SustainLane Government blasted off this week, giving state and local government officials a way to share their sustainability best practices and networks. With the full site up on Monday, so far more than 60 US cities, counties or states have registered to be part of the action.
Government officials coming to the free site have contributed about 30 best practices, with more in the pipeline.
Published entries range from a four-page overview of Denver International Airport's ISO 14001 registered Environmental Management System, the first such airport in the nation, to San Francisco's 170-page detailed engineering and planning report on transitioning the city's utilities from grid-based dirty fossil fuels to renewables and other cleaner distributed energy sources.
When I demoed the site at the University of Pennsylvania's "Growing Greener Cities" event earlier this week, the reaction was inspiring. People said they get it and they need a way to speed up their research. They also need to find a better way to "collaborate or die," as they say in the Silicon Valley.
SustainLane sees what we are calling "applied social networking" as a powerful force in the next wave of the internet. We think the net can be harnessed as a strategic tool through powerful social networks that work together simultaneously online and face-to-face to solve the world's most vexing problems.
Time to start integrating expertise and professional networks into a powerful economic and design force that will address the burning issues of the day: global climate change, economic competitiveness, energy and food security and domestic job creation.
Shout outs to the best global sustainability blog out there, worldchanging , and to Nick Astor's always-on TriplePundit for their coverage of SustainLane Government.
Oh yeah, the blog name will have to change to reflect our cast of the net to include states and other local government besides cities. Other writers will be showing up here, too.
well Time to start integrating expertise and professional networks into a powerful economic and design force that will address the burning issues of the day: global climate change, economic competitiveness, energy and food security and domestic job creation.
Posted by: Eco Talks | August 19, 2008 at 11:45 PM