Category Archives: Events

Community Science with Public Lab

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We are very proud to announce ioby’s newest partnership with the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science. Community groups in Boston, New Orleans and Brooklyn use Public’s Lab’s innovative, open source DIY tools to monitor environmental issues.

Circuit-hp-bannerWhether tracking chemical emissions from refineries, teaching kids about civic responsibility via kite mapping, or monitoring progress on efforts to remove invasive species, Public Lab contributors work to create healthier, more engaged communities using fun, simple techniques. Using everyday items–like handheld digital cameras, kites and string–Public Lab members re-imagine environmental monitoring tools, taking science out of its ivory tower and making it an accessible part of everyday life. With Public Lab, people leverage the brain power and experience of thousands of contributors around the world to create results in their own backyards.

Click here to see the projects.

The official press release from Public Laboratory follows:

JANUARY 15, 2014
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
A MESSAGE FROM
PUBLIC LAB

Public Lab and ioby Partner to Launch Neighborhood Environmental Health Projects

New Orleans, LA — The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science today announced a partnership with crowdfunding non-profit IOBY to host a series of locally focused environmentally themed crowdfunding campaigns. The five projects span several Public Lab regions from Massachusetts to Louisiana, and range from educational initiatives to pollution monitoring projects.

Local level, site-specific projects are the core of Public Lab’s collaborative community, many members of which come together around specific environmental threats such as landfills, chemical spills, or polluted urban waterways. This innovative partnership structure between the two non-profits organizations heralds further, fruitful collaborations.

The partner page, titled “Community Science with Public Lab” features five flagship projects: http://publiclab.org/ioby

Mystic River Open Water: Mystic River Open Water is building an open-source, DIY water quality monitoring network. (Don Blair, Massachusetts)

Refinery Flare Monitoring: We are constructing observation stations to monitor refinery flares continuously and remotely. They will provide an inexpensive, easy to construct, and reliable remote flare observation station that provides usable data. (This project relates to the newly-announced Knight Foundation-funded Homebrew Sensing Project) (Dan Beavers, Louisiana)

Put the People in the Picture: Barataria Wetlands Co-Monitoring: As attention fades from the BP disaster, residents who depend on the Barataria Bay marshes need to monitor their wetlands. Your contribution empowers communities to monitor the impacts of BP’s oil. (Scott Eustis, Louisiana)

Gowanus Low Altitude Mapping: Gowanus Low Altitude Mapping (GLAM) is a volunteer-driven initiative to create detailed aerial photos of the Superfund-designated Gowanus Canal, using cameras and balloons. (Gowanus Canal Conservancy, New York)

Parts and Crafts at Somerville Public Schools: Nine 5-week courses, including: Intro to Computer Science, DIY Environmental Monitoring, and Intro to Electronics. (Parts and Crafts, Massachusetts)
These projects provide a window into some of the most vibrant independent place-based research in the Public Lab network, revealing environmental issues of high priority to local residents — issues which government or industry have often overlooked.

Contact Public Lab: Becki Chall, becki@publiclab.org | p: 504-358-0647 f: 504-324-0401

About Public Lab

The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (Public Lab) is a community — supported by a 501(c)3 non-profit — which develops and applies open-source tools to environmental exploration and investigation. By democratizing inexpensive and accessible Do-It-Yourself techniques, Public Lab creates a collaborative network of practitioners who actively re-imagine the human relationship with the environment.

The core Public Lab program is focused on “civic science” in which we research open source hardware and software tools and methods to generate knowledge and share data about community environmental health. Our goal is to increase the ability of underserved communities to identify, redress, remediate, and create awareness and accountability around environmental concerns. Public Lab achieves this by providing online and offline training, education and support, and by focusing on locally-relevant outcomes that emphasize human capacity and understanding.

Since its founding during the 2010 BP oil disaster, Public Lab has launched a series of community-driven environmental technology projects, using a collaborative open source development process to rapidly innovate affordable tools to respond to and understand environmental threats.

About ioby

ioby is a crowd-resourcing platform for citizen-led neighborhood projects. Our name is derived from the opposite of NIMBY. We have a mission to deepen civic engagement in cities by connecting individuals directly to community-led, neighbor-funded environmental projects in their neighborhoods.

ioby connects change with resources. It enables all of us to invest in change—then see (and live with) the return on our investment. There are everyday neighbors taking small steps—bringing strength, open space, fresh food and greenery into our backyards.

Give Local on Giving Tuesday, Dec 3.

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Just as Small Business Saturday gave us a chance to reinvent Black Friday, Giving Tuesday offers a reimagination of Cyber Monday with a social impact. This Tuesday, December 3rd, join ioby, along with partners in Giving Tuesday, Cause Effective and NY Charities, in encouraging giving back, giving local, and giving generous.

orange-droplet-number-oneExplore ioby for a project in your neighborhood. Find something close to your home and close to your heart.

orange-droplet-number-twoGive local.

orange-droplet-number-threeDownload Your Unselflie Sign and write about your gift.

orange-droplet-number-fourTweet or Instagram an UNselfie with your sign. Include the hashtag #GivingTuesday. Be sure to mention @ioby on Twitter or @insta_ioby on instagram and we’ll feature you in our unselfie all-stars list.

 

Thanks very much to our amazing partners at Cause Effective and NY Charities.

 

CE-logo-prepNYCharities-logo-prep

givingtuesdaylogo

Join ioby at EcoDistricts. Discount code for ioby community.

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ioby is a proud community partner of the 2013 EcoDistricts Summit – the premier event for urban leaders to learn about cutting edge projects and thought leadership in green buildings, smart infrastructure and community action. Coming to Boston November 12-14, the Summit program features has great educational sessions, a block party and tours of Boston’s emerging ecodistricts. For friends of ioby, EcoDistricts is offering a generous 10% discount on Summit registration. Hurry! This discount ends October 18.

Click here to register. Use the discount code: IOBYSUMMIT13 in all capital letters.

Volunteer Opportunity in NYC

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Volunteer opportunity for teachers, educators and people generally good with kids of all ages,

ioby, a Brooklyn based environmental nonprofit, needs your volunteer muscle for a 3-hour event in Morningside Park created in partnership with Whole Foods Market. You’ll be assigned a group of approximately 15-25 kids and parents to help guide them through a lesson on neighborhood reimagination and visioning. You should have some experience working with and teaching kids of many ages.

  • Where: Morningside Park at 116th just north of the playground
  • When: 9am – noon, Saturday, September 7th
  • Perks: Fun people, free lunch from Whole Foods!
  • Event Details: http://wholefoodsnyckidsday.eventbrite.com/

Interested volunteers should email Erin Barnes, at erin@ioby.org or call her at 917-464-4515 x2.

Happy Birthday, ioby!

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Five years ago today, Erin Barnes, Brandon Whitney and Cassie Flynn signed the incorporation papers for ioby. With your involvement and support, today nearly 300 citizen-led, neighbor-funded projects have been completed in more than 80 cities across the country. Happy Birthday, ioby!

For our supporters in New York, the ioby Board of Directors would like to invite you to please join us for a small birthday celebration on August 7th. Details here.

Jack Johnson and ioby join smallwater to rebuild in the Rockaways

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Thanks very much to Jack and Kim Johnson and the whole team at the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation for matching donations to smallwater’s project on ioby. smallwater began serving the Rockaways in the days immediately following Hurricane Sandy, on Beach 96th Street (across the street from Rockaway Taco), and now, with serious elbow grease put in by neighbors and Jack Johnson himself, a vacant lot that was just six months ago used to deliver food and clothing to people in the Rockaways is now being transformed into a community center and garden. Give to the project now, and the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation will match your donations.

Tactical Urbanism Sparks Ideas at CNU21

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ioby was very happy to participate at CNU 21 in Salt Lake City this May. In addition, to running a pop-up idea café (that also provided new urbanists with much needed caffeine), we were part of an innovative 202 on tactical urbanism with Mike Lydon, principal at StreetPlans, Tommy Pacello with the Memphis Mayor’s Innovation Delivery Team, Ian Wolfe Ross, City Design Collective, and Jason Roberts, founder of the Better Block.

Tactical Urbanism, similar to Lighter Quicker Cheaper, is a concept that hits to the core of ioby’s work. Small-scale or short-term demonstration projects can be implemented quickly, or temporarily, on a small budget, but work to transform the community’s understanding of public space.

An example is the 78th Street Play Street, that, using a Department of Transportation Play Street permit was temporarily opened for play and closed to car traffic three summers in row, and is now designated a permanent playground.

Easy wins are an important way to ensure participation in what can often be a slow and grueling public process. Moreover, small-scale projects remind residents that they have the ability to make change in their communities, a key part of civic engagement.

And in fact, the scale of ioby projects is often small. Projects are either short-term demonstrations or small-scale neighborhood projects (see above section on tactical urbanism). While some may be quick to dismiss small projects, we believe small projects play an important role. They provide an opportunity for quick results and easy feel good wins, which are incredibly important for a community that is fatigued with a legacy of hopelessness and skepticism, as is exactly the case in Miami, or Detroit, or possibly your home town.

In addition, because with ioby people contribute relatively small donations and volunteer for just a few hours, there is a feeling that change can happen, without herculean effort. An important reminder for all of us changemakers out there.

 

 

The New Normal is Still Shocking: Millennials Turn Away from Car Ownership

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It’s funny being on a panel that creates an audible gasp from the audience. That’s what happened the other day at the Mountainfilm Festival coffee talk Sunday on Climate Solutions: 3 Under 30.

Erin Barnes, ioby’s cofounder and Executive Director (who is actually not under 30), joined Slater Jewell-Kemker, director of An Inconvenient Youth (very much under 30); and Gregg Treinish (also not under 30), a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year and the founder and executive director of Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation shared their work with an audience that was most definitely over 30.

At one point, Erin made the point that all is not as dire as we once imagined, and that real change is happening, using the example of Millennial preference for a better smart phone or computer over car ownership.

And there it was: the group gasp.

Weird. We thought everyone knew this.

Enterprise advertisement in NYC subway in June 2013.

In April last year, Richard Florida wrote in Atlantic Cities on a U.S. PIRG report, “Sixteen to 34-year-olds in households with incomes of more than $70,000 per year are increasingly choosing not to drive as well, according to the report. They have increased their use of public transit by 100 percent, biking by 122 percent, and walking by 37 percent.” And from his 2012 book, The Great Reset, Florida reminds us, “Whether it’s because they don’t want them, can’t afford them, or see them as a symbol of waste and environmental abuse. More and more people are ditching their cars and taking public transit or moving to more walkable neighborhoods where they can get by without them or by occasionally using a rental car or Zipcar.”

Maybe if you missed that, we thought for sure you would have heard about the Deloitte report from Aug 2012. It was in Bloomberg News in August. “Smartphones, laptops and tablet devices compete for their dollars and are higher priorities than vehicle purchases, said Joe Vitale, an automotive consultant with Deloitte.”

StreetsBlog, of course, has done several pieces that include roundups of the press on this issue, including stories in CNN Money, the LA Times, citing research by J.D. Power and Associates, PIRG, and others.

So the auto industry knows, car-sharing people know, and people who care about transit know, and Millennials know. Enterprise knows, which is why they’ve created their own car-sharing system. But some people, regular people who don’t work in the new sharing economy or the auto industry, may not know that car culture is dramatically changing. So keep talking about it. It may be shocking news!

Garrison Institute Talk Gets Picked Up

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We were excited to see ioby covered in Cara Pike’s latest piece in Climate Access that was also picked up in Think Progress. Pike’s piece unpacked resilience, the latest buzzword in use at the Garrison Institute conference Climate, Cities and Behavior Symposium where ioby’s cofounder and Chief Partnerships Officer Cassie Flynn spoke.

This Thursday, 5% of sales from NYC Whole Foods will be donated to ioby!

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This Thursday, 5% of sales from Whole Foods in NYC will be donated to ioby.  When you shop at a Whole Foods store on April 11, you are helping ioby to support the innovators across the country that are making our neighborhoods stronger and more sustainable.

At ioby, we are particularly excited about this day because, well, we love food.  We see so many leaders and innovators creating stronger food systems, neighborhood by neighborhood.  This is especially important in cities where access to healthy and affordable food can be limited.

And there are two ways that you can help!

  1. Help us to spread the word far and wide!  Even if you don’t live in NYC, please take 2 seconds to use Facebook or Twitter to show your support.
  2. Shop at Whole Foods on April 11!  Whether you need to stock your fridge or get ingredients for a dinner party, set your sights on April 11.  We will have a table to share information about the work of leaders across the country.  Come by and say hello!

Thank you for helping ioby to support the innovators across the country that make our neighborhoods stronger and more sustainable!

Here is a list of the seven Whole Foods stores in NYC:

Columbus Circle  — 10 Columbus Circle (Lower Concourse of Time Warner Center)

Bowery — 95 East Houston Street

Tribeca —  270 Greenwich Street

Upper West Side — 808 Columbus Avenue

Chelsea — 250 7th Avenue

Union Square — 4 Union Square South

Midtown East — 226 East 57th Street