We are Oso Excited to launch OsoEco to the public today!

We have been testing our green social shopping tools over the last several months with a small group of users behind the scenes. Today, we are quietly launching OsoEco to the public, with the intention of continuing to gain valuable feedback before shouting out OsoEco to the world.

For those who decide to join us we’d love it if you played around with the site (while having fun of course) and sharing your thoughts with us. We’re building this for you – so we want to make sure we’re providing social shopping and social research tools that meet your needs.

What Can You Currently Do on OsoEco?

1. Create your own Profile.

2. Tag your interests (assign keywords). This allows you to easily connect with people, products and articles that match your interests.

3. Learn about the power of TAGriculture™ on OsoEco. Basically this is how the OsoEco community works together to create a shared language and directory around green and health & wellness.

4. Take OsoEco with you wherever you go on the Web by adding an “Add to OsoEco” button to your browser’s toolbar. (Note: we currently only support Firefox)
   

This is an example from our TAGriculture™ page that shows who has been using the tag “organic cotton”

How Do You Share Feedback With OsoEco?

At the bottom of each page, you’ll see a “feedback” link – click on this, and you’ll be taken to an Eco Matter where you can post your questions, suggestions, etc. in a comment.

Where Can You Get Help On OsoEco?

Feeling stuck? Click on the “help” tab to find helpful videos, walk throughs, etc. Not finding what you need?

What’s Coming Soon to OsoEco?

[within the next 4-6 weeks]

1. Invite friends into OsoEco and share your finds with others outside of the OsoEco community.

2. “Follow” a Find, Eco Matter and/or Person and receive notifications of any related activity.

3. Use OsoEco across browsers (currently only support Firefox).

4. Eco Matters page will become more organized.

5. The Search feature will become more enhanced.
   

Thanks for your interest - enjoy the site and we look forward to hearing from you.

Updates, tweaks and enhancements on the Beta Site…

TAGriculture:

Are tags the glue that hold our site together; or are they the pathways that connect everything? Hmmmmm. Not sure. What I am sure of is that we have just added our TAGriculture page… and I just got so excited writing that last sentence that I knocked my water bottle over onto my keyboard. Hopefully I’ll survive the rest of this post without electrocuting myself. If not, well, I’ll miss everyone. You’ve been swell.

Back to TAGriculture…

Tag-ri-cul-ture = The science, art, or practice of cultivating tags, engaging in conversations and spirited debate about TagMeNots, and creating a rich and prosperous shared green language.

You can use tags to organize any finds, notes, people, eco matters, in a way that is important to you. You can also use TagMeNots and the Tag Detail pages to expand and share your knowledge.

Want to know more about tagging on OsoEco? If you’re a beta tester, log in, and check out the Help page.

What are TagMeNots?

I first talked about TagMeNots early this week where I butchered the explanation. Here’s a quick lowdown on what they are: TagMeNots give you an important tool for sustainability – the ability to see what’s not there. TagMeNots help us tell the difference between “not” and “don’t know”. Intrigued? Want to know more? Beta tester’s, feel free to log in, and check out the Help page.

This area of the site is very much in beta right now. Over the next several weeks, we will be growing and changing it. Some things on the horizon: The Tag Detail page will soon let you look at any tag and, like a wiki, contribute to it. We see tags as being the place where the community will hold conversations and share knowledge about what certain things mean. This is all part of building a shared green language!

How To Videos:

We had a number of University of Oregon students in the office a few weeks ago testing out our site and giving us feedback. Suddenly, I was hearing my voice throughout the room as people started watching some of the How To Videos. It’s humbling when you think you’re really funny, but then you hear yourself thinking you’re really funny and you realize you’re really not. It was a sad day for me.

But now, in the comfort of your own home, you can watch updated how to videos on tagging finds, people, eco matters, and see how tags work on your personal page. Sorry that I say “uh” so much. I’m working on this, I swear.

Well, though my computer is a bit soggy, I made it through this post. See you on the site!

When I was 4 my sweet, dear brother pushed me into a marble table and I cracked my head open.

I had been sick for a few days, but, I was in the state where I had completely recovered, and was using my “sickness” to issue orders to my brother. “Get me some water” “I want saltines, now” “You have to do it I’m sick”.

He, being the cold-hearted nasty older brother that he was, couldn’t take it anymore. He pushed me very very hard off the couch, and WHACK that was it.

My mother, did, and still does, refuse to believe that he actually pushed me… she, in her “blame the poor victim” mentality, to this day, maintains that I simply “fell”. Uh Huh.

Now, my brother actually admits to doing it – however, he doesn’t take any responsibility for it being psychotic and mean. “You sort of deserved it” is his mantra. No responsibility. No culpability. No apology.

Thank god it’s not genetic – or, if it is, the DNA somehow missed me. Maybe it’s recessive.

Which leads me to this – I made this whole post about all the updates to the site – and, you know what, I got some things wrong. See, I’m a big person, I can admit it.

What, you may be asking, the heck am I talking about?

I’m talking about my use of the words “ratings’. I’m talking about my explanation of Tag Me Not.

The word “ratings” isn’t accurate – because they’re really tags. They are tags that we’ve given extra attention to and made it easy for people to tag as “green” or “not green”, “practical” or “not practical”, “cool” or “not cool”. And because they’re tags with emphasis, it’s very easy for us to make them something else. We’ve put these on the web site as a test of sorts – put them up, have people see what we’re trying to do, and lead us down the path of choosing tags that beta testers see as meaningful and meaty. Maybe we’ll hear from beta testers that what you’d really like as quick tag options are “recycled” or “I have this” or “this company uses sustainable practices”. I think by using the word “ratings” I put an emphasis on these that was not quite right. BUT the important thing to remember is that over the next weeks we’ll be finding some way to ask beta testers what would be valuable.

The next thing I sort of kind of okay I messed up on, is, Tag Me Not. I come from a family of fighters not lovers (as I illustrated in my beginning story…). Ethan pointed out to me today that I had framed Tag Me Not in a completely different way than he thought of it. And, frankly, his explanation is a much nicer, non-confrontational way. And I like it more.

So here it is, Tag Me Not by Ethan: “Tag Me Not gives you an important tool for sustainability – the ability to see what’s not there. In stores, fair trade coffee often comes with “Fair Trade” labels, but you never see any coffee labeled “not Fair Trade”. Same goes for “organic” and countless other labels. But both in stores and on the web, the absence of a label is not the same as the presence of a “not” label. For example, if a shirt on OsoEco doesn’t have an “Organic” tag, does that mean it isn’t Organic, or just that nobody’s tagged it yet? Tag Me Not helps us tell the difference between “not” and “don’t know”.

“With Tag Me Not, things like “Organic” and “not Organic” aren’t two different tags – they’re the flip side of the same tag. This means that tags now offer us spectrum! So now when we look at the Organic tag, we can see side by side all the items that we’ve determined are or are not Organic. The same goes for unappealing characteristics. Think “Toxic” and “not Toxic.” Sure, some times there will be contradictions between how different members tag things. For those cases, we tally the relative counts of Tag Me So’s and Tag Me Nots. Sometimes this kind of contradiction will be really fun, like in seeing who thinks a note should be tagged “funny” and who says “not funny.” But the point isn’t to highlight differences among our opinions, it’s to highlight differences among our options. Which might be a waste of time, since all of our options for addressing sustainability are really just the same old boring rigamarole. Not.”

Now doesn’t that sound a bit better than my version?….

Sigh. Well, I’m sorry about my, uh, miscommunication; and I’m sure I’ll be making many many more mistakes. But, hopefully, I won’t split any heads open….

Conversations….mmmm, I love having them. But the art of conversation is not celebrated enough in our culture. And it is becoming ever more critical online as we struggle with tools that don’t communicate facial expressions or even intonation. So what can we do to bring forth conversation and nurture it?

Of course there are some simple obvious answers: ask questions and express gratitude. Come from a state of curiosity.

But how about receiving with grace? We have valued being independent or autonomous so highly that many of us have lost touch with the ability to receive with grace. Allow other people to feel good about their contribution. Don’t quickly close the social reciprocity contract–you know that sense that you have to return the favor? Don’t take it to be a sign that you are a slacker or a mooch! What a negative framing that is…although it does point to people who are not being gracious about receiving (or our jealousy of those that do receive with ease).

Keep in mind that people don’t see the world for what it is, they see it for what they are. Most people think about themselves, especially in our competitive culture. If you allow people to see themselves positively, they will see you positively.

I had a lovely friend who spoke about those in his social network in the most flattering terms. He said how brilliant and creative they were. And it made me feel like I must be pretty brilliant or creative to be included in his world, since that was clearly what he filtered for. And I had the sense that when he talked about me to others, he was saying amazing things about me (ones I might not even be able to believe about myself). Oh, was he ever attractive to spend time with!

What can you celebrate in others? Especially when they have given you something. Instead of returning the favor, do them a different sort of favor by saying very specifically what you see them having done for you (or for others), how that works for your needs and values, and how thankful you are for it. This is NOT a display of your weakness, in fact it shows your confidence and strength.

Allow it to create a flow in conversation toward common connection–shared celebration of shared values, other instances of gratitude or other things to be grateful for. Be patient in listening and clearly ask for more. I mean clearly as in “can you tell me more about that?” Or “What I hear you saying is ‘insert summary or key points‘ and I would love to know more about how you came to that/where you want to do with that.”

Receive with grace and enjoy your conversations flourishing–online and off.

Well, the title pretty much sums it up :)

A little background: mock ups are when I create pretty (sometimes they aren’t so pretty – but usually they’re better than Caroline’s) drawings that illustrate some aspect of the site. They are basically visualizations to see where we’re going before we build it.

So, here’s a few of the things I’m working on today:

Tagriculture

This is what we’re calling Tagriculture – it’s the idea that our site will function very simply and sweetly by using tags – and tags are how people can find each other, and things they’re interested in, and also say what it is they like or don’t like.

Which brings us to….

Ratings

We’re getting ready to introduce some sort of way to use tags to rate things – what you’re seeing here is not necessarily what we’re going with – again, this is an idea and we still haven’t gotten any feedback from our community as far as what they want to be able to rate finds (products and articles), and what we’re calling eco-matters at the moment (this is the place where people will be able to post questions; rant or rave about products or articles; post great ideas; and share eco-successes). On this mock up you’re seeing the values of green, cool, practical – and the ability to be able to rate it a yes, a no, or a not sure.

And finally….

Finds

The Finds page – anything that you can find on the internet and bring into OsoEco via our bookmarking tool we’re calling a “find” right now (again, I’ll be posting about language later – I thought today, but I think that will be what I’m working on tomorrow…). With this mock up I’m also playing with the new layout we will soon be going with – it incorporates a side-bar that is giving stat-type things – like, what are the last 5 finds that we’re added to OsoEco; who are the last 5 people to post an eco-matter; who’s on the site right now; what are the lastest notes that have been posted, etc…..

So that’s it. Feel free to let me know of any thoughts you have….

One of the many themes of this week has been “how do we communicate with each other and with beta testers effectively?”

In some ways this sounds like it should be so so easy. I mean, really, I’m raising a child, Katie’s walked on the wings of bi-planes, Caroline survived growing up in New Jersey, Ethan and Lew made it through being music majors (aka big dorks), and I’m not quite sure yet what Jean, Brittany, and Kelsi have made it through but, geez, talking with others should be a no-brainer, right? WRONG.

There have been many moments where Ethan, Lew and I have had deep discussions over the course of weeks about some functionality that needs changed and then we just go ahead and change it without talking to anyone else – because, man, it’s been the only thing on our minds for a chunk of time and how could everyone else NOT know about it? There was also one week where Caroline was back and forth from Portland more than she was in the office, and none of us knew until we saw her little suitcase sitting by the front door.

And this carries over to talking to the OsoEco community. We keep saying that we want the site to be a collaboration between us and everyone who’s using it – and we’ve put in some definite steps to do this (one major one being the feedback box you can find on every page in the test site; another being the usability tests we’ve been conducting over the past months) – but now it’s time to step it up and do more.

We came up with some ideas earlier this week – right now, we’re going to use the blog to talk about what we’re working on during the week; what are the hot topics we’re wrestling with; and let everyone in on our conversations, hopes, dreams, frustrations, failures, successes… we’re also going to use this space to pose questions to the community – to talk about what things we’ve got boiling, and see if anyone out there has things they want to add to the pot.

We also are wondering if there are any beta testers out there who would like to work with us on updates – what this means, is that before we update the general beta site, we’d have community members take a look at what we think is ready for production and get thoughts, feedback, etc. If you’re interested, please shoot me an email at adeleatosoeco.com (with the at being an @ sign….).

One of the hot topics today has been about Language, better how-tos and what’s this, and words we’re using on the site to communicate what can be done – cuz really, what the heck does Tagging mean? And a Note? What’s a find? And why can I only post a dilemma but not rave or advocate about something?

Tomorrow I’ll be posting some of our ideas that have come out of meetings we’re having today and see what others think. Till then – keep talking. :)

This has been an interesting couple of weeks – both on the national stage, and right here in our little office.

Obama’s speech about race got me thinking about the things that distract us, and pit us against one another, and how we have so many fundamental things in common. I got the sense that he was trying to shift the discussion to a higher level – to get out of the details that stop us and focus on greater-good things. It inspired me to think larger, bigger, broader myself. Something that I find hard to do at times because I’m so caught up in doing and going and coming and working and playing and figuring out what I’m going to make for dinner. It inspired me to think again about what are the things I truly find important, and how to hone in on them and practice and integrate them into my life.

In the beginnings of OsoEco – the stage where we were all making our general “wouldn’t it be great” lists – we were very much talking in terms of bigger, broader brushstrokes. But then we got down to working on the (sometimes overwhelming) details. And the “wouldn’t it be great” lists faded away – not that they disappeared or that we stopped applying them, but we lost site of them in our consciousness… but now, here I am, back thinking about how to make the “wouldn’t it be greats” part of everything I do.

Here are some of the things that are so important to us at OsoEco…..

First, the group of us want a work, life balance that feeds us, our families, and our communities. This means that work and play shouldn’t be separated. All of us at Oso are intent on doing what we love and having every part of our lives inform and enrich the others. Part of this means being personally attached to people that we share work with. I spend 40+ hours a week working – i believe for my work to be truly fulfilling, that I let others know me and I know others. This means not viewing work as just work – but creating a new “work environment” which incorporates friendship… I want the people I work with to become part of my family.

This isn’t always easy. In fact, sometimes it can be, well, pretty painful. i don’t know about your family, but I don’t always get along with them. And sometimes, I find myself in disagreements with them about doing the laundry that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the laundry. I also think that in families, there are usually some pretty dysfunctional ways of doing things. This is no different in the work environment. But my committment, and the committment we all made with starting OsoEco was that we would push ourselves to grow and evolve as people – which means finding ways to communicate, finding ways to play, finding ways to share that feed us all creatively. This is WAY easier said then done.

Second, we want a world that reflects our values of caring, kindness, concern, engaged, open and transparent. We want to operate thoughtfully with knowledge and compassion in our choices. This means the choices we make together in our office; this means choices we make while we’re working out the details of what’s going to be on the site; this means choices we make when we walk down the street, talk to our neighbors, do our grocery shopping, etc.

We want a world where we realize there is no “other”. That all of us succeed or fail together. My happiness, safety, comfort is not valued greater or lessor because I am an American, or because I am female, or because I was raised Catholic, or because I have excema on my elbow.

I know, how idealistic does this sound, right? But that’s part of what we want to bring into our world as well. The idea of hope; the idea of positivity; the idea that as humans we can work to lift each other up in meaningful ways.

Out of these ideas, OsoEco was born. in our daily discussions we are bringing back in these “higher aspirations” and being conscientous about how we incorporate and integrate them into our day to day workings of OsoEco, in what OsoEco will eventually be and offer.

In short, we are truly seeing OsoEco as a step in making the kind of change we want to see in our world.

There are so many who believe business is business, and making money is making money and somehow separate from how we function outside our work places, in our community groups and social circles. We are challenging this. We are bringing in our values that there really is a triple bottom line – profit is not, and should not, be the sole measure of our success. We do this everyday, every minute that we work at our desks by ourselves, or together at the conference table in our office.

We’re experimenting with doing things differently by looking at how a for-profit business (OsoEco) and a non-profit business (Grass Commons) can truly work together for mutual benefit.

We’re experimenting with doing things differently in the design of what and how you do things on OsoEco. We are constantly bringing in the ideas of wikis and community-based input/control to further our world rather than pretending that we, OsoEco, truly know the right way to do things.

We’re experimenting with systems that really supprt both the value of getting and giving. We believe to have a meaningful exchange of knowledge and to move ahead, that we must both talk and listen to truly contribute. And again, we are doing this in the tools that people will be able to use on our site, but also, in the way we work, talk and listen to one another in our office.

We can all do these things – they don’t have to be done on a large scale. It’s the smaller scale, in how we are with our families, how we are with our co-workers, how we are with our neighbors and community that we can work to transform ourselves – where we can work to challenge ourselves and grow and move beyond our distractions.

The basic idea we’re building on is simple really. As individuals we only know so much – but as a community we can combine, gather, and organize our collective knowledge so that we can all benefit from making greener decisions.

Even though some of us here at OsoEco think we know everything (not me, of course…), when it comes right down to it, we don’t. Especially when it comes to sustainability and green.

That’s why we started OsoEco. We have always thought of OsoEco as being this place where anyone could come – regardless of whether they’re Al Gore or they’re my grandma who thinks recycling has something to do with bicycling – and feel welcome.

Right now, we’re spending a whole lot of energy on working out this social part of OsoEco. Working out the How’s of sharing information; the How’s of finding information that interests you; the How’s of how people will connect and collaborate.

What does this translate into?… It translates into how to find others who know things you don’t but are interested in. It translates into how to be offered up discussions or items that you might be interested in based on other things you’ve looked for, other discussions you’ve participated in, or how you’ve tagged items that you’ve brought into OsoEco. It translates into developing a sense of community where people feel comfortable asking questions, offering solutions, and interacting with one another.

As my mother always liked to remind me, relationships are all about give and take (usually she was letting me know that I had been doing a whole lot of taking and not much giving – geez). Right now we’re working on developing a place that allows both of these things to happen in a meaningful way.

Do you want to be part of the discussion? Do you have ideas of what you’d like to see? If you’re not a beta tester already, and you’re interested in this meaty social part of OsoEco, shoot me an email at adele[at]osoeco.com.

As far as I’m concerned, I have the greatest job in the world. Sure, start ups are stressful, and there’s the constant pulling up the couch cushions looking for a few hundred thousand, but, as Lead Designer/Media Director, I’m pretty much insulated from all that.

My focus is to come into work and think up ways people can find and give useful information around green items and knowledge. And the other great part, is that I’m working directly with 2 great guys – Ethan and Lew. Their job it is to also think creatively – but with the emphasis on how to make what we want to do actually happen and work.

So what do I do exactly? Collaborate with Ethan and Lew on what it is people might want to do that will help us all become more sustainable….

but specifically, I then take the conversations we have and implement the look, feel, and how people easily get from one place to another on our site.

Katie and Caroline brought us all together to work out the nuts and bolts of their vision – and what’s happened is that as Ethan, Lew and I have gotten involved in making the vision real, how to accomplish the vision has morphed and changed.

But, Geez, what am I saying here? The vision has been creating a community where regardless of where you may be on the green spectrum, you’ll find something valuable here – whether it be solving a green dilemma you have, or sharing your green knowledge with someone else, or discovering and researching green products. How to do all this? Well, that’s dependent on how people use OsoEco, and what they want to do here.

It’s this give and take process that I love. Our team starts from this personal place – what we want to do on OsoEco, what we want to see on OsoEco – and then Ethan and Lew build it…. a small, teensy part of it. Then we all look at it, pretty it up, and put it out live to our beta testers. Depending on what our wonderful betas tell us, and how we see them using it, we tweak and refine and throw some things out and are spurred onto even grander ideas that we then build a teensy tiny part of and put out live again and the process just keeps going….

This ability to morph, change, evolve, is mainly possible because we’re really clear about where we’re going. We’re really clear that we’re creating a place for anyone who’s green-inclined to find useful ideas, items, relationships. We’re really clear that OsoEco is one part social network, one part green sharing network, and one part shopping for items network.