Climate Change 201 in the making

In 2010, with the help of creative colleagues (Ingrid Liepa and Zeb Hansell) I pulled together a short animation on climate change science for the Columbia Basin.  I was coordinating a three year project on helping local governments to adapt to the impacts of climate change  and created this animation to kick off our community and local government workshops with baseline information.  The animation was intended to replace the need for a long powerpoint explaining how the climate works and what the modeling was telling us. The key message was : Be ready for a future that is different from the past!  It was a great workshop starter and people appreciated the short synopsis.

The same creative group has come together once again to update the video with new information on extreme weather and ways people can act.  I am excited to be tasked with the storyboard –  giving life to a 50 page text document.

Climate Change 201 (our working title) intends to help people move to action rather than simply stating the facts.  I am looking for creative ways to tell this story….is it a conversation on the steps of city hall, a downtown cafe, in the ski hill lift line?  What metaphors might tap into peoples’ imagination?  What ultimately inspires you to learn more and to act? Do you have an idea to share?

Your ideas – mainstream or wacky – are welcome!

Liking gmail

I finally clicked on the red highlighted “New” button on my gmail account and learned about priority inbox.  The quick intro made me love gmail all the more!

Why?

1. Gmail is already great because its free, has inexpensive additional storage, has great search capacity, fairly good spam block, several features for archiving and managing the emails…the list goes on.

2. The new Priority Inbox is going to help ‘day to day’ management of emails, thereby creating less distractions for me and ideally increase productivity.

3. The animated video to explain the new tool is simple, quick and fun.  Very cool.

If you don’t want to watch the animation, in a nutshell,  the system automatically launches your inbox into important new emails, important (already read emails) and less important.  If you feel they made an error you can train the system by switching emails around so gmail learns what you think is important or not.

So far, I think this is fabulous and look forward to trying it out in the coming weeks.  Watch the quick intro video to learn and also admire how google used a simple animation to communicate its message.