The Geek affinity with Green

This week I’m going to two Green events, a networking party run by AMEE and GeeKyoto. Given that I am such a treehugging (carbon neutral), duck-squeezing (vegan), person I’ve been wondering what it is that makes some geeks care so much about green.

My simple conclusion is that geeks feel like they are empowered to make a difference. Hacker culture is pretty strong right now, where if something on your computer isn’t the way you want it, you fix it. Or, you can at least find someone else who did. The same is true of green, the long standing “justification” about why not to be green is that one person won’t make a difference. The debate here is not why economic theory doesn’t fit well into the human psyche, but rather that geeks don’t feel that way.

I’m proud to be a geek, I’m proud to be part of a sub-culture, a growing generation of hackers that change what they don’t like, I’m proud that one of the things I’m changing is how we learn to look after our planet.

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green, geek, hackers, geek culture, vegan, tree hugger, carbon neutral

Lifecycle Messaging

I’ve been reading YCombinator’s Hacker News a lot recently. It had a great link today to post about Lifecycle Messaging by Josh Kopelman.

Josh points out some really good things, and it all comes back to one of the current calls to arms at Y!, relevancy. It really is the holy grail. If you can send someone an actual relevant reminder at a relevant time (when they were about to forget) then you are going to get a much better total click through rate than bulk mailing a low relevancy message to more people.

Relevancy doesn’t have to be about mind reading. People won’t mind your best guess if it really is that. We deal with “nearly-noise” all day long. We don’t get upset when our co-workers ask us if we would like a drink, because the offer is relevant and timely (they are going to fetch drink and so the return will be immediate). On the other hand watching people who don’t want a free paper outside the tube station is a dramatically marked experience from those who do.

The key is knowing enough of what people want to make any offers seem like polite courtesy rather than blanket bombing. People will like you for polite reminders (as long as you don’t nag). This is something Josh really hit the nail on the end with, if you contact people just as they are about to forget it’s a reminder and they don’t feel upset. If you hit them too early in the curve it’s a nag.

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relevence, attension, memory, lifecycle messaging, josh kopelman