Greenversations

Last fall, I wrote about this blog’s Twitter account, @greenversations. Since then, several folks across EPA have been trying out Twitter, with varying approaches.  Today, I got this question from Randa Williams, a researcher at the University of Washington who’s looking into best practices for businesses on Twitter:

I wonder when you will start having conversations rather than just broadcasting on twitter…Lots of EPA broadcast channels on Twitter, exceptionally few conversations. I know, engagement is more work, wondering if you had thought about expanding into this area.

It was such a good question, I thought I’d respond publicly as well as emailing her.

Randa is right: the gold standard is conversing on Twitter and other social media sites, not just broadcasting. But she’s also right that it takes resources.  Not just someone’s time, but also having the right person, who’s plugged into what’s going on around EPA and who knows how to speak to the world on EPA’s behalf.

There are also different ways to use Twitter, and we’re experimenting with most of them.  For example, we’ve done a little live tweeting, with plans to do more.  There are also different approaches to who to follow, how frequently we can commit to posting, etc.

We do have a couple of good examples of interaction for content on a smaller scale than “all of EPA:”

• @EPAregion9 - Wendy Chavez in our San Francisco office.  I think Wendy is our best tweeter at the moment.
• @EPAespanol - Lina Younes at headquarters.  Lina leads our multilingual communications task force (have you seen all the languages in the upper right corner of our home page?), and she tweets in Spanish.

While we figure out the gold standard (interaction), we’re doing what we can on what I call the tin standard (broadcasting). Given the number of followers, it seems a decent number of people appreciate even that.  Here are some of our other accounts:

• @EPAgov - our main account.  Primarily our automated news release headlines and blog posts, plus a few web updates and manual tweets.  This account combines content that’s also split into individual accounts, and is also available on normal Web pages:
  • @EPAnews - news releases (same info as shown in our newsroom)
  • @greenversations - blog (same as the blog itself)
  • @EPAweb - updates to epa.gov (same info as shown on our recent additions page)
• @EPAlive - we’re occasionally experimenting with using this for live tweeting
• @EPAowow - Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds
• @EPAairmarkets - market-based regulatory programs to improve U.S. air quality
• @EPAregion2 - regional office in New York
• @EPAregion3 - regional office in Philadelphia

We’re also working up some conventions, like starting our account names with “usepa” and using the same seal as the avatar.

Not quite in the same category, some of us are also tweeting professionally. We’re not “representing” EPA per se, but we’re using it as a professional network and information source.  For example:

• @levyj413 - this is my Twitter account, and I use it to discuss social media in government (especially EPA)
• @suzack777 - this is Suzanne Ackerman on our web team.  Suzanne uses Twitter to research projects like blogger outreach, and uses Twitter to make contacts and discuss related issues.

So thanks, Randa, for reminding me that we need to communicate more about what we’re up to.  Stay tuned for updates about our other social media efforts, too (in the meantime, join us on Facebook!).

Jeffrey Levy is EPA’s Director of Web Communications.

About the Author: Pat Childers is a Senior Advisor in the Office of Air and Radiation who has spent over 1/2 his life promoting Clean Transportation choices for the American public. Pat currently coordinates the Clean Air Act Advisory Committee and the Clean Air Excellence Awards and is the proud father of two budding cyclists.

Bike to Work Day is Friday May 15, unlike many folks my decision isn’t to bike or not, its deciding which bike to ride. Some people think biking is my life. I seldom go a day with out some sort of spinning, be it mountain biking, commuting, or riding with my kids. I was named the Agency Bike Coordinator by Carol Browner fifteen years ago. I volunteer for an organization that teaches kids about the environment from the seat of a mountain bike. I met my wife through a biking buddy, and the first purchase we ever made together was a red tandem bike. I even teach a diversity class using bikes. While biking is a passion, it is not my life. However I do find that biking is a great tool, it is the swiss army knife that I use to get through my day providing me a way to solve many problems with one simple tool.

Biking is a great tool for exercise as you burn calories riding through the city or local parks. I look back at the 240 lbs that used to be me, and say it’s good to be on the other side of 200 now and I can thank biking for that.

It’s also a great tool for teaching almost anything. Need a math lesson, a bike has 3 front gears and 9 back gears…how many total gears does that provide? Please don’t say 12. How about history, sports and diversity lessons, the first African American World Champion in any sport was Major Taylor who was a cyclist at the turn of the century a hundred years ago, and Susan B Anthony said that the bike “has done more to emancipate woman than any one thing in the world”. That’s some pretty lofty importance to place on two wheels.

On top of that, the scientific importance of bicycling from pneumatic tires to the Wright brothers developing their ideas for the airplane from their previous job building bikes, make the bike one of the most important inventions ever.

But what biking really can do best is act as a tool for low cost environmentally sound transportation. For years I rode a bike recycled from the trash and the only fuel I needed for the trip was one peanut butter banana and cheese sandwich. If you look around the community you will see cyclists of every age, sex, race and socioeconomic background all riding for different reasons-fun, health, finances, coolness factor. Whatever their reason, they are all riding and they are all helping the environment, reducing their daily footprint by increasing their daily cycling mileage so to speak. I doubt that most think about the environment, the science of biking, or as they happily spin from place to place, seeing the world from a different view than commuters stuck in traffic.

Biking isn’t my life, but it certainly has made my life better so I will join the crowd on bike to work day….if I can just figure out which bike to ride.

If you’ve Picked 5 for the Environment, this is your chance to share your stories and exchange tips with others to help you achieve your environmental goals. If you haven’t, head over there now, commit to at least 5 actions out of the 10, and come back to share (we’ll add you to our mailing list so you’ll get advance notice, too).

This is the first time we’re “opening up the lines,” but we’ll post regular items like this to help Pick 5 community members talk to each other.

Thanks for committing to helping protect the environment!

Note: to ward off advertisers using our blog as a platform, we don’t allow specific product endorsements in our comment policy. But feel free to suggest Web sites that review products, suggest types of products, and share your experiences using them.

Each week we ask a question related to the environment. Please let us know your thoughts as comments. Feel free to respond to earlier comments or post new ideas. Previous questions.

Happy anniversary!  We started the Greenversations blog one year ago, on Earth Day 2008.  Since then we’ve discussed Questions of the Week, looked at Science Wednesday, and followed scientists on the “Bold” research vessel.

What have you learned from the Greenversations blog?

En español: Cada semana hacemos una pregunta relacionada al medio ambiente. Por favor comparta con nosotros sus pensamientos y comentarios. Siéntase en libertad de responder a comentarios anteriores o plantear nuevas ideas. Preguntas previas.

¡Feliz aniversario! Comenzamos el blog de Conversaciones verdes, Greenversacions, hace un año atrás el Día del Planeta Tierra 2008. Desde entonces hemos discutido las preguntas de la semana, hemos celebrado la ciencia los miércoles y hemos seguido a los científicos en el buque de investigaciones “Bold”.

¿Qué ha aprendido del blog Conversaciones verdes, Greenversations?

About the author: Jeffrey Levy joined EPA in 1993 to help protect the ozone layer. He is now the National Web Content Manager.

A few months ago, my wife and I bought a house slightly bigger than our current home, but organized inside in pretty strange ways. Since we plan to spend the next 30-40 years there, we decided to renovate it. We want to do it in the greenest way possible. That means reduce, reuse, and recycle through the renovation.

“Reduce” starts with choosing where to live. Both our current house and the new one are about ½ mile from Metro, the DC-area subway; I walk and ride in. We also accepted smaller houses than what was available much further out.

The environment gains from these choices in a few ways: less fuel to commute and less energy used to heat and cool our house. But our quality of life is also better, because my short commute leaves me more time at home, and I’m relaxed on the train instead of driving in rush hour. Not everyone can choose where to live, but I think not enough people put living close to work on their “wants” list when house hunting.

Reducing also means:

• choosing sustainable, low-emitting cabinets and flooring (THAT decision is a whole blog post by itself
• insulating well
• replacing drafty windows with efficient ones, and
• finding efficient plumbing (2-mode flushing toilets, anyone?)

It also meant asking the contractor to seal the basement so the heater isn’t running nonstop to keep the pipes from freezing.

“Reuse” comes in several forms. First, we’re keeping the existing appliances. I haven’t done the math, but it’s hard for me to believe that on a life cycle basis, even more efficient appliances are better than getting the full life out of existing ones. It just takes so many resources to create a new item. We also had the contractors keep trim work so they can reinstall it. Old kitchen cabinets will go in the basement. And what we’re not reusing ourselves, we’ll donate.

“Recycle” in this context includes scrap wood, metal, and bricks. We’ve been searching the web for help with that. It also includes recycling stuff we no longer want and won’t move with us (need an old computer power supply?).

Since it’s Radon Action Month, I should also mention we tested the house before we bought it, and it’s fine.

What are your favorite tips and tricks for renovating in a green way? Remember we don’t allow advertising in our comments, so please stick to generic product descriptions instead of specific companies.

About the author: Larry Teller joined EPA’s Philadelphia office in its early months and has worked in environmental assessment, state and congressional liaison, enforcement, and communications. His 28 years with the U.S. Air Force, most as a reservist, give him a different look at government service.

It’s considered an especially helpful Web practice to know who our audience is as we design and write Web pages. After all, a page about climate change intended for kids should be quite different from one prepared for the general public, and even more so for web content aimed at research scientists. Learning about the demographics of our readers isn’t easy: surveys are the only way to ask about age, occupation, education, location, technological savvy and the like, and even survey results can be dogged by sample bias and low response.

Somewhat related, if a bit less important, is a profile of the people who work on our website. As web content coordinator for EPA’s Mid-Atlantic regional office, I host monthly meetings of our Web staff and work with these earnest, talented people on a variety of projects and processes. So, I’m in a position to know, at no cost to the taxpayers-just using eyes and ears-quite a bit about the group’s demographics. And if you’re guessing that our group is a bunch of geeky twenty-somethings, please guess again.

Here’s a sketch of our surprisingly (pardon the euphemism) “mature” Web committee members, the 15 people who develop and maintain our Web pages (but not the people who, much more occasionally, provide the content):

• Nine are in their 40s and 50s, four are no longer that old, with one each still in his 20s and 30s.
• Only five work almost entirely on the Web.
• Eleven are EPA employees, two work for our IT support contractor, and two are members of EPA’s wonderful Senior Environmental Employment program.
• Only one, or possibly two, learned about Web work in college; most made mid-career changes after many years of more traditional (EPA or non-government) jobs. (EPA is good about allowing and sometimes encouraging this change.)

Demographics don’t reveal all that counts, and I’m feeling confident that our “experienced” Web committee’s work will continue to excel as we focus on (a) refining and coordinating our content (Web 1.0) as we (b) improve our work processes (via a new Web content management system) and (c) bring the public more fully into EPA’s data and decisions (Web 2.0). More on these challenges in future Greenversations posts.

Marcus Peacock is EPA’s Deputy Administrator.

My mother was born two weeks before Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic. She has witnessed amazing changes in her life: the advent of air transportation, the proliferation of television, the near eradication of scourges like small pox and polio, men walking on the moon, the internet. Yet when I asked her how she felt about these changes, I did not get the response I expected. She shrugged. “Yes, things have improved a lot.” That was it.

Deep in middle age, I now understand that answer. The time scale our brains work with is easily swamped by the broader march of technology. After a dash of initial wonder, we just assimilate advances and move on. A few decades ago, every Christmas Day my family would crowd around a phone in our house and have hurried static-filled ‘long distance’ conversations with relatives in other lands. Two weeks ago one of my kids got a call from a friend. My daughter was walking in the woods. Her friend was sitting in a cafe in Florence, Italy. This does not amaze them. It no longer amazes me. In fact, I can’t really remember how we got to this place. It just happened.

Today the Administrator signed a proposed rule modifying how EPA determines the Air Quality Index for fine particle pollution. As proposals go, it is not terribly notable. And yet . . . this will be the first proposed rule issued by a federal agency that will allow the public to comment on the rule using a blog. The blog will be open from March 2 to March 11 which corresponds to public hearings on the proposal. Stay tuned to Greenversations for more information on how to participate. Mark it as a small step on the way to what I believe will be a dramatic change in the way the federal government crafts rules and regulations. A small step, but one that, with others, will accumulate to the point where the government will be able to produce better quality rules much more quickly than in the past.

We live in the Information Age. It is sweeping over us like advancing waves on a beach. Federal agencies can either seize the tools that are coming from this change or just let the tide pick us up and deposit us in a new place. EPA is choosing to seize the day. We are not doing this because we want to amaze people with whiz-bang Web 2.0 technology. We do this because when someone in the future is asked about the changes they have seen in the environment, they will just shrug their shoulders and say, “Yes, things have improved a lot.”

Each week we ask a question related to the environment. Please let us know your thoughts as comments. Feel free to respond to earlier comments or post new ideas. Previous questions.

Happy New Year! I will drive more efficiently. I will start a compost pile. I will read pesticide labels. I will …

Share what YOU will do in the coming year to help protect the environment.

What are your New Year’s resolutions to help protect the environment in 2009?

About the author: Yolanda DeLilly, an Information Technology Specialist, joined EPA in 1988 and is currently working in the Office of Web Communications.

Back in August of this year I had the privilege of having lunch with Jeffrey Levy, Director of the Office of Web Communications, to discuss me doing a short assignment in his office to design a mobile website for EPA.

My first day, September 9, was a hectic one considering it was the launch of EPA’s new and improved homepage, in which I got pulled in to do some QAQC. In spite of that I still managed to do some research to see if there were any federal government mobile websites already out there in cyber land. I found that there are not a lot of federal government agencies with mobile sites. This made getting started a little difficult.

I did manage to find that usa.gov has a link to its mobile website mobile.usa.gov. This site has an A-Z index of all available state and federal agencies with mobile websites. Then I had an ah-haa moment.

Once I began thinking about what information would be useful on an EPA mobile website I began to build it. To my surprise it was not that difficult to build the site using my web editor. The most difficult part of the building the site was thinking about the beneficial important information.

The really cool thing about creating this mobile site was not only making EPA more visible to people on the go but also knowing that I was creating a site that will go down in history as the first mobile site for EPA.

Here is what you will find on EPA’s mobile site:

• How to contact EPA
• Find information by ZIP code
• EPA news releases
• Greenversations blog, including the question of the week, and
• Links to other government mobile websites.

I was able to test the site on a Blackberry and an iPhone and it looks great on both. It would be helpful to hear feedback from all mobile device users on:

• What you think about the site, and
• What can we do to improve it.