ColaLife is through the first stage of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge
November 27, 2009 by Simon Berry · 1 Comment
We have just heard that ColaLife is through the first stage of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge. The email said:
Your project was selected out of one of the strongest pools in quality of entries that we’ve seen to date. Over 200 projects were reviewed from all over the world. This is a significant milestone for you and your team and the high quality and meaningful work that you do. We are looking forward to learning more about who you are and gathering more details about your project.
Thanks go to ColaLife supporter Maria Ana who highlighted this opportunity to us. We will now be convening the steering committee for the project and alerting referees. This will all have to be done virtually as they are spread across 4 continents.
More to follow!
The top 4 ColaLife videos - enjoy!
November 25, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Note that the first minute of the fourth video is in Swahili. If you don’t speak Swahili, hang around because the rest is in English and is very interesting.
Open Sourcing Project 10^100?
November 25, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Do you remember Google’s Project 10 to the 100th? In the autumn of 2008 Google asked us all to submit ‘ideas that would change the World’. More than 170,000 of us did just that across 170 countries. We submitted the ColaLife idea. The plan was that Google would select the top 100 ideas and ask people to vote on them. The top 5 would share $10m to implement their idea. Inspirational! Unfortunately, after a very long delay Google backed off their original vision and turned something quite extraordinary into something very, very ordinary.
Backing off the original vision was bad enough but, more seriously, 170,000 ideas have simply disappeared. Only Google knows what they are.
Enter the wonderful people at project10tothe100now.org who have set up a website where those of us who submitted ideas to Google can submit them again but this time where everyone can see them! They also have a Facebook Group.
So if you submitted an idea to Google which is now trapped in Google’s servers somewhere, free it! Submit it here.
ColaLife makes it into the Skype Video Library
November 21, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
I was prompted to download the latest version of Skype this evening and was very excited to find that as well as a photo you can add a profile video! But then was disappointed that you can’t select your own video, you have to choose one from a (slightly dubious) library. I was about to give up but before I did I thought I’d do a search for ColaLife and this David Berman video popped up as an option! ColaLife gets a great mention in this video which I featured in a previous post. So. Upgrade your Skype and choose this video for your profile!
Look out Coca-Cola. Here come Pepsi.
November 19, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
With special thanks to ColaLife supporter Tim Cooke who persuaded his friend to take an AidPod out into the field and take pictures. Unfortunately his friend found Pepsi before he found Coca-Cola! I find it incredible that this AidPod was on my desk being made just a couple of weeks ago.
Anyway, a couple of things to note:
- There is a lot more unused space in a Pepsi crate - note how low the AidPod fits in the Pepsi crates
- Pepsi crates are not ‘full depth’ so Pepsi AidPods would need something to stop them sliding out the end of the crate
Tim’s friend is on a mission to get a picture of the AidPod in a Coca-Cola crate . . . on a bicycle . . . this space!
Please endorse ColaLife for the $20,000 Africa Rural Connect Prize
November 18, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Please could you take a few moments to endorse ColaLife on the Africa Rural Connect (ARC) site. The ARC judges will select the strongest idea on the site to receive the grand prize of $20,000 of funding. They will make the announcement in late December.
You do have to register but it only takes a few moments. Thanks.
A conversation with Julian Dobson
November 17, 2009 by Simon Berry · 1 Comment
I first met Julian when New Start Magazine was a twinkle in the eye around 10 years ago. Julian co-founded New Start Magazine with Kath Acres and Jamie Veitch. Kath was one of the first people I turned to when setting up the board of ruralnet|uk and she served as a trustee.
So it was great to meet up with Julian at Chain Reaction last week (12/11/09) and have this ColaLife conversation:
Below is an explanation of the AidPod mentioned in the interview.
10,000 have viewed ColaLife Animation
November 16, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Over the weekend the original ColaLife animation went through the 10,000 views barrier - that’s around 25 views a day since it was published. You can watch it on the *NEW* ColaLife Channel (it’s only got a few views here so far). Thanks go to Luke Berry (artist), Sam Berry (animator) and Julian (sound effects) of Georgia Wonder who put this together in 3 days back in October 2008 for the Google 10 to the 100th Project.
David Berman on ColaLife
November 15, 2009 by Simon Berry · 3 Comments
When putting together The ColaLife Channel I came across this interview with David Berman author of Do Good Design. Kate Andrews hooked us up at the beginning of the year when David’s book was published. In the interview David talks about ColaLife. The link is that on page 40 of his book in the chapter entitled ‘Pop Landscape’ David says:
Imagine what would be possible if The Coca-Cola Company’s uncommonly efficient distribution system in Africa could be harnessed to deliver health information, medicine, and condoms, in addition to caffeinated sugar water.
He hadn’t come across ColaLife at this point. David has been on a World Tour promoting his book which has just been translated into Chinese. He has been using ColaLife as a case study of “what others do while I rant”! The second edition of the book will mention ColaLife.
Cheers David.
The ColaLife Channel launches
November 14, 2009 by Simon Berry · 2 Comments
A key element of the online part of the ColaLife campaign has been to take a multi-channel approach and get ColaLife everywhere. We didn’t start with a website and expect people to find us, we went to all the places potential supporters might be. So we are:
- On Facebook - facebook.com/colalife
- On Twitter - twitter.com/colalife
- On Flickr - flickr.com/groups/colalife
And I’ve just set up vimeo.com/colalife. We didn’t have a website and this blog until we were well into the campaign and even now this acts as an aggregator of content from other places. No images are loaded on the blog, for example, they are all on Flickr.
A key missing element in this approach was the fact that we could not get youtube.com/colalife because it was already in place - may be it was set up by a ColaLife supporter - but it had never been used. Anyway, a handful of ColaLife supporters who work for Google (who own YouTube) worked some magic last week and now we have The ColaLife Channel on YouTube. Take a look.
What others are saying about ColaLife- ColaLife on Flickr
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