wow, great example of connectivity through twitter
what a web we weave
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Conversation Prism: the art of listening, learning and sharing (via @subutcher)
Su Butcher posted this up on her Posterous, and whilst the illustration is impressive, I love the title in the centre: Conversation = the art of listening, learning and sharing.
Could also see using this format, blank, to get groups or organisations to think through how they communicate, and then reveal what is out there. (A new voice of the customer?)
on snow leopard zen connections
‘If the snow leopard should manifest itself, then I am ready to see the snow leopard. If not, then somehow (and I don’t understand this instinct, even now) I am not ready to perceive it, in the same way that I am not ready to resolve my koan(*); and in the not-seeing, I am content. I think I must be disappointed, having come so far, and yet I do not feel that way. I am disappointed, and also, I am not disappointed. That the snow leopard is, that it is there, that its frosty eyes watch us from the mountain—that is enough.’ Peter Mattiessen, Snow Leopard
Installing Snow Leopoard onto the MacBook, brought back memories of reading The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, one of those all time great travel books whoose ‘feel and spirit’ lives with you.
It was back in early 80’s, in what would now be called a gap year that we trekked through Nepal. It was before trekking organisations had really became established, so it was a DIY affair, with map, tent and staying in very remote villages in the higher Langtang Hemlubu and Ganesh areas to the north of Katmandu.
The Snow Leopard, along with Midnights Children were the cult books of the moment that were being exchanged passed around, often falling apart, often in sections as the fours of us shared the reading.
Reading the book in the country and landscapes that matthiessen desribed brought the book alive, and instilled the sense of his Zen approach.
Matthiessen describes a journey with George Schaller through Nepal in search of the Snow Leopard and Himalayan blawal (bue)sheep, as the journey was taken shortly after the death of his wife, the book is Matthiessen’s journey, a metaphor, reflecting, through Zen, on much broader matters of life, death and existence itself.
So whilst Snow Leopard was being installed, I rummaged through the loft and found the very ear-torn and battered copy to reread… and out fell some map sections with notes I made….
*Koan = A Zen teaching riddle, koans are attractive paradoxes to be meditated on; their purpose is to help one to enlightenment, for example what is the sound of one hand clapping
45 Brilliant Examples of Photo Manipulation Art
The Building Blocks of Social Media for Business
via chrisbrogan.com
Commonsense here: Remember, roadmaps don’t work really well until you have a solid goal or destination in mind. None of this matters unless it feels right to you, regardless of my advice. You know your company’s boundaries. You know what your comfort levels are. Proceed at your organizational pace.
How to Start a Mind Map From Nothing from @MindMapSwitch
Why LEED is important to FM and can lead to better facilities
How LEED Can Lead to a Better Building
Part 1: LEED v3: How it has Changed
Part 2: LEED Sustainable Sites Strategies
Part 3: LEED Water Efficiency Strategies
Part 4: LEED Energy and Atmosphere Strategies
Part 5: LEED Materials and Resources Strategies
Part 6: LEED Indoor Environmental Quality Strategies
Part 7: LEED Innovation Strategies
LEED v3: How it has Changed
By Randhir Sahni
September 2009Sustainability is finally coming full circle. Many of the strategies being used to design and operate green buildings these days have actually been used for a long time, but are just now coming back into vogue.
Think back to a time when energy was expensive and not readily available. Transportation was costly. It was more cost-effective to use local or regional materials. Sites retained rainwater for consumption; sewage and silage were treated on site. Buildings had natural ventilation and provided a substantial number of air changes resulting in high indoor air quality.
As energy became abundant, readily available and inexpensive, the need to be sustainable diminished, and the old norm lost its importance. Economics changed, as developers took the stage and played a very important role in planning buildings to accommodate post-World War II population growth. Federal, state and local governments formulated policies that accommodated market forces and development economics rather than sustainability.
Now, the renewed emphasis on sustainability has reached a universal level, and more and more people understand how buildings affect the environment.
The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system has provided a framework to guide facility executives through sustainable projects. LEED has helped promote awareness for green design, operations and maintenance strategies. Few would dispute that LEED has improved the general attitude toward green building and how buildings affect the natural world.
Especially in these difficult economic times, where facility and design budgets are being squeezed, formal LEED certification may be an expense that is tough to justify. But that doesn’t mean facility executives should totally disregard LEED. The important thing to remember on any type of facility-related project is the consequences to the environment — and these can certainly be accounted for in LEED, even if plans for a formal certification are several years down the road. Each section of LEED provides a guide targeted at a particular area of sustainability. Understanding each category is important to understanding how LEED can be used as a guide to holistic green.
What You Need To Know About LEED v3
With the release of LEED v3 this April, the U.S. Green Building Council completed a sizable overhaul to its entire roster of LEED rating systems. Much has changed in the new LEED, from individual credit requirements to how much each credit is worth. Here is a list of some of the major changes facility executives should be aware of.
- LEED v3 actually refers to three different LEED initiatives: LEED 2009, LEED Online and a new certification model.
- LEED 2009 updates nine separate rating systems: LEED for New Construction, LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance, LEED for Core and Shell, LEED for Commercial Interiors, LEED for Schools, LEED for Homes, LEED for Retail, LEED for Healthcare, and LEED for Neighborhood Development.
- The LEED Online tool has been updated to make it easier for facility executives to go to the site, enter project details and be told which LEED rating system best fits their project. It also helps facility executives manage the entire process from registration to certification. Check it out at leedonline.usgbc.org.
- USGBC has delegated the project certification process to an organization called the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). This organization, which also manages the LEED Accredited Professional (AP) credential, has hired several third-party organizations to certify projects based on an ISO certification model. The goal of this new model is to speed up the process, make it more consistent and reduce the backlog of projects currently awaiting certification.
- GBCI has instituted several changes to the LEED AP program, including a credentialing maintenance system and two new designations: LEED Green Associate and LEED Fellow. For more information, visit www.gbci.org.
- Candidates for the LEED AP test have a choice whether to become credentialed in Operations & Maintenance, Building Design & Construction, or Interior Design & Construction. Each designation has its own exam.
- Credits for all rating systems have been re-weighted so that each rating system is now on a 100-point scale (with six more points available for Innovation and four for the newly added regional priority credits). For all rating systems, Certified is 40-49 points, Silver is 50-59, Gold is 60-79, and Platinum is 80 or more.
- Energy efficiency and strategies that reduce carbon dioxide emissions, such as using alternative energy, metering, and commissioning, have been weighted more heavily in the LEED 2009 rating systems. For example, in the new version of LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance, facility executives can get up to six points for using renewable energy, whereas in the previous version, the maximum was four points.
- Another major change in terms of credit requirements in LEED for New Construction is that a 20 percent reduction of in-building water use is now a prerequisite, as opposed to an optional credit.
- USGBC now asks that project teams commit to sharing energy and water data on their buildings for a minimum of five years via a free online tool. The goal for this requirement is to create a built-in study for green building data to compare with traditional building water and energy use.
— Greg Zimmerman, executive editor
Comments
Nice overview by By Randhir Sahni from a facilities executive perspective.
Thanks for the tweeted link to this from @brian_phelps (“LEED v3: How it has Changed, Building Operating Management, http://bit.ly/rcDWn“)
towards a be2camp sustainability manifesto
This post was originally written for and appeared on the be2camp website
Last weekend I bought and read a copy of Charles Leadbeater’s We Think. “the web is a platform for mass creativity and innovation”.
An analogy that Charles uses in his prologue struck me as a good one as to what is emerging within the built environment sector, and chimes well with my call for a be2camp manifesto at be2camp brum last week.
Imagine a large sandy beach with a small number of big, very big boulders. Around each boulder are gathered crowds of people.
The scene changes, and slowly hundreds and thousands of people come to the beach and drop small pebbles on the beach, anywhere and everywhere, and increasingly no where near the big boulders.
Slowly the pebbles, some of them as small as grains of sand start to dominate the beach-scape. A few new big boulders appear but these seem somehow more attractive, more colourful than the original ones. And on close inspection these are not the mono-culture type as before, but a collection of smaller, independent pebbles.
The landscape has changed dramatically. The big boulders having no influence crumble, as the crowds of people are scattered across the beach.
Leadbeater uses the scenario to illustrate what is happening within business under the influence of social media and network developments. A move away from big corporate control, to the smaller emergent ‘long tail’
In the built environment I see this analogy as a potential shift of influence from the institutes, quangos, national strategy working groups, corporate websites, (the established boulders) to the emerging ‘conversations’ through twitter, facebook, blogs, networks … (the peebles).
The new boulders, the collection of groups, are the flickrs and slideshares and linkedins. We can also see the be2camps, AECnetwork and Archnetworks, as the new colourful, more attractive boulders with a very different culture.
Problems and innovations are increasingly addressed by the crowds themselves, through connections and connections across the pebbles.
The pebbles are independent in another important aspect, they are no longer tethered to the original big boulders of IT departments, software and internet providers.
The influence in the built environment is shifting.
Which is where I come back to a be2camp sustainability manifesto, (which incidently should really be a resilience manifesto.)
The influence of where the built environment goes in respect of sustainability/resilience should come from, be influenced by, be commented upon and monitored by the people with pebbles. That’s the twitters, the bloggers, the be2campers, ie those who learn, share, inspire through social media, and are slowly becoming the conscience or compass for the sector.
The original starting point for a manifesto, part of the introduction to be2camp London follows, but I have added the issue of resilience that emerged at be2camp brum.
A be2camp manifesto
Address sustainability as an issue of resilience – resilience to changing environmental, social, economic and technical issues.
Make sustainability in the built environment open source. Sustainability is too important an issue and cannot be done behind closed doors
Adopt and use the opportunities that web2.0 offers
Influence, comment, monitor built environment approaches and strategies
Embrace open communication through pedia and dialogue through discussion forums, blogs and twitter to allow for consultation and collaboration
Engage with all in the built environment sector. Unless there is open and representative approaches to sustainability, it will be largely lost, misunderstood or perceived as irrelevant to those at the sharp end of our industry.
Encourage the debate, the transition, the movement to help shape a resilient built environment that embraces web2.0
These points will be put up onto a wiki very shortly for collaborative development. I do hope you engage and shape an open and collaborative approach to sustainability and resilience.
A discussion session will also be held at the be2camp working buildings event in London Oct 7 and 8
There is also the opportunity to comment and add your thoughts here and through twitter using the #b2camp hashtag.
keeping connected
This blog has been neglected of late, something I will remedy very soon (most likely at the end of school holidays!)
However comments, views and links to all manner of things can be found on the following:
Follow me on twitter at @fairsnape
Follow my new Posterous blog / scrapbook at http://martinbrown.posterous.com/
Follow and Get involved with be2camp developments at http://be2camp.ning.com/ in particular our upcoming event in London at the Working Buildings event on 7th and 8th October
Follow local community happenings at our new blog at WICE
Follow and Get involved with Straw Bale discussions on the very new Bowley Straw Bale site
a transition view of the uk transition housing plan
A welcomed and important perspective on the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan was posted by Rob Hopkins on the Transition blog:
After many months of Ed Milliband putting himself out there are a Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change that actually gets climate change, finally his big Plan, the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan was unveiled on Wednesday, in a speech in the House of Commons that name checked Transition Towns and which is the boldest national vision for a low carbon society yet seen. Many others have since pitched in with their thoughts, I thought it might be useful here to offer an analysis from a Transition perspective. In his speech, Milliband said “we know from the Transition Towns movement the power of community action to motivate people..”, clearly an outcome of his attendance as a ‘Keynote Listener’ at the Transition Network conference in May. So how does the Plan measure up, and does it actually advance what Transition initiatives and the wider relocalisation movement are doing?
On Housing (of particular interest here) Rob Comments:
The Plan restates 2016 of the date by which all new housing will be zero carbon, which is entirely laudable, although Wales has actually managed to introduce this 5 years earlier, by 2011. It might have provided a good push to this had it been brought forward to, say, 2014. Much of this part of the report is as you would imagine, but it does contain the intriguing statement that “the Government is investing up to £6 million to construct 60 more low carbon affordable homes built with innovative, highly insulating, renewable materials”.
Does this mean that there is now £6 million for hands-on research into straw bale, hemp construction, earth plasters and so on?
Or does ‘highly insulating, renewable materials’ refer to Kingspan and other industrial oil-derived building materials?
At the moment ‘zero carbon homes’ refers only to a building’s performance once built, not the embodied energy of the materials it contains.
The role of local and natural materials in strengthening local economies is key.
My Comment: it is these points that need a wider, open and urgent debate as raised in a previous blog item here. If zero carbon is the solution what was the question? and are we defining zero carbon with enough insight?
Rob scores the Plan as follows:
Addressing Peak Oil: 1 out of 10.
Energy: 7 out of 10.
Transport 4 out of 10
Housing: 6 out of 10
Community involvement: 2 out of 10
Food and Farming: 1 out of 10
and Overall : 6 out of 10
Fairsnape 