Posts tagged business

Common Cycles: Put Your Ass on Our Grass

I had my first appearance on the FearLess Revolution show last week to discuss the launch of Common Cycles. Watch here.

(Photo by Nick Todd)

John Bielenberg and Common Cycles

John Bielenberg, co-founder of COMMON, talks about the freedom of riding a bike, Alabamboo and Common Cycles.

Produced/shot/edited by Matt Wieting and Isaac Karsen of the FearLess Cottage.

The Intersection of Design and Sustainability

Here’s a little presentation I gave last week as part of an AIGA Colorado event at the Denver Art Museum. The night was an introduction for the local creative community to the Living Principles, which is the sustainability platform embraced by AIGA. The main speaker for the evening was Alex Bogusky, who I’ve been working with for the last several months on the FearLess Revolution and our new initiative, COMMON.

My talk was a bit of a transition from the Living Principles to Alex’s presentation. I’ve never really done this kind of thing before, but the opportunity came up and I thought it could be fun. The fact that I was getting over a cold definitely didn’t help my lack of public speaking skills. But there was a sold out auditorium there to see Alex and thousands more watching a live stream, so luckily my nerves went away just before going up and it was indeed a lot of fun.

Thanks a lot to Evelyn and Charles of AIGA for giving me the opportunity. And to a lot of other people who have helped inspire these ideas: Annie Leonard of The Story of Stuff, Alex Steffen of Worldchanging, designer Bruce Mau, my girlfriend Amy Breunissen, my good friend Brent Sainsbury, and of course Alex Bogusky who has helped me fear a little less in pursuit of innovation, creativity and happiness.

Thanks for watching,
Jeff Oeth

(Additional references: Chris Jordan & Pangea Organics)

Rachel Botsman: The case for collaborative consumption

With the 21st Century’s convergence of the economic downturn, environmental limitations, new media technologies and a renewed sense of community, there is a radically different economy emerging. Rachel Botsman, author of What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, has identified sharing services like Zipcar and Netflix as a crucial element in navigating this new economy.

Collaborative consumption

There’s an excellent guest post on Swissmiss by Rachel Botsman about the rise of what she’s calling “collaborative consumption.” Basically, it’s the idea that instead of owning everything you might need in your life, people are turning to new methods of sharing products, services, and ideas. It’s not a new concept, but in our current economic and environmental situations these new technology-driven businesses are reinventing not just what we consume but how we consume.

A couple of years ago I started to notice instead of friends bragging about their new Prius, they boasted how they had given up their cars altogether by becoming “Zipsters” (members of the car-sharing service Zipcar). More and more people were selling stuff on craigslist and eBay, swapping books, DVDs, and games on sites such as Swaptree, and giving unwanted items away on Freecycle. Local sharing platforms such as NeighborGoods and Share Some Sugar started popping up alongside a whole range of peer-to-peer rental services such as RelayRides and Zilok. On a trip to Denver, I saw cyclists pedaling around on bright red bikes with the word B-Cycle on their crossbars. A friend in London told me about her new favorite Channel 4 TV program called Landshare (a garden ‘dating agency’ connecting growers to people with land to share). I kept hearing about people joining some kind of collective or co-op, from Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs to Etsy Labs. Magazines, blogs and journals brimmed with popular articles from the self-organizing behavior of ants to “Coworking: Solo But Not Alone”. Whether it was ‘peer-to-peer,’ to the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to ‘smart mobs’ to ‘flashmobs’ to ‘prosumption’ to ‘crowdsourcing’, numerous sticky ideas were emerging on how easy it is to form groups, pods, packs, hubs or whatever you want to call them, and the might of communities.

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Jeff Oeth / Modern Evolution business cards

Here are some new Jeff Oeth Design / Modern Evolution business cards that I recently cranked out. The front is me, the back is the blog.

A few production notes:

• Hand-made, with extra love.
• Inkjet printing on label stock, wrapped around recycled chipboard.
• Printed in small quantities as-needed. Easy to update. No wasted cards.
• Fun-sized (a little shorter than your average card).

Also worth mentioning:

I’m offering special design rates for any projects that emphasize sustainability and social responsibility. That could be a lot of different things. Contact me for more info.

Twitter folks can follow @jeffoeth (the man) and @modevolution (the blog) to stay on top of things. Guaranteed not to clog up your Twit stream. “Quality over quantity” is our motto.

Thanks again to all those who follow along and to those who have supported me over the years. Your feedback is always welcome and appreciated!