My new (almost) zero carbon website

Welcome to my redesigned website and blog. Like everything on the Internet, this blog a work in progress. I posted for the first time on August 10, 2006. Nearly three years and about 900 posts (!) later, what began as an experiment turned into a hobby, then became an obsession and is now part of the way I earn my living. Who knew?

I’ve become a big fan of social media—blogging, Facebook and, yes, even Twitter, to which I came late, long after after my pal, Fortune editor-at-large Adam Lashinsky, but a few days before Oprah (who, as it happens, I also outpaced in the 1994 Marine Corps Marathon.). As a longtime print journalist, I’m delighted by the ways that blogging, Facebook and Twitter have connected me with readers, colleagues and friends. This blog, for example, has readers in India (71 in the last month), China (60), Sweden (21), South Africa (13) and the Ivory Coast (1, so you know who you are). Those aren’t big numbers, but still.

The redesign comes courtesy of Madeira James of xuni.com, who I’m quite sure is a wonderful woman although we have never met. Nor have we ever spoken by phone. Madeira politely advised me after we began work on the site that she preferred email communication; she has found that her clients focused their thinking better if they communicated by email. Email also enabled both of us to keep a handy record of what we’d said to one another, and what we’d agreed to do. We got to know one another in that weird 21st century virtual way, and the collaboration went very smoothly. (Maddee, if it turns out that you’re a 16-year-old boy, know that I’m OK with that.)

So what’s new? Mostly the look and feel and a contemporary design that should make the website and blog easier to navigate and click on links. I’m planning to add video to the Speaking page. I may put up some Google Ads. And I’ve written a new page (illustrated with a photo of Jay Leno and me) about disclosure and conflicts of interest which is intended to help me (and my clients) understand what I do in my new role as a writer and consultant.

And what is it that I do? I’m still connected to Fortune, as a contributing editor, writing a series on the FORTUNE 500 and chairing Brainstorm Green, our conference about business and the environment. (We’ll be back with a new edition on April 12-14, 2010, at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Beach.) I’m blogging for Greenbiz.com and The Energy Collective. I’m working closely with Dov Seidman of LRN and HOW Online (which will soon get a makeover of its own), and I’m speaking and consulting as well. It keeps me very busy and I am almost never bored.

As for the (almost) zero carbon in the headline, that is a reference to the fact that I never got into my car or any other mode of transport to meet Madeira and that, unlike almost everything else I do (reporting for the magazine, traveling to give speeches), digital media is a low-carbon enterprise. Of course I’m aware that computers and servers use energy and generate emissions, but the numbers are relatively low. (See this and this.)  If anyone can give me a reasonable estimate of the GHG emissions of this blog—even a guesstimate—I will be pleased to buy offsets and go entirely carbon neutral.

That’s the least I can do, because the larger purpose of this effort is to help all of us better understand how we can get to a more sustainable and just world. Thanks for sharing the journey with me and please stay in touch.