General Blog
-
BetterWorld at N2Y4
We just finished an incredible two days at TechSoup’s Netsquared event N2Y4. The conference at Cisco in San Jose boasted numerous creative social entrepeneurs and visionaries who are using mobile technology to tackle the world’s most challenging problems. The main event was a competition for 50 thousand in grant prizes, between 14 amazing projects tackling issues from getting appropriate and timely info via SMS text on phones for rural farmers in Cameroon (AMISProject ) to empowering everyday citizens to report and fix the problems in their local community – like pot holes and graffiti (SeeClickFix).... -
BALLE 2009 in Full Swing
Over 300 folks have packed it in for Day One of the national Business Alliance for Local Living Economies' conference. First off, Colorado is rocking on local living economies, there are so many networks and great things happening here. Entrepreneurs and network leaders from Vancouver to Santa Fe, all over New England down to Charleston and all the way to France have descended on Denver for our conference!... -
BetterWorld Supports Sustainable Art Show at Soundry
BetterWorld was out at the Soundry this past Monday along with the Sustainable Business Network of Washington to support a showcase of local artist talent and foster sustainable collaboration. The innovative space of the Soundry, a former auto body shop now converted into a public coffee shop, art gallery, and shared studio space for local artists and musicians provided a rich backdrop for the opening of their “Green is Beautiful” Sustainable Artwork show.... -
Sustainable in Seattle
The BetterWorld train stopped off in Seattle yesterday and its always a pleasure to get together with the amazing team from Climate Solutions. They have a couple HUGE events coming up next week, check ‘em out if you are in or around the Emerald City: EPA Rally: On May 21 at noon, the EPA will be holding a day-long hearing in Seattle – one of only two in the nation – on their recent proposed finding that global warming pollution is a threat to public health and the environment.... -
Full Circle Fund
Matt and I recently became members of Full Circle Fund, an engaged philanthropy organization cultivating the next generation of community leaders and driving lasting social change in the Bay Area and beyond. I attended their annual member retreat in Monterey last weekend to dive right in. It was a wonderful retreat with an incredibly dynamic and talented group of motivated individuals.... -
Our Visit with Dolphin Blue
We were fortunate this week to meet with Tom Kemper, founder at President of Dolphin Blue, at their offices in the Deep Ellum area of downtown Dallas. Tom is a visionary, having started Dolphin Blue way ahead of the curve in 1993 in Dallas on the belief that we all can all be responsible in what we use.... -
Democracy + Workplace = WorldBlu
We are excited for BetterWorld to make the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces™ 2009 list for the third year running! This year, forty companies are the annual winners of the WorldBlu List sponsored by WorldBlu, an Austin-based non-profit specializing in organizational democracy. The announcement came as part of the third annual Democracy in the Workplace Day on April 14th, sponsored by the WorldBlu organization.... -
Bionavitas – Bringing Photons to the Biomass
Thanks so much to the team at Bionavitas for the great tour of their facility late last week in Redmond, WA – – it was truly an eye-opening and huge learning experience. What Bionavitas is accomplishing, to the layman (me), is nothing short of miraculous – developing a way that algae (the foundation of life on our planet) can be effectively grown and harvested for a number of applications, including biofuels, nutraceuticals, and bio-remediation.... -
Green Telecom � IT Summit at CTIA, Introducing BetterWork
While the telecom carrier segment is slow to adopt a true & meaningful green agenda – – which is astounding to us given the massive opportunity – – there continues to be progress and the Green Telecom Summit at the CTIA / Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association convention last week was further proof that things are gaining steam.... -
BGI and BetterWorld Explore Open Work
What if you could reduce your organization’s carbon footprint by more than 20 percent, lower operational costs, and improve employee retention and satisfaction? Sound too good to be true? Well, these are just some of the conclusions reached in the report just issued from our Bainbridge Graduate Institute team, titled The Time Clock Revolution.... -
Our Visit with Eileen Fisher
Earlier this week, on a snowy,windy day next to the Hudson River north of NYC, we were fortunate to spend some quality time with our customer, Eileen Fisher, at their fab new HQ in Irvington, NY. Barbe Crowley, EF’s Facilities Director, provided us with a great tour and introduced us to so many wonderful folks who are the creators and shepherds of EF’s amazing vision and clothing design and delivery, popular in all corners of the U.... -
If Only Every Town had a Zingerman’s
…what a wonderful world it would be! We had the great fortune to spend a couple days in Ann Arbor last week with the team from Zingerman’s, exploring ways we might be able to work together and learning more about the great business model they have developed. No matter what you read about Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, nothing can really prepare you for seeing this amazing collection of businesses in action.... -
D.C. Takes Center Stage, Enter Mr. Obama
After living in D.C. for almost 20 years (Christine and I since moved to Charleston, SC), it was just magical to be there this week and feel the energy and anticipation of the coming inauguration. Never in my time in D.C. was energy level this high, the hope, the expectation. As BetterWorld was founded and continues to be based in the D.... -
BetterWorld Signpost – 2008
As we come to the final moments of 2008 and the first of 2009, its always a great time to take inventory and give thanks. Even though the BetterBlog is generally reserved for stories about our customers, partners, events and inspiration that we encounter, we always like to create a signpost of the year past and look out across the horizon to where we are going in the next year and beyond.... -
The Sun is Shining on Sun Micro
A few days back, we had our socks knocked off at Sun Microsystem’s main campus in Menlo Park – – we met with Ann Bamesberger and Michael Dunn who have spearheaded the Sun Open Work and Sun Ray initiatives for many years. The work that Sun has done in these areas is not only commendable from the environmental benefits they hold for all of us, but they demonstrate Sun’s true pioneering spirit and commitment to the environment and society.... -
The Miracle on Delancey Street
Every so often, your sense of reality is turned on its head – – well, that happened to us this past week upon our first visit to the Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco. Situated in the heart of the revitalized Embarcadero waterfront is a massive 400,00 sq. foot facility (pictured above), with a restaurant, cafe, housing, community rooms, courtyards, movie theater, event facility – all completely self sufficient, run by the residents of the Delancey Street Foundation.... -
Obama Campaign Calls, BetterWorld Answers
While it is our policy as a company not to endorse political positions or candidates, we are excited to find a new application for our virutal PBX and unified communications technologies in political campaigns. As we have been touting these technologies as enabling greener solutions and more democratic solutions for the workplace (see previous blogs on our project with BGI, and partnership with WorldBlu), we are feverishly trying to keep up with deploying our virtual calling platform for a number of state headquarters in the Obama-Biden Campaign for Change including campaign offices in Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire, Montana, Wisconsin, Virginia and Pennsylvania.... -
The Green Collar Economy
The Green Collar Economy On October 7, Green For All founder and president Van Jones will release his first book: The Green Collar Economy. The book is a powerful argument for a national commitment to green economic development as a way to address our environmental and economic crises at once. On the heels of sky-high fuel prices this summer, a massive financial crisis has sent the economy into a tailspin this fall.... -
Our Visit to the Pachamama Alliance
Visiting the peaceful and serene Presidio is always a pleasure for the senses – but especially when we get to meet an organization that is helping make it a better world every day. The Pachamama Alliance is one of those organizations that takes the harder, less traveled road, knowing that their efforts will take longer to bear fruit, but in the end they are planting seeds that will grow into sustainable forests of change.... -
Our Visit to BetterEnergy Systems/Solio
Plug into the sun! Tucked away on a semi-quiet street in Berkeley, CA lies one of the more amazing companies we’ve met yet – BetterEnergy Systems has basically created a whole new industry segment around renewable gadgets – portable solar charging devices, recycled (from truck tires) device carriers and cases, and with a whole list of new and innovative products to soon hit the market.... -
Our Visit to New Seasons Market
As part of the opening of our new Portland, OR office – we had a wave of new meetings in the past few weeks and were fortunate to stop by and meet with the folks at New Seasons Market, based in the Portland Metro area. We first read about New Seasons in the Marketing That Matters book, written by fellow SVN members Chip Conley and Eric Friedenwald-Fishman, published by Berrett Koehler with support from the Social Venture Network.... -
Our Visit to Mercy Corps
Last week we had the pleasure to visit with Mercy Corps out at the their Global Headquarters in beautiful Portland, OR – – where we have just setup BetterWorld’s Northwest operations at the downtown World Trade Center. We have provided services to Mercy Corps in their DC and Gulf Coast locations for some years and have always marveled at how one organization can have so much impact.... -
Our Visit To TS Designs
Every so often, I visit an organization and think back to the scene in Wayne’s World where they kneel before Alice Cooper and exclaim, “we’re not worthy!” – clearly TS Designs is one of those organizations. If everyone had their level of social and environmental commitment, we would not be in the global pickle we are today.... -
Our Visit with the Appalachian Mountain Club
When our colleague, Dave O’Leary, brought the Appalachian Mountain Club to our attention some months ago – – we immediately contacted them to set up a meeting and see if we could discuss ways for us to work together. Over the past few months, we have met with them a few times and learned so much more about their amazing and rich history.... -
BetterWorld Releases 2007 Corporate Citizenship Report
I won’t expand too much on this, we are very proud (and relieved!) to get our first major Corporate Citizenship Report out to the public – – it was truly a labor of love, though, and we thank every customer, partner, vendor, and donation recipient, because it is truly a product of all their efforts that we are able to reflect all the programs, data and goals stated in the report....
