Tent Talks Featuring: Tim Frick
Tent Talks Featuring Tim Frick: Digital Sustainability On Monday, December 4th at 5:00pm Central, Tim Frick joins us for a live Q&A session: “Digital Sustainability.” Tim Frick Tim started Mightybytes in early 1998 to help nonprofits, social enterprises, and purpose-driven companies solve problems, amplify their impact, and drive measurable business and marketing results. Tim is a Certified Sustainability Designer through Gaia Education, a United Nations global education partner, where he co-facilitated their course on Economic Design. The course is part of the Design for Sustainability program, which helps students learn regenerative design and inclusive economic practices. Tim has written four books, which have been translated into multiple languages and are used at educational institutions around the world: Designing for Sustainability: A Guide to Building Greener Digital Products and Services from O’Reilly Media Two editions of Return on Engagement: Content Strategy and Web Design Techniques for Digital Marketing from Elsevier/Focal Press Managing Interactive Media Projects, an academic project management guide from Cengage Learning In addition to authoring books, Tim has written for dozens of well-known publications, blogs, and media outlets. He recently contributed to the following projects: The first-ever sustainability chapter of the HTTP Archive’s annual Web Almanac, a comprehensive report on the state of the web A chapter in the Ecomm Manager’s Sustainable Ecommerce Handbook Tim is also a regular contributor to B the Change, the storytelling platform for the global B Corp community. Passionate about the growing global B Corp movement, Tim has co-founded and/or led several B Corp-related networks: B Local Illinois The B Corp Marketers Network The B Proud Network In 2013, Tim started a Sustainable Web Design community group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In 2023, this group introduced the Web Sustainability Guidelines to help organizations incorporate sustainability principles into the creation and management of digital products and services. Finally, Tim is currently a board member at the Alliance for the Great Lakes and former Board President for Climate Ride. About Tent Talks Chicago Camps hosts irregularly scheduled Tent Talks with people from all across the User Experience Design community, and beyond. Who really likes limits, anyway–If it’s a cool idea, we’d love to hear about it and share it! What is a Tent Talk? That’s a great question, we’d love to tell you. Tent Talks are short-form in nature, generally lasting from 10-20 minutes (ish) in a recorded format–we like to think of them as “S’mores-sized content” because that’s pretty on-brand. Tent Talks can be a presentation on a topic, a live Q&A session about the work we do, or the work around the work we do, or really just about anything–we don’t want to limit ourselves, or you. You should send along an idea or topic of your own so we can learn from you, as well! You don’t have to be a published author or a professional speaker on a circuit to be good at your job, so please, put yourself forward, and let’s have some fun, talk, and share your experience with others!
Tent Talks by Chicago Camps · Tim Frick, Chicago Camps
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Show Notes
In this episode of Tent Talks, Tim Frick delves into the evolving landscape of digital sustainability, a topic that's gaining traction but still relatively niche. Tim discusses recent regulatory changes, like the EU's Climate Sustainability Reporting Directive and Biden's executive order on AI, highlighting their impact on sustainability. He envisions a future where sustainable practices in digital product design and development become the norm, driven by a growing awareness and desire for change.
Tim also touches on the significant environmental impact of the internet and data centers, a revelation from his journey as a B Corp advocate. The discussion also covers the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSGs) and their potential to shape web development and design. Tim acknowledges challenges like lack of awareness, technical debt, data accessibility, and legislative incentives in adopting sustainable practices. Lastly, he emphasizes the importance of inclusive economic practices and regenerative design in the digital product lifecycle and advises on measuring and communicating the impact of sustainability initiatives, drawing on his experiences with MightyBytes and B Corp certification.
Digital Sustainability's Future:
- Digital sustainability is an emerging, niche topic.
- Growing awareness in both technology and sustainability sectors.
- Hope for sustainability to become a default in digital product design in the next decade.
- Significant environmental impact of internet and data centers highlighted.
Web Sustainability Guidelines:
- WSGs developed to provide guidance in digital sustainability.
- A multidisciplinary approach covering business, UX design, web development, and more.
- Aimed at making sustainable practices more accessible and actionable.
Barriers to Sustainable Practices:
- Challenges include lack of awareness and understanding, technical debt, data accessibility, and lack of legislative incentives.
- Emphasis on the need for sustainable data strategies and supporting right-to-repair policies.
Regenerative Design and Inclusive Economic Practices:
- Focus on systemic thinking and sustainability in all decisions.
- Importance of powering digital products with renewable energy and responsible data strategies.
- Inclusion entails personal wellbeing, equitable hiring, and sharing economic benefits.
Measuring and Communicating Sustainability Initiatives:
- The B Impact Assessment as a valuable tool for measuring sustainability.
- Importance of collective action and making sustainability a journey rather than a switch to flip.
Notable Quotes:
- "Digital sustainability...is growing rapidly. As technology advances, the intersection between digital innovation and sustainability becomes more crucial."
- "My hope is that 10 years from now, [sustainability] is just a default way that people design and develop digital products."
- "The internet is a big machine...the true environmental impact of the internet [is significant]."
- "We need a set of guidelines to govern sustainable digital practices...and [the Web Sustainability Guidelines] aim to provide that."
- "Lack of awareness, technical debt, and data gaps are significant barriers in sustainable digital product development."
- "Sustainability is not a switch you flip. It's a journey. It's about continuous improvement and collective action towards a more sustainable future."
About Tent Talks
Chicago Camps hosts irregularly scheduled Tent Talks with people from all across the User Experience Design community, and beyond. Who really likes limits, anyway--If it's a cool idea, we'd love to hear about it and share it!
What is a Tent Talk? That's a great question, we'd love to tell you.
Tent Talks are short-form in nature, generally lasting from 10-20 minutes (ish) in a recorded format--we like to think of them as "S'mores-sized content" because that's pretty on-brand. Tent Talks can be a presentation on a topic, a live Q&A session about the work we do, or the work around the work we do, or really just about anything--we don't want to limit ourselves, or you.
You should send along an idea or topic of your own so we can learn from you, as well! You don't have to be a published author or a professional speaker on a circuit to be good at your job, so please, put yourself forward, and let's have some fun, talk, and share your experience with others!
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