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A year ago, Al Gore spread the climate-change message at the Cannes Film Festival. Now it's Leonardo DiCaprio's turn. The former boy wonder produced, co-wrote, and narrated The 11th Hour, a documentary that explores how industrial society screwed itself and how it can fix the problem. Relying on interviews with the likes of Stephen Hawking and David Suzuki, the 90-minute film "[gives] the scientists and experts a format where they can speak freely and openly without having to argue the points anymore," says Leo. Like Gore, his eco-mentor, DiCaprio is battling accusations of hypocrisy from the press: You fly in planes! You use energy! You're a big fatty! Although he took a bit o' the bait, pointing out that he flew commercially to Cannes instead of on a private jet, DiCaprio deflected most of the personal attacks, calling on the mega-polluting U.S. to "set an example" for the world and reminding the press that the world is ending. "Look at the message," he pleaded. "Isn't that the larger story?"

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Growing numbers of Brits and others are choosing to go to their graves more greenly, in biodegradable cardboard caskets and woodland burials that use trees as grave markers. Enviros point out that traditional burials usually involve a non-reusable wooden casket and a materials-intensive headstone, while gobbling up prime land. Cremation isn't a green option either; last year in Britain, more than 400,000 wooden caskets were burned, wasting trees and emitting carbon dioxide. David Suzuki, noted Canadian environmentalist, intends to be buried in cardboard, just as his parents were. "If people think cardboard is tacky, perhaps they could rent a fancy casket with a trap door. Then the casket could be used again and again," he said.

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Sean T. O'Brien, Ph.D., is a circuit rider for the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Charlottesville, Va.

Monday, 4 Oct 1999

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.

People laugh when I tell them my job title is "circuit rider." It sounds funny, but I love it. How many people have a job title that is a pun, much less a job that requires the holder to have technical skills, an interest in promoting the health of our planet, and a willingness to travel extensively?

This is me conducting the first test of a full remote communications system in Bolivia.

So what is circuit riding? The term is a pun on "circuit" referring to both a route traveled and an electronic circuit. In short, it means working with technology to empower progressive nonprofits, activists, and organizers. The term circuit rider originated in the 19th century to describe a minister who traveled a route around the wild West dispensing his services. Like ministers, we modern-day circuit riders evangelize (about the benefits of using technology) and minister to the sick (for example, virus-infected computers). Over the next five days, I hope to give you a taste of what it's all about.

Contrary to the standard model for Grist diaries, mine will not be an entirely sequential set of entries. I think that a straight week-long diary would either give the impression that I have the most amazing job in the world or the most mundane. My job requires extensive travel, both within the U.S. and abroad, but it also requires a desire to get into the hardware and software guts of computers, networks, and the Internet. Read on and you will see what I mean.

First, excitement!

Eco Bolivia is largely responsible for the creation of the nearly 2 million-hectare Madidi National Park in the lowlands of Bolivia. The Bolivian government is contemplating building a dam at this site in the park, which would flood hundreds of thousands of hectares of primary lowland tropical rainforest and displace an unknown number of indigenous people.

In November 1998, the W. Alton Jones Foundation awarded Fundación Eco Bolivia a grant to develop a system that would enable the organization to communicate with the outside world via phone and email from very remote locations (that is, no wire-based phone or electric service for miles around) in the vast Madidi National Park which Eco Bolivia works to protect. Rosa María Ruiz, the director of Eco Bolivia, enlisted my assistance to develop this remote communication system and to train the group's employees in the use of the equipment. I, in turn, consulted with numerous people to ensure Eco Bolivia would get a robust system.

This project required extensive research on the various methods of communication available from remote locations, and a trip to Bolivia to deliver the equipment and train the users. Fortunately, I have a background in tropical forest ecology, so I knew we were facing some technical difficulties not found in other regions, the most important being the persistent high temperatures and high humidity. In a tropical rain forest, fungi can actually grow inside the lens of a camera within a few weeks if the camera is not stored in a dry place.

Rosa María in her office. The windows are just screen, no glass; the walls are made of grass stalks that grow 20 to 30 feet high; the floor is made of split palm tree trunks; and the roof is thatched. It remains remarkably dry inside. Nevertheless, all the equipment is stored in sealed cases when not in use, and plastic sheeting is sometimes used to keep the user and equipment dry when it is raining.

The remote communications system we designed allows Eco Bolivia to not only talk by telephone, but to send and receive email, with attached photographs, from the field, or anywhere else in the world. The system includes a ruggedized (meaning more or less waterproof and very resistant to damage from rough treatment) laptop computer from FieldWorks, a satellite phone (reasonably durable in moist conditions) from Thrane and Thrane, a digital camera (not so rugged, but highly capable and portable) from Sony, solar panels from Real Goods, an inverter and surge protector from Radio Shack, and a battery from the local auto parts store in La Paz to create a self-contained, highly portable communications station.

One of the great things about working in the tropics is the critters. This giant yellow snail was presented to me with great delight by the Bolivians who knew we have nothing like this in the forests of Virginia.

This project is atypical of those most circuit riders get to do. It involved very high-tech and expensive equipment and long-term travel to another country. However, it demonstrates the kind of project that would be very difficult to accomplish without a circuit rider. An understaffed nonprofit in Bolivia would have a very hard time researching, buying, and building such a system on its own. Moreover, one of the goals of circuit riding is to empower people and organizations and to do this in such a way that the group should be able to use and maintain the equipment with minimal outside assistance. This is done through training -- circuit riders focus on training people so the recipient is not dependent on others to use technology. This is the only way to ensure that effective use of technology is integrated into the everyday activities of an organization. Despite the complexity of the equipment, I have had to field very few technical support calls from Eco Bolivia, but I know they are using the system because I get email from them regularly and I have seen their satellite phone bill!

Tomorrow I will write about a more typical sort of project for a circuit rider, establishing a local area network (LAN) with Internet connectivity (Web and email), file and printer sharing, and a backup system. Wednesday I will actually tell you what I do on Wednesday; it will be a non-travel day for me, so the everyday office tasks will be highlighted. I will also write a bit about circuit-riding models and point you to other circuit riders. Thursday we will head to Haida Gwaii (you'll have to read Thursday's entry to find out what and where that is). And Friday I will write about a what preliminary site visit or technical assessment might be like for a group looking for assistance from a circuit rider. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, 5 Oct 1999

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.

Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR) suffered from some of the same technical troubles that affect many small nonprofit organizations -- old equipment and no staff expertise to upgrade its system. Based in the Ben & Jerry's headquarters (can you say "Free ice cream"?) in Burlington, VBSR benefited for many years from hand-me-down Macintosh computers from B&J. Recently, however, as VBSR became more comfortable with and dependent on technology, its needs and skills were outpacing the donated machines.

Some of my fellow circuit riders. We look pretty normal for a bunch of geeks.

VBSR is supported by the W. Alton Jones Foundation (WAJF) for its work on "environmental tax shifting" in Vermont (it does lots of other good work too). The basic idea is to tax things we don't like (e.g., waste, pollution) and to use these revenues to stop taxing things we do like (e.g., employment). Northwest Environment Watch has produced an easy-to-read introduction to tax shifting, and the Center for a Sustainable Economy has a nice weekly email list with news from around the nation and world related to tax shifting.

At the suggestion of Kristen Goddard, the WAJF program officer for VBSR, I visited Burlington this spring to perform a technical assessment. This involves drawing out of an organization details about what they are trying to do and helping them determine how technology can facilitate their work. Technical assessments (and the planning process that results) are not about the latest and coolest techno-toys, but about choosing the right technology for the job. The goal is to create a reliable system that requires little maintenance, is reasonably priced, and won't be obsolete in six months. I like to think of technical assessments as the beginning of a "co-independence" relationship, as opposed to the sort of "co-dependence" relationship that often results from work with for-profit technical assistance providers.

But I digress.

It was clear that VBSR needed to invest some of its hard-won funding into technology if it was going to continue to produce the excellent work that allows it to win such funding. For a variety of reasons (which would just upset the Mac enthusiasts and Microsoft haters out there), VBSR decided to change over to a Windows-based local area network (LAN). As an umbrella group for socially conscious businesses and individuals in Vermont, VBSR was able to obtain donated computers (from IBM via AmeriCorps/TeamTech), low-cost computers from its members, and donated labor. WAJF also kicked in enough money to buy a computer and some accessories. And about week of my life.

Thus, in July of this year I found myself in Burlington working with VBSR and a dedicated volunteer (and fun co-laborer), Larry Gold. Together we transferred several gigabytes of data from the Macintosh computers to the hard drive of one of the new computers. We then established a simple peer-to-peer network using the built-in networking capabilities of Windows 98. This arrangement allows all of the computers in the office to "see" each other and allows users to access selected files on other computers on the network. It also enables all of the computers to share a single printer with no switch boxes or user intervention of any kind.

Tool of the trade: a neoserver, an example of an inexpensive file server that also acts as an Internet Connection Sharing device.

We also included one of the Macs in the network to enable VBSR to continue to access its accounting data and to retrieve any data that was not transferred during the mass migration (unfortunately, this computer was fried by Hurricane Floyd!). The biggest challenge was setting up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS, also knows as modem sharing or using a proxy server). ICS can be one of the greatest strengths of a LAN in a small office -- it allows all of the computers on the LAN to share a single Internet connection as though each computer were connected to the Internet directly. It can be a little tricky to get ICS to work and it took me much of a weekend (and a couple pints of mint chocolate cookie). Finally, I decided to use the ICS functionality built into Windows 98 second edition.

(By the way, ONE/Northwest has some very nice resources for nonprofits looking to establish LANs or interested in performing technical assessments on themselves)

In summary, at the end of several fun and grueling days, VBSR had a functional LAN, with a regular backup system for the PCs, Internet Connection Sharing, printer sharing, file sharing, and email access from each desktop. Other than the computer killed by Floyd (it's important that all of your electronics are plugged into a good-quality surge protector at the least, or even better, an uninterruptible power supply), the LAN and shared resources are working smoothly with very little user intervention. Hooray!

Wednesday, 6 Oct 1999

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.

Today's inbox is not so bad. Only 23 email messages came in overnight. Mostly junk, a few important things from the west coast, and some messages from people working at home at night.

A photo from a recent business trip to the Haida Gwaii islands off the northwest coast of British Columbia. People call the natural formation in the center Sleeping Beauty because it resembles a woman lying on her back.

Twenty-three emails overnight is pretty typical for me. I make a concerted effort not to get on too many email lists. I hear lots of stories from W. Alton Jones Foundation grantees about the 200 messages they have in their email boxes every morning. They end up spending hours just wading through the electronic pile, most of which is garbage.

Today I have to set up a bunch of appointments for myself and the new circuit rider at WAJF, Todd Koym. I am going to D.C. with him for a few days to introduce him to some other circuit riders and make some site visits with grantees. Also today I have to update the WAJF circuit-riding website with a few new links. And I want to check out some new online services that people have told me about recently. I am always on the lookout for free services or really great pay services that might be useful for our grantees.

Another item on my list today is making calls and sending email to several grantees in Europe. One of WAJF's grantees recently discovered some pervasive Y2K problems and is looking for some assistance in solving them. Finally, I am remotely troubleshooting some communication difficulties with Eco Bolivia's satellite phone and ISP.

This is a pretty full plate of different activities. Like most days, it will be fun for me, checking out new web offerings and talking to interesting people. It is really the people that make my job so fun -- everywhere I go I feel like I meet dynamic people who are true believers in their cause. It is very refreshing and energizing to empower people who are trying to make a difference in the quality of our environment.

This tree in the Haida Gwaii islands was left standing because a bear den was found at the base of it when clear-cutting was underway. I wonder if the bear has noticed that the other trees are missing.

Strangely, it was my love of the environment that landed me a job working with technology. In college (at the University of Virginia) I studied environmental science, then in grad school (also at UVA) I specialized in tropical forest ecology. I hoped to work in the nonprofit sector on environmental issues. However, when I finished my Ph.D. I realized I really needed some more experience to get the kind of job I was interested in having. So I took a post doc at Princeton with the famous, brilliant, and wacky Steve Hubbell, a tropical forest ecologist and conservationist.

At Princeton, I realized I needed to broaden my horizons. So I pursued several other opportunities, including an apprenticeship at an investment banking firm in Princeton and a post as the finance director on two congressional campaigns for Rush Holt (D-N.J.). I then accepted the circuit rider job at WAJF.

You are probably wondering where the technology comes in to play. It is nowhere in my bio before this job. One of reasons I think I can be effective at convincing people to use technology to help them work for the environment is that I am not approaching them as a propeller head, but as an environmentalist. I want to understand the issues they work on and I care about them. I see technology as a facilitator, as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. Though I have strong technical skills and knowledge, I hope that my lack of formal technical training shows that anyone can learn to use technology. It does not require a degree in computer science or membership in Gen X. If a thirty-something academically trained ecologist can set up a LAN, configure Windows NT laptops, and learn remote communication methods, surely anyone can!

Thursday, 7 Oct 1999

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.

Today I will write about Haida Gwaii, after yesterday's photo teaser. First, what is it? The islands now popularly called Haida Gwaii (the traditional name given them by the Haida people) have long been shown on maps as the Queen Charlotte Islands. They form an arrowhead-shaped landmass south of the Alaskan panhandle off the coast of British Columbia. The islands encompass 1 million hectares (and about one-half the size of the Madidi National Park in Bolivia that I wrote about on Monday).

A typical hillside scene in some parts of Haida Gwaii, ravaged by logging.

I went to Haida Gwaii in August as part of an extended circuit ride in British Columbia. I met with several environmental nonprofits in Vancouver and then headed up the coast to the islands, where I spent most of my time with the Gowgaia Institute, a local environmental group supported by the W. Alton Jones Foundation. Gowgaia -- together with some of the Haida people, including their new president -- is planning a large web project to educate people about clear-cutting policies on the islands, alternative logging methods, traditional uses of the forest, and the impact of logging on the environment and people of Haida Gwaii.

Gowgaia staffers Simon Davies, John Broadhead, and Leslie Johnson, with Haida Nation Pres. Gujaaw (in red shirt), Jim Fulton of the David Suzuki Foundation, and his son.

My job was to help them brainstorm about the structure and content of their website and plan for the acquisition of photos to illustrate the issues they're concerned about. The photos in yesterday's and today's entries are examples of some potentially powerful images (which might also be presented as streaming videos on the web), especially when combined with comprehensive, clear, and substantive information about logging.

Another threat to the islands is introduced species, which can have dramatic impacts on the ecology of an area. On Haida Gwaii, beaver, deer, and elk are all nonnative, introduced species that are threatening the existence of some unique habitats as well as the overall structure and composition of the forestland.

A sorting area for primary-growth trees taken from Haida Gwaii. These are mostly spruce logs.

The Laskeek Bay Conservation Society is working with others to eradicate introduced species from one small island in the area. In a very short amount of time, they have seen a change in the forest. But they have also learned firsthand how difficult it is to remove every last deer from even a small area.

The trip was really amazing. I had never been to that part of the world and was very impressed with the beauty and the incredible caliber of the people working to protect it.

Friday, 8 Oct 1999

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.

As the week draws to a close and I prepare for my next trip (to Berlin, Sassenberg, and Utrecht), I look back on the past few days and hope that I have given you a good picture of what life is like as a circuit rider. Remember, of course, that there are many modes for circuit riding, but we all work with progressive nonprofits on technology use. For example, NPower works with a wide range of nonprofits in the Puget Sound area, which means they do not travel much, but their goals and use of technology are very similar to ours at the W. Alton Jones Foundation and other circuit riding outfits in the progressive community.

There is one more important aspect of this job that I want to tell you about: the technical assessment. This can be done in many ways -- a paper survey or a personal interview are probably the most common. I generally use the latter, but will often preface it with some communication by email, paper mail, or the web introducing a group to the concept and trying to establish some expectations.

The aim of the technical assessment is to figure out what a group is trying to accomplish and how they can accomplish it, whether or not this involves using technology. Often an organization will come to the meeting with a hardware and software wish list but without a good idea of how they would use such technology. Circuit riders help organizations avoid the mistake of getting equipment they may not need by talking with them about what their group does, who they communicate with, and what resources they currently have. I generally spend a couple hours with a group in a free-form discussion of their objectives and current technological capacity. I keep a list of questions that I want answered in front of me to make sure I get the information I need, but I like the loose format to help the people I am talking to feel comfortable with me, and hopefully, therefore, with the technology too.

Sometimes a group will present a technology plan, a great thing. These plans take many forms, but the fact that a group has thought about technology enough to have actually written something down is an excellent indicator of their desire to make a change and understand its importance. I would encourage all nonprofits to develop technology plans, even if they are not expecting a visit from a circuit rider.

There are several places you can go online to learn more about technical assessments and technology plans, and to find links to other resources for nonprofits. This non-comprehensive list includes some of the ones I reference, but not all of them. In addition to theONE/Northwest site mentioned a few days ago, I suggest checking out NPower, the Benton Foundation, and the LINC Project. All of these sites have slightly different foci and intended audiences, but all provide excellent information for nonprofits.

Another very important resource for nonprofits is access to software donations. All registered 501(c)3 organizations are eligible for donated or discounted software. In some cases, you need to get this directly from a manufacturer, but in many cases you can obtain the software through CompuMentor, a technology assistance organization for nonprofits, based in San Francisco. Also try Gifts in Kind's software program.

I recommend looking at the list of best practices for nonprofits (still under development) on the WAJF circuit rider website, which includes bullet points with goals for technology use. These best practices can help an organization develop a technology plan and evaluate their use of technology.

Okay, so you have no idea what I did today, but I had to get on my soapbox a little. It's part of my job, evangelist for effective technology use! I hope you liked reading my entries this week and learned something too.

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