Come join us to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day with Sustainble Alachua County and Sustainable UF at the Hippodrome this Thursday evening!   We will be hosting a reception to honor those who have dedicated thier time and energy to sustainability in our community from 5:30-7pm, and Earth Days the movie will be showing at 7:30 and 9pm.

Food courtesy of The Jones will also be provided.  Cash Bar.

-Michael Amish
SAC Board President

Review the year and brainstorm 2010 strategies for creating a more sustainable future with Sustainable Alachua County, while enjoying networking and beverages. Event is organized in cooperation with Green Drinks and all proceeds will be donated to the Gainesville Environmental Film & Art Festival happening March 19^th-28^th. Please join us for this follow-up session to the 2009 Stakeholder Meeting. Action starts with ideas and ideas start with people!

RSVP michaelamish@gmail.com or visit SAC online at http://sustainablealachua.org for more information and updates.

I’d say that one of the most exciting developments is this website itself. We are still just learning the ropes and capabilities of the site, working on getting members of the community signed on, and smoothing out the technical bumps, but we know how incredibly amazing the powers of communication can be. This site allows us to share our ideas and visions, collaborate, and support each other in our efforts to build a more sustainable community on a daily basis.

During our most recent Board Meeting, we board members had an opportunity to look back at our efforts over the course of the year and to begin strategizing for what’s upcoming. We were able to discuss our successes and our shortcomings. Most of our success has been in the facilitation of collaborative efforts and so we talked about how important it is to continue to bring people together – so that we can help to make connections, and strengthen the intricate web that binds us as a community.

We’ve got the Food Working Group which has come together, quite organically, over the course of the last many months. This group is made up of a variety of individuals and organizations, independent businesses, farmers, gardeners, advocates and policy makers. We meet roughly once a month to provide updates on current projects that fall under the general topic of local food issues, to brainstorm ways in which we can work more collaboratively, and to work cooperatively to build a more robust local food system. Since this group has formed, we’ve been witness to the beginnings of fruitful collaborations. Most recently, we’ve seen the development of a local community kitchen initiative and the receipt of a grant for a Buy Local Food Campaign. We hope that we’ll see more of these working groups emerge this year.

And we have lots of exciting, inspiring events to look forward to. We are planning a Sustainability Summit sometime in February and are hoping to be involved in Earth Day events with the Office of Sustainabilty at the University of Florida. We also hope to contribute to the Florida Food Summit in mid-April. More on all these things later…

We sincerely hope to continue to translate the collective wants and needs we have for a more sustainable community into action. But we need your help! Take the time to contact us and get involved.

Liz N.

1. CREATE A GROUP! If you haven’t created a group for your organization, agency, business, institute, neighborhood, or club yet, please go ahead and create it. If you notice that groups are missing from the site, please send them on over. Groups don’t have to be “official” in any way — you can create a group to network about any topic of interest, from bird watching to pizza making. Groups can even be “private” if you want to communicate with a limited number of folks on some issue — you’ll just have to let them know where to find the private group.

2. INVITE PEOPLE TO JOIN YOUR GROUP. You can invite any site members to join your group. You should also reach out to your real-world friends or members and get them to come over and join the site and group. When a person becomes an individual member of the site (free), they can join any groups that grab their interest.

3. USE YOUR GROUP WIRE to generate buzz and communicate with group members. Every time you post a news or “wire” item in your group space, all of the members can be notified. You could use this area for weekly updates, monthly news, volunteer requests, or group discussions. Group members can post replies for discussion topics.

4. POST GROUP EVENTS to the main calendar. (Click on “Create an Event” when you first log in.) Your events will then be listed and visible for everyone who visits the site to see. You can also set up private events. Remember to post event reminders and updates in your group news section, so members of your group get alerted to event changes or needs.

You can see that there are many ways to use the GROUPS feature on SAC’s website. These hints should help you maximize attention to your events, discussions, and volunteer needs. Make sure to invite your friends and contacts to come on over and join SAC’s site — we are getting a nice critical mass going here and we want to keep the energy flowing!

Susan Marynowski, for the entire SAC Board

If you are new to this kind of social network, all you need to do is sign up. Then you can login to browse the groups and events and post
messages. Go here to sign up.

If you are looking for the full events calendar, just click on Events to view the calendar. If you are interested in food or energy issues, browse in the Groups to find ones that you are interested in.

If you represent a group, sign up first as an individual, then you will be able to create a group page for your organization.

If you feel that a group is missing, if you have trouble with site features, or if you find inappropriate content on the website, please
contact us right away with your feedback by leaving a comment here.

We will continue to update the site as new features become available.

I want to send out a round of applause to Chris Cano and John Casey for site concept, and to Chris for building the site. You can see some other websites that Chris has built on his website.

Mainly, we hope you will participate, because your participation is what will make this sustainability hub work for the entire community. If you think that the site looks a bit empty for starters, that’s because YOU need to provide part of the content of this site…and YOU are a part of creating a more sustainable Alachua County and North Florida community.

Enjoy!

For the entire SAC Board,
Susan Marynowski

Problems that have been reported:

1. Image cropping is problematic for some users
2. Links throughout the site sometimes resolve incorrectly – i.e. www.website.com resolves as http://sustainablealachua.org/www.website.com - reported by nwtaylor
3. In events area, cannot view events beyond current month – reported by Sally

We will continue to improve the site and would greatly benefit from your input.

Please become a member and comment on this post to tell us what you think!