Community News

Happy New Year to the Climate CoLab Community!

This month we are looking forward to two meetings with policymakers. Winners of the 2011 Climate CoLab contest will present at the United Nations in New York City on January 24 and the United States Congress in Washington, D.C. on January 25. 

Professor Thomas Malone, the head of the Center for Collective Intelligence, will introduce the Climate CoLab and 2011 contest winners to officials at the United Nations. The winners will then present their proposals. Our audience will include the executive coordinators of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Brice Lalonde and Elizabeth Thompson.

>January 25: US Congress Briefing

The day following our meeting at the UN, Professor Malone and contest winners will also present in a briefing on Capitol Hill sponsored by the US House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee. 

We have uploaded slides to the Climate CoLab Library from our presentation at a side event during the Rio+20 Intersessional Meeting on December 16, 2011. A co-presenter, the Boston University Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, also wrote an interesting post describing its plans for the event.

Please stay tuned as weupdate you on upcoming developments. As always, you are invited to contribute any thoughts, ideas and feedback on our Community Page.

December is a busy time for policymakers. Right now, COP 17 is taking place in Durban, South Africa. Next week, the side events leading up to Rio+20 Conference for Sustainable Development will be taking place in New York City. As a result, it is a busy time at the CoLab. Check out these events with which we are involved and offer your support and insight:

“Achieving Implementation—Accountability, Engagement and Multi-Stakeholder Cooperation,” December 16, 2011, United Nations, New York City. As Rio+20 approaches, the Prepcom will be holding meetings at which organizations will present their work on climate change action strategies. The CoLab will have 1.5 hours, along with the other presenters, to contribute its ideas about multi-stakeholder cooperation. 

U.K. Youth Climate Coalition Durban Dares from November 28, 2011 to December 9, 2011.  A collaborator with the CoLab, the UKYCC, is attending COP17 and making sure its youth delegates have their voices heard by the attending countries. During COP17, the UKYCC is challenging the global community with Durban Dares where you can do your individual part for the health of the environment.

Green Innovators in Business Network’s (GIBN) Third Annual Boston Solutions Lab on December 8, 2011. The Environmental Defense Fund, Center for Climate Change and Energy Solutions and DIG IN are convening a conference on green innovation at the Microsoft New England Research Center. Staff at the Center for Collective Intelligence, the organization where the CoLab is designed and managed, will be attending. If it interests you, please join in this exciting day. 

The 2012 contest will have a new format and technology. Read about the proposed changes here. One of our goals is for the community to be involved in the evolution of our tool, through a series of activities, but in the meantime, contribute your ideas.

CoLab Talk
November 17, 2011

>Congratulations to our winners

After months of hard work from our community, we pleased to announce the winners of the 2011 Contest. These proposals reflect an excellent range in the methods and geography of the authors. Representatives from each team will present their work to the United Nations or U.S. Congress. Please stay tuned for these events.

Global Category

1^st Place, Popular Choice: 2010 Winners Combined by Dennis Peterson, a software engineer based in Charlotte, North Carolina 

2^nd Place, Popular Choice and Judges’ Special Commendation: The Planet or Your Plate: Mitigate Climate Change by Going Meatless by beach-babe-in-fl, an environmental activist and founder of the Daily Kos Meatless Advocates, Nancy A. Heitzeg, of St. Catherine University, and Gerard Wedderburn Bisshop, advisor and senior scientist at the World Preservation Foundation

National Category

1^st Place, Popular Choice: Cycling Carbon by Dennis Peterson, also the author of global category winner, 2010 Winners Combined

2^nd Place, Popular Choice: Dream for a Green Future by Arnab Mandal and Pooja Aroora, graduate students at TERI University, India

Judges’ Choice: Personal Rapid Transit Grids by Christopher Fry, research scientist at the M.I.T. Media Lab

Judges’ Choice: Climate Proofing the Economics of Socially Sustainable Small-Scale Agricultural Systems by Maruf Sanni, Idowu Ologeh and William O. Siyanbola, of the Nigeria National Centre for Technology Magement, and James O. Adejuwon, of Obafemi Awolowo University

Also, sincere congratulations to our finalists: ReWire Plus by Beth Savan, Zannah Matson and Ellie Farahani, and How to Change U.S. Energy in One Growing Season by George Mokray.

We thank the winners and the finalists for their outstanding work, as well as the semifinalists and 50+ members who contributed proposals during the contest. We are grateful to all members of the Climate CoLab for their enthusiastic comments and voting. Without all of your contributions, this contest would not have been possible.

Our membership has grown to nearly 3,600 and more than 1,750 votes were cast in support of the finalists. Please look out for our upcoming activities, which will offer more opportunities for collective thinking and design.