Podcast appearances and mentions of gerry mcgovern

Gerry McGovern chats to Pat Treacy on CRKC about the KK Lions Club GAA Photographic Exhibition 21.11.2024

We are delighted to bring you a conversation on the environmental impacts of technology with web designer and digital consultant Gerry McGovern. Daithí and Gerry have a wide-ranging talk about topics such as e-waste and the challenges of recycling most phones and laptops; how to lengthen the life of your devices; the embedded water and material impacts of devices and the huge demand for mining of metals that they create; the amount of unnecessary data that is created every year and the energy required to store it; how you can employ simple strategies to use less data; how to make your website use less energy; the large energy requirements of Artificial Intelligence; how Gerry is heartened by the Right to Repair movement and the potential of community activism to drive change. Music in this episode comes from Samuel Arnold Keane. Links: 1. Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/world-wide-waste/                 2. Gerry's Podcast 'World Wide Waste' - https://www.thisishcd.com/podcast-category/world-wide-waste-with-gerry-mcgovern                                          3. e-waste toxicity in landfill - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352186421006970#:~:text=1%20(Chen%20et%20al.%2C,70%25%20in%20terms%20of%20toxicity.                               4. Statistics on lifecycle carbon emissions of a phone - https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/your-phone-really-smart#:~:text=Yet%2C%20around%2080%20per%20cent,the%20lifespan%20of%20devices%20shrinks   5. Rare earth metals present in phones - https://www.acs.org/education/chemmatters/past-issues/archive-2014-2015/smartphones.html#:~:text=Scandium%20and%20yttrium%20are%20included,the%2017%20rare%20earth%20metals.                                                                                        6. Recycling Rate of e-waste - https://unitar.org/about/news-stories/press/global-e-waste-monitor-2024-electronic-waste-rising-five-times-faster-documented-e-waste-recycling                                   7. Fairphone - https://www.fairphone.com/nl                    8. Energy demand of any website - https://www.websitecarbon.com/                                               9. Data centre energy use in Ireland 2023 - https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/datacentresmeteredelectricityconsumption2023/keyfindings/#:~:text=The%20percentage%20of%20total%20metered%20electricity%20consumption%20accounted%20for%20by,10%25%20(See%20Infographic).                                                      10. Google's plans to build data centre in Uruguay - https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/aug/01/uruguay-anger-environmental-cost-google-datacentre-carbon-emissions-toxic-waste-water                                               11. Lifecycle emissions comparison of EV vs Internal Combustion Engine car - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/life-cycle-emissions-evs-vs-combustion-engine-vehicles/                                  12. Projection for growth in material extraction demand to 2050 https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/foresight/topic/aggravating-resource-scarcity/raw-materials-non-renewable-resources_en                           13. 10x more energy required for AI search compared to traditional search engines - https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/6b2fd954-2017-408e-bf08-952fdd62118a/Electricity2024-Analysisandforecastto2026.pdf                                          14. Electricity consumption from data centres, AI and the cryptocurrency sector could double by 2026 - https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-2024/executive-summary                                                                                   15. Right to Repair Directive - https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240419IPR20590/right-to-repair-making-repair-easier-and-more-appealing-to-consumers 16. Samuel Arnold Keane - https://www.instagram.com/samyelyel/

We can try our best, but its not always easy knowing what's best for the environment. The world is complicated, and it isn't as simple as reduce, reuse, recycle—though that's a great place to start!In the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, "It's not easy bein' green."We have two stories exploring that theme. The first is one we made in-house asking just how green our digital world really is, and the second comes from the Simply Science podcast exploring the world of urban forests.

Hardly a day goes by now without a news article circulating telling us of the boundless benefits of the next phase of AI and how we must all hurry to adapt. There's little time to think about the pros and cons – the mainstream narrative is get on board or get left behind. But what's at stake? What are the downsides? Activist Gerry McGovern is hugely concerned. And rightly so. The environmental footprint of next generation technology is barely mentioned. Author of World Wide Waste, Gerry has committed to sharing the true cost of AI as far and wide as he can. In this episode, Cat, Jen and Dom chat with Gerry to learn about the carbon impact of all-digital and uncover what internal communicators can do to educate, inform and help their organisations reduce their carbon emissions.   Takeaways Recognize the absence of bicycles in advertising and the prevalence of artificial bicycles for indoor use. Shift from propaganda to realism in order to make meaningful changes. Ask harder questions and work towards changing behaviors and mindsets. Slow down and recognize that humans were not designed for the fast-paced lifestyle we currently lead.   About Gerry McGovern Gerry has published eight books on digital content and data. In 1996, the Irish government published his report, ‘Ireland, The Digital Age, The Internet.' That same year, The European Union awarded Nua, a company he co-founded, its Best Overall WWW Business Achievement Award. Gerry's latest book, World Wide Waste, examines the impact data waste and e-waste are having on the environment and what to do about it. Gerry also developed Top Tasks, a research method used by hundreds of organizations to help identify what truly matters. The Irish Times has described Gerry as one of five visionaries who have had a major impact on the development of the Web.  www.gerrymcgovern.com gerry@gerrymcgovern.com @gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green    

Are you overlooking a major yet often overlooked contributor to climate change through your digital content creation and strategies? Are you unintentionally contributing to the planet's digital carbon footprint? As CME/CE content creators and strategists, we likely don't consider the climate impacts of our websites, documents, videos, and other digital materials. However, all that data requires substantial energy to power the creation, storage, and transfer of bytes, which generates carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. In this eye-opening episode, Alisa Bonsignore, a content strategy and sustainable content expert, reveals the surprising truth about the environmental impact of our digital world. Whether it's the websites we browse, the videos we stream, or the documents we store, our online habits are not as harmless as they seem.  For CME medical writers and content creators, understanding this connection is vital in making informed decisions that align with environmental sustainability. In today's episode, you'll: Gain insights into how digital content, including websites and emails, contributes to carbon emissions. Learn practical strategies like streamlining and removing unnecessary pages to create more sustainable and climate-friendly content. Understand how to balance visual impact with environmental responsibility when creating graphics, video and other visual media, and in doing so, you'll enhance the effectiveness of your digital presence. Appreciate the rationale for encouraging practices like video-off meetings and transitioning from video to audio or text formats. Tune in to hear digital sustainability expert Alisa Bonsignore explain how education content creators like you can reduce their climate impacts through smarter governance of bytes and pixels. Connect with Alisa LinkedIn Visit Clarifying Complex Ideas for more on sustainable content strategies. Resources Read Alisa's article on calculating emissions from digital content. Learn more about the Content Design Manifesto. Check out Gerry McGovern's book Worldwide Waste on the impacts of devices. Podcast recommendation: Health Literacy Out Loud Time Stamps (04:40) - Introducing Alisa (07:36) - The connection between data, energy, and carbon emissions (09:29) - How writers can think about the implications daily (12:19) - Her entry point into user experience and how it's important in the work that she does (15:39) - Where to go for up-to-date information about how to think about data and digital imprint (18:46) - How recommendations about reducing digital imprint work when working with clients (21:30) - Her recommendations on messaging and communication for freelancers in the content creator economy (28:21) - Some of the metrics to think about as we consider sustainability or digital sustainability (30:06) - Places to go to find out more about the metrics and resources to raise with clients or employers (31:48) - What the Content Design Manifesto is and involves (35:37) - Alisa's final thoughts for those who are noodling around the issue of digital imprint Transcript Subscribe to the Write Medicine podcast! Don't forget to subscribe to the Write Medicine podcast for more valuable insights on continuing medical education content for health professionals. Click the Follow button and subscribe on your favorite platform.

‘Save the paper!' is something we hear so often, but every email, every website loaded and attachment sent, has a carbon footprint. This waste is often tucked away in data centres and thus out of sight, out of mind. Gerry McGovern has been working with the internet since the 90s and is here to remind us that digital is very much physical. From waste produced by our electronic goods to what needs to change systemically to reduce our data use, Gerry is an absolute wealth of knowledge. Make sure to get a copy of his latest book World Wide Waste, or check out his podcast of the same name.[02:00] Gerry introduces himself[04:30] E-waste and data waste explained[09:30] Why tech devices are not made to be recycled[17:00] How companies and groups can stop contributing to child labour and e-waste[21:00] What's the story with data centres?[29:30] Measures we can take to reduce our data use and energy consumption[34:25] When Ceara met a group of data centre staff from Meta.[41:00] Ireland as a mining friendly countryAlso mentioned:Right to RepairYes to Life, No to MiningFairphone eco-friendly modular phone companyFramework – modular design computerCAIM Anti mining groupAs always, don't forget to follow Book of Leaves on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, leave us a review, and share with a friend xPatreon / Buy Me A Coffee Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joey Montagna and Jay Clark delve into a preview of what this year looks like for the Saints, Sydney, Dogs and Eagles! ------

 In this episode of For Tech's Sake, we dive into the landfill of digital waste to turn up some nuggets of information we hope you'll re-use. Tech waste involves more than just devices getting dumped, too. We also lose the precious and finite materials these devices contain. And, though it's not apparent to us, our digital detritus of messages, selfies and endless streams of data has a physical footprint. To understand more, we spoke to Gerry McGovern, author of World Wide Waste and host of the podcast of the same name. You can follow Gerry on Mastodon at @gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green. We've also included a link his previous interview with Jenny on SiliconRepublic.com, as well as some other links listeners might find useful. https://gerrymcgovern.com/ Silicon Republic interview: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/gerry-mcgovern-digital-pollution-e-waste World Wide Waste podcast episode with Josh Lepawsky: https://www.thisishcd.com/episode/josh-lepawsky-pernicious-myth-of-digital-as-ethereal Dublin's Tog Hackerspace, which sometimes hosts a Repair Café: https://www.tog.ie/ Ireland's repair and reuse directory: http://www.repairmystuff.ie/ This episode of For Tech's Sake was hosted by Elaine Burke and Jenny Darmody, and brought to you by Silicon Republic and The HeadStuff Podcast Network. Thank you to Megan Fox for production, Matt Mahon and Dall-E for our graphics, Claudia Grandez for her social media support, and all at the HeadStuff team. If you want to support The HeadStuff Podcast Network, for our sake, for tech's sake and for many more great podcasts, visit HeadStuffPodcasts.com. And follow us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonny has been to see the Polestar 3 and Richard thinks no one will buy the M3 Touring. Also in this episode, hitting the vitamin C supplements, NASCAR driver Richard Pictures, a German Liam Neeson disguised as a Swede, a big American locomotive having a baby, the urge to drive into an arrester bed, how to save F1 money on safety features, the under-rated Jaguar I-Pace, Gerry McGovern doubling for Brian May, seeing Tesla drivers' trousers, cat friendly holidays, taking a tortoise to an Airbnb, a trip to the Trafford Centre, mirroring someone's accent, the chance to put a back seat in a 911 GT3 Touring, accidentally mis-naming the Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo, thoughts on the VW Arteon Shooting Brake PHEV, 20 years since the start of 'new' Top Gear, and Jonny's doing a school careers talk.patreon.com/smithandsniff Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Talking Drupal #348 - A Website's Carbon Footprint Today we are talking about A Website's Carbon Footprint with Gerry McGovern. www.talkingDrupal.com/348 Topics Earth day What is a carbon footprint How do websites contribute How can you calculate your site's impact Cloud vs dedicated hosting How do you determine a vendor's impact Small sites VS FAANG How to improve your site Resources World Wide Waste podcast Chats with Gerry McGovern and guests about digital sustainability and Earth Experience Design Book How is your website impacting the planet? How green is your site? Sustainable Design Tom Greenwood: Sustainable Web Design Make greener design choices for better experiences and a healthier planet. https://abookapart.com/products/sustainable-web-design Macarthur foundation Circular Economy Guests Gerry McGovern - gerrymcgovern.com @gerrymcgovern Hosts Nic Laflin - www.nLighteneddevelopment.com @nicxvan John Picozzi - www.epam.com @johnpicozzi Mike Herchel - herchel.com - @mikeherchel MOTW Config Pages At some point I was tired of creating custom pages using menu and form API, writing tons of code just to have a page with an ugly form where a client can enter some settings, and as soon as a client wants to add some interactions to the page (drag&drop, ajax etc) things starts to get hairy. The same story was with the creation of dedicated CT just to theme a single page (like homepage) and explaining why you can only have 1 node of this type, or force it programmatically.

Jonny's been to the Autocar awards and Richard is obsessed with GR86 numbers. Also in this episode, the canals and moveable buildings of Silverstone, the joy of unusual Eurospecs, Gerry McGovern saying 'luxury' too much, car designers buying their own designs, the problem with metallic black, VW bringing the Scout back, Max Power number plate movements, re-inventing the Scimitar GTE, why Jonny doesn't like air-con, future classics, the Kia Stinger, the Corvette C8, Monaco versus VXR8, the new Range Rover Spowaaahhtaaaaaagh, and information about Martha and the Muffins. Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hannah is a freelance WordPress developer from Bristol with a background in Computer Science. Before freelance life, amongst other things, she honed her management skills at the Environment Agency, where she managed large business change projects. She's co-founder of Green Tech South West and is on a mission to raise awareness about the environmental impact of digital tech - checkout #LetsGreenTheWeb on Twitter. She also likes dogs, plants and snow. World Wide Waste book / https://gerrymcgovern.com/world-wide-waste/ Gerry McGovern on Twitter / https://twitter.com/gerrymcgovern See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hannah is a freelance WordPress developer from Bristol with a background in Computer Science. Before freelance life, amongst other things, she honed her management skills at the Environment Agency, where she managed large business change projects. She's co-founder of Green Tech South West and is on a mission to raise awareness about the environmental impact of digital tech - checkout #LetsGreenTheWeb on Twitter. She also likes dogs, plants and snow. World Wide Waste book / https://gerrymcgovern.com/world-wide-waste/ Gerry McGovern on Twitter / https://twitter.com/gerrymcgovern See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

'Earth Experience Design' course with Gerry McGovern Date: February 19 2022 Where: Online Tickets: https://www.thisisdoing.com/courses/earth-experience-design-january-2022  About this episode Is technology a good thing? That was my first question I asked Dr Sharon Richardson, who is a senior scientist and lecturer in geocomputation at the University of Zurich, where she applies data-intensive methods to improve understanding of and assist in human, societal and environmental challenges. Sharon also has a keen interest in exploring the potential and limits of AI in real-world decisions. World Wide Waste book / https://gerrymcgovern.com/world-wide-waste/ Gerry McGovern on Twitter / https://twitter.com/gerrymcgovern See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

'Earth Experience Design' course with Gerry McGovern Date: February 19 2022 Where: Online Tickets: https://www.thisisdoing.com/courses/earth-experience-design-january-2022  About this episode Is technology a good thing? That was my first question I asked Dr Sharon Richardson, who is a senior scientist and lecturer in geocomputation at the University of Zurich, where she applies data-intensive methods to improve understanding of and assist in human, societal and environmental challenges. Sharon also has a keen interest in exploring the potential and limits of AI in real-world decisions. World Wide Waste book / https://gerrymcgovern.com/world-wide-waste/ Gerry McGovern on Twitter / https://twitter.com/gerrymcgovern See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Caroline Whyte and Seán Ó Conláin speak with Gerry McGovern, who is a specialist in identifying and reducing digital waste and the author of the book 'World Wide Waste: how digital is killing our planet and what we can do with it'. Gerry has written eight books about digital design and has appeared on numerous media including the BBC and CNN. The Irish Times has described Gerry as one of five visionaries who have had a major impact on the development of the Web. Among topics discussed are the astounding difference in data use between a landline audio call and an online video call and the connection between digital waste, the concentration of power and poor working conditions.

Welcome to the Doing Design podcast on This is HCD. Hosted by all the the worlds best live design and innovation trainers at This is Doing.com - For regular listeners you’ll know what we do at This is Doing - home of many of the world’s best trainers in the spaces of Design Research, Service Design, UX and more. In this episode I speak with the brilliant Gerry McGovern about the story behind his exciting and very much needed course Earth Experience Design - we answer some community based questions about this topic as well as talk about the disassociation of behaviours that persist within the creators of online products and tools. https://www.thisisdoing.com/courses/earth-experience-design-january-2022 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to the Doing Design podcast on This is HCD. Hosted by all the the worlds best live design and innovation trainers at This is Doing.com -  For regular listeners you'll know what we do at This is Doing - home of many of the world's best trainers in the spaces of Design Research, Service Design, UX and more. In this episode I speak with the brilliant Gerry McGovern about the story behind his exciting and very much needed course Earth Experience Design - we answer some community based questions about this topic as well as talk about the disassociation of behaviours that persist within the creators of online products and tools.  https://www.thisisdoing.com/courses/earth-experience-design-january-2022 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Earth Experience Design - Online training Course with Gerry - Jan 19 2022  https://www.thisisdoing.com/courses/earth-experience-design-january-2022 About this episode Some people live their ideas. Katie Singer is one of them. She writes about the energy, extraction, toxic waste and greenhouse gases involved in manufacturing computers, telecom infrastructure, electric vehicles and other electronic technologies. Train with Gerry / https://www.thisisdoing.com/team/gerry-mcgovern Join the TiHCD Slack Community / https://www.thisishcd.com/community/slack-community Watch ''Top Tasks for Service Transformation' with Gerry McGovern & Ulla Devitt' / https://www.thisishcd.com/event-videos/top-tasks-for-service-transformation-with-gerry-mcgovern-ulla-devitt Gerry McGovern on Twitter / https://twitter.com/gerrymcgovern Download this episode: https://pdcn.co/e/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/bd8f5f93-c141-4567-92cc-a88801879d3f/ddca0573-ea81-4334-ad22-a88c017c8a99/35dfe9c4-010c-485b-9fcf-adf70092b521/audio.mp3?t=1638867356&skipAds=true See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Earth Experience Design - Online training Course with Gerry - Jan 19 2022  https://www.thisisdoing.com/courses/earth-experience-design-january-2022 About this episode Some people live their ideas. Katie Singer is one of them. She writes about the energy, extraction, toxic waste and greenhouse gases involved in manufacturing computers, telecom infrastructure, electric vehicles and other electronic technologies. Train with Gerry / https://www.thisisdoing.com/team/gerry-mcgovern Join the TiHCD Slack Community / https://www.thisishcd.com/community/slack-community Watch ''Top Tasks for Service Transformation' with Gerry McGovern & Ulla Devitt' / https://www.thisishcd.com/event-videos/top-tasks-for-service-transformation-with-gerry-mcgovern-ulla-devitt Gerry McGovern on Twitter / https://twitter.com/gerrymcgovern Download this episode: https://pdcn.co/e/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/bd8f5f93-c141-4567-92cc-a88801879d3f/ddca0573-ea81-4334-ad22-a88c017c8a99/35dfe9c4-010c-485b-9fcf-adf70092b521/audio.mp3?t=1638867356&skipAds=true See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Key links Sign up to our newsletter: https://www.thisishcd.com/community/stay-up-to-date-with-this-is-hcd This is HCD / Ireland event with Gerry McGovern and Ulla Devitt on November 11 - https://www.meetup.com/thisishcd-ireland-chapter/ This is HCD / Sydney event with Luke Craven on November 17 - https://www.meetup.com/this-is-HCD-sydney/events/280736773/ Join the Slack HCD Group: https://www.thisishcd.com/community/slack-community Transcript Hey folks and welcome to another episode of Global Voices the podcast dedicated to the wonderful chapters of This is HCD around the world. Today on the show we have a few things to chat about. So, there's been some updates from chapters, and we have an event happening this coming week in Ireland, and will be hearing from Sarah, our brilliant chapter Lead shortly. We will also include the event in Australia on November 17 again with Ines and Luke Craven which is a brilliant event - and replay the message from the last episode First up. Slack Channel We had a few teething issues around self-on boarding  to the Slack channel over the last week and that has been resolved now (hopefully)! As we move away from Meetup on Jan 1, we want to create more community level conversation within our Slack. A few people asked why we are leaving Meetup. Well there are a few reasons - I will cover off.   In my option, Meetup is a bad system for Community leaders to host with. The system itself is really clunky, poorly designed, and they never want you to leave. In fact once my credit card didn't go through, around the time I was leaving Australia. Without knowing this, they offered one of the communities to the first person on the list. Who could have taken the community that I had been paying for and I would have lost it. Meetup didn't care about this as this was their process. So you can't really LEAVE or close the community They do nothing to encourage community interaction. All it is is a database with people. We want to do more in this space, and Meetup is not the right place for us to do this. We have a Pro Level Mailchimp account, and Slack channel and figure we can do this better - with a little more work. So hope people will move over and follow us off Meetup. It might not be perfect, but it gets us closer than working with Meetup Back in the day, when I was a musician and working for Myspace - I saw businesses pour millions and millions of dollars into their Myspace communities. I saw bands and musicians delete their websites and replay the narrative that you don't need a website anymore, myspace does it all and better. This was probably true at the time for some. But what happened when a big corporate like News bought the website, and ran it into the ground? All that effort of building communities just floated away. I don't want that for the This is HCD Community system. We would rather own and have better control how we work, and use platforms that are agnostic. So going back to Slack - in the show notes now, you can join up. Join one of the channels in your timezone, like UK, Ireland, Sydney, Berlin, Melbourne, Cameroon etc. If you know of other people in your area who might be interested, invite them along too. We want to create a two level community - at a Global Level and at a Community level.  Melbourne event happening soon too - and will have more in the next episode   UK event In other news, we are edging closer to our first event in This is HCD UK. Be first in line by signing up to our newsletter (link in the show notes) Ireland Let's listen to the event in Ireland happening this week It's with the one and only, Gerry McGovern, host of World Wide Waste Podcast and creator of the wonderful Top Tasks method - Gerry works with us at This is Doing too and recently spoke at the last Doing Design Festival in June with Ulla Devitt from Ireland Health Department (HSE) - it was one of the highlights of the day and we are excited for them to give a talk at This is HCD Ireland Sydney - November 17th  Let's take a listen to Inez in Sydney about the upcoming event with Luke Craven. So that's all for this episode - if you have any questions, please hit me up on Slack @gerry - or via email if you're not part of the community at gerry@thisishcd.com Chat to you all soon See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If someone looked inside your computer or your Cloud account would they find a tidy, clean, well-maintained place? Or would they find a messy, chaotic dump. Imagine if old, waste content smelled. How smelly would your computer be?   Anneli Ohvril is founder and CEO of Let's Do It World, the international environmental organisation that engages leaders and organisations around the globe for a waste-free world. The biggest project World Cleanup Day have engaged in involved more than 50 million people from 180 countries.   Anneli is an expert in social change and excels in communication and marketing. She is an initiator of numerous social changes locally and globally. Read Gerry's brilliant book 'World Wide Waste' https://gerrymcgovern.com/world-wide-waste/ Gerry McGovern on Twitter https://twitter.com/gerrymcgovern Train with Gerry on This is Doing / Top Tasks https://www.thisisdoing.com/courses/top-tasks-identification-september-2021 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If someone looked inside your computer or your Cloud account would they find a tidy, clean, well-maintained place? Or would they find a messy, chaotic dump. Imagine if old, waste content smelled. How smelly would your computer be?   Anneli Ohvril is founder and CEO of Let's Do It World, the international environmental organisation that engages leaders and organisations around the globe for a waste-free world. The biggest project World Cleanup Day have engaged in involved more than 50 million people from 180 countries.   Anneli is an expert in social change and excels in communication and marketing. She is an initiator of numerous social changes locally and globally. Read Gerry's brilliant book 'World Wide Waste' https://gerrymcgovern.com/world-wide-waste/ Gerry McGovern on Twitter https://twitter.com/gerrymcgovern Train with Gerry on This is Doing / Top Tasks https://www.thisisdoing.com/courses/top-tasks-identification-september-2021 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Technology has been growing at a rapid speed, and the consequences are becoming apparent. There's more to this industry than just innovation. Our guest today exposes the dark side of digitalization you don't readily see. Gerry McGovern talks about the effects of the digital world on the environment and the steps we can still take to stop it. As an applauded visionary against climate change, Gerry's latest book, World Wide Waste, elaborates on the environmental impact of technology. He's widely known for Top Tasks, a research method he developed to identify what truly matters to people. Prepare to be challenged as he shares ideas and resources on how you can make a difference. Tune in today! The show notes, including the transcript and checklist to this episode, are at marketingspeak.com/303.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find Scott Goodman:Scott Goodman - Email: scott.goodman@okendo.ioWhere to find Rachel Tyers:Rachel Tyers - Email: rachel.tyers@okendo.ioWhere to find Okendo:Okendo - WebsiteOkendo - MindfulCommerce directory listing Where to find Lucy Roberts:Lucy Roberts - Email: lucy@bravetheskies.comWhere to find Brave the Skies:Brave the Skies - WebsiteWhere to find Reverie the Boutique:Reverie - WebsiteReverie - InstagramLinks Mentioned in Episode:Urth (formerly Gobe)Activated EcoFinisterreWAGWanderer BraceletsFoursixtySpellRixoLSKD (Loose Kid)KlaviyoHerbivoreGorgias - Shopify AppFashion Impact - Shopify AppShownotes:Krissie Leyland  0:00  Hello, and welcome to The MindfulCommerce Podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands and service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. I'm Krissie. Rich Bunker  0:11  And I'm Rich, and we're your hosts. This podcast is an extension of the MindfulCommerce Community.Krissie Leyland  0:18  The MindfulCommerce Community is a safe place for ecommerce brands and experts to connect, collaborate and explore opportunities to work together to unleash the power of ecommerce as a force for good.Rich Bunker  0:30  You can join by going to mindfulcommerce.io and by clicking 'Community'. See you there!Krissie Leyland  0:36  Hello, and welcome to a brand new series of The MindfulCommerce Podcast! So this is going to be slightly different. We are re-uploading or uploading events that we have done in the community. And today, this is an event we did in January-so the beginning of this year: 2021-with Okendo, which is a customer review app for Shopify stores, and Brave the Skies & Reverie The Boutique. So we spoke to Scott, just to get a little intro into what how Okendo came about. And if you would like to hear more information about Reverie The Boutique, Lucy's brand and Brave the Skies, which is a Shopify Plus agency that she is MD for, then you can head to episode number four. There, we talk about the intersection between ecommerce and sustainability. Anyway, let's get to the event then. So this is all about how online stores can create better connections with their customers. We talk about user generated content, influencer marketing, reviews, obviously with Okendo and email marketing as well and how you can combine all of those together to create the perfect strategy to connect with your customers on another level. In particular, we talk about this from a perspective of a small brand with not such a big budget. So hopefully, this will really help you to create your new strategy for the year going forward. Yeah, so we hope you enjoy. If you like it, please subscribe. Join the community so that you can be aware of these events and join them as they are actually happening live and you can ask your own questions! So let's now go and speak to Scott:Scott Goodman  2:43  Hey, guys, so I'm Scott, I'm Okendo's, APAC and EU/UK market lead. I've been tasked to kind of give you some background into Okendo's fruition. What's our story? How did we come about? So Okendo is a Sydney-founded tech startup. The idea or concept that started the journey was actually to do video reviews. Now obviously, we have evolved a lot since that concept. But at that time, text reviews was the standard, there was nothing else. So we saw an avenue to do video reviews. And now you know, we're in 2021 and we do text, we do video, we do photos, we do q&a and we integrate with a wealth of different Shopify partner partners out there, cross loyalty, email, subscription, those types of things.So we now services over 3000 customers for Shopify plus partner. And we have some of the world's biggest brands on our on our platform, so it's a super exciting time. We, strength to strength, growth to growth, milestone to milestone: everything changes every day. But with all these positive changes, we do need to be wary of the effect that we're having on the earth. So we need to support sustainable culture, support sustainable brands and we are definitely seeing a very, very positive trend of this with merchants using Okendo. We have some amazing brands who very much pioneered this and we're very happy to support them.So I've been tasked to kind of speak to two different tips on how sustainable brands can use Okendo and facilitate that review capture. So the first one is actually a fantastic initiative, which a brand called Urth (formerly Gobe) is Australian camera gear manufacturer. What they do is: they run loyalty line. Basically, with every review that they capture, you get loyalty points. And then what they were doing is they would assign X amount of loyalty points equals planting three trees. So for every review that we were getting, my goal was was giving back to the community, giving back to the earth and planting trees. I I think that is absolutely fantastic. You know, it doesn't pigeonhole you to just doing trees. It can be given back to charities, it can be whatever you'd like, but that's a super easy way to give back and a super easy way for all your customers to be involved. I think that's fantastic.The second idea, which I see brands doing, and the one that I want to speak about is quite Activated Eco, another Australian brand. Kudos to them down in Victoria. But basically, their pioneering product is stainless steel pegs. Super simple, but game changing. No longer are they breaking plastic pegs... The sun damage, having to repurchase them every six months. You buy once, you have them for the rest of your life. So what they're doing is they're collecting that content of photos of just clothes hanging up, but it's people's everyday experiences. And they're using that for retargeting ads across social media organic posts. And it's showcasing their five star experience with some personal UGC content. And that's going a long, long way, in showcasing the use case scenario for that product. It's a no brainer, right? But also showcasing real experiences with that product. So it's doing incredibly well for them. We're big supporters of both those brands and we do have many more brands doing different things out there like that. Thanks!Krissie Leyland  6:24  Thank you so much, Scott. That was great, really interesting to hear how sustainable brands are using Okendo to their advantage and also for the planet. So thank you so much. Okay, now we are going to go straight into the event.Welcome, everybody and thank you very much for coming. I'm Krissie and I am one of the two cofounders from MindfulCommerce. Rich couldn't attend but he said hi. MindfulCommerce is a community of ecommerce brands, service providers and developers who share a common goal. And that goal is to make ecommerce more sustainable and positively impactful. So we have a Facebook group, a Slack channel and an expert directory. And some of you are already in the community and it's great to see you! Kat is our marketing whiz and she's going to be co hosting with me today. This event is casual, relaxed and collaborative. It's a nice conversation between nice people. If you want to unmute then unmute, and say whatever within reason and there will be some time for q&a at the end. Over to you Kat. Cat Hunter  7:35  Okay, thank you so much Krissie. So, as she said, I'm Cat! I help out with marketing some stuff for MindfulCommerce something I'm super happy to be involved with. I'm absolutely loving everything that I'm seeing in the community at the moment and how it's growing, especially kind of in the in the wake of the crazy year that was 2020. There's been like a huge growth in interest in this. So it's been really lovely to see the community kind of really growing legs and taking off. Just to give you a little bit about my background, I'm actually ex Shopify, so I worked on the partner programme at Shopify for three years, and ran lots of their events for them. I got super into the world of ecommerce and then eventually decided to go freelance as a copywriter and content creator, but I'm still very much working within the realms of ecommerce and SaaS. So that's my bag, but obviously really interested in sustainability and making the industry as green as possible too.So without further ado, we will introduce our amazing panellists. Today, we're super duper happy to have them join us for this event. So first of all, we'll say hello to Lucy. So Lucy is not only the MD of a Shopify Plus agency called Brave the Skies, who are on a mission to create, launch and grow online stores with their expert crew of very skilled designers, marketers and developers, but she's also the founder of an online boutique called Reverie, which is a really luxurious, sustainable vegan brand. We really recommend checking them out if you haven't already. Krissie is repping some of the jewellery today, very subtly. So she really knows her stuff when it comes to creating these customer connections and ecommerce and most importantly within the sustainable ecommerce space.Also joining us today we have Rachel from Okendo. Hi Rachel! Rachel is VP of partnerships at Okendo. And we're incredibly grateful that she's joined us because it's very early in the morning, where she is. Okendo, as you all know, is a customer view app for Shopify stores but it's more than just a customer review app to us that MindfulCommerce. We think they have like a sort of secret superpower for sustainability and fighting climate change. Because Okendo not only creates great customer connections through reviews and some fantastic integrations which Rachel will talk about, they also help tackle one of the biggest issues in ecommerce when it comes to carbon emissions, which is returns.Gerry McGovern gave us a crazy stat the other day that it will take 1.5 billion trees to be planted to deal with the annual ecommerce returns in the US alone, in terms of carbon emissions. So reducing the number of returns is making ecommerce more sustainable. By having that user generated content, those reviews embedded in your site, people are able to make better choices, more informed choices about the the items that they're buying and hopefully this leads to fewer returns! Okendo is used by some really great sustainable brands like Finisterre, and WAG. They enable customers to show how the products really are. You know, how they fit into their life, helping people buy the right thing the first time.This event today, it's the first event of the of the year for MindfulCommerce. The first of many, we're hoping. We're going to be running these throughout the year. And they are very much a community focused event, we want to make sure that we are providing you guys with the content that you're looking for. With regard to that, when we set about trying to set up this first January event, we polled the community in the Facebook group, which you should all be, hopefully lovely active members of. Loud and clear, you told us that what you wanted to hear about was customer connections. We kind of had a sneaking suspicion that the topic might be something kind of along those lines, because we've been talking about this quite a lot behind the scenes, and customer connection really matters more in 2021 than it ever has before. I think the pandemic has really accelerated ecommerce.You may have seen some stats laying around that ecommerce has grown more in the it's basically had like five years growth in one year, in terms of how it has been accelerated by the demands placed upon it by the pandemic. And customer expectations have also kind of been accelerated in line with that. So, it's a really great area to invest your time and resources in, in terms of creating those lasting more authentic, deeper connections with your customers. We all know that retention is more cost effective than acquisition. And loyal, engaged customers are generating higher rate of ease and have better purchase purchase latency status, etc. So all in all, brands are looking to really create those deeper, more reliable connections with their customers going forward into this year.So yeah, great topic. Thanks for choosing it, guys! And once again, we are super, super honoured to have Rachel joining us to talk about customer connection from their own experiences. So without further ado, I will pass over to Krissie, who I think is going to kick us off with a few questions. And we will have questions for a while and then we will take Q&A from the floor. Over to Krissie. Krissie Leyland  12:47  Thank you so much, Cat. That was awesome. And so Rachel, can you tell us about like some more about Okendo and how customers can leverage the tool to create better customer connections? Rachel Tyers  13:01  Yeah, sure. So Okendo is a Shopify specific customer marketing platform. We work with about 2000, fast growing DTC brands. And we're really focused on helping them in their marketing across the board. So not just reviews, but how can we leverage your social proof to improve each area of your business or all the channels that you're marketing from? So I think a really important thing is that we know reviews increased conversion on site. Partly all of us on this group chat look at reviews before purchasing and product. The stat is 93% of people will read reviews before they purchase something and it's just showing you that there's credibility there because you've got that social proof. "Okay, these people like this product, so I probably will too!" It really puts our minds at ease when we're used to going into a retail store and maybe looking at some clothing, trying it on... having that self experience, which we can't have anymore, unless we're purchasing a product with the intention of maybe returning it later, which of course we don't want to do: Not sustainable, we don't want those carbon emissions. So by reading other people's feedback, we're able to sort of simulate that experience. But beyond that, it allows you to sort of create these connections with your audience. With a lot of brands that we work with, we see them using reviews as a tool to leverage to actually speak directly to your customer and allow your customer to speak back to you.We work with a company called Wanderer Bracelets. They are a sustainable brands that employs Balinese artists to make these custom bracelets. They pay the Balinese artists a fair wage that allows them to support their family. So reading through these reviews, it's so interesting to me because I'm able to connect with the person and their reviews. So this lady Tiffany, she ordered them for her girls, and her friend bought this anklet for the boys, for the preschool that they went to. They're all best friends. So all of a sudden, I'm having this deeper connection with the brand and with the product when I'm able to submit and let them know why I bought the product and how I feel about it. And then me as a reader or us reading together, we're able to see how personal and how beautiful the stories are there. So it's really helping to build out those connections that we're feeling with the brains. Krissie Leyland  15:45  Okay, great. So it's all about showing what your current customers think of your products. And then how does that help you to connect with new customers, for example?Rachel Tyers  15:58  So you can use those UGC, so these are generated content or the review content in your marketing as well. So you can push the star ratings through to Google product listing ads, and there, we know that if your Google Shopping ad has stars on the bottom, people are going to be more likely to click through than if it doesn't. So that can help draw more customers in. Or you can also leverage the user generated photo or video content for your other marketing campaigns. So in my decade of experience in Facebook media buying before I moved into partnership, the highest converting ad creative was always the scrappy UGC. So I put together UGC video, taking little sound bites are people saying how they love the product, how they use the product, what they think of it... And then you chop that together to make this really kind of like scrappy, bit short, sharp and entertaining. user generated content mashed-up clip. When you're using that across Facebook, or Instagram marketing, it often feels more real, more believable and more compelling. It's more natural in the setting that you're showing it because we're used to having our friends like talking to the camera, or the celebrities that we follow whatever it is, kind of scrappy. So if we're presenting something back that feels natural on that platform, sometimes it gets more attention. Because it feels real, you're also more likely to be building that the credibility and the trust side of things.Krissie Leyland  17:36  Yeah, definitely. I think I'm the kind of person who say, for example, I'm on an online store and I've seen a product that I quite like, I'll always go to something like Instagram, and look for real life people that are wearing that product orusing that product. Kind of putting myself in that person's shoes, or the item that I'm looking at and just thinking, "how do I relate to this person? And are they you know, a similar type of person? What are they doing? Are they outdoors?" Which is the kind of person I am, I like to be outdoors. So I'll relate to it more and and probably want to buy it if I can see someone in real life using it. So that makes a lot of sense. And so with Okendo, and I'm pretty sure you work with another app, which helps with that. Can you talk a bit about that one? Rachel Tyers  18:35  Sure. We work really well alongside Foursixty. They are a UGC platform that allows you to curate images that you're tagged in on Instagram and show those on your site. There are all of these images that people have tagged on Instagram, and then you're able to go in, and you can actually shop that product from within the image. And then you've got the Okendo five star ratings being pulled through here to add that little bit of social proof. So it's pretty nice to be able to use those together really compelling, you can put it anywhere on your site. Then of course, you as a brand own any of the imagery or any of the contents committed via Foursixty or via Okendo. So you can use it to leverage your products across all the marketing campaigns too.Krissie Leyland  19:39  That's really cool. I'm just thinking about like, people in the audience and the businesses that they've got and that sounds really great. But with the user generated content, sorry I'm still talking about that... Can you kind of say if someone's tagged you in something you're not very happy with, and you're like my my target audience won't relate to that, can you not accept it? Rachel Tyers  20:04  Yeah, absolutely. So on the Okendo site, you might get a review that has an image alongside it and really love their review, you love the story in it or it's just great content but this image maybe isn't on brand. It's super easy for you to hide that image and then publish the review. You can also set up automations in the back end so that all of your four or five star reviews that have positive sentiment get automatically published, so it's one less thing for you to do. But maybe if it's a four or five star review with a photo, it doesn't get automatically published so you have control to really maintain that brand image. The same thing for Foursixty on that UGC side: you curate everything in the back end, before it goes live on your site. So there are no mishaps of someone showing their new underwear that maybe isn't strictly on brand for you. Krissie Leyland  20:59Yeah you don't want that... [ laughs ] Lucy, I have a question for you related to UGC. I think you are a big fan of micro-influencers. So do you want to talk about that and introduce and what you're up to?Lucy Roberts  21:20  Yeah, for sure. I think I absolutely love the whole concept of user generated content. I think it's so smart. I think there are some brands who just use it so so well. A personal favourite of mine, and I think Rachel's probably heard of them as well as they're an Australian brand, is Spell and the Gypsy. I'm not quite sure how many people on the call have heard of them. But if you haven't, like please go and look at their Instagram page on our website, immediately. They do UGC so well. A feature that I really love on their product pages is you know how at the bottom of your standard econ product page, you'll have, "you may also like" and they also have a little bit where you can toggle to like "as seen on Insta". And it's really that thing that Krissie was talking about just there, which is you can see the product that you're looking at, in a real life situation. So it's not just on a 5'11", size 8 model. I'm 5'3.5" and like a solid size 8 or 10 so that's really not relevant to me. But having those micro-influencers, who really become more like brand ambassadors for you, as opposed to kind of having that influencer tag associated to them. They're uploading their content, they're sharing it, they love the brand. And it really becomes like more of a cult following, which I think a lot of Australian brands do really well. So I used to work for a brand called Cinnamon. And there was this insane cult following around the brand like people couldn't get enough of it. There's a few brands that we're working with, at the moment at Brave the Skies, which is the agency which I run. So for example, Rixo, Kitri and Les Girls Les Boys have this really interactive conversation with their customers, except that Les Girls Les Boys are actually using their customer base to cast for the upcoming campaign that the basically the tagline is "Show us your underwear." This is a really weird concept, but it works for them. Their tagline is "bed to street". The idea is that you wear oversized pyjamas and you wear their pyjamas shirt tucked into your leggings. And then you go to the shops like that. Stuff is amazing quality, the brand is really cool. But all of their customers, especially once you have really active social profiles, so specifically your Gen Z & Millennials have this really interesting opportunity to become micro-influencers or almost brand ambassadors. I could talk about this all day, so I'm probably gonna let someone else talk.Krissie Leyland  24:00  I was gonna ask how can a brand do this? They're like "Right, that sounds great. I want to find some micro-influencers, and I want to generate some user generated content." How can they find the right people to create these great customer connections that they can relate to?Lucy Roberts  24:18 I think if I could answer that one from more of a Reverie standpoint, which is the brand which I started a couple of months ago, I've actually got these little cards I'm just gonna reach behind my computer. Don't mind me guys, sorry. All of the orders that I send out have little "Thank you" cards. I don't know if you guys can see... Krissie, you've seen a few of these but essentially on it, it says "Thank you so much. We sincerely hope you enjoy your purchase from Reverie. Please tag us on Instagram with our hashtag and our handles so we can follow your daydream too!" The whole messaging of the brand, Reverie is a fanciful state of musing or a daydream. So we've only built on this.I say we because it's myself, my fiance, he's definitely a really big part of like building the brand. It's all about involving people in this concept of the daydream. So a lot of the brand messaging on Instagram and email is very much about letters, follow your Daydream come and join our Daydream. It's really conversational.And I find that when you're really authentic about your brand, and you really kind of back yourself, and we do this with Brave the Skies as well. We have a really heavy space-themed brand with the agency, people really respond well to that. If you really back your own brand, people naturally want to buy into it and get involved. I think I've been really lucky with the kind of brand messaging across social channels like Facebook and Instagram, mainly. It seems to attract some really wonderful people who have really similar values, who really like the brand aesthetic, who naturally want to be part of the conversation and support a small business. And especially when you send a really nice order out with a really cute little card. I always write a handwritten message on the back to say, "This is one of my favourite products, too. I really hope you love it." It's genuine and it's nice for people to want to help and to want to share it and to spread the message. I suppose in a way your customers become your micro-influencers.Krissie Leyland  26:20  Yeah, it's amazing. Every time we... well, I've made a few orders on Reverie and also, my partner got me a really nice Christmas present from there, which is this one. Yeah, we both went, "Oh, look! It's handwritten." It's really nice. Like, it just connects to the brand. and the person behind the brands. You know, the necklace and jewellery is really nice but it's nice to know that there's a person there. And it's real and authentic. Yeah, I love it. I was going to ask about-Sorry, I am going to ask you another question-the conversation and how do you keep the conversation going from that lovely card over to social media? And which kind of, again, going back to the connections: How does it help with engagement and how do we continue the conversation? Lucy Roberts  27:15  Yeah, that's a really good question. I think for a lot of customers, the journey tends to start on social, especially when I think with Instagram's algorithm, for example, it changes all the time. I'm sure there's loads of you guys who are listening at the moment who have your own small page or small business that you're starting Instagrams algorithm can really trip us up, and it's super annoying. At the moment, I think it's based quite heavily on whether or not somebody saves your images. So, I tried to make a lot of the images quite save-friendly. So a really nice image that you might want to come back to later, like a nice shot of interiors. Everyone might notice how fantastic Rachel's background is... I've been lusting after this call. But I love sharing content that people find some kind of escapism in. And I think that that starts to build a bit of an aesthetic for your brand.So I find that there's a lot of customers, who are always the ones who like everything on Instagram who comment on everything on Instagram and same with Facebook. And I always reply to everybody. The thing that I've said since day one: even if it's just an emoji, I want to reply to and acknowledge that it's there. Because I think a relationship where you're not just a faceless brand. There's actually someone behind it. A lot of people messaged me now and say, "Hey Lucy, when is this coming back into stock? I really like it." And when that kind of continues on to the website, for example, if somebody places an order, I've got a really good memory. It's one of my very few very strong skills, I'm really good at names. So I'll always remember if I see a name on an order, I'm like, I'm sure she's liked a couple of things on Instagram before I'll go back and check before I write the card.And I've had this absolutely amazing woman who was the first person to follow me on Instagram who wasn't a family member or a friend. She's called Elizabeth, and I absolutely love her. She likes everything, she shares everything, she comments and everything, she always buys a candle. And I actually did a post on Instagram might have been last week or the week before. But it was really it was really authentic. I just wanted to kind of appreciate her and give her something back. She always sends messages from her Pinterest board that she thinks that I'd really liked for the Reverie feed. So I've kind of done a bit of a story and a Facebook post about how she was the first person who I didn't know who followed my page and how it's so nice that she's been there since day one. And just like celebrating that connection that I have with her... though I've never met her. Obviously, we've only ever messaged on Instagram, but somehow we've kind of built this amazing connection and almost a friendship, just through her engagement with the tone of voice that I'm using on Instagram.There's been a couple of people like her. I think Instagram can get quite a bad rap for being quite toxic but I've had nothing but positive experiences through doing it for Reverie. Had an amazing call with a lovely girl in South Africa last Friday, we had a coffee. She's starting a brand &  we had a nice chat about it. I think the connections really come down to, as well as everything that Rachel has said, which is obviously so valuable about the reviews like collecting feedback, like simulating that in store experience. It's just for me, it's complete authenticity, and just having a really, really honest tone of voice and speaking to someone as though they're in the same room as you, I guess. Yeah, it's really long-winded answer again. I'm really sorry.Krissie Leyland  30:49  I love that though. It's almost like everyone here. Well, I've met Alice and Cat in real life, but everybody else I've probably never met you. But I feel like we know each other and it's really nice. Yeah, just wanted to say that.Lucy Roberts  31:10  You know, we love a good tag on Instagram. That was something that said "normalise girls messaging each other on Facebook and Instagram to be mates."Krissie Leyland  31:22  Yeah, it's amazing. I love it. Especially at the moment, you know, crazy times. It's nice to be able to connect to people still online. Thank you internet. Me and Alice, we met in Portugal on a surf trip and now we're reconnecting over business, brands, ecommerce and how she built websites. It's just great. I love this. So Cat, do you want to ask some questions?Cat Hunter  31:59  Absolutely. I do. I was thinking from what you were saying, that idea about starting up conversations, about that two way flow that connection necessitates by its very, very nature. Obviously, it's so important that it's a two way street. I was just wondering, Rachel, perhaps you could tell us a bit more about how brands can ensure that they're getting that right. That idea of, of listening to customers, as well as kind of initiating that conversation... making sure that that connection is a two way flow?Rachel Tyers  32:30  Yeah, definitely. I think there are a few really great platforms and ideas you can have in your back pocket for that. And a way that Okendo allows you to connect with customers beyond the reviews is the Q&A section of the widget. So customers can actually directly ask you questions there, and you can respond to them. Another really good tool that we love working with is Gorgias. Gorgias allows you to collect any customer questions or concerns from multiple platforms, and then you have them all in one place where you can respond to them. So I think being able to offer really great customer service in that way, definitely helps you to grow your brand and create that bond with your audience, like Lucy mentioned.Another good way to use customer feedback is by collecting information on your product, and actually implementing that in your product strategy. So we have a client: LSKD, an Australian streetwear brand that did just this. They were wanting to create the best leggings out there. I want to show what their widget looks like, actually. They used a few different slider bars on their widget to collect information around the product quality, the design and the sizing. So they actually went through many iterations of their product until they got to a level where almost all of these product slider bars were hitting excellent. And it was super important to them that they were listening to what the customer wanted, what they thought of the current product, and then continuing to build upon that. So through doing that, they'd be able to really gain that cult following. They have an incredible product now that people are coming back to buy again and every colour, which I think is always what you want as a brand. They were able to also create those bonds with the customers and they incentivize. So when somebody gave them product feedback and spent their valuable time to do so, they would offer a percentage of coupon for them on the site. So I think that has really allowed them to grow into the brand they are today.Lucy Roberts  34:50  I love that. I think that's so cool. I want those sliders. Can you talk about the sliders later, Rachel?Cat Hunter  34:55  I know, that's something I write about as, as a sort of technical content writer at the moment is audience segmentation and how that can be used. That's something that a lot of smaller brands want to get started with. They know that they could be using their audience data in a more informed & strategic way and really honing in on specific messaging for specific segments of their audience. Maybe they just haven't got it off the ground yet or they haven't started. But I'd love to hear maybe from either of you, if you have anything to say about audience segmentation, and what that can do to strengthen that one-to-one kind of connection that people feel with a brand.Rachel Tyers  35:42  Yeah, I'd love to jump in here, Lucy, and then hand over to you. So I think being able to segment allows us to create these stronger one-to-one connections, because I want to feel like a brand is talking to me about something that I'm interested in as something that affects me personally, rather than just "Hey, I'm one of your many 1000 customers, and I'm just another number." So a way that we allow our brands to do that through Okendo is through using our customer attributes to collect a bit of information on our audience and then we can sync that over into Klaviyo and use it in special ways.I'll share my screen again to show an example. This is WAG, they are a dog treats company that's made with natural and sustainable ingredients. And they have been using our Klaviyo integration. So what that does is it allows you to sync all of this customer data into your Klaviyo or Omnisend customer data profile. Then we can segment out based on the dog breed, the dog age, and the eating habits. Then using those segments, WAG is able to recommend specific products that are going to be right for that dog for your pet. So using that segmentation strategy, they were actually able to increase the revenue per recipient by about 430% just by speaking to that customer.Then another example here, we've got Herbivore who is a cruelty free and vegan brand that we work with. They actually collect information around skin type, and skin concerns. So you can imagine if I've got perhaps acne or dryness, and I get an email that in the copy says, "Hey! Help with dry skin" in the subject line, whatever it may be and it's something that actually relates to me or pertains to what I'm actually interested in solving, then I've got more likelihood of clicking through and converting for that product. It cuts through the noise and we know that our email tends to get clogged up with a lot of other noise. So if you're able to speak directly to that shopper, then you're more likely to build that connection there. Cat Hunter  38:11  Just speaking with my like content marketing hat on as well, that could be really interesting in terms of the way that you structure your content marketing too. Just knowing kind of which topics are going to land well, which ones to be promoting more to which segments, writing "buying guides" and things like that must be very helpful to know how your audience demographic is skewed across those different kind of attributes.Rachel Tyers  38:35  Right, absolutely. Lucy, do you have anything to add from the marketing strategy side on segmentation?Lucy Roberts  38:43  To be honest, I think I think you've pretty much covered it. From a kind of more of an established merchant perspective, something like Okendo, which is what Rachel's obviously talking about is amazing. Having that integration with Klaviyo as well is so powerful, because you can start to target those segments with automated workflows. But the agency side of me is like "100%, that's the way to go", but the Reverie side of me doesn't have the budget to really have a powerful option like that in-house because obviously, it's all self funded, and you're a little bit more scrappy when you're a startup. So a lot of the tools that I would use for my own brand as well would just be things like Facebook Insights or Instagram Business Insights.Reverie's built on the Shopify platform just on one of our pre-budget plans, but you can still get a decent amount of data and understanding as to, even if it's just gender split. You know, like 70% female, largely between 25 and 35 (years). Even the most kind of basic bits of data, I find can be really helpful, especially when you are a small brand and every pound that you're spending on stock or anything really is very important. For me, I've tried to very much build a picture of who the reverie customer is. I think there's roughly three personas and I do try to validate that with any bit of data that I can glean from any of the platforms that I use. But 100% the segmentation of those one on one conversations and connections is amazing. And Krissie, we're getting some questions in this chat.Krissie Leyland  40:28  Yes, so I was gonna go to the question that Chris Butterworth just put in there, which is a brilliant question and I love it. So we are talking about gathering data about your customers, but one thing that we talk about at MindfulCommerce is storing data and being really mindful about the data that you collect, to kind of ensure that you need the data and it's actually going to be useful. So Chris's question was, "what are people's thoughts on the ethics of collecting all of this customer data to allow this almost one-on-one targeting?" It's a great question and it's a rabbit hole that I go down often. So, Chris, do you want to unmute and talk about your thoughts?Chris Butterworth  41:30  Yeah, I've just seen Vickie's response to it as well, "if they the customer voluntarily gives it" I mean, as part of GDPR within the EU, obviously, you have to get consent, or at least let people know that you are tracking. My concern is how much data that is collected is actually useful. Not just from an ethical standpoint, but from a sustainable standpoint, obviously, the more data you collect, the more data is transmitted, the more data is stored. So it's kind of just to try and cover both of those areas, really, just to try and get people's thoughts on it... whether it is completely ethical or not.Krissie Leyland  42:21  So just to explain it a little bit more, like you said, it's not just about the ethics of GDPR, and stuff like that. It's about the more data that you store, the more impact it has on the planet, and the more energy that you basically zapped from the earth. What Chris and I are saying is just be mindful of the data that you collect. Lucy, what your thoughts are on that because you're a small brand. At Reverie, like you said, you don't collect much customer data, but say a client at Brave the Skies... Is it something that you might bring in conversation or do you just collect needless data?Lucy Roberts  43:13  I would potentially suggest that no data is useless or needless, I have very strong views on not sharing data with other businesses that you haven't directly opted into. I hate it when that kind of thing, those damn T's and C's that you have to click to check out that drives me mad. I hate hearing from businesses that I haven't directly signed up with. So if something like that does happen, I do make it a personal mission to find out who sold my data and wage war with them. That in the spirit of creating more meaningful connections with customers, offering a better service offering more value, I think as long as you're using the data proactively that you have, and like you say, You're not just collecting data for the sake of collecting data, then I think ethically, I'm on board with it. As long as it's being used responsibly, and in a way that genuinely benefits the customer and not the business. Yeah, then I think it's a nice thing to be able to do because tying back to everything that Cat and Rachel were talking about, like at the started at the start of the chat, like having those better connections, being able to not necessarily sell a product better, but advise the customer better on things like the fit or things like whether or not based on your previous purchase in the previous data that we've collected, we're pretty sure we're actually 85% sure that the size eight is going to fit you then I think that that solves the problem as well. So it's interesting, it's almost a bit of a double edged sword. It's like we didn't have the data, we might create more returns which might create more questions. Rachel, help me out.Rachel Tyers  45:04  For midsize enterprises, the data were collecting is only scratching the very surface. It's so insignificant compared to the billions of points of data that Facebook or Google stores on every single one of us. And as SMPs, we use that too. So all of the Facebook marketing targeting that we're using, which is very comprehensive, incredible, and allows us to get in front of customers that are going to be interested in our products, that is stored somewhere. And that's significantly more than, like a couple of skin type questions that you might have on your reviews widget. So I think that's like more of a consideration and there's certainly a line. You know, it's always really creepy, when I'm talking about back pain, and my phone is sitting here, and then I get ads on Instagram. And I'm like, "Okay, back pain ads? Come on. My phone wasn't even unlocked!" So it's tricky. But that said, we're opting in for this every time we use Facebook or Instagram, like we have opted in to share all of our data with Facebook. So, you know, it's definitely a grey area. It's really creepy as a consumer, but it's really fantastic as a marketer.Krissie Leyland  46:23  Yeah, it's like Lucy said, it's definitely double edged. I think, what Chris will say and what I will always say is, just please be mindful of the data that you collect. Don't store it for too long if you find out that you don't need it or use it. Going back to customer connections, it can be really great if you can personalise things, and for example, you're using data to create an ad that's more relevant. Perhaps, that's okay. But yeah, just be mindful. Thank you so much, Chris. I love that question. And I think we should do it entirely different event with me, you and Cat and anyone wants to join about that. And so yeah, thank you!Lucy Roberts  47:14  There is a really good question that's just popped up in the chat about sensitive versus non sensitive data, which I think is a really, really interesting question. I don't think there's any need for anyone to collect sensitive data. I don't think marketers need it. I think everything that Rachel was just saying is completely accurate. Like it is a marketer's dream to have access to loads of information and data about your age, your buying patterns, which device you shop on, that kind of thing. But I really can't find a use case for a marketer to need the full name of somebody, the full address of somebody. I don't think anything needs to be that specific. So if I was being targeted based on very sensitive data, like, you know, my exact age or my birthday, or whatever, unless i'd specifically opted in because I wanted a 10% discount on my birthday,, I would be pretty annoyed about that. So I would always say sensitive data is no no.Krissie Leyland  48:21  I totally agree. So, again, thank you those really good questions and I like that topic a lot. Shall we go back to marketing and customer connections? So Lucy, you mentioned something called opti-channel marketing.Lucy Roberts  48:50  It's a good little buzzword, isn't it?Krissie Leyland  48:54  It is, it's a new one! It's anew one even to me & Cat! We were like, "what is it?"Lucy Roberts  49:01  I've had quite a few people talking about it recently. I was just mentioning to you ladies, before we jumped on the call: I've just started as an associate lecturer on a fashion course up in Newcastle at the university there. One of the senior lecturers that I was speaking to was talking about how they're talking to the students about the concept opti-channel marketing. I was like, "but surely you mean omni-channel?" and she was like, "No, I mean, opti-channel." Okay, so I was doing a bit of research into it and the more I looked into it, the more I thought "this is actually so smart." Because for being an omni channel retailer, you're everywhere where your customer is and your brand is everywhere. But this concept of opti-channel marketing is more about optimising your brand, your tone of voice and your message for the channel that you're operating on. So you might speak to a slightly different set of customers who engage with you more on email marketing. So your tone of voice might be a little bit more salesy. It might be a little bit more, "hey, you bought this, you might like this as well!" Whereas your conversations on a social platform like Facebook, or Instagram might be more about those one-on-one connections, where you've got the same people commenting and messaging every time. So you can be a lot more, "hey, I'm the face behind the brand. Let's have a chat. I'm really glad you like this image. What do you think about this?"So, I really liked this idea of this opti-channel suggestion. It's something that I've spoken to a couple of our clients about at the agency and it seems to have struck a chord with a couple of them. Because they think you very much do present yourself and your brand in very different ways, depending on the circumstance. It goes back to what Rachel was talking about before, which is more about customer segmentation and there are certain segments of customers who respond really well, for example to "we've got a flash sale", because the only time they're going to buy it is if it's on discount. But then you've got another section of customers who are incredibly brand loyal, and anything you put out they want to buy, because you have promised them that it's got your stamp for approval, and they're just going to buy it anyway. So I think this concept of opti-channel is actually I think it's common sense for a lot of people and I think we do it anyway. But I quite like that there's that there's a name for it, so I'm going with it.Krissie Leyland  51:27  Love it. That's really cool. Yeah, I was just like, "what? what is this" and Cat said, "That's good! Give us the dirt!"Lucy Roberts  51:36  Coin the term, take it and run! Go for it.Krissie Leyland  51:42  I'll be an opti-channel marketing agency!Lucy Roberts  51:47  I would like a revenue share please. [ laughs ]Krissie Leyland  51:52  Yeah! Rachel, what do you have any thoughts on that? Have you ever heard of that concept before?Rachel Tyers  51:59  I haven't heard of that concept before, but it makes so much sense. I think, when we were kind of getting used to SMS being a part of our structure, people or brands werre worried about, "okay, we're sending an email to this person and we're also sending them an SMS... Isn't that a bit much? You know, we're double handing this message." But being able to use the correct sort of address in SMS is going to be really different to what you're using an email and you know, it's so short-handed and sort of off the cuff. Maybe you're throwing in a few emojis if you've got extra budget for SMS that month. So it's really different way of messaging someone, and both are equally valuable.Lucy Roberts  52:51  Chris is throwing me a curveball here. It doesn't seem like he's on board with opti-channel marketing.Chris Butterworth  52:57  Sorry, it's because I come from a brand background. So a lot of the work that I've done is basically been all about kind of consistent brand experience and brand strategy, and that sort of side of things. So changing your voice depending on the medium is a little bit odd to me, purely because I would think about it is something where it's completely consistent in terms of tone of voice and everything like that.Lucy Roberts  53:27  I totally get what you're saying. I think you're totally right in that all of your core values and your core messaging should always be the same. But the way that I thought about it was, I'm the same person as an individual. I am very much the same person in every situation, but I definitely have a phone voice. I'm definitely extra polite. When I'm around my parents friends, I'm definitely a little bit more of a wine girl with my girlfriends. And I'm to be honest, a bit of a loose cannon with my fiance, but I'm still the same person all around. I think you naturally have slightly different versions of yourself, even though you're still the same base person, it's still the same brands. You just act ever so slightly differently depending on your environment. So I'm going to go with that metaphor. I think it works.Chris Butterworth  54:22  Absolutely amazing. Yeah, I didn't even really think about it that way.Krissie Leyland  54:27  That is so good.Lucy Roberts  54:28  Yes, Thank you so much!Cat Hunter  54:29  We have a question from Bridget as well in the in the Q&A. I'll read out. So Bridget says that she has a question on marketing strategy. They recently launched a sustainability Shopify tool for fashion retailers. We know that consumers are interested in sustainability ratings, but our tool is a b2b product. Any tips on how we can get in touch with the right type of retailers?Lucy Roberts  55:01  First of all, I would love to hear about it because I'm sure the merchants that we work with that Krissie works with at her agency and that I work with... 100% would love to hear more about that. Bridget, I'm actually going to drop my email address in the chat. So, yeah I'd love to hear more about.Bridget  55:24  Sure! We only launched about a month ago, and we've got some traction, but we put so much work into it. Really, I guess, you know, the more work we put in, the more we thought we were just gonna blow up as soon as we launched. Guess things are harder once you're in the real world. So I'm just trying to reach out to brands, because I know a lot of consumers will be interested in seeing this, but it's just sort of highlighting the need to retailers and trying to get in touch with the right people because Shopify is so vast. Yeah, I think it's a good tool and we really thought of all the hypotheticals. What if this, what if that? It has a lot of flexibility, but in doing that, I worry that we've made our marketing more complicated. And so yeah, please let me know if anyone's interested.Lucy Roberts  56:13  I mean, I'd love a demo of it. Maybe we could connect and kind of chat about it more. From my experience in the agency, for example, I went down & met Rixo, which is a brand that we launched on Shopify Plus middle of last year. As part of their discovery, I kept saying to them, like, what about sustainability? What are you guys doing there? I mean, you sell 350 pound viscose dresses, like made in China? What's the message? Like? Where's that price coming from? And I don't think the founders were really expecting somebody to ask a question like that. I think they have enough of a cult following that the dresses sell themselves but we ended up doing a really big section on the site about meet the makers. And like, who's actually designed the clothes where they're being made. Like, where the factories are, what factories specialise in. I think that the more you almost propose the tool to brands, even brands, who aren't actively doing anything on sustainability on their websites, they naturally want to be associated with it, because most of them are thinking about it, they're just not doing anything about it. I always think those Rixos & Les Girls Les Boys, the independently owned small-medium sized business, I think they're going to be your bread and butter for it all like that on Shopify, for sure. I'd be more than happy to help in any way I can and get you connected with merchants like that.Bridget  57:42  That would be great. Yes, please.Krissie Leyland  57:45  I was just gonna say... Well, I know what the apps called, but can you tell everyone what the app is called?Bridget  57:53  That's just another example of how marketing is not my... But yes it's called Fashion Impact - Clothing. I have a data science background. It's not actually my main job. It's a hobby that we started in March when the first lockdown hit. Then my husband is a programmer for Shopify tools. So yeah, it's obviously a passion of ours. We launched it in December. In the end, I really hoping to get some traction on it. You know, because it's a business to business product, I guess it makes the marketing, a little bit more complicated for us. We're used to being at the bottom end of business to consumer marketing. So we know, how we received that and those kind of strategies at a basic level. But we are out of our depth, I guess a little bit when it comes to business to business marketing. But platforms like this are so helpful, and I'm really enjoying this.Rachel Tyers  58:46  Bridget, I would just say, if you can get some data and metrics around how the app helps is stored, and that becomes really compelling. For me, like I really love LinkedIn for reaching out to brands. I think, like the SMB area is a really good place to start and get those early adopters on the board, get more data and metrics, and then even working with agencies. I mean, being in partnerships, I know that if I make friends with a great agency and show them with my show them my product, it's way better use of my time than going out to each company individually. So I think that would be a strong sell for you, especially if you're looking at agencies that are focused on ethical marketing or ethical development. So there are those agencies that are specialising in that space. And then for me, if anyone's interested in learning more about Okendo, I will drop my email in the chat. I'm happy to do a demo with you or chat more about your marketing strategy. And thank you so much Krissie for inviting me to share some time with you all today.Krissie Leyland  59:52  You're very welcome. Thank you. And yes! Lucy?Lucy Roberts  1:00:02  I've had I've had a great time like, this has been so much fun. It's been a lovely like relaxed conversation. It's been great to see some new faces and put some faces to names. I dropped my email in the chat as well. But if anybody ever needs any advice or anything on like startup brands or anything Shopify or econ related, just drop me an email, I'm always happy to help, or LinkedIn is cool, too. And everyone, make sure you're following Reverie the Boutique on Instagram, and save everything for the algorithm! [ laughs ]Krissie Leyland  1:00:38  Yeah, if it helps, I'll save everything! Yeah, thank you so much, everyone. There'll be lots more events like this, I hope. People like Bridget, and everybody in the ecommerce space, this is a place to connect! And, yeah, I loved it... thank you so much! Thank you very much as well to our panellists, Rachel, Lucy... and Chris and Bridget for coming on in. If you're not a member of the MindfulCommerce Community yet, please, please join us if you're interested in ecommerce sustainability, and helping to make the ecommerce world more positively impactful. Also, don't forget to have a look at our brand new MindfulCommerce Directory listings for all the experts, including Okendo, and you can learn a bit more about them on there. Yeah, thank you so much. This has been great. This is the first event I've ever done like this. So yeah, thank you again.Cat Hunter  1:01:43  And we will create a space to kind of continue this discussion on the MindfulCommerce Community on the Facebook group. So if people do want to have a space to connect or raise any issues that are questions that they had, that kind of grew out of the conversation that they've heard today, if you want to carry on the conversation, then that's very much what the MindfulCommerce Community is all about. So we will make sure that there's a clearly identified thread in the Facebook group for you to get.Krissie Leyland  1:02:10  Yeah, and so a little task to take away: Just think about what you're going to do to create better connections with your customers this year and then let us know you know, on Instagram, whatever, and tag us! Yeah, let's start a conversation!Cat Hunter  1:02:27  Fantastic. Thanks ever so much, everyone! Rich Bunker  1:02:32 We hope you enjoyed the episode today. If you did, you're probably like being in our community. There's a whole host of exciting things going on.Krissie Leyland  1:02:39  So don't forget to join by going to mindfulcommerce.io, click on 'Community' and register from there.Rich Bunker  1:02:46  If you liked this episode, please share the review and remember to subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When COVID-19 hit, many governments reverted to a panic publishing approach, getting as much content up on their websites as quickly as possible. Structure, organization, testing, it all got shoved aside in the rush to publish. Sarah explains how this sort of panic publishing culture can be avoided in the future because panicking serves nobody. Sarah Richards defined the term ‘content design' in the early days of GOV.UK, where she led the award-winning content team in the design of the UK government website. For me, GOV.UK is one of the shining lights when it comes to true and genuine quality web design and management. GOV.UK has shown what online government for the people, rather than for the politicians, can be like, by being functional, evidence-based, rigorously tested, clear and succinct. Sarah now runs Content Design London, a content design consultancy. Sarah is a wonderful person and a true digital pioneer. Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ Sarah / Content Design London - https://contentdesign.london/ Upcoming online live classes with Gerry McGovern - https://www.thisisdoing.com/team/gerry-mcgovern More from This is HCD https://linktr.ee/thisishcd Join our Slack community / https://www.thisishcd.com/community/join/ Training with This is Doing   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When COVID-19 hit, many governments reverted to a panic publishing approach, getting as much content up on their websites as quickly as possible. Structure, organization, testing, it all got shoved aside in the rush to publish. Sarah explains how this sort of panic publishing culture can be avoided in the future because panicking serves nobody. Sarah Richards defined the term ‘content design’ in the early days of GOV.UK, where she led the award-winning content team in the design of the UK government website. For me, GOV.UK is one of the shining lights when it comes to true and genuine quality web design and management. GOV.UK has shown what online government for the people, rather than for the politicians, can be like, by being functional, evidence-based, rigorously tested, clear and succinct. Sarah now runs Content Design London, a content design consultancy. Sarah is a wonderful person and a true digital pioneer. Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ Sarah / Content Design London - https://contentdesign.london/ Upcoming online live classes with Gerry McGovern - https://www.thisisdoing.com/team/gerry-mcgovern More from This is HCD https://linktr.ee/thisishcd Join our Slack community / https://www.thisishcd.com/community/join/ Training with This is Doing   Become a Premium Member: https://thisishcdnetwork.supercast.tech See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Liam Nugent closed down his digital agency he accounted for all the digital stuff they had created. Each employee was generating about 100 gigabytes of data a year. When they cleaned up all this data so as to give a quality hand-off to their clients, they found that 99.9% of the 8 terabytes of data they had created was useless. Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ Liam Nugent Twitter / https://twitter.com/liamjnugent Upcoming online live classes with Gerry McGovern - https://www.thisisdoing.com/team/gerry-mcgovern More from This is HCD https://linktr.ee/thisishcd Join our Slack community / https://www.thisishcd.com/community/join/ Training with This is Doing See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Liam Nugent closed down his digital agency he accounted for all the digital stuff they had created. Each employee was generating about 100 gigabytes of data a year. When they cleaned up all this data so as to give a quality hand-off to their clients, they found that 99.9% of the 8 terabytes of data they had created was useless. Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ Liam Nugent Twitter / https://twitter.com/liamjnugent Upcoming online live classes with Gerry McGovern - https://www.thisisdoing.com/team/gerry-mcgovern More from This is HCD https://linktr.ee/thisishcd Join our Slack community / https://www.thisishcd.com/community/join/ Training with This is Doing Become a Premium Member: https://thisishcdnetwork.supercast.tech See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioMindfulCommerce Sustainability FrameworkMindfulCommerce Directory (mindfulcommerce.io)Where to find Jessica and Naomi:TwelveLinks Mentioned in the Episode:Gerry McGovern Podcast with usPukka HerbsFinisterre - Leave No TraceBcorpShownotes: Rich Bunker  0:00  Hello, and welcome to The MindfulCommerce podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce experts and brands who care about protecting our planet.Krissie Leyland  0:07  Today we're talking to Jessica and Naomi from Twelve, a sustainability consultancy firm, helping businesses respond to the climate and ecological emergency and embed sustainability in the way they work. Happy New Year, everyone. This is our very first podcast of 2021. And we are very, very excited because we'll talk to Jessica and Naomi about our sustainability framework, which we built with them last year. It was a very interesting project. And it is, we think, is going to be very beneficial for the ecommerce industry, and also for the planet. All notes will be in the show notes. And if you have any questions or input, please feel free to email us at info@mindfulcommerce.io. Enjoy.Hello, and welcome Jessica and Naomi. Jessica, because you are the founder of Twelve, would you like to introduce yourself first? And tell us a little bit about your agency?Jessica Ferrow  1:23  Hi, you just did a great job of introducing me. Yeah, I am one of the two co founders of Twelve and we set up as a business in 2020. And yeah we're here to help businesses respond to the climate and ecological crisis. But yeah, I've been working in sustainability for about 10 years, working with businesses, mainly purpose driven businesses, to help them be better and have more positive impact in the world.Krissie Leyland  1:52  Cool. And what about you Naomi?Naomi Lawson  1:55  Hello. Um, so thanks very much for having us on the podcast. I'm a sustainability consultant and I've been working with Jessica over roughly the past year, which has been great. I kind of started out my career working for BCorps like Pukka herbs. And I've specialised in communications, marketing, and working on policies and campaigns that kind of focus on big impact to help tackle the climate and ecological crisis. That's me.Krissie Leyland  2:32  Perfect. And Jess, what brands have you worked with?Jessica Ferrow  2:35  Sure, yeah. So I spent some time... Well, a few years ago, I was kind of working with large businesses. So mainly, like on corporate responsibility, so I did a lot of work doing sustainability reporting for companies like IKEA, Vodafone, BT, those kinds of organisations. And then lately I've been working more with purpose driven founder led BCorps so I work with Pukka - been working with Pukka for the last three or four years. Worked with Ella's kitchen, Finisterre... I've done some work with Ecover. And yeah, so it's just Oh, and was really one of the companies I'm working with the moment is Edgard and Cooper who made pet food, and I think your doggy eats Edgard and Cooper!Krissie Leyland  3:22  Yes he does! We just transferred him over fully. And he loves it.Jessica Ferrow  3:29  Great. Yeah. Krissie Leyland  3:29  We love it too, not to eat, but you know, the brand, I look at the packaging, and I'm just like, this is amazing. I'd probably eat that.Jessica Ferrow  3:37  Yeah, I feel like the rule for us, like for the kinds of brands we like to work with my co founder, Ellie and I, we often say like, Is it the kind of brand that we like, and we want to use? And that we maybe probably have in our cupboards or on our shelves? And if the answer is yes, then yeah, we want to work with them for sure.Krissie Leyland  3:54  Perfect. Rich Bunker  3:54  Cool. Krissie Leyland  3:55  Um, so what are the kind of projects that you work on with these brands? And what does the process usually look like, working with you?Jessica Ferrow  4:05  Yeah, so basically, what we tend to find is most businesses in the world they want to make a positive impact. Or they want it you know, more and more these days, people are waking up to what's going on in the world with the climate and with nature. And, or if they haven't yet, they're kind of, they're going to wake up soon. But they it's been amazing the last few years, ever since Gretta, has become a big name and and extinction rebellion and the school strikes and all the things that are happening. And then of course, now with pandemic, David Attenborough and all these things, people are waking up and now most businesses are feeling the pressure from them. Their employees or their customers or even just their own consciousness of just being a better business and doing better things for the world and leaving the world a better place than they found it. So what we do is we help businesses to navigate those challenges, because it's all very well saying I want to be really sustainable business, but a lot of people just have no idea where to start. So, yeah, what we'll do at Twelve is we help guide businesses through that process. And we normally help them to create a strategy, a sustainability strategy, which would help them identify targets and set a roadmap for improvement. And then also, we'd help them to communicate that with their consumers. We also help businesses to become BCorps and so if you don't know what B Corp is, it's certification for ethical and sustainable businesses. So it's, if you don't know what it is, you should definitely check it out. Because it's an amazing movement that's sweeping the globe. I know you guys know what it is.Krissie Leyland  5:49  There's something else that might sweep the globe that we worked on together recently. So obviously, we recently worked with you on a very exciting project. So we built the MindfulCommerce Sustainability Framework together. And it sounds like this isn't normally your usual style of project. So what were your initial thoughts when you? Well, when we approached you with this idea for the framework?Jessica Ferrow  6:17  Yeah, great question. So yeah, we loved working on the MindfulCommerce Framework you guys, what we love about that project is that normally would be working with one business, on their own sustainability strategy, and how they're going to become a more sustainable business themselves. So it's kind of on a micro level, when you approached us and talked about your vision for the MindfulCommerce Framework... It just is basically the same thing but on a whole industry level, or even beyond an industry because ecommerce isn't exactly an industry is a kind of, it's a what a channel, it's a it's a way people are selling. So it encompasses so much more on a much more macro scale, but it's a similar process that we followed with you to get to the result that we we wanted, we essentially, well, should we talk about the the project and what, what, what we did?Krissie Leyland  7:10  Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, talk us through like, so I approached you. And I said, or we said, actually, originally, I think I wanted to make my business more sustainable, and then work with you to define a framework for Kollectify and then you were like, I think it's bigger than that. Because we would then use that framework to help other businesses in the ecommerce industry to kind of do the same thing. And then, yeah,I totally forgot about that. Rich Bunker  7:43  Yeah, yeah it was because I suggested it is like, for us to be on not authoritative but have experienced the process, then we could better understand it, to deliver it and help others get to that place. So I was like, let's put Kollectify through it. But then you guys like, it's too big for Kollectify, it doesn't work enough for Kollectify, we need to go bigger.Jessica Ferrow  8:08  Yeah, I think that that's right. I think what happened was, it was just, it was great to see that you, it was really obvious when you first approached us is that you really wants to make an impact. But you weren't quite sure how you had a huge amount of energy, that you wanted to channel somewhere. But you and you want to have this positive impact in the world, but you just were like, help us figure out what to do. So I think what we really noticed that your vision to bring everyone together in this MindfulCommerce Community was was going to be the key. And what we really needed is something to hold together that community. Yeah, we needed a focus. So it's like you bring all these people through the door and saying we want to make ecommerce more sustainable, and more mindful. But when there's no answer to the question of Okay, how do you do that, then it's a little bit up in the air. So what we really wanted to create was a kind of best practice framework for all of the things that anyone working in ecommerce, can look at in terms of steps to become more sustainable, more ethical, more mindful. And then provide that to them as something they can work through.Krissie Leyland  9:20  Yeah. And then the next step was, you went and did loads of research. So yeah, do you wanna talk us through that?Jessica Ferrow  9:29  Sure. Naomi, you want to talk us through that? Naomi Lawson  9:31  Yeah, sure. I was also just going to say, because I wasn't on the initial phone calls as well. So I remember when Jessica briefed me as well. It was obviously a really exciting project, because we were talking about the fact that it could have a really big impact. And that really came through when we did the initial research as well, because it was clear that this was like a big open space where not a lot of work had been done. And it was and it was definitely needed. So it was Yeah, it was a great project to work on from that perspective. For our stakeholder research, we had a couple different approaches. Firstly, we did a survey for the MindfulCommerce Community, and kind of identified what the main environmental challenges that are facing the ecommerce world. And as well as that, we also interviewed 10 key stakeholders from large merchants through to small ethical merchants, as well as tech developers and web experts to get a real range of perspectives and views on again, what the most kind of prominent environmental challenges there are facing ecommerce. And we used that information to develop an insights report and kind of gather our key recommendations for building the Framework.Jessica Ferrow  10:56  When when you approach us we realised that we needed to find out more about what was going on out there. So the best way to do that was to speak directly to people who are working in e commerce. So we ran some surveys, we did some interviews with some experts. And through that, we gathered a load of insights into what was happening out there, what was missing, what people needed. And the main things that we heard, were that people really wanted to be more sustainable in their ecommerce, but they just had no idea where to start. They wanted to be more sustainable businesses, but they weren't really sure where to go to find those materials. They really valued that idea of a community that they could be part of. And they also really, they there just wasn't much out there already. So we could really see an opportunity. And what this this told us is that the MindfulCommerce Framework could have a really massive potential impact. Because there's lots of people out there who are just poised to do something, but they don't know where to start.Krissie Leyland  12:04  Yeah. Why do you think these people didn't know where to start? Like, I guess because ecommerce is a specific world. And it's not just like your supply chains. And yeah, why do you think no one's done it before?Jessica Ferrow  12:21  Yeah, it's a great question. Because some of the brands that we spoke to, even if they have quite robust sustainability programmes in place, even some of the more kind of sustainable brands that you think of, they hadn't quite tied up their sustainability department with their ecommerce department. I think quite a lot of the time in the kind of medium to larger businesses, those two aren't necessarily crossing over. So you've got the ecommerce team who just focused on growth and sales. And they aren't necessarily embedding really sustainable practices. I just think it's not quite come on people's radars yet, I think a lot of people are thinking about packaging,  that's the main thing that consumers will be noticing and flagging up. But I think beyond that, I think a lot of brands haven't quite thought beyond the packaging piece. Or we just saw, those are great opportunities for how, for example, there's so many tech tools on the Shopify App Store, where you can add carbon offsetting at checkout, you can add charitable donations, at checkout, you can there's even apps or kind of tools that you can add plug into your Shopify website where you can create a whole secondhand store on your on your site. And that is called ...Krissie Leyland  13:49  Recurate. Jessica Ferrow  13:50  Recurate! And they're part of the MindfulCommerce Community. Krissie Leyland  13:55  They are.Jessica Ferrow  13:55  But I think a lot of brands don't know about these opportunities. So what we really wanted the framework to do was to not just tell people what they could do, but actually link them up with the apps, people the organisations, the partners who can help them do those things.Krissie Leyland  14:13  Yes, that's my favourite. They're my favourite benefits, you just nailed them.Naomi Lawson  14:18  And I also think that when we spoke to ecommerce experts, and people who work for different for different brands, and spoke to them about the different challenges, I think it all seemed a bit overwhelming. So we needed to think of a way where we could kind of break it down and, and people who kind of work in ecommerce could type kind of, like take it step by step because they didn't know which challenge to prioritise. And that's kind of why we framed it and we took like a value chain approach. So first, so people who want to use the framework would start with sourcing and kind of end with like, product end of life. Yeah. But that's kind of going on and getting into the nitty gritty of the framework. Are we ready? Yeah,Jessica Ferrow  14:37  yeah, it's really important to say that like, there are lots of tools out there for businesses to use to become more sustainable. But I haven't seen that many that have been specifically cut for those working in ecommerce. So I think it's just, this is a specialist tool, that speaking the language of people who are working with ecommerce in e commerce, and it specifically identified all the issues that they are working on or that they need to prioritise. So we, you know, I talked before about how we work with businesses to help them become more sustainable, what we do we help them to, like set a strategy and to figure out what they need to do. We've done that, yeah, or a company that's got an ecommerce operation. So it's, it's specialised, Krissie Leyland  15:39  yeah and it can scale and that's why it could make a big impact.Rich Bunker  15:46  So that's great. So what is the framework? And sort of, can you give us an overview of it?Jessica Ferrow  15:53  Sure. So the framework is a best practice guide for any company who's working in the ecommerce world. And it's split into six categories, or pillars. So I'll just list them off. And then I'll go through them in more detail. So there's mindful business, mindful sourcing, mindful footprint, mindful deliveries, mindful products, and mindful communications. So mindful business is all about your business model. So it's, what kind of business are you? Do you have a strong mission? Do you have a mission for social impact? Are you doing anything to try and tackle the issues around for example, overconsumption and people buying too much? And I have you got any aspects of your business that, for example, are you working in the circular economy? Or are you doing something that's not just traditional types of business, but something that's inherently sustainable? So that's kind of what kind of business model are you. So the Framework contains loads of prompts, and questions to help people navigate some of those ideas. And it also provides links to case studies or examples of businesses that are doing these things, or it links to resources for them to learn more.Krissie Leyland  17:16  And to the MindfulCommerce Directory. If, for example, there is a tech company that is involved with the circular economy. So for example, Recurate who offers, like we mentioned before, a plugin for a brand to have a secondhand store, then they would be kind of listed as an example, for the brand to find on the directory to help them with that.Jessica Ferrow  17:46  Exactly. And that's one of the things I love about this tool is that it's linking back to the directory, and it's all the people within the community that can help each other out. So we tried wherever possible to link to people in the community, and we really hope that over time, the framework can evolve and grow. And more and more, we hope that we can add more links in to people within the community itself who can help each other.So yeah, the second one is mindful sourcing. So it's all about what kind of supply chain do you have? Where are you getting your products from? What are they made of that kind of thing. Then we have multiple footprints. So this is all thinking about your carbon footprint as a business. Even thinking about things like your website, and the data that you're using, and how much carbon emissions that's causing. And so it's really helping you think about - maybe things you haven't thought about before. And deliveries. So that's obviously a big one for ecommerce. So in here, we talk about packaging, of course, different types of delivery methods, and we so some people might not realise that if you choose next day delivery, on an online purchase, that that might mean that it has a much higher carbon emissions than if you chose a slower method of delivery. That's because often, especially in the United States, next day delivery means probably it's going to be popped on a plane overnight and flown to you. Whereas if you chose slow delivery, it might make its way to you by road or another way. So I think just a lot of people who are just buying something on a website might not think about that. But we're trying to encourage businesses to offer more awareness to their consumers about that and offer them different options.Naomi Lawson  19:37  Yeah, because I guess the thinking behind that as well as like, obviously, if consumers are aware, then they might choose a better delivery option and also are given an incentive to.Jessica Ferrow  19:48  Yeah, exactly. So that's deliveries and then products. So the products themselves, what we're really trying to think about is yeh, what is your product? How are you thinking about how you can make your product better how you think about how you can cut out waste ending up in landfill could it end up as something else, and designing it. So for example, Fairphone, design phones that can be their components can all be replaced easily. So instead of it becoming e waste, it would become something that could be used again. And then finally, mindful communications, because we think it's all very well doing all these things. But if you're not telling people what you're doing, then you don't, you're not unlocking that opportunity to lead change in the industry. So we really encourage that kind of to talk about what you're doing and sharing with others in your industry and leading that change.Krissie Leyland  20:45  Yeah, that one's a good one. Because it by doing that you're building awareness as well. And then giving the ideas to other people to do the same thing. And like influencing, because we buy from a really good coffee brand. And didn't know for a while that their packaging is actually like fully recyclable, which is really interesting for a coffee brand because it's difficult to normally how to have like the foil inside and stuff. But if he had said it on the packaging, then you know, yeah, we would know we could recycle it. and he is doing really cool things as well like making it will be like actually,Rich Bunker  21:28  home compostable Krissie Leyland  21:28  home compostable. Yeah. So he's like working with another organisation to create this home compostable packaging. And then I was like, oh, would you mind when you've done that, sharing that so then we could tell some other coffee brands. And yeah, it's like, innovation, spread the word, build awareness and a nice little circle. Rich Bunker  21:53  Exactly. Jessica Ferrow  21:55  Yeah, and a great example of a company that's doing that is Finisterre. So Finisterre, make ethical apparel. And they are they create, they've created what they call Leave No Trace bag, which is made out of water soluble material. And they are using that instead of kind of poly plastic to send out their clothes. And, and instead of keeping that innovation to themselves, and giving themselves the kind of competitive advantage for being a really sustainable company. They've just open sourced it. So they've just said anyone who wants to use this bag can just speak to us about it, so and they they've gone to other B corps and offered it to them. So that's a great example of communications and kind of advocating for change and, and sharing open source information.Rich Bunker  22:44  Super - thank you for going through that.Naomi Lawson  22:47  And I guess another thing to say about the framework as well is that it's all about asking questions, and prompting people to think about different, like different areas of sustainability, rather than telling them what to do.Krissie Leyland  23:04  Yes, yeah, definitely. Rich Bunker  23:05  Definitely. It's a good it's a, it's a helps them ask the questions about themselves. That's what I found sort of looking at it was definitely, you can gauge yourself by it, and really deeply get into almost sometimes too deeply, to where you can go and what you can do to make yourself your business more sustainable or better for the environment. And that's great. And I guess, a little bit - in reflection now that it's been out there and delivered. And we've had a few weeks to play with it and, and ask the community what they think about it, but like, what are your guys thoughts on it? Now that you know you're looking back at the project and where it is now? What do you think about it?Jessica Ferrow  23:54  Yeah, so I'm really excited about I think what we found in our research, or what we really felt with this project is that we didn't spend, you know, it was quite a quick project to just get started. And we didn't want to spend like a year perfecting it and getting it to like the perfect, perfect thing and test and tests and tests. We just wanted to get something out there that people can start using. And what I'm really excited about is seeing how it evolves. And we by no means think that it's perfect to begin with, even though we know it's really great start and I'm sure that anyone who goes in and starts playing around with it and finds it, they'll definitely find some really useful resources. And I'm sure they will find things in there that they've not heard of, or they've not come across before. So even if we can get someone to know about one app or one tech company that they've never heard of, then we've done some good, but I would expect that most people will find a lot more than that in there. And as time goes on, we can just keep tweaking it and keep improving it and keep adding more and more things, more resources to it. I very much see it as a work in progress that can grow and grow. And with feedback from the community with input, and as things improve, so I'm excited to see where it goes.Krissie Leyland  25:09  Yeah, definitely. I'm already like, constantly thinking of how we can improve it and add more solutions, more brands as examples. And yeah, it's great.Naomi Lawson  25:20  Yeah, definitely. And I think we also spoke about how we could kind of expand it and draw on your amazing community of experts that you've already got to do things like run kind of workshops and webinars on like specific areas of sustainable e commerce. So there's so much that you can do with it.Krissie Leyland  25:41  Yeah, that's a good idea.Rich Bunker  25:43  Jot that one down!Jessica Ferrow  25:48  And I'm just really just seeing it as something that can create so much impact because we are Twelve, as so we set up Twelve because it was all about - it is called Twelve because in 2018, there was a report by the IPCC released that said that we had less than 12 years to avert the climate and ecological crisis. So we've now got less than 12 years to go. So yeah, we only really want to work on projects that are game changing, and they're going to make a big impact. And that's why we love this project. Because the scalability of it, you know, there could be hundreds or 1000s of people using this framework and making positive impact to their business. And that really gives us a really good feeling. And we really hope that even if one business changes the way they source their materials, or reconsiders, the kind of packaging that they use or thinks about how they could be a more purpose driven business, then we've done our job. But I would just say that the the scope for scale is huge. So I really hope that lots of people do use it.Naomi Lawson  26:55  And the key thing as well, just in the framework that we spoke about a lot was needed to show users how to think beyond their own operations. So it's not just about reducing the negative impacts, but also about how they can increase their positive impact. So it's a bit of a mindset change for for some organisations.Krissie Leyland  27:13  Definitely. And even like, you know, the thing that I kept saying was, we need to talk about the websites and the impact of an e commerce website. Because not like I say this all the time, but not enough people realise that because it's just because it's not physical, it's still having an impact. And it's taking energy from the planet. And I think that's the biggest thing that people go, Oh, I never realised that. So just by, like you said, if one person takes one thing away from this framework, or being in the community, then we've done our job.Jessica Ferrow  27:51  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think what the the important thing that, that as sustainability consultants, we would try to get people to think about is how material those issues are. So if you are a huge company, like a huge, you know, clothing company, that selling fast fashion, and your website is probably not going to be your biggest impact. So it might not be the thing you focus on. First, you might want to think about the fact that you're flying clothes all around the world, and you've got a truck to transport going everywhere. If you're a small company like yourselves, and with a few a small team working remotely, then yeah, your digital footprint is likely to be one of your significant impacts. So you have to think about it like that, that different companies need to think about what their biggest impacts are, and they're not going to be able to do that until they start looking into it.Krissie Leyland  28:43  That's very true. Rich Bunker  28:44  I think that was one of the big Penny drop them for me was, you know, when we found out about listening to our friend Gerry about the digital impact of business businesses online. And that was just I was kinda like, we just have to tell people about this. How do we how do we let people know about this so they can make more informed better decisions? And that I think that was one of the biggest things that kicked off.Krissie Leyland  29:10  It was it was the rabbit hole. Rich Bunker  29:11  Yeah, the MindfulCommerce reconing.Jessica Ferrow  29:15  We're really lucky to speak to Gerry as part of our research for the Framework, we had a great conversation with him and he has some extraordinary facts around the amount of data storage and and how many trees you'd have to plant per year to just account for the returns. I think it's something like 2 billion trees per year.Krissie Leyland  29:36  He has some shocking stats that make you think. And and by the way, we did interview him on the podcast on episode three.Jessica Ferrow  29:47  Listen to that definitely. Yeah, no, it's really it's really great to have such a wide range of experts in the community, just who are all supportive of this and what we found when we did our research was there was appetite and support from all the people we spoke to for this. So it was really great to, to feel that love from the community and enthusiasm.Krissie Leyland  30:10  Just out of interest on that topic of, you know, digital impact. And did you ever think about that? Did you consider it before you met us? Or was like, was it already on your radar?Jessica Ferrow  30:26  It's definitely on my radar it's probably not something that I had, it's probably something that I had thought I need to act on it. Like, I've got some shocking amount of emails, you know, old emails that I probably need to delete are just like digital clutter. And it probably just gave me the kick to just tackle it a bit or think about it a bit more. But yeah, I think you guys have done a great job of raising awareness of that issue. So yeah, keep doing it. For sure.Naomi Lawson  30:56  Definitely. I too am just, I kind of, I knew it was a thing before, but I am so much more conscious of it now day to day, kind of things like thinking before sending an email and storing images and watching videos and things like that.Krissie Leyland  31:13  Yeah, definitely. I think in ecommerce, it's quite tricky, because, you know, it's quite image heavy. And videos and graphics and stuff. But yeah, hopefully we can help people to do better.Jessica Ferrow  31:31  Yeah, I don't, I also think that people need to think about the thing that is, like I said, the thing that's going to be the most material impact, you know, if you, if you if your house was burning down, you wouldn't go outside and like, put out the tiny fire in like, a tiny corner of the garden, you know, like, do you know, I mean, it's just you need to kind of focus on the areas that you are your biggest impact. And, and that's what as sustainability consultants, that's what we kind of help people to figure out. And there's lots of ways that you can do that you can do that through the carbon emissions that it creates the spend that you're spending on it, the amount of impact it has on your business, and how relevant it is to your business, that kind of thing. So, but you've got a lot of our thinking in the framework, you know, as sustainability consultants, we've put all that together, and we've literally externalised our brain into, into a resource that you can read and look at. So it's like, we think about it as like having a sustainability expert in your pocket? SoRich Bunker  32:33  It's a great way to you know, you can use the framework to sort of go Okay, maybe that is my big ticket item, that that's the biggest impact we have. But we can't afford to change that just yet. What else can we do? It gives us that, you know, because sometimes businesses get focused on Oh, we need to change this massive impact that our business has, but then can't see past it. Krissie Leyland  32:53  can't do it right now. So in the meantime, I'll look at this small thing that I can do, which has a big impact small but big change.Jessica Ferrow  33:02  Yeah, exactly.Rich Bunker  33:03  If you do several small things that are easy to change, you can have quite a big impact in your business, as opposed to just doing the one big thing that might take some time and have quite a lot of institutional changes that you need to do you know, soJessica Ferrow  33:16  yeah, that's totally right. And sometimes it can be cheaper things are easy things or behavioural changes. And I think the most important thing that I'd encourage people to look at is, is that kind of mindset, mind set shift. So actually getting them to think and ask questions of themselves that are a bit more like a business that takes sustainability seriously. And just, some people might have never asked themselves those questions before. I think when people are new to the idea of sustainability, they're always asking, what's the right thing? Should I do this? Or this? You know, should I use this type of packaging? Or this type of packaging? Which one's better? Which one's best? And what I often have to explain to people is, it depends. It depends, and it depends what best is. And what best is depends on what your priorities are. So what do your consumers care about? What do you care about? is plastic The worst thing for your consumers and they don't want to see any plastic? Or is it Do they want to have Do you have to also balance all these other things like durability, and it's no good if you have a really sustainable packaging, that means all the goods insides get damaged or it gets damaged 50% of time, so you have to send it back and that's going to create more carbon emissions. So it's all about as a sustainability consultant, what we're always trying to do is think holistically about all the different multifaceted issues that will add up to your environmental impact, and social impact and trying to balance all those challenges.Rich Bunker  34:47  you know, and tech can help with that. I think tech can be really helpful in leading that change. You know, there's lots of good calculators out and there's probably scope for more calculators out there that say like a business has got a product and they ship it in plastic packaging, or it's a plastic bottle and they're like, we want to be more sustainable or something that's more recyclable or something that can be reused, we're going to use glass. But then what is the upshot of using that glass, like the co2 footprint of transporting that glass product, as opposed to a plastic could be, you know, in tech can play a big part in in that where there's lots of online calculators that you can gauge your co2 footprint and you know, against the two, again, it's, it's what's best or better or the best. And there's there's definitely scope for tech, to help with that. And I guess what, what's your guy's views on tech in e commerce and its place in sustainability?Jessica Ferrow  35:48  Well, tech,Naomi Lawson  35:50  tech, I think with tech, there are already a lot of tech solutions out there for different sustainability challenges. I think one of the challenges perhaps for kind of tech developers and applications is kind of them getting the message out there and communicating and kind of promoting their own service potentially. And kind of seeing themselves as a sustainability solution. I guess an example of that would be, maybe it comes down to to the brand or merchant using them. But an example of that would be Okendo, which is an app that enables shoppers to review their purchase online. So I know that Finisterre for example, use Okendo so that people can purchase an item, once they have done they can leave a review, say if the sizing runs large or small, which obviously enables future shoppers to go look at the reviews and say, okay, that runs large, so perhaps I'll get some size down, which means that they are reducing the number of returns, which obviously lowers their carbon emissions. But so that's that's an amazing initiative. But I would say that a lot of a lot of organisations maybe don't see that as being an amazing initiative or being something that is an incredible sustainability solution.Krissie Leyland  37:23  I absolutely love that. it's true. They don't they don't recognise,  in particular Okendo... so I've got a good relationship with Okendo, and they, I was like, have you worked with any, you know, sustainable ethical brands? Can you help with this and that and they're like, I haven't really thought about that. And yeah, they're in our report, they're in our framework and now on the directory, and all of a sudden, they're like, Oh, yeah, I can be a solution to help fight climate change. And, yeah, it's just, I liked your answer.Naomi Lawson  38:01  That's good.But actually, quite an interesting fact that Gerry McGovern gave us is that 1.5 billion trees would need to be planted to deal with annual ecommerce returns in the US alone. So yeah, reducing the number of returns is making ecommerce more sustainable.Krissie Leyland  38:20  Yeah. So Okendo, a customer review app are a solution a solution to lots of , well, the biggest ecommerce issue, which in my opinion, retruns like returns are the biggest issue in ecommerce, huge Like...Jessica Ferrow  38:39  yeah and we want to get more people realising how they can be an actor in that in that response, or into kind of fight one of those big challenges. So if we have the issue of returns, like how can we get more app developers to, to kind of step up and say we we've got solution to that. And there's some really cool as well, just thinking about other tech tools that are at play. And quite a few companies now like ASOS and Finisterre using AI, lead size fit guides. So you go online, helps you find the right fit. And so you click you know, or you average body shape, or you know, above or below and then what height you what weights, and it kind of figures out the best size for you and says you should by size 10 or size 12 or whatever. And then it's it's much more likely that you'll get the right fit first time. So again, reducing returns. So more and more that of companies that can do that. They're also going to save money, because often returns are free. So it's it's a win win for businesses to do this. Rich Bunker  39:41  Definitely.Krissie Leyland  39:43  Yeah.Naomi Lawson  39:43  I also think when it comes to returns, as well as it comes back to the communication piece up. It's most people I would say, think oh, I'll just order two sizes of that because they can easily send it back and they won't think about the impact that that has which is massive. But all it takes is is kind of raising awareness and people to think about it to just completely change their habits, which if you know, like the impact that that could have if there was sort of a big industry led campaign around, it would be huge again.Krissie Leyland  40:20  Yeah, I've actually recently come across an app that at checkout says, like, your impact or a comment what it was, but I was like, Oh, my God, that's a perfect app to say, like, prompt the shopper - Do you really need this, like, this is the impact that it's going to have, and make them just be more mindful about their purchases.Jessica Ferrow  40:49  I love that. I love that I'd love to see that. You know, why you got Three? Three have the same dress in your basket? Why don't you head over to our fitness system to find the right size? You know, like that. And if we had a industry wide example of best practice, if we have more and more people saying, well, we're doing this, we've got this tool, we've installed this plugin, we're using this. And then if we had an industry wide campaign, where we tried to get all the power companies to do something similar. I just think that's where we need to go, we need to get all the people have the solutions to start telling everyone Hey, this is the way to do it. We all need to do this. Come on, let's get on board. And I think you could see some really rapid change.Naomi Lawson  41:32  Exactly, yeah. And partnerships are important in e commerce, which is why the directory is needed. But yeah, another thing that I've seen recently, I can't remember where it was, was basic, I think it was a men's clothing website. And it basically told people, it would tell you, like how much water was used to make a T shirt, or you know how much energy was used. And that's just amazing. Just to get you to stop and think about whether you need something as well, and to realise, like the impact of your purchase. Yeah,Krissie Leyland  42:11  it's just cool. And definitely transparency. And yeah, communicate your impact.Rich Bunker  42:18  I think, I mean, there's, there's a lot of businesses and a lot of tech, and a lot of good solutions out there. And there's just not enough awareness about the solutions, I think is the biggest problem.Krissie Leyland  42:31  That's our goal to build awareness of them.Rich Bunker  42:35  And if there isn't, if there is a problem that a lot of brands and merchants are facing, and then they're asking about it, and there's a there's sometimes a gap in to be filled by some tech, possibly so that that'll be part of the framework, where there isn't a solution for merchants problems. So ...Krissie Leyland  42:57  We will be like, can you fill this with your current app or like add a feature to your current app or build an entirely different app for to fill that gap?Jessica Ferrow  43:10  Yeah, 100%. Like, I would love to see tech companies kind of doing massive hackathons to figure out the solution, you know, to these things, if we're like, we really need something that's going to help us track our carbon footprint from warehouse to end user. And we don't have a tool to do it. But we're pretty sure using mobile data, we can do it. And who can do it, as well as so many clever smart people out there. There's so many young graduates who are just absolute coding geniuses, who I'm sure if we gave them that challenge, they could meet it, I'm sure they could learn something amazing. So it's identifying the need, it's identifying the fact that we want to do this. There's a lot of people out there who who want to do it, and it could be a great opportunity.Krissie Leyland  43:58  So I'm very aware of your time. So I guess I might ask Naomi first. What's your number one tip or words of wisdom for any ecommerce business who wants to be more sustainable?Naomi Lawson  44:20  Phwor that's a good one. I'm just gonna go to my notes. might have to cut this out.Rich Bunker  44:31  How professional, you have notes. Krissie Leyland  44:33  Yeh, we didnt even share the talking points!Naomi Lawson  44:38  So I would like to encourage organisations to really reflect on their business model. I think a lot of businesses fall short when they're setting sustainability goals and targets because they're so focused on short term gains. And actually thinking long term is so critical to ongoing commercial success and to the protection of our planet. And if we're not thinking long term then there won't be a planet for us to make profit to run our business. Krissie Leyland  45:07  Ohhh...Rich Bunker  45:07  Very deep, I like itKrissie Leyland  45:10  I like that. I like that a lot. So over to you, Jessica.Jessica Ferrow  45:18  Yeah. So my top tip would be, just get started, it can feel really overwhelming when you just see this huge list of things, or you look at other businesses, and they seem so far ahead of you. But really, every journey starts with a single step. And it really is important just to start where you can start small, get the wins, celebrate the wins. And also just find the right people to work with. Just reach out to people who are doing it, find experts to work with find brilliant people on your team, quite often, if you have a team, you know, young people will be very interested in helping you with this. And you can delegate projects to interns, or, or, or senior managers, or anyone at most people will be really motivated by this kind of work. So just get everyone involved and just try and set a target to get something done by a certain date, and then keep going. And good luck. Krissie Leyland  46:20  Perfect.Rich Bunker  46:21  Great, great answer.Naomi Lawson  46:22  That's a great answer.Rich Bunker  46:24  I guess one final thing to touch on. You mentioned it early on in the podcast there was you help businesses with B Corp certification? And really, what are the big differences between B Corp and what you've created for us at MC?Jessica Ferrow  46:43  Great question, because I think that's a really, it's really good to to recognise that there are other frameworks out there. And the BIA, the B impact assessment, which is the one you do for the B Corp certification is also a big list of questions, which you tick. And the main difference I would say is that the MindfulCommerce Framework is first and foremost geared up for people who are working in e commerce in some way. So it's been tailor made for that kind of organisation. So it has more specific questions to that kind of business. However, it does also have some broader sustainability and business related questions and topics. So I would say the MindfulCommerce Framework is really great place to get started and to start your journey towards becoming a more sustainable business. And I think the BIA B Corp assessment, after you've done the MindfulCommerce  Framework would be a lot less daunting and a lot that you find quite a lot of overlap. And you'd be on a great, you've done a great start to continue and do the B Corp as a next step. But I would say that when you first approached the BIA, it can be a bit overwhelming, because there's more than 200 questions, and some of them you're like, how does this even relate to my business and some of the way the languages can be quite difficult to navigate. So for a company that doesn't have a sustainability strategy in place, it can be quite difficult to know, where you should be focusing. So that's what that's why we find that often we work with businesses to help them identify what their priorities are, and help them set their own strategy before tackling the BIA because it helps them not just go down rabbit holes, focusing on how to measure water consumption in their suppliers, when actually they really should be focusing on the you know, environmental footprint of their offices, which are massive, whatever it is, it's just like, you've got to you've got to it was like I was talking about for you need to go where the big impacts are. And the people that are in your company and your stakeholders care about.Krissie Leyland  48:52  What about the other way around? So if you're if you're doing the B Corp assessment, so the BIA Jessica Ferrow  49:00  Yeah. Krissie Leyland  49:05  And and then you came across the MindfulCommerce Framework. So you're an e commerce business, obviously.Jessica Ferrow  49:09  Yeah, I still think you'd really find the MindfulCommerce Framework useful because as we talked about, there's loads of case studies, which you never even find that in the BIA. It's not like an informative thing. It's more like a questionnaire asking you about your performance. Whereas I feel like the MindfulCommerce Framework has got more focus on improvement, and also linking you up via the directory of people who can help you. So it's more like a one stop shop for thinking about your business but also improving rather than just assessing where you're at. So I think if you've done the BIA or you're already a certified B Corp, I really think you will still really find the MindfulCommerce Framework to be super useful in your journey.Krissie Leyland  49:46  Perfect. Wow. I love this.Why didn't we do this ages ago, I would have found it so much easier to write the website copyRich Bunker  50:01  The first iteration is out there.Jessica Ferrow  50:02  Well that's it it's an iteration. You just have to keep improving. And done is better than perfect, right? Rich Bunker  50:11  Like the framework is, it's a journey.Krissie Leyland  50:14  It's a journey for us as well. Um, thank you so much. It was lovely to chat to you both.Jessica Ferrow  50:24  Thank you. Great. Talk to you guys, too.Naomi Lawson  50:26  Yeah, it's lovely to catch up.Krissie Leyland  50:28  Thanks for winging it with us. Rich Bunker  50:30  Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for the catch. And really, thanks again for helping us get to where we needed to get to to help others. Krissie Leyland  50:39  Hmm, it's amazing, honestly.Jessica Ferrow  50:42  Aww it was great to work with you. And we really look forward to seeing all the impact that the framework and the directory will, will make, and we look forward to hearing what people think so do let us know.Krissie Leyland  50:51  Definitely. 100%Naomi Lawson  50:53  I can't wait to see how it develops as well. In months and years to come.Rich Bunker  50:59  It's very exciting, so excited.Krissie Leyland  51:03  Thank you so much. Um,Rich Bunker  51:06  And yeah, we'll speak again soon.Krissie Leyland  51:10  If you'd like to find out more about Twelve you can head over to their website twelvefutures.com. And I will leave the link in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this conversation today, you'll love the MindfulCommerce community, head over to mindfulcommerce.io and click on community and I'll see you there! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Netlife is one of Norway's digital pioneers, having focused on usability and user experience when it was not exactly fashionable. Beth Stensen, their CEO, talks to Gerry McGovern about how Netlife is on a new journey which focuses on the Earth Experience. It's exciting and challenging times. Digital can often accelerate very bad and wasteful human behaviours. Designing digital for Earth Experience is a key challenge and opportunity.   Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ Learn more about Netlife and Beth - https://www.netlife.com/folka/beth-stensen Upcoming online live classes with Gerry McGovern - https://www.thisisdoing.com/team/gerry-mcgovern More from This is HCD https://linktr.ee/thisishcd Join our Slack community / https://www.thisishcd.com/community/join/ Training with This is Doing   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Netlife is one of Norway’s digital pioneers, having focused on usability and user experience when it was not exactly fashionable. Beth Stensen, their CEO, talks to Gerry McGovern about how Netlife is on a new journey which focuses on the Earth Experience. It’s exciting and challenging times. Digital can often accelerate very bad and wasteful human behaviours. Designing digital for Earth Experience is a key challenge and opportunity.   Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ Learn more about Netlife and Beth - https://www.netlife.com/folka/beth-stensen Upcoming online live classes with Gerry McGovern - https://www.thisisdoing.com/team/gerry-mcgovern More from This is HCD https://linktr.ee/thisishcd Join our Slack community / https://www.thisishcd.com/community/join/ Training with This is Doing   Become a Premium Member: https://thisishcdnetwork.supercast.tech See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find Gerry McGovern:Gerry McGovern's websiteGerry McGovern's Books - Including World Wide WasteContact Gerry - gerry@gerrymcgovern.comSponsor:This podcast is sponsored by Kollectify, a content marketing agency working specifically with Shopify solutions to successfully position and promote the app or agency Show notes:Krissie  0:00  Hello, and welcome to episode three of the Mindful Commerce podcast. I'm Krissie, and I'm your host for this episode. In this episode, I talk to a very inspiring man who knows all about sustainability on the web and his name is Gerry McGovern. Gerry has written a book called Worldwide Waste, which is all about how digital is killing our planet, and what we can do about it. In this episode, we talk about how the digital world is killing our planet and what Gerry thinks e-commerce brands and tech companies can do to combat the problem. Amongst many other topics, we discussed the ideal synergy of going back to localisation and community with a dash of innovative technology and less data collection. I hope you enjoy this episode. It's really fascinating. If you have any thoughts or comments, please feel free to email us at info@mindfulcommerce.io and all the details will be in the show notes. Enjoy. Hi, Gerry, welcome to the MindfulCommerce podcast. Thank you for joining us today. Would you like to kick things off by just telling us your story and how you ended up where you are today?Gerry McGovern  1:22  Okay, Krissie, and Thanks for the invite to be here. I used to many years ago, I was a freelance journalist back in there in the 90s, in the early 90s, and doing all sorts of different work for music and some, a little bit technology as well. And I came across the internet very early, maybe about '93 or so '94, sometime around then. And I thought wow, this is gonna, it's gonna change the world. And basically, from then on one way or another, either true, you know, for a while, I got commissioned to do a report for the Irish government around '94, about the future of the internet and society. And so that kept me busy for a while and then started some companies and you know, some of those companies went bust and had the whole, had the whole dot com bust experience. And then, you know, started writing books, this is my last book, worldwide waste is my eight. And traveling and doing workshops and working with clients and developed a methodology called top task, which is a kind of a prioritization system for, you know, really focusing on what matters, and that's been my main kind of work for the last 10 or 15 years is helping organisations implement top tasks projects.Krissie  2:56  Okay, interesting, then, so when was it that you kind of realised that digital is not so great for our planet? So, obviously, if used in the right way, it's, it's great, but yeah, tell me a little bit about that.Gerry McGovern  3:12  Yeah, really, only maybe two or three years ago, you know, because I always changed my computer every two years, changed my phone every two years. And, you know, I really had the impression that, that I was lucky to be working a digital like, I was, you know, watching, you know, the movements out there, and, you know, Greta Thunberg, and all those other wonderful young people, you know, really being passionate and idealistic and trying to make changes, and I kinda, I thought that's, that's nice to see. And, you know, isn't it great that, you know, where I'm, what I'm doing is, is helping them and, you know, but I taught in the back of my head, then I realised I was taking back over my careers since the 90s. And just, it kind of struck me that so many times in so many organisations, what we needed to do, specifically, say I did a lot of work for Internet's for a number of years. And that internets were just dumps and that to make them work, we nearly always had to delete 80 or 90% of the data and then systems, going into organisations and finding five or six or seven systems for training and, you know, all these duplications of systems that just got the sense of "Wow this is an incredible amount of waste in here", and nearly all the projects I've worked on where, you know, huge dumps that either the public websites, I remember, you know dealing with the US Department of Health and in one area there 200,000 pages, and they deleted 150,000 of them and nobody noticed. They didn't get a single inquiry. And I kept just seeing that. So that kinda was in the back of my head. And I thought, wow, you know, maybe digital listeners, as green as I, you know, Todd was and then when I started doing research and looking at e-waste, you know, recognising e-waste in particular, because, you know, I, I never really saw where these old computers went or cables or stuff like that. So it was really digging into the dark e-waste story that, you know, began to open up some talks that maybe digital is, is not nearly as green as I had been thinking as was over most of my career.Krissie  6:01  Yeah, so e-waste in terms of like, you know, your laptops, your phones. And then like, do you know where they end up? Do they end up in landfill as well? Gerry McGovern  6:12  They do most of them. See, what we have, you know, us in the rich countries, we've created a really nice system where our air is clean, and, you know, our environments are very clean. But we've essentially outsourced waste. So we go to poor countries, and we get them to manufacture the products very, very cheaply. And whatever waste is accrued there. And, you know, in the manufacturing process, or getting the raw materials, it's rarely, like a lot of these raw materials are for, they're called rare, rare materials, because they are rare. And they're difficult to find. And often they're found in virgin habitats, or, you know, in Western Africa, where the great apes, you know, there's certain type of rare, rare that's only found there. And, you know, in unusual places, that humans had not really been in insignificant numbers. So that's how we, you know, we suck all those raw materials out of certain countries then we give those materials to people in other more poor developing countries. And then we get our nice shiny products. And then two years later, we dumped them. But what happens is, they often get back to the very set back to the very same countries that the raw materials were dug up in. So we recycle less than 20%. And even recycling is incredibly crude, like a lot of like, somebody was telling me that in data centres, they just shred, they shred the servers that are working perfectly well, you know, every three or four years, they just shred them for either security or privacy, or they're worried that data might be accessed on them. So there's these perfectly working servers, because they've got this commitment to uptime, you know, they, they have to meet 99.9% uptime. So they don't want to take that statistical chance that the server will break. So even recycling is most recycling does not actually recycle in any real sense. And then the other 80% are put on big containers and, and are sent back to poor countries where they often end up in landfills, and they end up being burned, you know, with toxic fumes, so as to get out some gold or wood. So they're in open pits. So this, we never see these pictures when we see the Apple iPhone or the or the Samsung, we see the most beautiful things. But behind the scenes is a very ugly, very ugly world that we've created. But our world looks great, you know, because we outsource. We outsource all the nasty stuff to places that consumers won't see.Krissie  9:18  That's crazy. That's really crazy. So would you say, so someone like me? Oh, what can I do? Can I just you know, don't upgrade my phone every year or two?Gerry McGovern  9:32  Yeah, that's the single biggest thing. Like somebody did a study recently at a UK entity and they said that "If you kept your phone for five years versus two years, you essentially have the water issue in making devices" so they're making less phones, right. So you, you cut in half the amount of water required and the amount of co2. So keeping it between two and five years, has a huge makes a huge difference. Because, see, the problem with electronics is that electronics are very manufacturing intensive. So, the piece of electronics requires much more energy to create than a screwdriver or a knife, you know, or, you know, some other physical object. So there's a much higher intensity of energy. And as with energy is waste and often material. So these rare earth materials to get one tonne of Iridium or whatever it is, I can't remember they did, there's about 16 or 17 rare materials, well, you probably need to do 100 tonnes of mining. And often that mining is a kind of a pollutant, they add a kind of chemicals to actually filter out these materials. So, so the the very act of mining is very toxic in the environments that it actually happens in. And it creates these huge large kind of lakes because they use a lot of water and chemicals, that kind of have got to be dammed up in in the area. So, if we hold on to, and I think I think what we need to do, as well as somehow is to agitate for repairability and fixability, because many of these phones are deliberately designed to break. Krissie  11:43  YesGerry McGovern  11:44  So they deliberately designed them so the designers sit around, deliberately specking out how do we make this not work after 2, 3, 4 years? And often it's with software updates, you know, so there's a deliberate strategy to actually break our phones. So that sort of, we have to buy more stuff. So, you know, there's the right to repair. There's movements beginning in the European Union are looking at, so holding on and if your phone breaks, trying to get it fixed, and going into it, why can't it be fit? Because they know if enough of us are getting in touch with the local politicians are saying this, I should be able to fix this? So fixing it when it breaks, like, so I've committed now, you know, there's my computer I've got, I'm gonna stick with it. And if and when it breaks, I'm going to try and fix it like, and I'm going to go and say, Well, how do you replace to hard disk? I want to replace to hard disk. You know? And how do I replace the screen? And why can't you replace this? You know, because if enough of us started saying that, basically we accept this world that we've been given. So hold on to it as long as you possibly can, and demand the right to repair and repair it and get it, you know, repaired and ask about those issues when you're buying. I never asked, I never considered warranty or stuff like that, or issues or you know, and get a five year often longer warranties, you know, are better. You know because they make a commitment to the organisation that they will repair it, you know, for X number of years. So, so holding on and thinking about repairability it's stuff that you know, I've already started thinking of in the last two or three years like I can't, I don't know, it's just invisible to us in so many ways. Krissie  13:55  Yeah and then I think if they can't repair it, they can't fix it. Well, then can they recycle it? And then are they actually recycling it properly?Gerry McGovern  14:05  exactly, exactly ask questions, ask. Because if thousands of us, like, somebody told me this story about a lady, I don't know if it's in Ireland or the UK or whatever. And every week she goes to the local supermarket to do her shopping. Then she buys her shopping and then she just goes beyond the tail and she takes everything out of the plastic that you know, she tries to avoid plastic if she can, but anything that has plastic, she unwraps and puts it into a bag she has carried with her and then she she just gives the plastic. Here you go. I don't want it. You know? And if only we could scale that woman. You know by a 10,000 or a million. Then we'd see change. Yeah, I think we have got to have change. at a national level, there's not this idea of blaming the consumer. Yeah, that's what the plastics industry did for 50. That was great PR, you know, we got this better recycling. We know that 90%, well, a huge percentage of plastic is not recycled. You know, that's stuff I learned. Most plastic is not recycled. It's does all we think we're doing good in the green bin, but actually, most of the time we're not. And even being aware of that, you know, that, really demanding that if you make it, you take care of it, you know. And that making the manufacturers responsible, I think, until we make the manufacturers responsible, we will never solve this problem. But I think it's up to the consumers to make the manufacturers responsible, because unfortunately, politicians, yeah, many good many bad, but are often more controlled by the hidden powers behind the scenes than we would want them to be and will nearly always defend those powers over ordinary citizen, and certainly over planet rights.Krissie  16:18  Yeah, definitely. I think if so, because it is to do with consumerism and overconsumption and, you know, mostly, it's the big businesses that need to change. But what do you think the small to medium size like I don't know, any e-commerce brand doesn't matter if they're, they've got sustainability at their core or not, but what can they do to make a difference?Gerry McGovern  16:43  Well, I think what you just said they're genuine sustainability at your core, because I was reading an article there at the weekend about luxury brands and luxury thinking now. And I don't know if that's true or not, but the writer was saying that there's a real shift in what is luxury? You know, that, that it's a movement away from, you know, this, whatever that Kardashian logo, you know, that visual bling, or whatever, or variants of that gold, to days, how it's made, how much water it use, you know, that there's a shift in thinking about what is luxury, and, and what is quality and what is things I want to buy? So, I think, if we are genuinely sustainable and sustainable at the core, I don't know how much of a business that's, that's out there. But certainly, I think there's a feeling or a mode to buy local, you know, because the closer you are from the thing you consume, the less waste. So if you've got onions out in your garden, there's less waste in consuming those onions than if you buy the onions in the supermarket. So distance, so there's ideas, you know, around, you know, being local, and being nearby and, you know, calculate, and people genuinely, because a lot of times you look at it, here's a T shirt that costs, you know, 40 euros, but here's why it costs 40 euros, and we give three euros to the person who made it. Whereas she typically only gets 50 cents, you know, and there's some very good e-commerce entities, I think ask it is one of the console, where they're calculating the entire lifecycle of the product. And they're saying, and we make 10 euros on that, you know, and that's okay. Yeah, be honest and transparent and tell their story. And, you know, and yes, it costs a bit more, but here's why it costs a bit more. And actually, this will last you 5 years or 10 years, and you know that and I think I've been thinking as well like my old jeans and things like that, and then committed to where and I think, wouldn't it be great if we had a whole network of designers, you know, local design within an area, and that you say, Hey, here's, these jeans, they're beginning to shred now in places I don't want them to shred and to do something and, you know, be willing to pay the price of a new pair of jeans for the design of that pair. I would be. I don't know how many other, you know, and so they've used 70% of the materials of the jeans that I gave them, but they added 30% new material, and they put a nice design, you know, and then you're going around, and then you're genuinely unique. You've got a custom pair of jeans. But um, you paid 30 euros or 40 euros, or whatever you paid for it. And that is going to be good for the planet. And it's good for local business, and it's good. So I'm quite hopeful in many ways of, you know, genuine sustainable business is not, there's so much unfortunately, in marketing that has been a con you know, over the years, but genuine stories of genuine people, like I see, you know, I cracked my wedding ring, there a couple of months gone. I got it fixed in, in this, you know, workshop that just specialises in this sort of stuff. And it was just, it was just lovely to, obviously, the mask on and everything on the screen. But I could see the people working behind. And I could see that it was just lovely to see these people who you could just know that have 30 or 40 years of experience and, and you know, all at all cost me I think was 30 euros. I was I was thinking to myself, why would I get from a writer or a developer or a programmer for 30 euros? Like, here, I got the ring back and it closed. It is like new, polished. And there's no way you could see the crack, the old crack. This was just, just beautiful work. And it cost me 30 euros. So it's not that expensive to give craftspeople work, and you get beautiful stuff back. You know, so I think there's models and this is how the web can be used that to connect up with Google and then to connect up with Coca Cola, or, whoever wants to manipulate the next election that we we can connect up with, you know, John, the goldsmith, you know, or Susan, who's a great at designing, you know, clothes and, you know, she just lives 20 miles away, or that you can somehow get it to people it who are more distant, but it's sent by a really economical energy conserving transport mechanism, and they'll do it. And I think there are ways and means that whether it's genuine sustainability, whether it's making cheese, or, you know, like, I think there's a mode for that.Krissie  22:53  So basically, going back to the old times where there was no online shops, there was no, you know, it's all local and lovely, and community of makers and craft, crafty, men. Gerry McGovern  23:07  Yeah, but with technology, like with, like that, that you get a notification that says, oh, your friend Marius is in the coffee shop now, you know, I mean, obviously, all of this has to be careful in privacy and but with the, because often we don't know what's local, that's the funny thing. You know, we don't know what's near us, in many ways where we're more aware of what's 10,000 miles away, you know. We don't know that there's a craft cheese maker down the road, most of us don't. So the technology can connect that, can be a connective local tissue. So it's not, I don't want, I grew up on a small farm, you know, where we didn't even have machinery, I don't want to go back to that work. As nice as some people might think it was, I thought was absolutely horrible. Like, I like having a phone. I love checking up stuff. You know, online, I like connecting up with interesting people. And so I don't, I want the benefits of both. And I think we can, we can have both. So I'm not, I'm not anti technology. I'm just anti waste. And a kind of us being owned by Facebook and Google and Amazon and just making another trillion for Jeff Bezos. I have no interest in that.Krissie  24:32  Absolutely not. I think there needs to be a really nice happy medium. But I think, so the biggest thing of technology is data. And big data is a solution to many problems, but only used in the right way. And I just think, I'd like to ask you if you think there's a happy medium between the amount of data that we need and the data that we don't need, so for example, Facebook, Google, like, what do you think is the happy medium there?Gerry McGovern  25:09  I think most data is not useful and is not used. And there's a very crude way that we work in that we try and collect everything with the expectation that we are, at least we have it, and we might find a use for it later. So I think we need a much more mindful understanding of what we need to collect and what we need to use, like, i've had an email newsletter since 1996, just a simple 500 words every week. And then, you know, over the years or recently I was trying to say, How do I get it? Because I don't want or I don't care who opened it or didn't open it? It's no, I don't want to track people. Like I don't I don't want to do any of that. It's almost impossible to find a company that doesn't track that you know, tracking is just inherent what you mean, you don't want tracking? You have to have it. Like No, I don't want it does, it has no benefit to me. It is zero benefit and have zero interest in it and in tracking. So I don't want it, no, but you have to have, like we collect, whether people want it or not. Whether it's used or not. It's collected. And, you know, for years as well, like I just wanted a text newsletter. And the systems I choose, I set it up as text, and then six months later it be HTML will become an asset. How is this happening? Like, it's like, the system is demanding that you go to that ultimate level, like we've designed systems and structures that they always seek to max out either on features or collection of data. And I think, really thinking do we need this because when my core has been this the research, the top tasks. And then with the top task list, there's a number of segmentation questions. And, you know, really trying to get, I always say no more than 5 to 8 maximum or whatever. But often keeping people within the maximum is a real challenge in many situations. And then even with that, often, they don't even look at the detailed data Even then, to 5 to 8, the look at it once, they'll take the top level data and maybe use it but you know, we don't, it's like we're buying tomatoes, and we buy, you know, 10 kilos of potatoes every week. And we only use one kilo or a half a kilo. And nine and a half kilos is just get stored in the cloud. And,  it's nine and a half kilos or gigabytes every week. And we only use half a kilo. Why don't we collect the half a kilo that we use? Then, you know, the impact on the data centres on our servers on our computers on our processing. All these stats that say 90% of data is never used three months after it's created. If we could, if we could only deal with 50% of that. Think of how many less computers, less meetings, the amount of meetings I've sat in over the years of teams on a Monday morning or whatever, talking about the The Google Analytics and trying to seem intelligent about bounce rates and time on pages. Most analytics is bullshit. It's analytics theatre. It's, it has no meaning. And people go and they do things that oh, we should. Oh, that page was really looked at a lot. Yeah, well, yeah. What are you gonna do? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, we're really popular now. Yeah, you're the WHO, It's a pandemic.Krissie  29:14  Yeah!Gerry McGovern  29:16  You know, most of these metrics can mean, horrible are good. You know, lots of people visiting the page. Yeah, maybe your product is crummy. Like, your pricing is confusing. Like so, so much of this stuff. And when I talk to people, they really don't know what they're doing. I think there's an awful lot of people and an awful lot of companies that actually don't know what they're doing.Krissie  29:45  Yeah, especially with data.Gerry McGovern  29:47  They're about a month ago, we were looking at the blackberries out on the, you know, the roadsides or the hedges and, and I was thinking now if this was a big data problem, Look, what would what would Big Data people do? They'd hire a huge digger, and a trailer. And they'd go out and they take off all the hedges, you know, for a five or 10 mile radius. And then they'd bring them back to a huge yard, and they dumped them in that yard. And then they'd start looking for the berries. Yeah, that's the way we approach big data, we collect, you know, all of this stuff. And most of it is, is absolute crap. It's totally, it's totally never, it would never be used. Because when you look at it, at a level of data, you get down to a certain level, there is data, that is totally, absolutely without question, useless. You know, it's like you saved, for some reason the system is outputting Excel files, and CSV files, you know, there's these sorts of it, and you only need Excel files or you only need CSV files. Yeah. Or there's a duplication happening here, or there's a, you know, there's this happening, or there's, like, there's things happening in data, that anybody any sort of analysis would look at it, we don't need that that's a, that's not used, there's no way we'll ever use that. You know, I don't care whether we bring in 50 Einsteins, that's just not usable. And that can be 20, 30, 40, 50% of the data being being collected, and not alone is it not useful if you're training the AI on crap. Krissie  31:35  Yeah for sure. And then their technology isn't right, then, if they're learning.Gerry McGovern  31:42  It's getting these strange biases, or these strange, you know, behavior patterns. Because, you know, if AI was a human, you know, we bring it into McDonald's every day and force it to eat everything, you know, 15 Big Macs, and eat and then go to the West Bend and eat that as well. You know, that's, that's the way we're training our AI. Our AI is will be strange beasts.Krissie  32:09  Oh weird, what a strange thought. So in your opinion, then. So say if you're building an app, what are the most important considerations that they should think about? For example, like, I don't know, a customer review app, which integrates on Shopify stores. Like how can they decide which data they collect, and which they don't?Gerry McGovern  32:40  Yeah, so number one, do you even need the app? Or do you know like, I downloaded the government app for COVID-19? I don't know if it works any more, you know, or is it really useful? Or, you know, is it practical? You know, we don't ask those hard questions like, Oh, you know, this really requires Bluetooth, to work effectively. Like, is that, you know, is Bluetooth stable? Will it really collect? You know, so really asking, is this one, you know, kind of, can we collect this properly and efficiently and  really digging into, you know, we're coming out at the cult of move fast and break things and we've seen, they've broken a lot, you know, Facebook, et al, they've, they've really managed to break America kinda to break the USA. They've move fast, and they broke the USA, in,  their cult of speed and stuff like that, and a little bit of thoughtfulness and about, what are we trying to achieve? And can we achieve it through the website? Why do we need an app? You know, why can it not be, can it not work, true to you, what does it actually need to really do? And then, you know, even if we're unsure of our data, well say, well, well, let's collect for six months or three months, or, like, why do we need to track like, and what can we achieve by not tracking? Like, what if we say to, you know, what's the cost of tracking? You know, what can we say, to, you know, the customer, like, we don't track you. What's that world? You know, what sidewalk as a branding statement, you know, no tracking here. You know, we we'll chat with you, but we don't track you. We don't collect information on you, you know, other than if you buy something from us, but here's exactly what we collect. And otherwise, you know, we don't and how much faster will our page with things be if we don't track and you know, and If we don't do this not enough people ask, what's the benefits of not doing this?Krissie  35:05  Exactly! And also, I was going to ask you, if I was trying to persuade a tech company, like don't store this data, because it damages the planet, because dot dot dot? What would those... how would you fill in those dots?Gerry McGovern  35:21  Well, speed will be well, privacy and, you know, definitely, you know, and I think there's a big moment. I think there's a building tsunami of privacy coming of people, you know, wanting to be protected and wanting to be more anonymous, and, you know, much more skeptical about people collecting their data, I really get a sense that a movement gathering momentum, so I think the organisations that are positioned in the future, that actually are the least intrusive, you know, in people's lives will, you know, have a real positioning statement of, you know, sustainability will probably be a key element of that will be, you know, minimum collection of data, because the less data, the less waste. You know, there's every piece of data requires energy to create and to store. Yeah. So, you know, and of course, the less data created, or the less tracking, the faster, the better the experience on the page downloading. I see. Yeah. New York Times have announced they're, they're stopping cookies, you know, they're, moving. And see, most of this doesn't even work. You know, I've seen in studies that you get just as good an advertising return from contextual advertising than from all this. But most of it is, most of it is trickery. And it's, it's, it doesn't actually work. Like it actually, it's just phantasmagoria stuff. It's magic. You know, Google said years ago, they got rid of the magic in advertising. No, they didn't, they just, they brought back the magic micro targeting God, called Google. Most of the times, it doesn't actually work, putting an ad for sports shoes, or whatever, in the sport section is just as effective as trying to target me, you know, and understand that now I need sports shoes, like so. So no, this stuff actually doesn't work. So find out what actually works. And, you know, at least if you're going to destroy the planet, have a purpose to destroy. You know, if you if you're going to create waste and use energy, at least use it for a purpose, but to create waste just to fill a dump. Yeah. You know, so purposeful. And knowing that, you know, there is a there is an argument to go out there to consumers and say, well, we are, you know, we're in the lowest tier of tracking, we collect the minimal amount of information on you. Certainly, that's the type of company I'd be interested in doing business with.Krissie  38:24  Yeah, for sure. I think at the moment, the struggle is that, you know, personalisation in e commerce is a really big trend. And it has been for a while. And so you know, you get personalised emails, where the recommended products based on what you've previously purchased. And so if your company is based on that, and like, that's what your USP is, we're a personalisation app.Gerry McGovern  38:51  Yeah, and if it's working, it's what, you know, but a lot of these are not working, you know, they're actually not work. I saw studies that you know, something 80 90% of these personalisation projects did not show return on investment. A lot of this stuff is magic. You know, it's, it's snake oil sales, it's actually not as effective as it's been made out to be. You know, so is it actually working? You know? Like, is it actually all these personal emails? You know, or is it just annoying the hell out to your customers? You know, for every for every one that you convert, have you have you pissed off 20 more?Krissie  39:36  Yeah. Because I think, you know, yeah, like you said, you're gonna piss people off, and if they're more switched on to it now, it's like, oh, that's just a personalised ad.Gerry McGovern  39:49  I don't know about you, Krissie. But every time I get an email from anybody, you know, and like that, the first thing I got is straight unsubscribe. I said I didn't give them permission, you know, everybody  seems to think they can bombard you? You know, and and I go straight unsubscribe or, you know, they're going into junk or whatever. So I think then, because everyone is doing, everyone's trying to be personal with you, and, you know, think of how creepy that is.Krissie Leyland  40:29Yeah, yeah. So I guess, then the three things that you would recommend is to think, is this actually going to be, Is this going to work? Do I need this data? And if not, then don't store it. Gerry McGovern  40:49Yeah, don't. And maybe there's an angle, you know, that you could test even if you've got numerous companies, or you're an open start and you say, you know, you come out, you're young, you're a start, and you say, we're not creepy. We don't personalise, we don't collect. Well, you won't be getting tons of emails from us, I promise, you know, you, we will not be bombarding you. You know, that's our commitment. Could that work? Or we will only send you six emails a year maximum. Krissie Leyland  41:25You know, only if we really need to email you. Gerry McGovern  41:28Yeah. You know, so we're not going to annoy you. That's part of our commitment. That's part of our total calculation, you know, of, the total cost of this T shirt. You know, because the 15 customised emails are part of the T shirt as well, cost as well. You know, and, the data it sucked up. So, you know, I think there's a conscious consumer out, or more conscious consumers. I mean, I hope there is because if we, if there isn't, we have no chance. Krissie Leyland  42:03There is. That's what the MindfulCommerce community is. So, but then a brand might argue, right, so if I'm not going to send any emails, I'm probably not going to be on social media that much. So how do I get my message out there? How do I tell people about this new product that we've got that is sustainable and it is ethical? Gerry McGovern  42:26Well, maybe maybe, you are on, you are calculating you know, are you saying, we will just send you six emails a year, you know, we will just say, you know, and our emails are, X number of K, you know, and actually two of those will be text only, you know, for those who read, and we will, we use social media, but we don't, we only use video, every 50 post and we really think about video. And we tend to use text. And, you know, we use SMS messages in a clever way, because an SMS message creates 295 times less pollution than an email. You know, so there's different scales up from, from a text message to an email, to an audio to a video, like 30 seconds of video is like 60,000 or 100,000 or 200,000 text messages, you know, one 30 second, you know, so, you know, we're careful. And we compress well, and we do all these sorts of things. But if I thought, you know, somebody was consciously, you know, connecting with me, like, I'll open, if they do send me an email, then, you know, from, you know, that ring, they fixed the ring. Yeah, but we're bombarded you know, we just bomb everybody's telling us how much they care about us during COVID-19 whether they're airlines, you know, like, whatever. Krissie Leyland  44:08I delete those ones now. Gerry McGovern  44:10Yeah, well, it's all a blur, isn't it? Like, it's all you just, you just thought you want to live your life a bit like, you know, so? I think that there's a space as you say, for, for mindful commerce. Krissie Leyland  44:26Yeah, definitely. And and I think, you know, when we are back to normal, because we will get back to normal, or the new normal. Instead of emailing and you know, social media, maybe we'll be able to do more events and like, you know, community events. And then they can promote their brand that way. But yeah, I like the idea of just having just saying, right, we're not collecting your data, we're not going to target you. And here's all the reasons why. Gerry McGovern  44:57Yeah, or here's all the data, here's what we collect on you. And it's typically only 20% of what others will collect. And you can go out and check that, you know. So we say, we need to collect it, you know, or we feel or this helps, because we want to keep the size your size of your shoe. You know, and, and we will let you know, but only, you know, if, in a maybe in two years or, and we take back your shoes, we will repair them and sell them or, you know, or, you know, that's our sort of stuff. It's really, truly useful from both sides. You know, it's not it's not "No", you know, but some, some environments will say we actually, we don't need any. Some will say, you know, actually, when we look at it, the nature of our product, we don't need to collect anything. So all we need to collect very little, but really thinking that every, every collection is an invasion. Tracking, I mean, when the tracking ever seemed like a positive thing. You know, think of the very word tracking, you know? And the dangers inherent in being tracked? Who wants to be tracked?  Krissie Leyland  46:20I just don't know if anyone is aware, like, because businesses aren't that transparent about it, or, you know, there's this really long chunk of text telling you about the data, and you just accept it without reading it, because you just don't have the time to read it. So they get away with it. Gerry McGovern  46:37Yeah. Krissie Leyland  46:39Yeah. So if, if brands are more transparent, about if they are collecting data, why they are, then I think that's okay. Gerry McGovern  46:49Yeah, and, you know, let's see real sustainable brands, mindful brands that, you know, are not out to screw us, are not out to fool us and not out, you know, and say, here's a reason, here's our problem. Yeah, great. You know, I think there's lots of people want to buy gold from those sorts of people. Yeah, you know, that, work hard and create beautiful things and that are genuinely useful and are repairable and are, you know, use as natural products as possible and don't use too many chemicals in the creation. You know, there is nothing wrong with that. That's a nice story. That's a good story. And, and if we need to collect some data, to make that story work, that's okay. But we do, we think about it, you know, what do we need to collect, what's really necessary, you know, and, you know, we're constantly trying to reduce the waste, whether it's the waste in the data, or the waste and the garment or the waste in the laptop, like, you know, for not, if we're not processing all this stupid data, then the laptop will last another year.  Krissie Leyland  48:13Yeah, good point.  Gerry McGovern  48:14Oh, you know, because the less stress I mean, if you don't drive your car as much your car last longer to, generally speaking, you know, so. So computers, like everything else, are affected by use, and if there's lots of intensive use, and so if you're not processing, if you're only processing, one gigabyte versus 30 gigabyte, that's, it's less energy, it's less stress on the parts. And you didn't need that other 40. And a lot of it is comes back to this mindfulness of really thinking about what you're doing, rather than just grabbing everything, and then bringing it all back home and saying "Now what? Oh, I don't want this, I don't want this, don't want this, don't want this" you know, be much more conscious about our decisions. And technology, the great danger of technology, Is that it is it stopping us actually thinking. Krissie Leyland  49:15Yeah, it is. Especially when you're sending an email and it finishes your sentence for you. And you're like, Oh, so I don't need to use my brain nails. Gerry McGovern  49:27Yeah, and that a, then you use it less and less and then we just become addicts. We don't, you don't, we lose our sense of agency in our very lives and then we start doing things to our customers because we don't, they're not it's not even that is, It's some it's some AI record on McDonald's data. Yeah, no, that's bombarding customers because of some flaw in the, in the connection or the interpretation of the data, because here's the thing about customisation. It can be wonderful. It can work. But when you get it wrong, you can get it extraordinarily wrong. Krissie Leyland  50:17Oh, gosh, so true. Do you have an example of someone who's got it?  Gerry McGovern  50:22Well you know, try, you know, all of these things like, you know, figuring out, you know, that, hey, someone in your household is pregnant, why not buy some clothes for the baby, or, you know, that has actually happened, or, you know, or, you know, all sorts of things where, you know, Facebook would be showing pictures of children who had died and families and so on the, the remembrance, or the, you know, what nice things happened this year, you know, it can get really, really ugly in people's lives. I mean, and look at the way these algorithms really operate. The work on our worst instincts. I mean, we see, I mean, the society that AI is building is not a pretty society in the USA at the moment, you know, it's not a pretty society, it is not building the society that tech is building. We are the customisation in or the targeted advertising. And it's not it's not a pretty society, we, you know, the USA is the most tech advanced society on Earth. Is that, is that the future we want for the world? Krissie Leyland  51:43Probably not. I think we need to talk about all of this more so that people realise what's going on. And then... because basically it you know, big tech companies are manipulating us.  Gerry McGovern  51:55Yeah, and all they care about, and these those big tech companies, they have no, they have no nations, they don't belong. They may be in Silicon Valley, but, you know, their accounts are in the Cayman Islands, or they they don't exist in any community. They have no loyalty to nothing. Other than the accumulation of the maximum, they don't, they will... Look at them, they make the biggest profits of any companies on earth, and they pay the least taxes because they are optimised to screw the earth basically. I mean that's what Facebook and Amazon are, screw the earth, that's their optimisation model. You know, maximise profit, minimise tax. It's not that they're bad people or, you know, it's just that that's the machine they've built.  Krissie Leyland  52:47Yeah. Oh, crazy times.  Gerry McGovern  52:52Yeah but not, but not, beyond our reach yet. Krissie Leyland  52:56We can still stop can't we? We can still make a difference. Gerry McGovern  53:01I think so. I mean, we at least have to try. Krissie Leyland  53:04Yeah. More conversations like this, I think. Gerry McGovern  53:08Yeah. Krissie Leyland  53:10Um, so if you could give one tip to our listeners. So they are e-commerce, tech developers and e-commerce brands, what would that tip be? Gerry McGovern  53:22I mean, I think move slow and fix things, you know, and be thoughtful, be mindful. Think about your decisions more. I mean, this, you know, agile and sprinting, it's great, but you can sprint in the wrong direction. Like, and really thinking about the decision before we make it and the parameters of the decision, I'm thinking, we've got trapped in this total short term loop of, we can't think beyond a week or a month. We got to think longer. And we can, and it requires exercise and requires disciplines and requires doing maybe games or whatever, to actually stretch our minds, you know, like, like, we stretch our muscles who we need to stretch our minds. We still can, we've got this wonderful human brain that is actually still much more efficient than the most efficient AI, you know, like that consumes the energy consumption, you know, of the brain, it's about 20 watts an hour. Think of all the stuff that the brain does for 20 watts an hour. It's good value. And it's an it's the most sustainable thing you know, that that's out there. So getting people and, designing things, you know, that get people out there, away from the machines. Like that they're taking walks or you know, enjoying food or they're, you know, because everything in digital is consuming energy. So how do we get help people using technology partly but to live their lives more in nature rather than in technology? In technology 20% at a time rather than 80% and I don't mean no technology, but that like getting people to be more human, because we are human. We are not machines yet we are not circuit boards. Krissie Leyland  55:32No, not yet. You said yet, does that mean we might be one day? Gerry McGovern  55:36We will be, we will gradually become, you know, over 50 or hundred years, we will become, we will have brain implants. And we will have, you know, eye implants and become a time where we either when did the human stop and the sidebar begin I'm sure that, you know that. But that is a potential outcome of the way things are progressing. If we're not, unless we say well hold on a minute, do we really want to go this path but right now, we're still human. Unless in giant here, we made lots of mistakes. And hopefully we can learn. But right now we are flesh and bone and brain and if we do that, right, we can be less impactful on the environment, and less destructive. Combining the best of technology with the best of humans. I think that's the perfect outcome, but just treating technology as if it's some sort of a magic God, like, we are so susceptible to this idea of the God that knows it all. That'll figure it all out for us. And really, we replaced, you know, the traditional gods, with Apple and Google and Facebook and AI and they will no more lead us to a blissful world than the old ones really did. Krissie Leyland  57:13Amazing, very powerful. Very powerful answer, Gerry. Thank you. Thank you so much. So Gerry, where can people find you and how can they find out more? Gerry McGovern  57:28Worldwide Waste is available at GerryMcGovern.com. You can read it for free there or buy a copy of it. Krissie Leyland  57:38This series is sponsored by Kollectify. Kollectify is a content marketing agency working specifically with Shopify solutions to successfully position and promote the app or agency. Episodes go out every Monday so don't forget to subscribe or you might miss a few knowledge bombs. And finally, if you'd like to join the MindfulCommerce community with lots of conscious brands and e-commerce experts, who are all working together to make change, please email info@mindfulcommerce.io and I'll send you the deets! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

By 2035, it is estimated that there will be more than 2,000 zettabytes of data produced globally. Based on current storage pricing, 2,000 zettabytes would cost $58 trillion to store. The global economy is currently worth about $80 trillion. The pace and quantity of data production is not even remotely sustainable. One zettabyte—just one zettabyte—would require 20 trillion trees worth of paper to print out. There are about three trillion trees left on this planet. The digital world is undergoing a Big Bang of data and 90% of it is useless because we have a culture that prizes production and collection over-analysis and insight. Nick talks about how we might address the Big Data tsunami.  Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ Connect with Nick - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-e-0a0734124/ Upcoming courses with Gerry McGovern - https://www.thisisdoing.com/team/gerry-mcgovern More from This is HCD https://linktr.ee/thisishcd Join our Slack community / https://www.thisishcd.com/community/join/ Training with This is Doing   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

By 2035, it is estimated that there will be more than 2,000 zettabytes of data produced globally. Based on current storage pricing, 2,000 zettabytes would cost $58 trillion to store. The global economy is currently worth about $80 trillion. The pace and quantity of data production is not even remotely sustainable. One zettabyte—just one zettabyte—would require 20 trillion trees worth of paper to print out. There are about three trillion trees left on this planet. The digital world is undergoing a Big Bang of data and 90% of it is useless because we have a culture that prizes production and collection over-analysis and insight. Nick talks about how we might address the Big Data tsunami.  Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ Connect with Nick - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-e-0a0734124/ Upcoming courses with Gerry McGovern - https://www.thisisdoing.com/team/gerry-mcgovern More from This is HCD https://linktr.ee/thisishcd Join our Slack community / https://www.thisishcd.com/community/join/ Training with This is Doing   Become a Premium Member: https://thisishcdnetwork.supercast.tech See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

NEW CAR REGISTRATION FIGURES OCTOBER 2020The October New Car Registration figures were down only 1.6% year-on-year, even with the Welsh lockdown. Diesel, unsurprisingly, and petrol both down but battery vehicles up a whopping 143.9%. There is a surprise or two in the model Top 10 list as well. To read more, click here for the SMMT article. CO2 POOLING Car manufacturers are beginning to finalise their plans for dealing with the EU Fleet CO2 rules. In an effort to avoid large fines the fine print allows manufacturers to buy CO2 credits from others who have spare. To see further who has signed up with whom, click the CarScoops article here. M6 TOLL PRICE RISEFrom the 4 December 2020, the price will increase to use the M6 Toll Road. Cars will be charged £6.90 to use the full length of the road during the day, with the Junction price being £4.90. Local residents can get a Flxi-Pass, which means that paying £29 will allow for 10 Junction trips. To read more, click the Motoring Research article here. MORE DRIVING TRAINING REQUIRED FOR ASSISTANCE TECHNOLOGYA study run by the University of Nottingham, with support from the RAC Foundation, found that drivers who received behavioural training before using Level 3 equipped vehicles, were more measured in using the technology. The understanding of the technology meant they were paying more attention whilst the vehicle was undertaking manoeuvrers. To read more, click the FleetNews article here. _____________________________________________If you like what we do, on this show, and think it is worth a £1.00, please consider supporting us via Patreon. Here is the link to that CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT THE PODCAST——————————————————————————-WRC: COLIN CLARK’S INCREASING WORRY OVER 2022We have discussed the ‘hybrid issue’ that is still plaguing WRC as it pushes to be about the only top flight motorsport that is adamant new technology rules should still come into force. Colin Clark has written an interesting article explaining his growing fears over the future of WRC. To read this, click the DirtFish link here. BLOODHOUND TV SERIES AND SPONSORSHIP DRIVEThe Bloodhound LSR project will be on Channel 4 at 18:00 GMT on 14 November 2020, taking us through the highs and lows of the journey so far. This coincides with a renewed call for sponsors, in what is a financially tough time. To read more, click the link for information about sponsorship here. DESIGNERS MOOD BOARD: CHANGES AT JLRThere have been big changes at the design departments of Jaguar Land Rover. Firstly, Massimo Frascella has been made Design Director of Land Rover. Gerry McGovern has been named Chief Creative Officer for JLR. This will mean that Julian Thomson, Design Director at Jaguar, will also report to him. However, there are some wondering if this will be an advisory role, as Tata has a policy of staff retiring at 65, which Mr McGovern is approaching. To read more, click the link for the Autocar article here. LUNCHTIME READ: THE HISTORY OF IN-CAR ENTERTAINMENTGavin Braithwaite-Smith has written an excellent article, on Motoring Research, taking us through the evolution of in-car entertainment. Go and click the link here to find out how far we have come since the first radios were introduced in 1920. LIST OF THE WEEK: PERFECTLY USELESS THINGS YOU CAN BUY FOR YOUR CARWe recommend another Autocar List of the Week for you to peruse and enjoy. This time, the suggestions are stuff you really shouldn’t buy for your car. There are many items we agree with, but not all. Do let the chaps know which you find the most cringe-worthy after you’ve run through the options. To find out more, click the link here. AND FINALLY: CELEBRATE HOW GEOFFREY PALMER HELPED AUDIGeoffrey Palmer sadly passed away last week, however, we want to celebrate what he did to raise the profile of Audi in the UK thanks to adverts like the one for the 100 Avant and the Quattro. PetrolBlog has written about how much his ads had a hand in turning public opinion about the German brand. To read that, click the link here. To watch the Audi 100 ad, click the link here. To watch the Audi Quattro ad, click the link here.

Find Gerry's book - Top Tasks - here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1916444601?pf_rd_r=JFSFFGCWKEDECGV2DT2P&pf_rd_p=e632fea2-678f-4848-9a97-bcecda59cb4e

The growth in webpage size over the years has been astounding. It is driven by a culture of delivery, a project mindset, and a feeling that the Web is this unlimited space where you can essentially do anything you want without consequences. But good web design is a complex task that many organizations are either unwilling or unable to manage professionally. Once the initial buzz of signing off the visual design is done people want to move on. Fixing stuff is seen as a cost that the organization doesn't have time or money for. Reframing things around quality can change the focus. Jono explores how we can think of web design through a quality lens. https://www.jonoalderson.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonoalderson/?originalSubdomain=uk Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The growth in webpage size over the years has been astounding. It is driven by a culture of delivery, a project mindset, and a feeling that the Web is this unlimited space where you can essentially do anything you want without consequences. But good web design is a complex task that many organizations are either unwilling or unable to manage professionally. Once the initial buzz of signing off the visual design is done people want to move on. Fixing stuff is seen as a cost that the organization doesn’t have time or money for. Reframing things around quality can change the focus. Jono explores how we can think of web design through a quality lens. https://www.jonoalderson.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonoalderson/?originalSubdomain=uk Buy the book by Gerry McGovern - https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ Become a Premium Member: https://thisishcdnetwork.supercast.tech See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As product people, we handle vast amounts of data without thinking about the environment. We make copies and backups of everything, and even our devices are powered to the max. Can we do better? Our guest today is Gerry McGovern, the author of World Wide Waste. You’ll learn about the current risks associated with data waste, along with Gerry’s tips on digital sustainability and minimizing your footprint.Podcast feed: subscribe to https://feeds.simplecast.com/4MvgQ73R in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play Music.Show NotesWorld Wide Waste — Gerry’s recent bookEpisode 118: Customer Top Tasks with Gerry McGovernEpisode 140: Sustainable UX with James ChristieWebsite Carbon Calculator — a tool for estimating your website’s carbon footprintUserlist — Jane's SaaS productgerrymcgovern.com — Gerry’s websiteFollow Gerry on TwitterToday’s SponsorThis episode is brought to you by Hover. Register a domain name for your design portfolio and choose from over 300 domain name extensions. No matter what area of the creative space you are in, there’s a domain name waiting for it — from .design and .art to .ink, .photo and more. Check them out at hover.com/uibreakfast.Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here.Leave a ReviewReviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here’s how.

Ever wonder what Gerry McGovern did next? Those who've been around the Irish technology scene for a couple of decades will remember a time when Nua was one of the beacons of the industry. With a mission to create a ‘Local Ireland' platform, it culminated in a multi-million euro stake from (what was then known as) Telecom Eireann. And then the dot bomb crash happened. So where has Gerry McGovern been? What does he now think of that time? This week, Adrian catches up with the Longford man on the publication of his eighth book, ‘World Wide Waste'. McGovern has lost none of his passion, which is now directed at cutting out physical and digital waste. He gets heated about a few things during the podcast.

This episode was brought to you by ThisisDoing.com Chris Coyier talks to Gerry McGovern about how many of the tools and resources out there make it easy for developers and designers to create bloated, heavy, energy-sapping digital designs. Chris says we need new thinking and new tools that clearly indicate when we are making design decisions that are bad for the user and bad for the planet. https://twitter.com/chriscoyier https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ This is HCD Podcast Network EthnoPod with Jay Hasbrouck Bringing Design Closer with Gerry Scullion ProdPod with Adrienne Tan Getting Started in Design with Gerry Scullion Moments of Change with Melanie Rayment World Wide Waste with Gerry McGovern Global Jams Podcast with Adam Lawrence and Markus Edgar Hormess Connect with This is HCD Follow This is HCD us on Twitter Follow This is HCD on Instagram Sign up for our newsletter (we have lots of design giveaways!) Join the practitioner community on This is HCD Slack Channel Read articles on our This is HCD Network on Medium See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was brought to you by ThisisDoing.com Chris Coyier talks to Gerry McGovern about how many of the tools and resources out there make it easy for developers and designers to create bloated, heavy, energy-sapping digital designs. Chris says we need new thinking and new tools that clearly indicate when we are making design decisions that are bad for the user and bad for the planet. https://twitter.com/chriscoyier https://gerrymcgovern.com/books/world-wide-waste/ This is HCD Podcast Network EthnoPod with Jay Hasbrouck Bringing Design Closer with Gerry Scullion ProdPod with Adrienne Tan Getting Started in Design with Gerry Scullion Moments of Change with Melanie Rayment World Wide Waste with Gerry McGovern Global Jams Podcast with Adam Lawrence and Markus Edgar Hormess Connect with This is HCD Follow This is HCD us on Twitter Follow This is HCD on Instagram Sign up for our newsletter (we have lots of design giveaways!) Join the practitioner community on This is HCD Slack Channel Read articles on our This is HCD Network on Medium Become a Premium Member: https://thisishcdnetwork.supercast.tech See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.

This episode was brought to you by This is Doing - Design & Innovation Online Learning In this episode, Gerry McGovern speaks with Erika Hall from Mule Design. Gerry discusses with Erika if we've ruined web design, and if we have, what do we do about it? https://muledesign.com/speaking/erika-hall Buy Gerry McGovern's new book 'World Wide Waste' Support This is HCD by becoming a Premium subscriber. This is HCD Podcast Network EthnoPod with Jay Hasbrouck Bringing Design Closer with Gerry Scullion ProdPod with Adrienne Tan Getting Started in Design with Gerry Scullion Power of Ten with Andy Polaine The Big Remote with Gerry Scullion and Andy Polaine Moments of Change with Melanie Rayment Talking Shop with Andy Polaine and Gerry Scullion Decoding Culture with Dr. John Curran World Wide Waste with Gerry McGovern Global Jams Podcast with Adam Lawrence and Markus Hormess Connect with This is HCD Follow This is HCD us on Twitter Follow This is HCD on Instagram Sign up for our newsletter (we have lots of design giveaways!) Join the practitioner community on This is HCD Slack Channel Read articles on our This is HCD Network on Medium   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was brought to you by This is Doing - Design & Innovation Online Learning In this episode, Gerry McGovern speaks with Erika Hall from Mule Design. Gerry discusses with Erika if we've ruined web design, and if we have, what do we do about it? https://muledesign.com/speaking/erika-hall Buy Gerry McGovern's new book 'World Wide Waste' Support This is HCD by becoming a Premium subscriber. This is HCD Podcast Network EthnoPod with Jay Hasbrouck Bringing Design Closer with Gerry Scullion ProdPod with Adrienne Tan Getting Started in Design with Gerry Scullion Power of Ten with Andy Polaine The Big Remote with Gerry Scullion and Andy Polaine Moments of Change with Melanie Rayment Talking Shop with Andy Polaine and Gerry Scullion Decoding Culture with Dr. John Curran World Wide Waste with Gerry McGovern Global Jams Podcast with Adam Lawrence and Markus Hormess Connect with This is HCD Follow This is HCD us on Twitter Follow This is HCD on Instagram Sign up for our newsletter (we have lots of design giveaways!) Join the practitioner community on This is HCD Slack Channel Read articles on our This is HCD Network on Medium   Support the show: https://thisishcdnetwork.supercast.tech

Today's interview is with Don Schuerman who is the CTO & Vice President of Product Strategy and Marketing at Pegasystems. Don joins me today to talk about Pegaworld iNspire, Center-Out™, Process Fabric™, Ethical Bias Testing and what it is going to take to succeed and thrive, particularly when it comes to delivering an outstanding customer experience, in this changing world we live in. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Up to 90% of digital data is not used. What sort of society accepts 90% waste? – Interview with Gerry McGovern – and is number 346 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month. While PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems took place earlier this month (June 2nd) you can still view the sessions on-demand so do head over to www.pegaworld.com to check them out.

Today's interview is with Gerry McGovern who is the founder and CEO of Customer Carewords and the author of six books on all things digital, content, transformation and online customer experience. He has just published a new book called: World Wide Waste and joins me today to talk about the book, how it came about, what we can learn from it and why it matters. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Scaling customer support and maintaining employee and customer satisfaction even through a pandemic – Interview with Nick Misewicz of Pura Vida Bracelets – and is number 345 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees. NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pega for sponsoring my podcast this month. While PegaWorld iNspire, the annual conference from Pegasystems took place earlier this month (June 2nd) you can still view the sessions on-demand so do head over to www.pegaworld.com to check them out.

Gerry McGovern talks with us about the amount of energy used sending the bits and bytes around the internet, the cost of storage, new phones vs old phones, the scale of data, and how do we adjust our process and culture to make changes?

Enjoy our content? Support This is HCD by becoming a Premium Member Welcome to World Wide Waste, a podcast about how digital is killing the planet, and what to do about it. In this session, I'm chatting with Jeremy Keith. Jeremy is a philosopher of the internet. Every time I see him speak, I'm struck by his calming presence, his brilliant mind and his deep humanity. Jeremy makes websites with Clearleft. His books include DOM Scripting, Bulletproof Ajax, HTML5 for Web Designers, Resilient Web Design, and, most recently, Going Offline. Hailing from Erin's green shores, Jeremy maintains his link with Irish traditional music, running the community site The Session. He also indulges a darker side of his bouzouki playing in the band, Salter Cane. You can find out more about Jeremy at adactio.com.  https://dannyvankooten.com/website-carbon-emissions/ http://designingforperformance.com/ https://idlewords.com/2020/03/we_need_a_massive_surveillance_program.htm Learn more about Gerry McGovern's World Wide Waste book  Join our live online Coffee Timeevents every Tuesday and Thursday during the pandemic with a surprise guest each time :-) This is HCD Podcast Network EthnoPod with Jay Hasbrouck Bringing Design Closer with Gerry Scullion ProdPod with Adrienne Tan Getting Started in Design with Gerry Scullion Power of Ten with Andy Polaine NEW: The Big Remote with Gerry Scullion and Andy Polaine Talking Shop with Andy Polaine and Gerry Scullion Decoding Culture with Dr. John Curran NEW: World Wide Waste with Gerry McGovern NEW: Global Jams Podcast with Adam Lawrence and Markus Hormess Connect with This is HCD Follow This is HCD us on Twitter Follow This is HCD on Instagram Sign up for our newsletter (we have lots of design giveaways!) Join the practitioner community on This is HCD Slack Channel Read articles on our This is HCD Network on Medium See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are thrilled to welcome Gerry McGovern to the This is HCD Team, and delighted to present to you his new podcast, World Wide Waste. How do we design for less waste in digital? How can digital designers, developers and content professionals create a more environmentally friendly digital? One that uses less energy and creates less waste. One where reuse is at the core of thinking. One where the Earth Experience is central. Gerry McGovern will talk to designers who are pioneering green digital thinking and methods. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are thrilled to welcome Gerry McGovern to the This is HCD Team, and delighted to present to you his new podcast, World Wide Waste. How do we design for less waste in digital? How can digital designers, developers and content professionals create a more environmentally friendly digital? One that uses less energy and creates less waste. One where reuse is at the core of thinking. One where the Earth Experience is central. Gerry McGovern will talk to designers who are pioneering green digital thinking and methods. Support the show.

Most of customer experience is cleaning and sweeping - Interview with Gerry McGovern who is the founder and CEO of Customer Carewords and the author of six books on all things digital, content, transformation and online customer experience. He is about to publish a new book at the end of this month: Top Tasks – A How to Guide, which provides an A to Z look at the Top Tasks methodology that Gerry has developed and has used in around 4-500 organisations around the world over the last 20 years. Gerry joins me today to talk about the book, why being great is hard work and to take a closer look at the Top Tasks methodology.

This week for Faces and Places, Breifne went to visit the official opening of the McGovern Aughavas Leitrim GAA Centre of Excellence in Annaduff. Built at a cost of €2.8 million it has been completed without incurring a massive debt due to the fantastic efforts of a number of people. Supported by: Gurns Milestone Bar, Manorhamilton We hear from a number of those individuals on the show today. GAA President John Horan tells us about the assistance provided by Croke Park to the project while Terence Boyle and Gerry McGovern share with us the blood sweat and tears which went into the project locally over the last 15 years. John O'Mahony shares a little bit with us about the various inputs to the 1994 Connacht Championship success and how this centre of excellence will allow Leitrim to bridge the gap to our competitors at all levels in the province and further afield. Eamon Duignan shares a few of the stories behind the success of the Leitrim Wall which helped to raise €300,000 to complete the project and ensure that the finances of the centre wouldn't cripple the association into the future. We hear from current Leitrim Manager Terry Hyland about Leitrim's plans for an assault on Division 3 as they get on a level playing field with the facilities available as good as any other county. Ronan Haslette of Glencar/Manor who wore the county colours in the past talks about the difference these facilities will make to the preparation of Leitrim teams into the future.

Welcome to the 9th Sales Acceleration show where together with Gerry McGovern we discuss anti-marketing, getting trust from your users, current customer obsession and changing the internal measurement model. TRUST is USE. It is getting so much harder to get attention from customers but what you need to start doing is to give attention. The cult of the new customers is driving many organisation and their internal measurement structures but this behaviour is eroding the trust in your company. Start measuring in the world of the customers as they are driven by a task, a purpose to solve in order to grow your revenues. Buy his latest book about digital transformation here: http://bit.ly/gerrymcgovernbook About :http://gerrymcgovern.com/

There's some of you might know the Top Tasks methodology already and even if you do, I'd encourage you to listen to this episode, as I break down the method to better understand the mechanics behind Top Tasks, and also get Gerry's insights into where it works well - as well as looking at the origins of the method. There's so much wisdom in this episode, I just know you'll enjoy it - Gerry McGovern on Twitter Sign up to Gerrys McGoverns amazing newsletter Buy Gerry's books and specifically the new Top Tasks book This is HCD is brought to you by Humana Design Follow This is HCD us on Twitter Follow This is HCD on Instagram Sign up for our newsletter Join the This is HCD Slack Channel Follow us on Medium   Support the show.

There's some of you might know the Top Tasks methodology already and even if you do, I'd encourage you to listen to this episode, as I break down the method to better understand the mechanics behind Top Tasks, and also get Gerry's insights into where it works well - as well as looking at the origins of the method. There's so much wisdom in this episode, I just know you'll enjoy it - Gerry McGovern on Twitter Sign up to Gerrys McGoverns amazing newsletter Buy Gerry's books and specifically the new Top Tasks book This is HCD is brought to you by Humana Design Follow This is HCD us on Twitter Follow This is HCD on Instagram Sign up for our newsletter Join the This is HCD Slack Channel Follow us on Medium   Support the show.

Hazel White and Mike Press from OpenChange in Scotland join me on the show this week, and we dig  a little deeper into what myself and sarah drummond covered about the changes in the scottish design landscape and what trigged this. We speak more about a walkabout, service safari or observational masterclass that the guys gave at service design days in barcelona, and what’s so good about these types of workshop activities. Now before we jump into the interview, i wanted to mention we have a shelf load of books to give-away as thank you to all of our listeners in 2018. To be in with a chance of winning the books, you need to be on our newsletter which you can subscribe on our website at thisishcd.com - we’ve got books from O’Reilly Media  in NYC one of our biggest supporters, as well as exclusive TIHCD discounts for Rosenfeld Media books and also have 2 books from the guys at Smashing Magazine. We also have signed copies of Andy Polaines Service Design book and Gerry McGovern’s latest book, Top Tasks. Read the transcript of this episode on our website Visit OpenChange.co.uk Tweet Mike Press Tweet Hazel White This is HCD is brought to you by Humana Design Follow This is HCD us on Twitter Follow This is HCD on Instagram Sign up for our newsletter Join the This is HCD Slack Channel Follow us on Medium   Support the show.

The words you use in your marketing and in your customer communications matter. You need to use the words that connect to the experiences that your customers and prospects want to have. You need to understand the path that these users take as they are navigating your website to get to the outcomes they are after. There is a science to identifying and optimizing these paths. It's called Top TasksManagement. You're about to learn all about this and more in this episode number 150. If you care about customer experience, then you are in for a treat. Our guest is Gerry McGovern. He's the Founder and CEO of Customer Care Words. Gerry helps large organizations deliver a better digital customer experience. His commercial clients include Microsoft, Dropbox, Cisco, VMware and IBM. He's also consulted with the US, UK, EU, Dutch, Canadian, Norwegian and Irish governments. A highly regarded speaker, he has spoken on digital customer experience in 35 countries. He's also written six books on digital customer experience. His latest is called Transform: A Rebel’s Guide for Digital Transformation.

Before designing anything, how do you figure out what your users need in the first place? Today we're diving into Top Tasks Management framework developed by Gerry McGovern, a famous UI/UX expert and author of six books on customer experience. You'll learn why addressing the top tasks is a key to customer success, and how to define and manage them for your project. Podcast feed: subscribe to http://simplecast.fm/podcasts/1441/rss in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play Music. Show Notes Gerry's website — customer experience insights published since 1996 (don't forget to subscribe) Gerry's books Identifying Customer Top Tasks — Gerry's article on Medium Episode 111: Effective Website Navigation with Els Aerts SurveyMonkey — a popular survey tool Jared Spool, Jacob Nielsen — UX thought leaders that influenced Gerry's work Optimal Workshop — great user research tools MeasuringU by Jeff Sauro, This is HCD by Gerry Scullion — recommended UI/UX resources Customer Carewords — Gerry's consulting website Follow Gerry on Twitter: @gerrymcgovern Today's Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Balsamiq, the super-simple wireframing tool that can help you focus your design on what really matters to your customers. Try it free for 30 days at balsamiq.cloud. Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here. Leave a Review Reviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.

Hello and welcome to another episode of This is HCD. My name is Gerry Scullion and I'm a human centred design practitioner based in Dublin, Ireland. In this episode, we caught up with Gerry McGovern, one of the most well known and loved customer experience advocates in the industry today. Gerry has developed a number of fantastic models over the years such as Top Tasks and also curates and creates one of the best weekly experience design newsletters on the internet. Sign up below. Gerry's been described by the Irish Times as 'one of the five visionaries who has had a major impact on the development of the web'. He's a fantastic speaker and by the time this episode gets released we'll have completed three of the four dates as close and keynote speaker on Jeffrey Zeldman's An Event Apart conferences in the US. Gerry has written six books, one of which came across my desk a number of years ago by Gerry Gaffney in Melbourne. The three Gerry's all Irish and all doing something pretty similar. So, going back to this episode, we discussed trust and we cover off what is trust to Gerry; the role of trust in society and in relation to the exchanges between customers and organisations. We speak about how customers have evolved at an exponential rate that exceeds that of organisations and now organisations are playing catch up. Gerry McGovern on Twitter Sign up to Gerrys McGoverns amazing newsletter Buy Gerrys books  Read the transcript of this episode This is HCD is brought to you by Humana Design Follow us on Twitter Follow on Instagram Sign up for our newsletter Join our Slack Channel Follow us on Medium Support the show.

Show Description****************Gerry McGovern is our guest this week to talk about listening to your customers, what big companies do right and wrong, how to avoid living in the past, and consulting Chris on how a new feature for CodePen could be developed. Listen on Website →Links*****Sponsors********

We've been building websites for decades, yet each project imposes new challenges when it comes to navigation. Our guest today is Els Aerts — a famous usability expert, speaker, and co-founder of AGConsult. We talk about the core principles behind effective navigation, how to figure out what information deserves the spotlight, and how to avoid common pitfalls. You'll also learn how to deal with navigation challenges in different industries: government websites, ecommerce, and SaaS. Podcast feed: subscribe to http://simplecast.fm/podcasts/1441/rss in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play Music. Show Notes AGConsult — Els' agency Identifying Customer Top Tasks — an article by Gerry McGovern Treejack, OptimalSort — tools by Optimal Workshop for tree testing and card sorting Balsamiq, Axure, InVision — prototyping tools Information Scent — a definition at Optimizely Glossary Navigation versus search — Els' article GOV.UK — a good website example without top navigation Jakob Nielsen, Jared Spool, Gerry McGovern — usability authorities to follow CTAConf 2018 — one of the upcoming conferences where Els will give a talk (August 27-29, 2018 in Vancouver, Canada) Follow Els on Twitter: @els_aerts Get €200 off user research training by AGConsult Academy using promocode UIBREAKFAST (valid until June 31, 2018) Today's Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Balsamiq. This super easy-to-use wireframing tool can help you and your team get user interface ideas down before you start coding or sweating the details on fancier tools. Try it free for 30 days at balsamiq.cloud. Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here. Leave a Review Reviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.

Customer experience expert Gerry McGovern speaks with Kristina about how organizations need to shift focus away from production-based, internally-focused thinking and toward putting their customers' needs and top tasks first.

Gerry McGovern helps customers complete their most important tasks when they arrive at a website. His proven process routinely results in the removal of as much as 90% of the content on a website. This requires content managers to shift their mindset from a simple production model to an ongoing customer-centric "eternal beta."

Gerry McGovernGerry McGovern helps customers complete their most important tasks when they arrive at a website. His proven process routinely results in the removal of as much as 90% of the content on a website. This requires content managers to shift their mindset from a simple production model to an ongoing customer-centric "eternal beta." Gerry and I talked about: the shift in power away from organizations to customers the importance of customer centricity the evolution of web content from a push model to a pull model the differences between keywords, carewords, and brandwords how branding has shifted from broadcasting messages to facilitating conversations among customers conventional branding's continued relevance in the digital age the evolution of content from project-based production to continuous evolution & improvement the importance of focusing on top tasks how to identify and measure top tasks why we use products we don't trust Gerry's Bio Gerry McGovern helps large organizations deliver a better digital customer experience. His commercial clients include Microsoft, Dropbox, Cisco, NetApp, VMware, and IBM. He has also consulted with the US, UK, EU, Dutch, Canadian, Norwegian, and Irish governments. Gerry has developed a research and management model to help large organizations improve customer experience through identifying and optimizing customer top tasks. It's called Top Tasks Management. A highly-regarded speaker, he has spoken on digital customer experience in 35 countries. He has written six books on digital customer experience. His latest is called Transform: A Rebel's Guide for Digital Transformation. It shows that digital transformation is far more about culture change than technology change. The Irish Times described Gerry as one of five visionaries who have had a major impact on the development of the Web. He is the founder and CEO of Customer Carewords. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/ar_9Qtd4i08 Show Notes/"Transcript" [Not an actual transcript - just my quick notes on first listen-through] 00:20 - my intro 00:50 - Gerry intro - same broad intent in both content and tasks - his background is journalism and he writes constantly - so not as if he's left world of content - mid-90s saw world-changing coming - saw early on sense of shift in power away from organizations to customers - his "North Star" - if you want to be successful you need to be customer centric - how to do this in digital - it's words that help you navigate the digital space - maybe 10-15 years we'll navigate a visual VR landscape but for now it's words - "Content is the foundation of the digital customer experience." - most essential element of delivering a great customer experience is content - "help people do stuff" - that's his focus now - customer centricity - still does lots of content even though he identifies as a customer experience person 4:25 - question - evolution of content - carewords over keywords and then tasks - any Eureka! moments? 5:30 - problem with old push media like PointCast - not on the web to be bombarded by random info - early 2000s insight about keywords vs carewords vs brandwords- arose with research on "cheap flights" vs. "low fares" - "low fares" was branding term barely searched for compared with "cheap flights" - marketers said, we can't use word cheap it will hurt brand but 5 years later they were all using it - had realized that they had to follow - that's how you get them there, search terms, then when you arrive at the site you need to shift to a different language - like passing the baton in a 400 relay - you need to pass them along to carewords as soon as they're on the site - another example: university searches - "top-ranked university" got them to site, but "how to advance your career" once they're onsite - different words bring you to the site vs what you use when you're there - carewords trigger...

Gerry McGovernGerry McGovern helps customers complete their most important tasks when they arrive at a website. His proven process routinely results in the removal of as much as 90% of the content on a website. This requires content managers to shift their mindset from a simple production model to an ongoing customer-centric "eternal beta." Gerry and I talked about: the shift in power away from organizations to customers the importance of customer centricity the evolution of web content from a push model to a pull model the differences between keywords, carewords, and brandwords how branding has shifted from broadcasting messages to facilitating conversations among customers conventional branding's continued relevance in the digital age the evolution of content from project-based production to continuous evolution & improvement the importance of focusing on top tasks how to identify and measure top tasks why we use products we don't trust Gerry's Bio Gerry McGovern helps large organizations deliver a better digital customer experience. His commercial clients include Microsoft, Dropbox, Cisco, NetApp, VMware, and IBM. He has also consulted with the US, UK, EU, Dutch, Canadian, Norwegian, and Irish governments. Gerry has developed a research and management model to help large organizations improve customer experience through identifying and optimizing customer top tasks. It’s called Top Tasks Management. A highly-regarded speaker, he has spoken on digital customer experience in 35 countries. He has written six books on digital customer experience. His latest is called Transform: A Rebel’s Guide for Digital Transformation. It shows that digital transformation is far more about culture change than technology change. The Irish Times described Gerry as one of five visionaries who have had a major impact on the development of the Web. He is the founder and CEO of Customer Carewords. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/ar_9Qtd4i08 Show Notes/"Transcript" [Not an actual transcript - just my quick notes on first listen-through] 00:20 - my intro 00:50 - Gerry intro - same broad intent in both content and tasks - his background is journalism and he writes constantly - so not as if he's left world of content - mid-90s saw world-changing coming - saw early on sense of shift in power away from organizations to customers - his "North Star" - if you want to be successful you need to be customer centric - how to do this in digital - it's words that help you navigate the digital space - maybe 10-15 years we'll navigate a visual VR landscape but for now it's words - "Content is the foundation of the digital customer experience." - most essential element of delivering a great customer experience is content - "help people do stuff" - that's his focus now - customer centricity - still does lots of content even though he identifies as a customer experience person 4:25 - question - evolution of content - carewords over keywords and then tasks - any Eureka! moments? 5:30 - problem with old push media like PointCast - not on the web to be bombarded by random info - early 2000s insight about keywords vs carewords vs brandwords- arose with research on "cheap flights" vs. "low fares" - "low fares" was branding term barely searched for compared with "cheap flights" - marketers said, we can't use word cheap it will hurt brand but 5 years later they were all using it - had realized that they had to follow - that's how you get them there, search terms, then when you arrive at the site you need to shift to a different language - like passing the baton in a 400 relay - you need to pass them along to carewords as soon as they're on the site - another example: university searches - "top-ranked university" got them to site, but "how to advance your career" once they're onsite - different words bring you to the site vs what you use when you're there - carewords trigger...

Gerry McGovern talks to Gerry Gaffney about the empowered customer and the consequent need to transform organisations.

We tackle the great debate over content marketing and content that is simply just "noise" and how to become more customercentric on the Web. Gerry McGovern shares how to get into the customer's brain to gain a competitive advantage. See the show notes.

In this special Thanksgiving episode of #ThisOldMarketing, Joe and Robert discuss the amazing new content marketing launch for Y Combinator called "The Macro". Facebook Instant Articles is (surprise, surprise) not working for the 20 publishers...Robert Rose has a solution that involves content syndication, not advertising. In addition, the boys strongly disagree with a Gerry McGovern post about quality content.  Rants and raves include what is NOT content marketing.  This week's TOM example: US Military Hospitals. This week's article links: Facebook Instant Articleshttp://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-mulls-ad-changes-for-instant-articles-after-publisher-pushback-1447281399?alg=yPaired Withhttp://www.engadget.com/2015/11/12/facebook-instant-article-ad-revenue/ Y Combinator Launches The Macrohttp://techcrunch.com/2015/11/20/sifting-through-secrets/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000634Less Content Marketing, More Quality Contenthttp://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/less-content-marketing-more-quality-contentB2B Data Driven Trendshttp://adage.com/article/digitalnext/data-transform-b-b-marketing-2016/301386/ Sponsor Message: http://ContentMarketingUniversity.com Rants and Raves 8 Examples of Content Marketinghttp://marketingland.com/content-marketing-done-right-8-examples-can-learn-149088    

This week on the Boagworld Show we are joined by Gerry Mcgovern to discuss how we should be building great experiences for our employees too. For a transcript of this week's show including all links mentioned go to: https://boagworld.com/season/13/episode/1308/ ‎

As soon as you have many people chiming in on the direction of a website, you get disagreements, conflicting idea, and turf wars. What about what customers want? Gerry McGovern has developed a specific step-by-step methodology for identifying what matters to your customers, focusing effort on those things, and objectively testing the performance of those tasks. Helpful and well-gathered data can quickly end debates and focus a team. Gerry joins Jen Simmons to walk through the process.

In questa puntata di Ruote in Pista: Renault Espace: innovazione e rivoluzione. Fin dalla sua prima edizione è sempre stata capace di proporsi come una vettura rivoluzionaria. L’ultimo capitolo sposa linee da crossover, elementi aeronautici e tanta tecnologia. Renault ci ha abituato a non dare mai niente per scontato e anche nel rinnovare l’inossidabile Espace, pioniera tra le monovolume, la Casa francese ha saputo innovare e rivoluzionare il concetto di auto spaziosa da viaggio per il tempo libero. Espace è ora più crossover che monovolume, ma mantiene la spaziosità, la versatilità ed il comfort che la hanno resa famosa. Milano Design Week: le Case Auto protagoniste del fuori salone. Nuove vetture, ma soprattutto oggetti di stile ispirati alle linee delle loro gamme. Sono ben otto i quartieri coinvolti quest’anno, in quella che è diventata la settimana più importante per il mondo del design; da Brera alle 5 Vie, da Porta Venezia a Tortona, da Lambrate a Sarpi Bridge, da San Gregorio a Sant’Ambrogio, la città si anima con una serie di fuorisalone in cui le Case Auto hanno molto da dire a partire dal Gruppo PSA che con suoi tre marchi espone tre diverse visioni. Parte Citroen con un vero e proprio manifesto di design, abbinando forma e funzionalità. Una correlazione fondamentale perché il design non sia un esercizio fine a se stesso. Mini collabora con il designer e artista spagnolo Jaime Hayon, che da la sua interpretazione di mobilità urbana con due diverse configurazioni di MINI Citysurfer Concept. Il team Design BMW e il noto designer Alfredo Häberli hanno invece elaborato un’installazione che affronta i valori della mobilità del futuro partendo dal leitmotiv “Precision and Poetry”. Chiudiamo il nostro viaggio nel fuorisalone con Jaguar e Land Rover. Il Giaguaro ha creato una interpretazione della sua Word Cloud, una struttura in alluminio che riproduce la sagoma della nuova XE attraverso 95 parole in 7 lingue diverse, mentre Land Rover ha presentato in Piazza Gae Aulenti l’installazione “Unstoppable Spirit” ispirata al design della Discovery Sport, frutto della collaborazione tra l’artista Nino Mustica e il capo stile Gerry McGovern. Campionato Italiano Rally: il leone colpisce ancora Paolo Andreucci domina con la sua Peugeot 208 T16 il Rallye di Sanremo chiudendo 1° davanti alla Ford Fiesta di Basso, riscattando così lo sfortunato esordio del Rally del Ciocco. A seguire le News di Autolink Kia Golf Cup - 16a edizione del Kia Golf Cup. Quest'anno inizia a Monticello dove tornerà per la finale di ottobre dopo un circuito di 15 Circoli, dal Nord Est fino a Palermo. Audi RS3 Sportback Un’autentica supercar travestita da compatta sportiva premium, un modello utilizzabile tranquillamente tutti i giorni sulle strade, ma che certamente trova la sua massima espressione in pista. Ed è proprio sul circuito di Vallelunga che abbiamo messo alla frusta il 5 cilindri più potente della storia RS: 367 CV e prestazioni eccezionali con velocità massima fino a 280 km/h e scatto 0-100 orari in appena 4,3 secondi, per consumi medi di 8,1 litri/100 km ed emissioni di CO2 sotto i 200 g/km. La nuova trasmissione Haldex 5 a gestione elettronica garantisce prestazioni dinamiche fuori dal comune: alla straordinaria motricità “quattro” by Audi si aggiunge la possibilità di trasmettere fino al 100% della coppia al posteriore. Se vi piace andare forte pennellando le traiettorie, la nuova RS3 Sportback fa per voi. Le prenotazioni sono aperte e, con un prezzo sotto i 50 mila euro, il successo garantito!

In questa puntata di Ruote in Pista: Renault Espace: innovazione e rivoluzione. Fin dalla sua prima edizione è sempre stata capace di proporsi come una vettura rivoluzionaria. L’ultimo capitolo sposa linee da crossover, elementi aeronautici e tanta tecnologia. Renault ci ha abituato a non dare mai niente per scontato e anche nel rinnovare l’inossidabile Espace, pioniera tra le monovolume, la Casa francese ha saputo innovare e rivoluzionare il concetto di auto spaziosa da viaggio per il tempo libero. Espace è ora più crossover che monovolume, ma mantiene la spaziosità, la versatilità ed il comfort che la hanno resa famosa. Milano Design Week: le Case Auto protagoniste del fuori salone. Nuove vetture, ma soprattutto oggetti di stile ispirati alle linee delle loro gamme. Sono ben otto i quartieri coinvolti quest’anno, in quella che è diventata la settimana più importante per il mondo del design; da Brera alle 5 Vie, da Porta Venezia a Tortona, da Lambrate a Sarpi Bridge, da San Gregorio a Sant’Ambrogio, la città si anima con una serie di fuorisalone in cui le Case Auto hanno molto da dire a partire dal Gruppo PSA che con suoi tre marchi espone tre diverse visioni. Parte Citroen con un vero e proprio manifesto di design, abbinando forma e funzionalità. Una correlazione fondamentale perché il design non sia un esercizio fine a se stesso. Mini collabora con il designer e artista spagnolo Jaime Hayon, che da la sua interpretazione di mobilità urbana con due diverse configurazioni di MINI Citysurfer Concept. Il team Design BMW e il noto designer Alfredo Häberli hanno invece elaborato un’installazione che affronta i valori della mobilità del futuro partendo dal leitmotiv “Precision and Poetry”. Chiudiamo il nostro viaggio nel fuorisalone con Jaguar e Land Rover. Il Giaguaro ha creato una interpretazione della sua Word Cloud, una struttura in alluminio che riproduce la sagoma della nuova XE attraverso 95 parole in 7 lingue diverse, mentre Land Rover ha presentato in Piazza Gae Aulenti l’installazione “Unstoppable Spirit” ispirata al design della Discovery Sport, frutto della collaborazione tra l’artista Nino Mustica e il capo stile Gerry McGovern. Campionato Italiano Rally: il leone colpisce ancora Paolo Andreucci domina con la sua Peugeot 208 T16 il Rallye di Sanremo chiudendo 1° davanti alla Ford Fiesta di Basso, riscattando così lo sfortunato esordio del Rally del Ciocco. A seguire le News di Autolink Kia Golf Cup - 16a edizione del Kia Golf Cup. Quest'anno inizia a Monticello dove tornerà per la finale di ottobre dopo un circuito di 15 Circoli, dal Nord Est fino a Palermo. Audi RS3 Sportback Un’autentica supercar travestita da compatta sportiva premium, un modello utilizzabile tranquillamente tutti i giorni sulle strade, ma che certamente trova la sua massima espressione in pista. Ed è proprio sul circuito di Vallelunga che abbiamo messo alla frusta il 5 cilindri più potente della storia RS: 367 CV e prestazioni eccezionali con velocità massima fino a 280 km/h e scatto 0-100 orari in appena 4,3 secondi, per consumi medi di 8,1 litri/100 km ed emissioni di CO2 sotto i 200 g/km. La nuova trasmissione Haldex 5 a gestione elettronica garantisce prestazioni dinamiche fuori dal comune: alla straordinaria motricità “quattro” by Audi si aggiunge la possibilità di trasmettere fino al 100% della coppia al posteriore. Se vi piace andare forte pennellando le traiettorie, la nuova RS3 Sportback fa per voi. Le prenotazioni sono aperte e, con un prezzo sotto i 50 mila euro, il successo garantito!

This week on the Boagworld Show we discuss user experience, top tasks and the role of aesthetics with Gerry McGovern.

On this week's show: Gerry McGovern talks about user tasks, Colin Firth discusses content and we have a review of Powerpoint alternative - Prezi.

One of the most popular speakers in the history of our User Interface Conference is Gerry McGovern. Certainly most of that popularity is thanks to Gerry's no-nonsense, customer-centric approach to content management strategy. Gerry joins us in this podcast to discuss customer care words and managing top tasks.

Gerry Gaffney interviews GerryMcGovern, author of "Killer Web Content".(This site is maintained for historical purposes only. Visit www.uxpod.com for a transcript of this and other episodes, and a searchable archive.)

In today's SpoolCast, I had the opportunity to speak with Gerry McGovern. Gerry is a widely-acclaimed speaker author and consultant on the topic of web content.