OvertheFence | Computing for Sustainability

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Over the fence: sustainable practitioners in planning?

April 23, 2009

The Egan Review was commissioned by the UK government in 2004. It aimed to undertake a skills review of the skills required to deliver sustainable communities. Despite a wide ranging definition: Sustainable communities meet the diverse needs of existing and future residents, their children and other users, contribute to a high quality of life and provide opportunity and choice. […]

Pencil Envy: Good Design is Sustainable Design

March 8, 2009

The designers have done it again – proving once again that computing has largely missed the boat on what it means to be a sustainable discipline (see earlier design accord and design manifesto). Here’s the opening line from the Queensland Design Strategy 2020: Good design is sustainable design. This definition comes from the British […]

Footprints and longfins

September 9, 2008

Last night we went to a talk by Metiria Turei about the dramatic collapse in New Zealand’s endemic eel population, the longfin in particular. Metiria showed an outstanding film by students from the Science and Natural History filmmaking programme of the the Centre for Science Communication. Lindsay Davidson and Melissa Salpietra’s Longfin (mp4 24mins) is a […]

Accountant turns both left and green

May 11, 2008

This week I attended a public lecture by Graham Crombie who is a Dunedin accountant and president of the NZ Chartered Accountants. Organised by the Otago Polytechnic Business School, Graham’s talk was entitled “Thinking about change”. In it he considered a wide variety of factors affecting his accountancy firm, concluding with lessons for the Polytechnic […]

Designers engage every client in sustainability while computing checks the light switch (maybe)

April 7, 2008

Our Design School has just been accepted into the Designers Accord. They (we, even as I teach Interaction for design) are early educational adopters – one of only 5 educational institutions worldwide. The Designers Accord envisions a creative community where the principles of sustainable design are seamlessly integrated into all practice and production: Our mission […]