This is my inaugural National Digital Media Day ’08 post, and by the time you read it, Rebecca and I have already finished breakfast in Surrey. As I wanted to write all my blog entries with the theme of “mixing digital media and sustainability”, I think the first post should ask the question – just how miscible are these two?

Given my recent (2008) increase in readership and rise in the Technorati rankings, for a while there, I gave serious thought to the possibility of getting a job in the social media and sustainability realm. I know that Dave Olson‘s hard work with HappyFrog has been very fruitful. I understand that both Rob Cottingham and Alexandra Samuel do some work with firms in the sustainability realm. I have heard of the work of Communicopia, and of some work that Darren Barefoot has done with DeSmogBlog and IKEA Canada. Joe Solomon works on some of these projects (social change and Web 2.0)

But the thing is, I have found that job market kind of hard to crack. I told this to Rebecca, Tanya and Monica. Truth is, geeky as I’ve become, I’m not a full-fledged developer/programmer, so I am not sure I can get a job there. However, I am very much now an analyst of the way in which environmental organizations and government agencies are working to reach to the communities (and in some cases, not very impressed with the results!)

For example, the Take the Tap Water Pledge. This would be a wonderful tool to reach to communities, if Metro Vancouver knew how to use Web 2.0. Given my research background on water, I would be (I think) in a good position to help design this type of campaign. I think sustainability and digital media can be friends, it’s just a matter of finding the right person for the job. Someone who can speak both languages fluently (either knowledge translator or inter-mediator).

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This post was written as a free contribution to National Digital Media Day ’08.
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Related posts:

1. Digital media and sustainability: Friends or foes? – NDMD ’08
2. Digital media content creation – impromptu meetups :) – NDMD ’08
3. More celebrations of National Digital Media Day ’08 – NDMD ’08

Rebecca kindly invited me to join her through her tour (and live-blog) of Metro Vancouver celebrating National Digital Media Day (September 25th, 2008) which is tomorrow. We’ll be liveblogging and visiting several municipalities along the way. I really value these kinds of “day trips”, and it’s actually the realization of something we had talked about a long while ago – going on a Metro-Vancouver-wide day trip.

So, we’ll be starting at 9:00am with breakfast in Surrey, then we’ll head throughout the Metro Vancouver area, I think we’re hitting Salt Tasting Room at 1pm for lunch with Anthony Nicalo of Farmstead Wines who has kindly agreed to sponsor drinks, and then another destination before Rebecca drops me off for my 7:00pm appointment with the Vancouver Bloggers Meetup at Isabella’s house.

There will be wi-fi and a potluck at Isabella’s and most certainly, a number of bloggers. Then on Friday it’s the BarCamp Vancouver 2008 party and on Saturday, the event itself. And on Sunday, I plan to take a Raul day and not blog at all. Hope you all enjoy our liveblogs tomorrow. Be sure to check Rebecca’s posts and mine as both will be tagged/categorized “ndmd08″. Furthermore, I will be blogging about environmental issues in Vancouver throughout the day, so feel free to drop suggestions and comments.

Related posts:

1. Vancouver Bloggers Meetup for July 2008 – What a success!
2. Recap of Vancouver Bloggers Meetup Nov 2008
3. Vancouver Bloggers Meetup November 2008 coming up!