international ECIS (Ethical Consumption Information System) collaboration

An international collaboration of projects that seek to provide ethical information to consumers.

As well as publishing a series of podcast interviews with many of the projects, we’ve been organising online teleconferences every week addressing specific topics. The first of these conferences dealt with data collection, representation, summarisation and presentation. The second conference looked at how we could make our projects financially sustainable. The next conferences will focus on involving the academic members of our community and keeping up the momentum we’ve developed in the early conferences. Recordings and transcripts of previous conferences, dates of upcoming conferences and other related information can be found below.
- Jonathan Melhuish
more from Jonathan...

Skype: Annesley or Jonathan for a chat!
or feedback

discussion map

download the source file written with FreeMind
bold nodes indicate independent subgroup areas of discussion. These are split out to be manageable in terms of size.

events

These events are focused, designed for 4-5 people to discuss a particular element of this initiative.
There are periodic open events to discuss overall direction and introduce new members.
All events can be listened to live and recordings and also available.
Each meeting will have a chair who is responsible for meeting format and compiling agenda. An opening presentation will often also be made. These roles are filled simply by you requesting to do them. Email the chair if you would like to attend.
Events are always held at 19:00 GMT (11:00 west coast USA, 14:00 east coast USA, 21:00 Finland).
Skype anewholm for more information and to setup your computer ready for the conference.
Events are run using DimDim. Follow this link to enter the meeting after 15 mins before the start.

Wednesday, December 3rd 2007 - general meet, chair:Jonathan Melhuish ( Mp3 recording, transcript, minutes)
Tuesday, December 9th 2007 - general meet, chair:Jonathan Melhuish ( Mp3 recording, text chat, post discussion)
Wednesday, January 7th 2008 - data: research, collection, sharing, rating, normalisation, chair:Jake de Grazia ( Mp3 recording (partial), text chat, notes )
the first hour recording of this conference was lost
Wednesday, January 14th 2008 - commercialisation. chair:Annesley Newholm, presenter:Gbenga Kogbe ( video recording, Gbenga's "The business of free" power point presentation )
Thursday, January 22nd 2008 - data. chair:Jake de Grazia
no recordings were made of this conference
Wednesday, January 28th 2008 - marketing, motivating the consumer, consumer theory.
chair:Dorothea Kliene
,
presenter:Terry Newholm
( Terry's "Influencing consumer ethics" presentation, text chat )
Monday, Febuary 2nd 2008 - academic research
chair:Jonathan Melhuish

no recordings were made of this conference
Wednesday, Febuary 4th 2008 - data (quantitative analysis only)
The quantitative analysis, via application of algorithms, by researchers and community members alike of imported company metrics in an ECIS.
This includes discussion of the currently available company metrics, it's trustworthyness, international efforts to get company metrics and their interporability.
chair:Annesley Newholm
Thursday, Febuary 5th 2008 - data (qualitative analysis only): Trust networks, ethical categories, knowledge, reputation and ranking.
The qualitative analysis and summarisation by researchers and community members alike of imported and authored data in an ECIS.
This is not about the extent of community involvment or about the balance of free and premium access.

chair:Annesley Newholm
Wednesday, Febuary 11th 2008 - user experience (planning for Feb 28th science open day testing. Contact Dorothea Kliene for more info)
chair:Jonathan Melhuish
( audio, video, text chat )
Saturday, Febuary 28th 2008 - University of Holloway science open day research.
chair:Dorothea Kliene
Wednesday, March 25th 2008 - Review. Many members have moved forward with their projects and collaboration. Time to catch up with progress :)
chair:Annesley Newholm
( video )
Wednesday, April 1st 2008 - Fossil fools day, London
chair:Jonathan Melhuish
(no injuries, see youtube for videos)
Friday, July 16th 2010 - 6 people in London at once, physical conference near Old Street
chair:Jonathan Melhuish
( physical attendees: Ellis, Dorothea, Terry, Nick Ray, Jonathan and Annesley; video )

results and related documents

As well as starting to work on those things together, it would be great to start more "ad-hoc" communication. We'd both be happy to chat whenever you see us on Skype, and I'm sure that goes for all the other conference attendees too.

Google group on data collection, sharing, normalisation and quantifying
mockup webpage with all the information we have on Nestlé as an example of what things could look like
data model diagrams for each organisation ( Bilumi.org, EasyEthical.org, EthicalConsumer.org )
the shared mission statement
brainstorm of monetisation possibilities
possible sources of funding listing
Business plan for Alonovo
new media knowledge - commercialisation around free data and Web 2.0
make money around free content - wiki page
community member reputation design options

the people

Many people have made videos about their thoughts on collaboration. Click on someones face or the podcast link to watch.
clock times around the world (US coasts, Finland and UK).

15:32 London, UK (GMT UTC+0000)
17:32 Helsinki, Finland (EST UTC+0200)
10:32 New York, East Coast USA (EDT UTC-0500)
7:32 San Francisco, West Coast USA (UTC-0800)