New Voices: 2007 Grantees: Vermont Climate Witness

2007 Grantees

Vermont Climate Witness

Bill Finnegan, Tamarack Productions
Burlington, VT

CONTACT INFO

Bill Finnegan
Tamarack Productions
1 Steele Street, Ste. 111
Burlington, VT 05401
(802) 238-5938
E-mail

Web site

To create a map-based interactive experience to track how residents see climate change affecting the state’s economy, from fall foliage and maple syrup to skiing. Tamarack Productions, a nonprofit environmental awareness organization, will work with the Vermont Natural Resources Council to develop user content and create Google Map mash-ups to help users visualize weather data and real-time weather indicators.

Check back for future news and updates.

• July 2009
• February 2009
• August 2008
• March 2008
• November 2007

Vermont Climate Witness from J-Lab on Vimeo.

2007 grantee Bill Finnegan talks about the challenges of launching the site, where content is generated by the community. People can share their stories and report on local conditions. The interview took place on April 5, 2008, at the New Voices 2007 Grantee Meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Washington, D.C.

Collaborations Help Create Climate Content

July 2009

The first half of 2009 saw a great deal of activity on the Vermont Climate Witness Web site. After a slow second half of 2008, project leader Bill Finnegan was happy to report that a new and improved Web site was launched in spring 2009 with rich content due to new collaborations with students, teachers, and local environmental organizations.

VCW was created to empower citizen scientists and citizen journalists to connect a global, abstract issue to the backyards and everyday decisions of ordinary people in the state. At the same time VCW wanted to harness the latest developments in interactive Web sites - user-generated, multi-media content, presented through an interactive map - to support grassroots environmental activism.

In order to accomplish this goal during the term of their New Voices grant, VCW faced two main challenges: the proper use of technical resources and the consistent creation of original and meaningful content.

Originally, Finnegan says VCW saw the allocation of 42 percent of its project budget to the customization of the content and media management system by its technical partner Legitify as an investment in a strong technical platform for the site. But upon reflection, Finnegan now believes that VCW may have been better served through some combination of open-source software or existing mapping, social networking, and media sharing services. Working with a commercial Web-development company meant that VCW often slipped to the bottom of Legitify’s to-do list because of its small budget. “We were forced to put on hold some of our more ambitious additions to the site (for example, a live weather conditions widget that also presented historic climate data and climate change models) in order to get the basic functionality in place.“

On the content creation side, Finnegan says the problem was one of defining clearly the reason for the site’s existence and how those interested in climate change could contribute information. Basically, people weren’t sure just what they could actually write about. “We began to realize that part of our problem was the framing of the issue and the focus on observations or witnesses, which limited our community of contributors to people who felt they had hard evidence of changing conditions in the state.“

Finnegan adds that the lack of incentives for contributing affected the number of posts, as did the informal nature of the Web that provided little pull to bring visitors back to he site. But VCW was able to overcome many of these limitations thanks to two very successful initiatives: working with Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility to identify two interns to help create content for the site, and a new partnership with Main Street Middle School in Montpelier that saw VCW as a way to use - indeed, to go beyond—formal learning activities about climate change.

The two interns helped VCW produce content for two new features it added this spring, Actions and Voices. One intern, a recent graduate from the University of Vermont, focused on researching and writing case studies to fill the Action strand of content. The second, a sophomore at Burlington College studying activism and film, produced a series of videos of a cross section of Vermonters talking about climate change for the Voices strand of content. Over their three-month, part-time internship, they each produced a number of high quality pieces for the site, averaging one to two in-depth posts each week. Finnegan says this boost of content from a pair of “highly motivated young people” was a very efficient use of the project resources.

“Given the success of this dimension of the project, we will be seeking similar collaborations with teachers and after school programs in the next academic year.“

Meanwhile, Finnegan says VCW found the perfect collaborator in Eli Rosenburg, a science teacher at Main Street Middle School. “Eli instantly saw the potential of the Web site as a platform for integrating the seventh and eighth grade energy curriculum with local exploration of climate change.“ Rosenburg recognized that the use of new media would provide the “hook” to keep kids interested in the project. Armed with Flip cameras, the students headed out into the Montpelier community to interview expert and local citizens. Using this material, they produced stories, videos, and slideshows on the site. “Given the success of this dimension of the project, we will be seeking similar collaborations with teachers and after school programs in the next academic year. “

Finnegan says VCW will also continue its collaboration with the Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) to identify potential stories for the site and content contributors. VNRC is the lead organization behind the Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network (VECAN), a loose affiliation of community organizations throughout the state. Because of time and resource limitations, VECAN has been slow to develop. So Finnegan says that rather than compete with VECAN, VCW hopes to capture stories of VNRC members and cross post them on the VECAN site.

As the move beyond their New Voices grant, Finnegan says VCW will continue to seek partnerships and funding from the environmental community to further support the mission of VCW.

—Tom Regan

Stormy Weather

February 2009

After a slow second half of 2008, Vermont Climate Witness this winter is set to launch two new site features, Actions and Reactions. The first will showcase efforts undertaken by local individuals and communities to respond to climate change. The second will feature on-the-street, video-blog discussions of climate change and weather.

Project leader Bill Finnegan is gearing up to produce and solicit more content for the VCW Web site, which has not been refreshed since early 2008. He and Tamarack Productions (the nonprofit arm of the Burlington,Vt.-based Tamarack Media) also plan to work with a local middle school science teacher to develop and test a multimedia unit on local climate change, which will be a part of the teacher’s curriculum. Finnegan plans to broaden the unit’s reach by offering it to Vermont’s network of community media centers and public access television stations. He also seeks to collect oral histories about climate change from older Vermonters.

“I am very excited about harnessing these tools to give voice to people suffering from air, water and other toxic pollution.“

The site’s goal is to provide a platform for Vermonters to participate in a dialogue about climate change and what it means for the state, Finnegan says. As users share their thoughts and comments, they will also be creating a digital archive of climate observations that will in effect provide a time-lapsed picture of climate change in the state.

Finnegan picked up food for thought at the April 2008 New Voices grantee gathering, where he and other grant recipients discussed the potential of a multimedia, map-based tool for addressing social justice issues. Finnegan hopes that linking climate change to social issues, such as diseases attributable to environmental pollution, will bring more users to the Vermont Climate Witness site.

To that end, he has reached out to Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE), an environmental justice organization based in Boston. Tamarack and ACE have discussed plans for an interactive map and an online platform for environmental justice advocates to share their stories. “I am very excited about harnessing these tools to give voice to people suffering from air, water and other toxic pollution,“ Finnegan says.

Meanwhile, Finnegan continues to tap into the network of local climate activists, including members of the Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network and the Vermont Natural Resources Council. He will keep in regular touch with these sources to gather case studies for the new Actions feature of the VCW site.

The Vermont Climate Witness project has faced several challenges, Finnegan reports. One issue is technical: Tamarack has relied on a custom Web-development firm to build and update the VCW Web site. As the company gained customers, the VCW site—with its limited budget—slid to the bottom of the firm’s priority list. Finnegan cautions others to think hard before partnering with a for-profit Web developer: “I would strongly recommend that any similar projects harness open-source software or utilize existing online media services, such as YouTube and Flickr.“

Another, larger, challenge has been articulating the Web site’s reason for being. Even some people who had been enthusiastic about the project in the planning stage appeared puzzled once the site went live. The original idea was to solicit, collect and post weather- and climate-related observations from citizens in text, photo or video form. What Tamarack/VCW at first failed to do, Finnegan says, was tell users why their input was important and how it could help further understanding of climate change. The site failed to explain to potential users that out of individual observations could appear, over time, a comprehensive (and digitally archived) picture of climate change in Vermont. “We never fully thought through why people would want to share this information and actively participate in a small, niche online network,“ Finnegan says.

For the next six months, Tamarack plans to produce about 75 percent of the site’s content, with 25 percent created by 25 users. Finnegan hopes to reverse that ratio over time. He is working with Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility to find and interview interns to help Tamarack with content production. Finnegan hopes to increase traffic to the site by regularly posting new content.

- Hope Keller, 2/23/09

Ripening

August 2008

Vermont Climate Witness has completed its beta testing phase and is preparing now for a more formal launch this fall. Is it raining at Lake Champlain? You can now find out by logging on to Vermont Climate Witness, which has added the live National Weather Service Doppler radar feed of cloud cover as a layer to its map.

In the meantime, VCW has been doing grassroots outreach to spread the word about the new site, which welcomes citizen scientists and citizen journalists to share their observations about the weather. VCW exhibited at a recent sustainable living expo in Burlington, and the project was profiled in an article that was published in central Vermont newspapers: The Rutland Herald and the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus.

Bill Finnegan, VCW project leader, says outreach will continue to be his focus. “As with any Web site that depends on user-generated content, we know that it is not enough simply to go live with the site and expect people to find it. Nor is a simple blitz of e-mail lists enough to garner the attention and activity that will sustain the Web site in the long term.“

So VCW will work with its partner the Vermont Natural Resources Council’s Energy and Climate Action Network, which consists of community-based teams that are engaging citizens in discussions about climate change. VCW will put together a simple guide for using the site and distribute it through the VNRC.

VCW is on the road over the summer and fall to spread the word widely, face-to-face. And to engage new audiences, they’ve reached beyond the environmentalist community to the Vermont Ski Areas Association. If they feel they need an extra push before launch, they may place targeted advertising and a contest through the Front Porch Forum, a popular Burlington-based neighborhood electronic newsletter.

“We are also very interested in finding ways to capture the stories of older Vermonters who are less tech savvy but have plenty to teach us about the Vermont climate over the years,“ said Finnegan. One possibility is to create an intergenerational oral history project.

Beta Testing 1-2-3 ...

March 2008

Vermont Climate Witness went live in beta version in December 2007. Since then, it has recruited a posse of weather buffs, student activists and environmental educators to test the site and contribute seed content, as site producers fine-tune the back-end systems and the site interface in advance of the public launch.

“The transition from concept to actual functioning Web site has been an interesting and exciting process,“ says Bill Finnegan of Tamarack Productions, the project leader. “There were many things that we couldn’t fully anticipate - issues that only became clear once we created the site and people started posting.“ The testing period has helped producers simplify the site’s location tagging and create a more user-friendly system for setting up accounts, uploading content, adding comments and forwarding posts to friends.

Finnegan says the team still has some technical and content challenges ahead. “For the map interface, we are still trying to figure out the best way to represent multiple posts to the same location - we will likely add either a multi-post icon for popular locations or add more specialized statewide, regional, and city/town level views that include different information on the map. We are also working on the best way to integrate Vermont Climate Witness with existing media sharing Web sites, like YouTube and Flickr, so users don’t have to re-upload existing online video clips or photographs.“

With heightened awareness of global warming, many people tend to blame all sorts of weather conditions on greenhouse gases and carbon emissions. So Vermont Climate Witness knows it must proceed cautiously, encouraging people to share weather stories on the site without losing credibility for featuring information that’s not really related to climate change or trends.

Finnegan say they are developing a strategy to recruit and support a social network of regular contributors. A key partner will be Seventh Generation the national non-toxic cleaning products company which happens to be based in Burlington, VT. The company is leading a regional “Low Carbon Diet” initiative in which community-based eco-teams post their stories to Vermont Climate Witness as they track their personal progress using a carbon footprint tool developed by the EPA. They have also started a conversation with Greenopolis.com, a social network for green living, about replicating Climate Witness at a larger scale.

Vermont Climate Witness had originally planned its public launch for January 31 to coincide with Focus the Nation, a national teach-in, but Finnegan says his team concluded the site wasn’t ready yet. Instead they seized the opportunity to share the Beta version with the 27 schools and other organizations participating in the event around the state. The site will also do heavy promotion at March 4 Town Meeting Day gatherings around Vermont in partnership with community energy and climate groups. They are also considering touring libraries and community centers around the state to publicly launch the site this spring.

Can I get a Witness?

November 2007

Vermont Climate Witness is gearing up for a soft launch of the site in late November, 2007. The site will encourage Vermonters to think globally, but act locally, by documenting the impact of climate change on their lives and immediate environment. The site introduction reads:

“We all know what Global Warming is. We hear it on the radio, see it on the television, and read about it in the news. Whatever the myths and truths surrounding Global Warming: its causes, its consequences, or possible solutions, ignoring the topic is no longer an option for any conscious individual. This Web site aims to create a unique regional perspective of our climate. By sharing observations seen where you live, we can together build a strong regional view of some rather drastic changes.“

Through summer, the Vermont Climate Witness project has been hard at work preparing the digital soil for the new site. Key partners in the project are Legitify, a media firm that specializes in Web development and content management, and the Vermont Natural Resources Council, the state’s leading environmental organization. Project leader Bill Finnegan of Tamarack Productions says, “We are confident we can create a powerful platform for citizen science and citizen journalism with an active community of users and contributors.“

Over the past few months, they have been working to adapt Legitify’s “Studio” Web application for a Web site driven by user-generated, multi-media content. They have refined the interface and the interactive map, which Finnegan says “must be intuitively organized to fully engage users ... In many ways it’s been a reality check in terms of the time it takes to develop a complicated software application that is user-friendly.“

A local graphic designer has developed a logo and design for the Web site, including icons that will indicate the different types of content available through the site’s embedded Google Maps: weather conditions, plants/foliage, wildlife/hunting/fishing, farming/sugaring, outdoor recreation/skiing, and climate action.

The project has reached out to a slew of climate experts to advise and participate:

Lesley-Ann L. Dupigny-Giroux, the Vermont State Climatologist and a Professor in the Geography Department at the University of Vermont.
Mark Breen, Senior Meteorologist at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium and Host of Vermont Public Radio’s “Eye on the Sky” weather programming.
Tom Messner, Chief Meteorologist of WPTZ NewsChannel 5 and the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center.
Alexander Quarles van Ufford, Coordinator of the Climate Witness Initiative at WWF International.

During the soft launch phase, the Vermont Natural Resources Council will link to the site and help recruit 50 contributors already interested in climate change, from student activists involved in the Step it Up climate action protests to energy commission members from small towns. “This first set of users will upload seed content while testing the software,“ says Finnegan. He expects these pioneering participants to ultimately become active contributors and an important network for promoting the site.

“In an effort to get beyond those already interested in this issue, or who represent a particular perspective, we plan to involve weather buffs from the National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Program, as well as Vermont celebrities, such as artists musicians and business leaders.“

The public launch is slated for January when Finnegan says the site will be fully tested, chock-full of rich multimedia content, and buzzing with activity from a co-hort of contributors. The launch date is planned to coincide with and ride the promotional coattails of a national teach-in on global warming called Focus the Nation, on Jan. 31, 2008.

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