of the organization must personally adopt the web as a tool and make it their own. Those who do “get it” must demand that public officials demonstrate their adoption levels through participation.
4. Assessment and Goal Setting – To succeed we need to know where we are and where we’re going. Green Collar Technologies is compiling a list of resources.
   1. How much bandwidth is available? By area? Future projections?
   2. How much electronic commerce is currently being conducted in Hawaii? Annually? By region?
   3. How many citizens are working on digital projects? How many online jobs exist? How many telecommuters? How many workers in Hawaii spend over 50% of their job online?
5. Analysis, reporting, transparency and ethics – There’s a distinct and obvious absence of key players involvement in raising awareness of the issues. See #2-3. Fear still seems prevalant in many areas as some leaders allow others to represent themselves online. Increased transparency means key players should be writing in blogs to provide updates on key issues. It is becoming increasingly unethical to represent yourself online, through an intermediary in an effort to seem to be something you are not.

The list of five will surely grow and shrink over the next few years. Look beyond a sustainable Hawaii and you’ll find room for growth in digital economies. I have a hunch that the former may never exist without the latter. Anyone agree?

The cost reduction at the data center level is driving innovation in software and hardware development. Today we’ve got better software processing code faster on the more efficient hardware. At Green Collar technologies, we’re even working on a plan to bring Green Web Serving to Hawaii. This would run the web server with power from the sun over at the Natural Energy Lab in Kona. Look for more on this later.

One of the critical success factors of the Internet has been it’s ability to improve our lives. that’s the big picture. The details are where the potential for big impact exists. Please allow me a moment to explain.

“Time on site” is the single most important key metric according to Nielsen/NetRatings. It’s a metric that purports how interesting someone finds your site or the information on your site. Most of your website visitors stay about 5 seconds and leave. This wasted traffic can be measured but the most helpful equation is way more complex than that.

For example, if my site is truly efficient, I can help the visitor find exactly what they want in a shorter amount of time. It doesn’t mean that it was any less helpful, just more efficient. If the resources on our site are valuable and easy to use and remove, how can this be measured? If writers and other bloggers come to your site to grab content like embed code for videos and other links and quickly go back to their sites, does it mean your site is any less important? The answer to this loaded question is yes. At least to advertisers. However, if this is the case, your site is very efficient. Not only are your saving time and money for others, you’re also providing that value quickly and with much less carbon. In fact, the more people that visit your site, the more you help the environment. Carbon calculators do not account for this value.

So does all this get sorted out? The answer is in spending more time in the details. Spending more time analyzing the details is out of the question for small website owners. Online marketers specialize in this area and get paid well to do so.

However, there are a few things website owners can do:

>> Provide the right information, at the right time in the right format to your visitors. If they find your site from a keyword or keyphrase search, then provide the relevant information on the landing page. Don’t make them hunt for the content.

>> Give your visitors options when it comes to file formats. Not all information in your web pages should be stuck in the html in your page or post. Good interaction design addresses this challenge. For example, sometimes your visitors need quality printing. Sometimes cutting and pasting from your site to another is the most important consideration. Consider offering an Adobe Acrobat PDF or a Google Document. Consider offering a branded source file under a Creative Commons license. Also consider the importance of rich media on your site. Rich media is the most effective way to increase your “time on site” metric.

>> Learn more about sustainable web platforms and designs.

>> No time for a site? No problem. All of the content on most websites can be communicated in ten minutes using video. You may not even need a website. Have you considered releasing your marketing message strictly on social networks such as MySpace, Linkedin, Facebook and YouTube? For the first time ever, it’s a viable alternative to having your own website.

Common sense was ordinary hundreds of years ago and ahupua`a wasn’t a grassroots movement or a government mandate. It was a way of life for many more people than currently inhabit Hawai`i Island.

We may be able to sideline ahupua`a through creative technologies but just as we thought coal and oil were the way, these sustainable technologies too will have a certain shelf-life. At least until there’s moving parts that grow themselves. But that’s another discussion.

Today I wanted to champion the fact that you’ve come a long way towards being self-sustainable. You’ve done this on your farms, homes and small businesses. You’ve done things only your family or neighbors know about. Whether you’ve changed a few light bulbs or harnessed power from a stream of water, It’s called, “common sense”. It’s part of the beauty of becoming or living sustainably for yourself. It feels good and there’s a certain freedom you get from cutting your energy bill or eating food you grow. It feels free and it feels good inside. Many of you have left somewhere to be here, just for these reasons. Simplicity, common sense and aloha.

The media would have us think that tax incentives, rebates or programs will bring us into 70% energy sustainability by 2030. The fact is that these same programs have been around for ten years or more. You are the one that will become sustainable and you’ll do it when it makes sense to you. Meanwhile, back on the farm, you are growing your own food and we hear about it.

When the prices of energy go up we find cheaper power. When the price of our food goes up, we learn to farm. When the price of water goes up, we catch it from the heavens. These are the stories that need to be shared.

Common sense, logic and ahupua`a isn’t dead. But in the future it won’t be the smartest, fastest or strongest that survive, it will be the most adaptable. At least that’s what I heard.

Malama i ke aina
Malama i ke kai

Green Collar Technologies will be sharing these stories and hope to provide an online technology platform for you to stand upon and declare your adaptations, your manao and your aloha of freedom.

Let’s hear it. Comments will not be moderated for the next two hours, then you’ll have to register and login to comment.

More Resources

East Maui Watershed Partnership – a ahupua`definition

Hawai`i History.org – a ahupua`definition

Would someone please go and rewrite the definition for ahupua`a definition at Wikipedia?