fresh-air

I spent the fall/winter ’09 working with an amazing organization leading up to and in Copenhagen for the UNF Climate Change Conference. I was working with TckTckTck, a coalition of over 250 NGOs, Faith Groups, youth groups, and others including WWF, Greenpeace, Oxfam, 1SKY, 350, and a host of other huge organizations. It was an amazing 3 months, working crazy hours, and traveling to New York, Barcelona, and two trips to Copenhagen.

I acted as project manager, IT strategy manager, and lead the logistics team creating and operating the Fresh Air Center in Copenhagen, during the Conference.

A few key activities:

  • Co-creator of brand and project plan
  • Advance research in CPH in November, hiring a site-manager and IT site-manager, sourcing and securing a venue and making various logistic arrangements
  • 8 days in Barcelona at the UNFCCC Intercessional Meeting communicating goals and offering with public, fostering support with partners and stakeholders, building relationships with the UNFCCC administrators, general research
  • Managed IT Strategy and execution
  • Project management and team leadership of the site managers and volunteers during live dates
  • Designed and built a micro-site to act as
    • an aggregation point for content being created in Fresh Air
    • offer a central calendar for important events, actions and activities taking place during the conference
    • offering a rapid-response multi-media resource library for media members of the Fresh Air Center
  • Operated multiple daily live-streaming interviews & updates from inside the conference centre to our downtown location
  • Managed the social media outreach and communications for the team inside Fresh Air Center.

I’d try to explain all that we were doing but it’s best described by a few quotes I’ll share from various posts written about what we were doing:

When I think of what it means to be a new media journalist today, I think about the Fresh Air Center in downtown Copenhagen. It was set up during the UN climate summit by TckTckTck … TckTckTck made space available to bloggers, journalists and NGOs and provided high speed Internet access, live streaming briefings, video editing set-up, drop-in talks by people like Kumi Naidoo, the head of Greenpeace, panels with Naomi Klein, Andrew Revkin and George Monbiot, Happy Hour sponsored by the UN Foundation, and patient, tirelessly helpful support team.

From “Standing On The Edge Of The Future: The New Media In Copenhagen”
by Katherine Goldstine, Editor of The Huffington Post Green

10 minutes away from the…cluttered convention center, a much smaller, conversational, and action-driven citizens platform was produced, The Fresh Air Center. This downtown physical space, founded out of the ethos of the we-powered people movement of media makers and activists, stepped up and demonstrated more courage and leadership in organizing for climate change than our president.

Fresh Air Center grassroots field and technology-driven organizing methods accomplished a number of transformative and inspiring exchanges. What makes the Fresh Air Center worth drilling into is that it wasn’t a typical sponsored media center or a blogger tent.

Instead, the Fresh Air Center blurred traditional lines first by bringing grassroots activists and leading media mavens together to produce content, and second by carefully constructing a physical space with shared technology and social media.

From “Activism 2.0: Creating Casablanca in Copenhagen, The Fresh Air Center”
by Chrissie Brodigan for The Huffington Post

It was a pretty amazing opportunity and learning experience, and an honour to be working amongst such a hard-working and committed group of NGOs, bloggers, media, and consultants.

I was hired and led by Jason Mogus, CEO of Communicopia. It was awesome working with Jason, I look forward to working with him again.

I worked very closely with Beka Economopoulos from Fission Strategy in NYC, who was the other partner and leader of the Fresh Air Center. Beka is incredible, we became a tight, dynamic duo with a few short days, and I’m not sure I would have survived the 22 days in Copenhagen without her.