By Katherine Dodds On April 05, 2013 | 0 Comments
At Hello Cool World we really are dreamers, and it's a good thing too. We dream of tools for social change, amplification engines for all our visions of alternative futures. The dream is what keeps me going.
There is a story behind every dream. Since I learned to read (such a long time ago), the technology that is the alphabet changed my life forever. But I also had the first massive moment of facing my limits because I had always assumed that once a person learned to read, they simply went on to read all the books. Which is what I set out to do.
The moment when I realized I could never read all the books was devastating. I also discovered there were more languages than I could ever learn. The tower of babble fell on my five-year old self, already drunk on fermented knowledge apples. It was one of my most profound moments, the friction between desire and reality, and I never recovered from learning my personal limits.
Since then I have been obsessed with systems. And collaborations. Things that help people do more than what they can do alone. And which is why, in such a personal way, I fell in love with the possiblities of the internet.
When we began working on The Corporation over a decade ago, our dream was to mobilize a grassroots network that connects audiences to ideas and actions. I remember excited conversations with Mark Achbar, before the film was even in production, about grassroots outreach and the possiblities of email. We were excited about websites and heady over hypertext. It was a time when blogs barely existed, and Facebook and Twitter were years away.
But the people and projects behind the technology were the point all along. What I fell in love with was the power of connecting people. We had a grassroots hit on our hands armed with little more than an email list. As we foraged forward, we built the technological infrastructure to go with it, a centralized platform to create and launch campaigns. We always liked to say that our platform balanced content, technology and outreach.
And I could not have done ANY of this alone. Films take teams of people. So do websites, databases and strategies. What we built in the early days (with the strategic advice of Scott Nelson and the hands-on help of Phillip Djwa, followed by David Griffith, and more recently with Atef Abdelkefi & Sandy Haksi), has been serving us well.
But now, we at Hello Cool World are up against the limits of our old code, and in the face of new frontiers it's time to BOOST our platform to new heights. In a way that will offer the economy of scale to our potential user and investors.
This platform connects all the work we have been doing. We are putting into practice everything we have learned before, during and after the launches of The Corporation and other documentaries The Take, Scared Sacred, and 65_RedRoses, as well as from book projects like Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine and Picturing Transformation, Nexw-áyantsut, the book I am co-writing (with Chief Bill Williams and Nancy Bleck) for the Uts'am Witness Project. We're drawing on our experience with LACE Campaign, promoting cervical cancer awareness, and our many sexual health campaigns and cross-cultural projects, all of which require mobilizing and connecting people around a cause. We're proud of what we've accomplished and if we can scale it up, we believe we can do more good for more people.
Make our dreams come true, not only for us, but for you.
Katherine Dodds AKA "Kat" is the founder of Good Company Communications and HelloCoolWorld.com. Trained in renegade advertising & branding through her work with Adbusters in the '90s, Kat's early induction into the possibilities of the web-world was inspired by the term hypertext, which she immediately found comforting. She is dedicated to cause-related communication and to the development and use of tools that promote democratic processes.
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By Katherine Dodds On April 03, 2013 | 0 Comments
HELLO COOL WORLD SEEKS SOCIAL JUSTICE COPY WRITING - EN FRANÇAIS!
Dear friends,
Help us find a spectacular copy-writer in French!
Hello Cool World is looking for experienced Francophone copywriters with a taste for social justice. We need to communicate with you in English, but we need true word-crafting expertise in French, with a current understanding of Quebec culture.
We need pitch writing, tag lines and ad-style copy for a bilingual non-profit identity project, and we are looking for someone with experience* in these areas, but who wants to use their powers of persuasion for good!
We are well aware that concepts and creative ideas don't all translate directly, and that word crafting takes a certain kind of finesse. We're also a company that is unashamedly go-gooders, and all our clients do meaningful work. For this project, our client is Inter Pares. We've worked with these fine folks several times before, but this time we are being stretched to become a truly bilingual company, and we need to find a person, or people who fit with our sensiblity and that can provide us with some high-level writing in French, that takes into consideration the process we have already undergone so far.
Contact kdodds@hellocoolworld.com by email with your resume if this is you, and give us an example of your copy-writing. Please let us know your hourly freelance rate.
* we are not looking for good writers only, but for people who have done this kind of work specifically, for other clients, and who understand the back-and-forth process that identity work entails.
For some of our work in progress, see the surveys we just launched of logo drafts.
By Maria Martin On March 20, 2013 | 0 Comments
The three days at the CDC Conference was a whirlwind of mid-week fun. The team was there to live-tweet CDC conference happenings + their projects around First Nations health and social media promotion. Many attendees recognized and were aware of our projects and campaigns. We did live tweeting & video interviews throughout the conference, so stay tuned for our vlog post highlighting the event. We asked people what community health meant to them & what community health looked like in First Nations communities. We also interviewed Dr. Evan Adams who explained the connection between community health and the new First Nations Health Authority. The wellness model takes a mind, body, spirit approach.
Tag(s):
Aboriginal,
health promotion,
Health/Health Advocacy,
Hello Cool World,
I Have Immunity,
HIV AIDS,
Local Events and Parties,
nursing,
Sexual Health,
Technology,
Video,
Youth
Maria Martin is interning with Hello Cool World as part of her community nursing course at VCC.
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By David Ng On March 14, 2013 | 0 Comments
The much anticipated Day 3 of the #CDC2013 #FNhealth conference has finally arrived!
We were looking forward to Day 3 because the presentations today covered the topics of HIV/AIDS and harm reduction. Kathy Wrath talked about doing harm reduction in small communities, and a lot of the stigma and misinformation about harm reduction that exists in communities. She pointed out an interesting fact that drug users are often the biggest opponents to harm reduction! So in order to "do" harm reduction effectively in communities, we have to consider how and where people are receiving care. Who are they listening to and where are people going to receive help? Kathy explored a part of grassroots outreach that is fundamental to reaching people - using peer groups. By using existing social networks, we can meet people where they are.
David Ng is a Hello Cool World veteran with experience going back a decade. David first worked with us when he was just 14 years old as a participant in the youth advisory group for the sexual health education program Condomania. Now an accomplished videographer passionate about the issues of gender and power, he is currently on sabbatical in South Africa while he pursues a Masters in Gender Studies with a focus on international development.
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By David Ng On March 13, 2013 | 0 Comments
Day 2 at the First Nations Health conference today started with a presentation on vaccines, which we were of course interested in because of our work with ImmunizeBC. (See Kat Dodds holding a few of our I Have Immunity portfolio pieces to the right.)
The topic of immunizations has been in the media a lot recently, particularly with Simon Fraser University recently coming under fire for allowing an anti-vaccine conference to take place at their Harbor Centre campus.
Andrea Derban explored some of the common myths and misinformation in the public today about vaccines, including the idea that vaccine's "cause" autism, and the idea that the reactions to vaccines that some people get is evidence of the vaccine delivering the full disease itself.
"If someone ever says 'I got the flu from the flu vaccine,' that's like saying 'I got an egg from ground chicken.'"
Looking at the actual science behind vaccines, the presentations today explored some of this widespread misinformation, and suggested that we need to think about the way that we talk to people about immunizations.
The way that we communicate with people - as health care service providers, (and social marketers!) is critical! Polarizing the conversation is not always productive - it's not just about "us versus them". The presentations today implored health care providers to remember that it is their responsibility to promote the most optimal health in their communities, and that immunizations are one of the tools that they have to do so.
After the jump, hear Vancouver's Tyson and Dawn Wozniak tell their story about how, as "natural parents," they decided not to vaccinate their first child. But when their second child arrived, they did more research - and had a change of heart.
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