SustainableUX newsletter #5, Fall 2019
Hello!
We’ve been pretty quiet since the conference (all the way back in February). Climate change burnout - it's real. But attending the climate strike gave us a jolt of fresh motivation, and rewatching Amy Bucher’s 2018 talk on maintaining momentum helped too. Now we’re back with a fresh ideas for SustainableUX and a passel of links and events to share.
Back in 2016 when we started SustainableUX the climate wasn’t much of a topic in UX-land. That’s no longer the case – new events, articles, tools, manifestos and collaborations are popping up daily. We’ve collected just a few below.
If you see something that would be helpful to the other 861 newsletter subscribers, please let us know (sustainableUX@gmail.com or tweet @sustainableUX )
First up - events:
Upcoming events
Remote events (all the learning, none of the travel carbon)
Oct 17th (hey that’s today!)
Products with Purpose presents: Etsy's Approach to Sustainability & Learn How To Build Your Own
https://www.meetup.com/Products-with-Purpose/events/265312182/
Oct 23rd
Be Your Own Change Agent: How Organizations Can Meet the SDGs
Our friends at MightyBytes are running a free webinar: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xQFFwWmzSJqZ5fSx9KFlyQ
Frequent SustainableUX collaborator Tim Frick is running this one. You can read some of his thoughts on SDGs, climate, and what agencies can do.
Oct 30th 9am ET
SustainableUX Slack office hours
Sustainableux.slack.com
Jan 20nd, 2020
One Team Gov is convening its third global event; this one focuses on climate, the environment and sustainability.
Meatspace events
Oct 25th, Bath UK
The Bath Digital Festival (cheap!)
Hannah Smith will present on the Carbon Footprint of the Internet.
Nov 9th, NYC USA
AllTechIsHuman NYC(sign-up to wait list)
“All Tech Is Human: NYC is an all-day ethical tech summit with 200 technologists, academics, advocates, students, org leaders, artists, designers, policymakers, and YOU.”
Held at Thoughtworks; 2019 SustainableUX speaker Cennydd Bowles will be speaking.
We plan to be there too– NYC is a bus ride away which helps with our goal of “stop flying to events”.
Nov 14th, Chicago USA
Learn how to integrate the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals with your organization. Mightybytes again! Sign up here.
March 2020 Copenhagen
UXCopenhagen: Design for Good.
https://uxcopenhagen.com/
May 2020
Circularity 20
Call for speakers: https://www.greenbiz.com/events/circularity/atlanta/2020
SustainableUX news
Change in format
We’re resting the “day long conference” format for 2020, and aiming to put on a few smaller events dotted throughout the year. We’re partly motivated by time zones: it’s impossible to find a good 8hr slice of the day that suits Europe, both US coasts, and most of the rest of the world. We hope by putting on shorter (2-3hr) events we can schedule them to have the most geographical overlap. More to come on that.
Call for speakers: open 24/365
Want to talk at a SustainableUX event? Or want to nominate someone?
Our form is open: https://forms.gle/GCuvzysGBfR1ecZ26
Sponsor SustainableUX
If you or your org would like to sponsor SustainableUX (in general, or for a specific event), get in touch: sustainableUX@gmail.com
Slack drop-in
Our Slack tends to be pretty quiet outside of conference time. We’re going to try and make it more useful to the community by running bi-weekly office hours.
The first of these will be October 30th at 9am Eastern Time (-5 GMT).
Not in the Slack? Join here: https://join.slack.com/t/sustainableux/shared_invite/enQtNzk4NDE3Mjk0NzA0LTFlMTVkYWM2NjczM2ZhMjI5YmQ1OGM3ODFhZGVhNjc2MzM4NzZkY2M0MmZjNzk5MjJlYjRiNGI1MWEwMDgwMmE
SustainableUX out and about
You can catch us in NYC for AllTechIsHuman 9th Nov. Say hi!
We were on the UI Breakfast Podcast: https://uibreakfast.com/140-sustainable-ux-with-james-christie/
And also the Grow Ensemble Podcast. https://growensemble.com/sustainable-ux-james-christie/ That one turned more into a rant about burn out and keeping motivated rather than anything design/tech/climate. Good therapy (for us) anyway.
Want us on your podcast? We’ve borrowed a fancy microphone and are itching to try it out.
Links
Climateaction.tech are rocking it in all directions. We recommend jumping into their slack for a constant stream of ideas and event suggestions.
Sign up here
https://climateaction.tech
.
WholeGrain Digital continue to be great exemplars of an agency trying to do better.
This latest blog post of theirs lays out some of the realities of trying to live your values:
https://www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/zero-carbon-synching/
And if you haven’t checked out their Sustainable Web Manifesto yet, here it is: https://www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/introducing-the-sustainable-web-manifesto/
Vox has a new tech/ethics podcast: https://www.vox.com/reset
They promise climate coverage in future.
How’s our glorious future of low-carbon remote work coming along then? OwlLabs take a survey.
https://www.owllabs.com/state-of-remote-work/2019
Lots of interesting factoids here. To pick one – 38% of workers got no training on HOW to work remotely, which is a huge own goal. Support your remote workers better.
The Climate Crowd just launched with a podcast and newsletter.
“As the climate crisis worsens, tech companies seem to mostly be in business-as-usual mode. Do you want to change that?”
https://www.theclimatecrowd.com/
Earth Centered Design: a new manifesto under development: “Being designers, we have a genuine and innate desire to do things better.” They are accepting comments, so jump in and give your input.
https://medium.com/@TAMSINA/earth-centered-design-manifesto-beta-451e657697ed
Ttfn. See you at the Slack office hours? (Oct 30th 9am ET).
James Christie, SustainableUX
sustainableUX@gmail.com
@sustainableUX
Sustainableux.com