The best of everything 2010

It’s fun, and a strong blogging tradition, to look back over year just gone and create “best-of” lists. So here’s absolutely the definitive list of the best music, books and films from the year. Just kidding, it’s just a random list of my favourite stuff of the past year, conjured by my imperfect memory and [...]

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Transparency and Leaving No Trace

As I wrote recently, Burning Man is Festival 2.0. It is a user-generated community, built on the respect and responsibility of its citizens, a place where people are participants, not consumers. The event and indeed the entire culture is based on ten principles, one of which is “leaving no trace”. This practice of leaving no [...]

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What Apple cares about

Over the past couple of weeks two interesting and inter-related controversies have sprung up which reveal in stark terms Apple’s lack of support for non-profits and values as a corporate citizen. Beth Kanter, the nonprofit web guru, started drawing attention a couple of weeks ago to the iPhone’s lack of support for donation apps.The essense [...]

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The new world of peer-funded projects

I have a confession to make. I’m a crowdfunding addict. Or as I think of these emerging platforms: peer-funding. For the first time projects can be funded by those who share the passion and vision of the creator. In other words, not the anonymous crowd, but your global peers getting together and saying “let’s make [...]

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The rise of public bikes in DC

I left Washington DC in June and was amazed on a visit back this weekend how much seemed to have changed in the urban environment in this short time. The biggest change I’m thrilled about is the launch of a new shared bike scheme – Capital Bikeshare – already now the biggest in the USA. [...]

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What has travel taught you?

  As part of my participation in the zooGooder fundraising challenge December 2-9, for which I’m supporting Global Lives Project (find out more), I wanted to share why I’m so passionate about travel and why I think Global Lives Project shares some of the important insights of travel to those who may not have the [...]

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Help open a window on the world

Both Thanksgiving and Christmas are good times for taking stock and thinking about the things we have to be grateful for. For me this means thinking about my global tribe and how lucky I am to have you all in my life. Thinking about this made me realize, once more, how important travel has always [...]

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