This Grist article ends with some great, hard-won insight from Alex Fenton: "Public interest types, across the board — we think because we’ve said something, know something, or done something, that everybody else knows it. We don’t realize the bubble we live in. 

He explains: "It’s only when you’ve said something so many times that you’re utterly and completely sick of it that someone has even heard it. Marketers understand this. Scientists and people from the humanities less so — they get bored by it. “We already had our op-ed in the New York Times! The world knows!”

"But it takes so much more repetition than that. I mean, as a country, even the intelligentsia has not fully realized that we are in a planetary emergency and we are running rapidly out of time. I like to say, “What if they gave a planetary emergency, and nobody noticed?”

This is something relevant to just about anyone I've ever worked with, and is so very useful to remember if you want to leap the gap between your in-crowd and new audiences. [More over the fold]

People know more than you might expect about the electricity market, according to this project. In 2012 Short Communications answered a brief for the Total Environment Centre for some communications research and material development on "Demand Side Participation" in the national electricity grid.

Our team, including Grant Young of Zumio, assisted with phone polling, completed a literature review then got talking to people in stakeholder workshops and focus groups on these complex issues. The final product was an information pack that spelled out the problems and potential solutions that was released under creative commons license for other advocates and communicators to use. We also shared insights and research findings with the network of energy market participants who contributed to the work. Graphic design by Toby Cotton of Arc Communications.

This new site tells us what big buildings might say if they could talk. It has been conceived for use by property owners, building managers and more, however lurking inside this blog is a powerful engine that provides a way to look a complex data that hasn’t been done before.

Earth Hour, started in Sydney in 2007 has now become a bit of a global juggernaut. During summer 2010, I became fully immersed in the rapidly evolving and changing social media landscape, as it was my role to look after all the on-line communications for Earth Hour in Australia. In effect, this meant website content, email blasts that were relevant and useful to over 100,000 willing participants, plus keeping the discussion flowing on newer mediums like facebook and twitter.

In September 2009 I was lucky enough to be part of the team on a project called Worldwide View on Global Warming (or WWViews for short). 

It was initiated by the Danish Government to give citizens a voice in the crucial climate talks in Copenhagen, December 2009. Working on a model of 'deliberative democracy', 100 randomly-selected people heard the facts then talked amongst themselves, and voted on pre-set questions. On the day, the same thing happened around the world in 35 other countries.