By Martina Welke & Bolot Bazarbaev
Re-Vision Labs Fellows

Bolot Bazarbaev

Bolot Bazarbaev, a Humphrey Fellow at the University of Washington and an intern at Re-Vision Labs, has been captivating us for the past ten days with his knowledge and perspective as a revolution unfolded in his homeland of the Kyrgyz Republic.

Since traditional media was slow to react to the Kyrgyz crisis, Twitter was the first place Bolot went for news.  He learned about events as they unfolded by following hash tags like #freekg,  and handles like @kg_news, @Baisalov, @Otunbayeva.  Even when the Internet was temporarily shut down within Kyrgyzstan, citizens could still access Twitter from their mobile phones and continued to share information.  Websites like diesel.elcat.kg also played a crucial role in sharing information and helping to dispel false rumors.

The strategy leading up to the overthrow of Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s administration was so well-coordinated, primarily via social media, that even when the leaders of the opposition movement were jailed, the movement continued successfully.  As our colleague Brett Horvath astutely observed, “As soon as [Bakiyev] lost control of the information, he lost control.” (Last night Brett spoke on the subject at the TEDx Mission in San Francisco, which you can view here)

Now the Kyrgyz interim government has a unique opportunity to start with a “blank slate” unencumbered by previous bureaucratic systems.  It could become the exemplar of open government: transparent and collaborative with high level civic engagement.  Or it could be a cruel repeat of history, and fall back on the same systems that brought the demise of the previous administration, which came into being after a similar revolution only five years ago. 

Krygyz President's desk, Before (2005) & After (2010).

At a  press conference in Bishkek on Thursday, Robert O. Blake, Jr.,  the Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs announced that the United States was committed to assisting in the development of open Kyrgyz governance:

The United States believes that the provisional government and the people of Kyrgyzstan have a unique and historic opportunity to create a democracy that could be a model for Central Asia and the wider region.

In all my meetings I emphasized the importance of the provisional government working transparently and in an inclusive manner with Kyrgyz civil society to ensure the provisional government has the benefit of the views and advice of the Kyrgyz people as Kyrgyzstan moves through this important transition. I look forward to meeting with members of Kyrgyz civil society later today.

At this crucial moment in history, the Kyrgyz Republic could leapfrog into a new kind of democracy by building itself around an open information platform, and help usher Central Asia- and the rest of the globe- into an era of open governance.

Before & After photo from Elena Skochilo.

By Jesse Burns
Senior Associate

Cincinnati, OH — that’s where the community is in education reform!

Yesterday, my post focused on the topic of low community engagement in relation to Washington State’s education reform efforts.  ss articulated this dilemma well in the comment:

“It has always been a recurring and problematic theme that the community, parents and students are left out of the equation. This is not new and still troubling“.

Will we ever figure out community engagement in education reform?  Evidence from case studies and research demonstrates that community engagement (as defined as mobilizing groups, not individuals) can:

1) Tap ideas, energy, and experience of parents, citizens, and community constituencies;

2) build enduring constituency support for school improvement and reform (helpful for providing consistency when principals, superintendents and principals are transient);

3) legitimize reform efforts, as a variety of constituencies are fighting together for reform, rather than isolated groups fighting alone; and

4) build persistent public participation in public education to ensure high quality schools for future generations.

While I am a firm believer in using research and evidence for decision-making, sometimes real examples blow away the data.  The greater Cincinnati region is just the example to do just that.

In total, over  300 organizations (over $7 billion in assets) have voluntary joined a coalition that provides comprehensive services for students from… Birth to Career!

Known as Strive, this massive effort aligns the work of corporations, non-profits, schools, universities, advocacy groups, and any other group that voluntarily joins the effort. Strive is catalyzing positive outcomes in both academic outcomes and social/developmental outcomes, all driven by research-based practices focused upon student learning.

Furthermore, Strive’s model involves organizations with co-creating indicators of impact and sharing their data about progress.  Consequently, all organizations in the network (including parent groups) are able to avoid redundancy of efforts, gain access to valuable data about performance to improve their efficiency and impact, and bridge previous or potential divides amongst all of these organizations.

Everyone is playing for the same prize:  improving the educational future of the greater Cincinnati region’s children.  How about that for a real-world example of community engagement?

More to come on how Strive gets all of these organizations to work together–and how Seattle might be ripe for a Strive-like initiative.

Serpentine Wall photo by Angleskiss31 on Flickr.

By Regan Kohlhardt
Re-Vision Labs Fellow Emeritus

When I’ve talked to people about what RVL does – building community, both within a business and outside of it – one of the more typical responses I get back is, “Ah, like Google.” I’ve always thought this response was both amusing and entirely appropriate. Amusing because the word ‘community’ doesn’t really bring to mind the world’s biggest search, a technological tool for the masses; Appropriate because Google really has excelled in creating itself an excellent reputation through the cultivation of community.

Below are 4 Lessons from Google on how to create a stellar reputation as a charismatic and well-meaning company:

1. Doodle

Nearly everyone who has signed onto the internet and carried out a search on Google has noticed that the Google logo changes from time to time depending on certain holidays or events. This is a very subtle quirk of Google’s efforts to create a colorful, creative, and friendly aura around its brand. According to Google’s website, the Doodle has become both quite popular with users and integral to the brand’s identity. Apparently, some users even collect the Doodles.

The important  take-home note from the Doodle is that it represents Google’s willingness to have fun, show a little personality, and ultimately relate to its consumers.

I love the Doodle. I have to admit, it makes me happy when I see a new Google Doodle online. If every company’s objective is to make its consumers happy, then Google has definitely succeeded on this front.

2. Keep the employees happy

Keeping the employees happy has made Google famous as one of the best company’s to work for in the world. Fortune Magazine has ranked Google in the top 5 of its 100 Best Companies to Work For listing for three years in a row.

With everything from on-site daycare and gourmet foods to nap pods, dental services, and recreational facilities, Google strives for employee contentment.

It also strives to keep its employees working as much as possible for as long as possible. All of these extra amenities seem fantastic, but let’s not forget the original purpose of them: to extract more work form Google employees. If you never have to leave work to eat, to go to the dentist, to work out, or to see your kids, you’ll end up spending more time at work, and subsequently, you’ll end up doing more work.

Regardless of the long hours, the Google-plex is legendary for trying to please employees, and that reputation serves the company well. When I’ve spoken personally with people about Google, they tend to get this dreamy look in their eyes as they start listing off the amazing features that the company has to keep its employees innovative and happy: bean bags and balls to sit on, work hours dedicated to exploring personal ideas and projects for Google, the afore-mentioned nap pods, health services, etc etc. The place sounds like a working paradise!

3. Have an environmental conscience

Google is working towards a neutral carbon footprint. The company is working to make its own processes more environmentally friendly, to source its electricity from renewable sources (and ultimately work towards making renewable energy cheaper than traditional forms), and to invest in projects that will offset greenhouse gases (see the Google Blog for more info).

Why? Why should they care? Would it really drive business away from their search engine if they did nothing about the environment?

The answer lies in the fact that Google wants to appear to be on the side of the people. That’s why it has the Doodles and happy-employee programs. It doesn’t want to come off as a cold, metallic tool that a search engine could otherwise come across as.

Investing in the environment is synonymous to saying to users, “Google cares about you and your lot. We want to help.” That alone can win people over.

4. Don’t be evil

Finally, Google’s unofficial and already famous company motto is: Don’t be evil. It’s actually stated in their company philosophy as “you can make money without doing evil.”

This refreshing. Money-making enterprises don’t have to be evil and based off greed! How novel!

Google has made its stance on evil fairly obvious in its recent interactions with China. The company has recently made it clear to China that censorship regarding the internet is not compatible with the Google company motto.

A corporate giant taking a stand against one of the world’s super powers. Indeed, it would appear we have a battle of the titans on hand. Who will win out? Democracy on the web or governmental control?

Whether or not the act is ultimately successful in achieving internet democracy in China, Google’s stance on China has once again proven that the company is not just a greedy, profit snatching corporation. Google has a conscience, and people like that in a company.

For interest sake, I’ve pasted the entire list of Google’s corporate philosophy below. The bottom line that I want to communicate is that corporate success lies not just in a good product and good financial figures, it also lies in working with the people who are consuming the company’s product.

In other words, be fun, schmooze the people who work for you (they’ll do better work!), hug trees (within reason – tree hugging extremists are NOT attractive), and and don’t be evil – the people will follow.

Google Philosophy

1. focus on the user and all else will follow
2. it’s best to do one thing really, really well
3. fast is better than slow
4. democracy on the web works
5. you don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer
6. you can make money without doing evil
7. there’s always more information out there
8. the need for information crosses all borders
9. you can be serious without a suit
10. great just isn’t good enough

By Jesse Burns
Senior Associate

Where’s the community in education reform?

The federal Race to the Top education reform initiative has some deadlines that require moving quickly, but that shouldn’t have to mean the exclusion of important voices in the education community.  In a recent Seattle Times article about Washington’s process for putting together a grant for the Race to the Top, I noticed some omissions in the parties listed as key stakeholders. Do you see what I see (or don’t see) in:

“Gregoire said the plan is a compromise between all the people involved in education – teacher, principals, district superintendents, lawmakers and other government officials.”

What about the community, the parents, the numerous nonprofits and programs that contribute to learning outcomes for students?  Is this simply an omission by the reporter, or a more persistent trend?

Without being able to ask the Governor directly, I can only rely on my research and observational skills to piece together a picture of how the state views the importance of community and parent engagement in education reform efforts.

Evidence that Community is overlooked in Reform Efforts

January 13, 2010 QEC Initial Report to the Governor & Legislature

The Quality Education Council arose out of ESHB 2261 (the 2009 WA State Ed Reform Bill), and was tasked with submitting a report of recommendations as a first step in the process of education finance reform.  The QEC made thirteen recommendations for funding (outlined in the report), and was wrapped up by a minority report from Senator Rosemary McAuliffe.  Senator McAuliffe shared specific thoughts on the recommendations, as well as a more general recommendation:

Over the last few months I have sought input from our educators, parents and students regarding what are their goals for education reform. Despite these difficult economic times, I have heard teachers, parents, principals and superintendents across the entire State say that they want us to continue to move forward on education reform. However, they want us to move forward on this reform together.

Notably, Senator McAuliffe identifies in her minority report the broad desire to move education reform forward with the input from parents and students.  It is interesting to me that the notion to move forward with community engagement arises within the minority report rather than in the main section of the report (the TVW Broadcast of the QEC’s last meeting (Jan 6, 2010) here).

What do you think about integrating parent and student input into education reform?

Would you, as a community member, have any interest in getting involved in education reform?

How?

UPDATE:  Senator McAuliffe wrote a piece Washington’s reforms are well on their way for the Daily Herald outlining why and how Washington is poised for reform.  A relevant statement from the article about community engagement

“Missing from many news articles on the subject is the back story and true success of our education effort. It takes countless hours of meetings, discussions, collaboration and compromise among education stakeholders, business leaders, school districts, state agencies, teachers and unions. Not only is it important to note this is one of the top reasons why Delaware and Tennessee won millions of dollars in RTTT grants, it also shows that Washington listens and is therefore successful in implementing education reforms. By taking small, collaborative steps over the last 30 years, we are building toward big victories.”

It is encouraging to hear that all of the stakeholders, business leaders, school districts, state agencies, teachers and unions met, discussed, collaborated, and compromised.  I would suggest that a change in perspective is needed–students (and parents) need to not be seen as just stakeholders, they need to be seen as central to everything.  Upcoming posts will exemplify successful, bold approaches for improving student learning.

By Nick Spang
Senior Associate & RVL Fellow

In many respects, Australia is the world leader in creating a democracy that is the most representative of its people. That’s because it is lowering the barriers to entry for citizen participation in large-scale civic planning processes.

In contemporary democracies across the globe, the system for public engagement assumes that citizen participation in civic process is based on people’s satisfaction with their living situations.  Barriers to participation, therefore, serve as a way to moderate input from citizens based on how much they care.

In other words, the harder it is to give input, the more likely it is that input primarily comes from people with extreme views.

Public meetings on proposed projects, laws, or regulations are generally either boring- because no one shows up and the speakers can’t orate- or they are tense- because angry people are using heated rhetoric to make their points.

The other way to give input is to write a letter or send an email, essentially in a vacuum of information. If citizens want more information they have to download a large report, request a paper copy, or go online in search of commentary.  The end result is that high quality public comments are minimal for most public engagement processes because they are a pain to deal with.

While most government agencies try to keep public input to a reasonable minimum- because interacting with lots of the public is expensive and time consuming- municipal governments in Australia are taking another approach: actively trying to get as much high quality public input as possible.  Enter Future Melbourne.

Future Melbourne is a Wikipedia-style platform that supports an online community of citizens that are concerned about Melbourne’s long-term plan for the future.

The stated goals of Future Melbourne are:
•    Engage citizens in creating a vision for the future, setting priorities and contributing to decision-making.
•    Value and utilize local networks.
•    Focus on people and place that requires a more flexible and joined-up approach to policy and service delivery.
•    Connect the top-down and bottom-up policy processes that influence resource allocation.

Future Melbourne is designed to replace the current City Plan 2010. It sets out six high level Goals for the city, then Pathways that lead to achieving these Goals. Under each Pathway, there are a range of Outcomes to be achieved over the decade to 2020.

1.    People
2.    Creative
3.    Prosperous
4.    Knowledge
5.    Ecocity
6.    Connected

Based on input from the public, the plan envisages Melbourne to be a bold, inspirational and sustainable global city and one of the top ten most livable and sustainable cities in the world.

But Future Melbourne is not without issues.

For example, many people in Melbourne have never heard of Future Melbourne, and participation rates are not stellar.  Once on the webpage it is unclear how to participate or how the information generated will actually get used. The web design generally lacks an interactive look and feel, and is not as inviting as it could be.

Criticisms aside, Future Melbourne is a bold step in the right direction. It’s hard for a government agency to be on the cutting edge of social media and Melbourne is the first city to take on such an effort.  The real difficulty is not that the tech is lacking or budgets are tight, but that the pace of IT innovation is so much faster than government agencies and citizens can keep up with.

For a citizen, having constantly changing modes of providing input can be very confusing and off-putting. For agencies, investing in something that doesn’t work is an embarrassment at best and considered waste, fraud, and abuse at worst.

Another way to think about it is by looking at how many consumers avoid buying the first generation of new gadgets because they are generally more expensive and don’t work as well as later generations.  Similarly, most agency decision makers are looking for the sweet spot where they can invest in something that is innovative and also refined.

Therefore, having chosen the Wikipedia-style approach makes sense, because that is a proven concept for crowdsourcing based on the success of Wikipedia itself.  I hope that soon we will see other government agencies following suit, and using best practices for communications and data display, as well as the new set of proven crowdsourcing techniques for ranked voting, content analysis, and comment moderation.

Until that time, we will be following in Australia’s footsteps.

Wheel and Skyline, Melbourne photo by stephenk1977 on Flickr.

A couple weeks after helping to host the first OpenGovWest conference in Seattle, Re-Vision Labs members Brett Horvath, Nick Spang, and Daniela Vasquez discuss the Gov 2.0’s present challenges, opportunities, direction, and why they would be smiling from their municipal office in 2060 if all goes as hoped.

Q: WHAT CHALLENGES DO YOU SEE IN THE GOVERNMENT 2.0 MOVEMENT IN 2010?

Full Responses to Opportunities and Challenges MP3

Brett Horvath at OpenGovWest conference. Photo by Lawrence Leung: curiousangle.com.

BRETT:  The biggest challenge right now is that the open government movement is not a social movement; it’s a movement of technocrats and innovators, and therefore the conversations are really limited in scope.

NICK: I think the challenges are mainly twofold:  One is from the citizen’s side.  It’s hard to get citizens engaged and to invest the time that it takes to learn about issues and then share their thoughts.  People are too distracted.  There’s a lot of ways to occupy your time, and spending it getting involved in policy is a huge investment that I don’t think a lot of people are willing to make right now.

The other challenge is administrative.  The changes that are coming about with the IT revolution are requiring a complete re-thinking about how you share information with constituents and retrieve it from them, and those changes are meeting a lot of resistance from people who don’t want to spend the time taking the risks to try out new systems and learn new things.

DANIELA: One, leadership, and two, engaging the citizens.  You can have a very committed leader and it’s going well, but elections change the leader and you have to start again.  It is very difficult to trigger the movement of the citizens.  How do we create a way that is really meaningful for them?  The government tries to use push technology – it needs to engage people and really listen to what they’re saying.

BRETT: The problem is most governments are run like loose confederations of org charts.  Each one of those departments fights for their budgets.  The informational revolution has not treated institutions well.  So many of those departments get their validity– their reason for being– by controlling information.  And there’s an INVERSE relationship between freedom of information, and command and control hierarchies.  The more free that information is, the less control that institution has.  And the first thing the institution does is fight for its own survival.

You get this really weird dynamic where people working in government who have really innovating instincts… well, the system is actually working against them.  And that’s a major problem.

DANIELA: Because you need people with vision and courage.

Q: WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DO YOU SEE IN THE GOVERNMENT 2.0 MOVEMENT IN 2010?

Daniela Vasquez on Open Gov Policy panel. Photo by Lawrence Leung: curiousangle.com.

BRETT: The Gov 2.0 movement is about to get very Darwinian. Unlike the federal government who can print new money, state and city governments are

revenue-based businesses.  People in department of commerce and economic development are hungry, and they will do anything to cultivate economic growth and the Gov 2.0 movement will be the core driver of it.   The last 30 years it has been a regulatory race to the bottom. Where you see states in the south making it easier to pollute so businesses will come, the opposite will happen.  It’s going to be “what are the government structures and regulatory frameworks really cultivate econ growth in the 21^st century?”

NICK: This is indicative of a sea change that’s occurring within our govt slowly around IT.  In the old system, we elected “wise” people to make decisions for us.  The government’s responsibility was to collect all of the pertinent information and then to be the wizened decision maker and come up with the right solution that represents everyone.  If they didn’t come up with the right solution they wouldn’t get re-elected.  And that’s the concept of government as “Solution Provider.”  And that’s why under the traditional system the government has a monopoly on all the information, and operates under the idea that the more you let citizens get involved the more it just slows down the process of the wise public servant coming to their conclusion.  I think we still operate very much under that paradigm.

But in the new paradigm, these people become BROKERS of the information coming from the citizens.  The citizens are given equal access to information and are able to understand that information for themselves and respond to it with their thoughts, opinions and values, and deliver those to the decision-maker who has to weigh and balance and create a transparent solution that meets the needs of the people, as opposed to the traditional way where input from the people is just a distraction to the wizened public servant making their decision.

Q: CAN YOU CLARIFY THE CONNECTION BETWEEN OPEN GOVERNMENT, CITIZEN PARTICIPATION, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?

NICK: Part of the connection is in this concept of an Innovation Ecosystem where you can create a whole body – a whole platform – where decision-makers, citizens, and businesses go through processes much more quickly than traditionally.  A lot of time the bottleneck is around information.  The business needs to get the information to the agency, the agency to the public, the public to the agency, and etc. If you make all of that information flow instantly to all parties, and you don’t need these stepwise processes, I think you can quadruple the speed by which you can make equally informed decision.

BRETT: To piggyback on that, data is a stagnant concept in people’s minds.  But data is not linear.  You think of data, you think of 1s and 0s, charts, spreadsheets.  Data is more expansive and non-linear in the way that once it gets out there and it’s put in the right format, it spreads through different mediums, it gets re-purposed, re-packaged.  And government may put out one open source piece of prime data that might completely change the dynamics at the other end– in whether a business wants to locate there, how a neighborhood thinks about itself and engages in problem solving, and so forth.  Getting data out there effects citizen engagement and economic development. Governments have thought that the data is theirs – they own it, they control it – and it’s not.  It’s the people’s data.  And it’s the government’s moral obligation to make that data useful and available in real time.  And if it doesn’t, then it’s going to hold itself back, it’s going to make it harder to activate citizens, for business to interact with the government.

DANIELA: Open information and collaboration help to ensure governments don’t duplicate so many things, which is inefficient and ultimately hinders progress, economic or otherwise.

NICK: Right.  For example, millions of dollars get spent every year on administrative disputes and lawsuits between agencies and agencies and citizens.  In the Forest Service where I worked, the budget was about $1 million a year, but 95% of that was spent on attorney fees because every project proposed ended up getting appealed by citizen groups.  And if the citizen groups ended up winning, under law the Forest Service had to pay all the attorney fees for that battle.

So this command and control structure where controlling information flow might have worked in the past for some projects is clearly failing now and costing taxpayers money and slowing things down drastically.

Q: SO WHERE IS THE GOV 2.0 GOING?

BRETT: The Tea Party Movement is just the beginning.  These people that are not necessarily against abortion or gun rights, they’re just mad at the government.  It is not working for them.  And I think you’re right– when you have trans-national corporations that are as powerful as they are, they’re literally pitting governments against one another and seeing who can get the best deal, and exploiting all over the map.  Usual boundaries aren’t going to be able to confront that and protect citizens.

The other thing I think is that the division between citizens and government is going to start evaporating.  Grover Norquist, one of the titans of the conservative movement over the past 30 years, famously said that, “I want a government so small that I can drown it in the bathtub.”  I want a government so porous that I can’t tell where it ends and the rest of society begins.  And that is where we’re going to be pushing towards.  Obviously there’s always going to be experts, institutions, and things I want to get done that I don’t want to think about.  But you’re going to be living, and swimming, and breathing government all the time.  You already do right now but people just don’t realize it.  That is going to get further extended in some ways that are… well, kind of mind blowing.

NICK: We’re moving away from a system where public servants are expected to be the wise decision-makers who unilaterally make the most long-term balanced decision for everyone, and toward crowd sourcing to citizens.  The whole nation will eventually be deciding what to do with nuclear waste from Hanford.  It’s almost direct-citizen voting.

DANIELA: People will be more involved because the tools will make it more easy to do so.

Nick Spang and Bolot Bazarbaev.

Q: IT’S YEAR 2060 AND YOU’RE SITTING INSIDE YOUR MUNICIPAL OFFICE AND SMILING.  WHY ARE YOU SMILING?

Full Responses to Smiling in 2060 MP3

DANIELA: To know that you have more equity.  Basic needs are met so people can do whatever they are best at doing — to release everyone’s potential, unfettered.

NICK: Because there’s a thriving community of people below.  Sustainable.  People feel they’re part of a cohesive community.  There’s growth.  All of the basic needs are taken care of.  Nobody is hungry, shelter, warmth, clean air and water, feel they can express themselves and have above all the opportunity to express their strengths and abilities.

BRETT: I’m in a bathtub (laugh).  I would be smiling because I would know that if I had to solve a problem in my geography, I could work with anyone on earth, in government and society to solve that problem.    We could share resources and infrastructure, adapt and be flexible,  instead of year 2010 when I had to work with people in the municipal tower with the budget I had and the info I had on spreadsheets.  And CD ROMS.

Intrigued by what we learned about Agent Green during a recent interview with the owners of the Pike Brewing Company, Aurea Astro and I decided to further explore this mysterious environmental force moving through Seattle businesses.  First we made our way back to Pike Pub—the site of Agent Green’s inaugural appearance—and then our investigations led us to Terra Bella Flowers in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood, one of Agent Green’s most recent missions.

Re-Vision Labs founding partners Gabriel Scheer and Dan O’Shea designed the Agent Green program as part of Seattle Greendrinks in an effort to capitalize on the power of crowds and community partnerships.  Agent Green utilizes these elements in order to help make it easy and ultimately financially beneficial for businesses to become more environmentally efficient.  Proponents of Agent Green use social media, traditional media, and good old word-of-mouth to announce an upcoming event, and on the day of the event a crowd descends to support the participating business and help fund energy retrofits.

Back to the Pub We Go!

Gabriel approached Drew Gillespie, manager of the Pike Pub, early in 2009 and proposed that the restaurant host the first Agent Green event in Seattle.  They decided to schedule the event during Earth month, and Pike Pub committed 25% of sales made to the Agent Green crowd to energy retrofits.

When the scheduled day arrived, the crowd flooded in and raised $3,700.  After much research and analysis, Drew decided that lighting was the best place to invest in energy retrofits.  With the help of energy incentives offered Seattle City Light (which amounted to $14,000!) and the money earned from the Agent Green event, Pike Pub only had to pay about $1,000 out of pocket—an investment that Drew estimates will pay for itself with energy savings in less than a year and a half.

“We’ve always been a fairly green company, but [Agent Green] was the beginning of us really striving to be leaders,” Drew told us.

The lighting improvements have resulted in 31 tonnes of carbon gas reductions and 51,000 KW hours savings!  Drew is now working with Puget Sound Energy to improve the restaurant’s heating and cooling systems, and he continues to look for more opportunities for promoting environmental excellence.

“It’s amazing the small things you can do to make a big difference—it doesn’t take much to compost or change your light bulbs…a lot of it can save you money in the long run.”

Drew appreciates that events like Agent Green allow the Pike Brewing Co. to support social awareness and engagement: “That’s where I’m really seeing an impact on a business side is people in Seattle who are in these communities, who are environmentally responsible, now respect us and come here.”

This year for Earth Day, Pike Pub will be hosting an Earth Dinner “to support Chefs Collaborative and to raise awareness of the importance of a sustainable food supply.”  And where will Agent Green be heading this month?  Read on, gentle reader, read on…

And North, to Greenwood!

Aurea and I continued to track the Agent around Seattle, and ended up in a somewhat magical Greenwood neighborhood flower shop.  We spoke with the Terra Bella Flowers owner, Melissa Feveyear, amidst a visceral feast of vibrant blossoms, rich scents, and fanciful ornaments.  Oh, and how could I neglect to mention the gigantic canine Oscar—closer in stature to a horse than a dog—who rested his delightfully large head in my lap for the duration of our conversation.

Terra Bella Flowers was one of six businesses to join Agent Green and the Sustainability Committee of the Greenwood-Phinney Chamber of Commerce in February for the fourth and most extensive mission to date.  Melissa’s shop already operates “under the umbrella of organic, local, and sustainable” products, so the Agent Green partnership was an obvious match.

The crowd convened yet again, this time to enjoy food, shopping, and art all around the neighborhood.

“We had more traffic come through here than I’d ever seen before…I had roughly twenty to thirty people in here at all time,” Melissa recounted.  “It really helped us with publicity and I think in the long term it will help us financially for that reason.”

Melissa hopes to eventually insulate the cold concrete floors and improve the Terra Bella heating system with the revenue and resources generated by Agent Green.

Where Next?

If you’ve decided by now that you want to do a little sleuthing of your own and you happen to be in Seattle,  don’t make plans next Tuesday evening: April’s Agent Green event will be at Sport Restaurant & Bar on 4th Avenue.  Hope to see you there!