PureGin.org

I'm pretty excited about the upcoming launch of the new Sustainable Building Centre, not the least because I've been involved in helping them to build their new Bryght powered website. That disclosure aside, I hope the rest of this post will be taken as less disingenuous.

The reason I'm excited about the SBC is that, IMNSHO, messages about 'sustainability' stick best when delivered in the context of an individual's key decision points. That is, you can shout all you like about saving energy, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and curbing the use of fossil fuels. But these messages, however well delivered, don't generally translate into actions. On the other hand, information about energy consumption and environmental impact delivered when someone is buying a new appliance or car, for example, or building a new home, can have a powerful impact on decisions with significant 'sustainability' impacts.

SBC will be there will the appropriate information for home-owners, builders, developers, planners, vendors and other parties involved in the very complex process of building new or renovating existing building. Clearly, people who identify in one of these roles will be very interested in learning about energy efficient design, best practices in building maintenance and operations, selection of appropriate building materials, products and services, and about a milllion other things in which sustainability figures large. These people will be actively thinking about all of these issues, and making decisions which have potentially significant outcomes in terms of energy use, environmental impact, cost, maintenance, etc.

I can see a large market for context-specific information sites - essentially 'Just In Time' information for key decisions. Clearly discoverability and associative positioning are critical for such sites - the average person won't care about them or need to know of their existence 99.99% for of their lives, but when they need them, they need to be able to discover that they need them (associative positioning - the entry links are prominent in the immediate context, e.g., shopping for an architect, planning for a renovation).