be green or be gone

So maybe caring about the planet is not an either-or thing where you're either for environmental protection or against it. Often, most of us do care about the Earth a lot - we enjoy our beach holidays and our forests. Time and again, we just need a kick up the pants to change our habits, no?

An easy start is eDay, a cars-only drive-through recycling event which gives you the opportunity to recycle old computers or mobile phones in an environmentally sustainable way. For more info, click here.

eDay will be held on the 4th* of October 2008 in regions around New Zealand.

Computer collectables charity auction, live from Sat 4 Oct.

The event was launched in Wellington in 2006 with an extremely successful pilot sponsored by Dell. Fifty-four tonnes of unused computer hardware were collected in one day. In 2007, eDay was extended to 12 locations throughout New Zealand where a total of 6,900 cars dropped off 415 tonnes of e-waste. This included more than 26,000 computer items including monitors, CPUs and printers....

• mobile phone chargers can be recycled to recover copper
• handsets and accessories can be recycled to recover the plastics
• circuit boards inside handsets can be recycled to recover precious metals such as gold, silver and other materials like copper, lead and zinc
• rechargeable batteries are recycled for their nickel, iron, cadmium, lead and cobalt.

On average, over 95% of the materials collected on eDay will be diverted from landfills.

Volunteers are required for eDay to assist with logistics at each eDay drop off site. Volunteers are needed to help direct traffic, interview drivers about their awareness of e-waste issues and remove computer equipment from cars. Sign up here.

The secrets behind the speech-maker

Fear number two: death. Fear number one: public speaking. Our keynote speaker from last week, John Mazenier (NZ Country Manager of Sun Microsystems) was a huge hit. Here, he shares a few nuggets sourced from Toastmasters:

1. Know the room. Be familiar with the place in which you will speak. Arrive early, walk around the speaking area and practice using the microphone and any visual aids.

2. Know your audience. Greet some of the audience as they arrive. It's easier to speak to a group of friends than to a group of strangers.

3. Know your material. If you're not familiar with your material or are uncomfortable with it, your nervousness will increase. Practise your speech and revise it if necessary.

4. Relax. Ease tension by doing exercises.

5. Visualize yourself giving your speech. Imagine yourself speaking, your voice loud, clear, and assured. When you visualize yourself as successful, you will be successful.

6. Realize that people want you to succeed. They are just as scared of public speaking as you are. They’re on your side!

7. Don't apologize. If you mention your nervousness or apologize for any problems you think you have with your speech, you may be calling the audience's attention to something they hadn't noticed. Keep silent.

8. Concentrate on the message -- not the medium. Focus your attention away from your own anxieties, and outwardly toward your message and your audience. Your nervousness will dissipate.

9. Turn nervousness into positive energy. Harness your nervous energy and transform it into vitality and enthusiasm.

10. Gain experience. Experience builds confidence, which is the key to effective speaking.

Well, well, Welly

Apart from the projector favoring PCs over Macs; a whole new Powerpoint show hurriedly thrown together; and a bumpy quick-change in the bathrooms (Pam and I have developed a whole new relationship with our gym bags and public toilets); everything last night went smoothly.

At the yMedia Wellington Awards, the night turned when Paul Matthews from the NZ Computer Society announced that NZCS, Sun Microsystems, RecruitIT, IBM, and Summer of Code (SoC) were each putting $200 on the bar as a gift to the Wellington student crowd.

So Paul Matthews, John Clegg (SoC), John Mazenier (Sun), John O'Leary (IBM), John Wyatt (RecruitIT), and Liz Hampton (IBM) - here's a huge cheers to you again, for such a well-timed/well-received/well-intentioned gesture. Thanks also to the very cool Southern Cross Bar for hosting us for free.

Thanks also to Dave Turnbull (ChromeToaster), Rod Drury (Xero) and Dave Ralph (Creo) for coming along to present the prizes and sharing their words of wisdom with the crowd.

Well, well, Welly - all of those who came last night have made yMedia feel very welcome in this city, so thanks again. It feels like a million thank-you's have been said over the past three days, but John Mazenier's keynote address reminded me that "the hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings."

John spoke about how people who work for multi-national corporations are essentially, still, just people (yes... they have hearts). At the start of the night, he had watched the video that Team Anna_Jamie_Josh had made for Alzheimers NZ, and was visibly moved by a brilliant post-it installation which the team did.

They stuck heaps and heaps of post-it notes around a popular corridor at their uni. Anyone who knows Alzheimers, recognises the gesture.

"You have no idea how poignant that is," he told me.

The gratitude he publicly expressed for the project itself, and for community groups like Alzheimers AZ, echoed that warm-and-fuzzy feeling that buzzed around the Auckland Awards last night. And it reminded me that each thank-you message opens doors for repeating whatever attracted the gratitude in the first place.

Huge congrats to our Wellington winners - Team Ignite - Liz Hands, Nicola Edhouse and Ian Loveridge, for their work with the Outdoor Pursuits Centre.

And once again, thanks to all our sponsors, students and community groups for taking up this opportunity, and giving yMedia a thousand more opportunities in the process.

Awards night in Aucks

And so another yMedia whanau meet-up came and went with last night's Auckland Awards. Ah, the warm-and-fuzzy 'family' vibe was there (albeit one of those estranged families where everyone knows others' names but not necessarily the fine print of their histories).

Stephen Tindall spoke, recalling how the Warehouse's decision to take a chance with electronic technology back in the day largely propelled it to success. The theme of the night was the changing importance of digital media, the new addiction that young people have to this technology, and of course, the spotlight was on the fantastic projects from this year's Challenge.

Massive congrats to the Auckland Winners: Team Open Eyes (Kyle Meszaros and Kevin Cooper) who worked with 'Community Connections'. We'd also like to congratulate all the other participants for producing some amazing blogs, Facebook pages, websites and so on.

For Pamela and myself, having Bon, Jade, Joe, Sheena, Nathan, Red and Anthea as quasi-co-hosts of the evening was a definite highlight. Telecom's gift vouchers of $400 to the winning teams, one set for Auckland one for Wellington, were also a lovely surprise.

We're very aware that the people in the room last night - the 2007 participants, our sponsors, judges, community groups, and 2008 students - are yMedia as it exists today.

In Ancient Greece, gathering in the forum was a part of daily life. In 1960s America, rallies and marches were part of the student experience. At the turn of the 21st century, it's becoming increasingly harder to drag people out of their homes and into real-world, face-to-face activities on a Wednesday night.

And so we'd like to thank everyone again for coming out and for making it another warm-and-fuzzy night.