The quarterly business newsletter of Ian McBurney

View this email in your browser

Live ecoLogical

Follow Ian

ianmcburney.com

Email Ian

Connect with Ian

Talking ecoLogical

Life @ Live ecoLogical

Ian McBurney - Sustainability Speaker, MC, Facilitator, Educator, Author and Business Mentor.

24 gigs in 24 weeks - well, give or take a week or two! It's been a hectic few months since the last Live ecoLogical update...

I'm also pretty chuffed to mention I've managed to get published twice. 'Talking ecoLogical' the conversation starting card set is now available and the 'Sustainability Street' iBook hit iTunes just last week.

On the Business Sustainability Mentoring front the 3G Team at St. John of God Bendigo have been kicking goals again and September will see Hume and Iser Bendigo launching "Our Green Choice" a win-win-win for them and their customers.

The 'Rub from the Hub' this month has been planning our Small Business Bootcamp that I will be MCing to be held Monday 11 August as part of the Bendigo Small Business Festival. Check out our You Tube Video:

It's here! It's a journey we started over 12 years ago with this brilliant bunch of folks in Coburg and now we've published the Sustainability Street book for iPad.

Sustainability Street provides "a new reason to be neighbours" and might just be the most powerful community sustainability approach on the planet.

I've been working for over a year with my old mentor and friend Francis Fitzgerald-Ryan, Sustainability Street Founder and Author to publish the book for the iPad. We've worked on animations, videos, images and stories to bring the concept into the digital world. After twelve years and 300 communities in three countries plus a university evaluation of the approach, we've now published the Sustainability Street Approach iBook to bring the approach to the world. And now you can be amongst the first to d ownload Sustainability Street: and I'd love you to rate it and review it in iTunes!

Want to reduce your waste, water and energy consumption by 30% meanwhile

building wonderful new relationships in your local community? Sustainability Street is the most powerful environmental education approach I have ever come across: it has shaped my approach to all of my work ever since. Read more about my unique education with Francis Fitzgerald Ryan through my days at Vox Bandicoot and the beginning on Sustainability Street on my Blog. So excited!

How to win a Sustainability Street iBook for your iPad!

Just 'like' the Sustainability Street Institute Facebook page and then send the Facebook page a private message with the answer to the following question: In the iBook description on iTunes, what does DIO stand for? One winner will be chosen at random at 5pm on Friday August 8.

A card set to inspire meaningful conversations about ecological sustainability and your organisation.

I am still grateful to the contributors to my Pozible campaign that covered the costs of publishing the cards. It's a year on and we have just sold our 500th pack! Here's the new promo video:

When I developed the cards I also wrote an on-line booklet full of facilitation ideas, suggestions and activities for using the cards. If you haven't taken a look at the booklet I highly recommend you do.

I just received this email from a Sustainability Officer from a coastal shire council:

Hey Ian!

Just read the online booklet and am feeling very excited and invigorated! This resource really resonates with me to the core of my sustainability being.

Some feedback-
I really think you should market the value of this booklet in terms of the numerous How to Guides for community engagement and facilitation activities…I didn’t realise just how much the online booklet had to offer when I bought the cards.
The booklet is a great set of tools if you’re new to facilitation or if you’re an old hat.

I am really looking forward to using the cards and techniques as an educational and organisational change tool in my corporate sustainability activities in the next year and beyond.

Order Talking ecoLogical now

Forward to Friend

MC Wrap-up

When I speak with a new audience I need to tailor the message to make sure it speaks to people where they are. Speaking to delegates at the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Association National Conference it was easy to make that link.

“Our health and the health of the planet are inseparable.”

Nurses do what they do because they care about people. I asked them to simply extend that level of care for their patients to the earth and to their work practices that impact on the earth. Returning a well patient to an unwell world does not make sense.

"Ian was thought provoking and made me consider the impact individuals and healthcare facilities have on the environment and ways we can reduce our environmental impact. Great realistic and achievable suggestions were given."

"I really appreciated the focus on sustainability- and the great calibre of speakers such as Ian who really impressed upon us the delegates the significance of what we can do."

ANMF Conference Delegates, Convention Centre, Melbourne, June 2014

Line-up change prompts change practice presentation

I prepared to speak about sustainability and small business to the Victorian Friendly Society Pharmacies Association Conference, when on the Friday before they called. Due to illness there was now a space in the program. I suggested I also deliver my talk how to enable, excite and go with change. My two talks were well received and I realised that not many groups see both aspects to the work I do.

Facilitator Fundamentals

I have had a busy time of late, 24 gigs in 24 weeks, well almost. Some of my recent workshops have included the "Active Transport Workshops" in Bendigo for business and schools, the second "Mount Alexander Sustainability and Environment Roundtable" in Castlemaine and the "Community Sustainability Leaders Graduation MC" in Melbourne.

I was overwhelmed and also more than a little excited when I received this bit of feedback after the Darebin and Banyule Sustainability Leaders Graduation evening. Connecting with each other on a human level has a massively overlooked and underrated effect on behaviour change. This is why I love my job...

“You allowed us to connect on an emotional level which is not normally something we do or strive to do at council workshops - but in doing so, we really cemented the ties between us, the reasons we do what we do, what we have in common and are striving for. We realised that we are all in this together.”

— Samantha Green, Sustainable Communities Officer, City of Darebin, 2014

Good news from the Business Sustainability Mentor Program

St. John of God Bendigo
In July we launched the new waste reduction

program after six busy months of

planning, workshops, education program creation, Green Team meetings, senior management team updates, system rethinking and behaviour change coaching across 22 departments.

Two weeks later and the hospital was producing a third less waste to landfill and saving money on waste disposal costs.

The winds of change are blowing on many fronts – make sure your organisation reaps the rewards, or at the very least, avoids the coming costs.

What's Ian Thinking About?

My blog. It's where I go to reflect in more than 140 characters.

Here are my latest posts ranging from overhead conversations to my journey to becoming an iPublished author.

Sustainability Street iBook Launch: my part in the story

Talking ecoLogical: three overhead conversations

Green Team Leadership: or not

My (web) Surfing Suggestions:

In the late 1980s someone gave our family a cassette tape of a David Suzuki lecture that we listened to in the car on the way to Melbourne one day. I was about 11 and it blew my mind.

When I left school I wanted to be David Suzuki but there didn't seem to be a specific uni course. Ever since I've been lapping up everything he has said, written and recorded - admiring and learning from his amazing presentation skills and story telling ability. He has an extraordinary gift for conveying our connection to the earth, the seriousness of our ecological challenges and the possibilities for our future.

This is his Legacy lecture and his best. Take an hour out of your life, settle in and let it inspire you like it did me.

Dip your toe before taking the plunge...

Want to explore how looking after the planet can look after your business?

Book a two-hour, thought provoking, deep thinking, participatory session that can kick-start your journey into the new economy or evaluate and re-invigorate your progress.

What are we doing well?
How can our business benefit?
How do we change?

$660! Book Now

I'm one of a bunch of micro businesses who set up Synergize, the first co-working Hub in Bendigo in 2012. We sit inside the awesome Haven; Home, Safe, just near the fountain.
Our new website: check it out!

The Small Business Bootcamp: Book now!

We're running this event with the Bendigo Business Council on August 11 as part of the Victorian Small Business Festival, with yours truly as MC. Seats are selling fast. Book in here.

The BSG rocks.
Get on board

Join the BSG and help change the world around you, for a "diverse, inspired, connected, ecologically effective and delightful Bendigo." In 2007, I helped set up the BSG. In 2014, it's still going strong. Join in in your area of passion.

How will you use Talking ecoLogical?

Educators: Plan your sustainability unit
Green teams: Plan your year’s activities
Community organisations: Create your vision
Managers and leaders: Build teams and inspire change
Event organisers: Offer a unique opening or closing activity
School principals: Engage your staff and students on sustainability
Facilitators: Run large/small group conversations and create a buzz

40 cards, 40 intriguing statements, 40 conversation-starting questions, 40 inspiring quotes
... and an on-line booklet full of facilitation ideas, suggestions and activities for using the cards.

Seriously, have you ordered yet?

Order Talking ecoLogical

Sustainability Workshops

Since my April Newsletter I have delivered sustainability workshops in Swan Hill, Bendigo and Melbourne. The groups have included teachers, organisational green teams and professional development for sustainability professionals.

Workshops I can deliver for you ... Just ask :-)

* Introduction to Sustainability and Change
* Ecological Sustainability Leaders
* Green Team Professional Development
* Leadership and Change Practice
* Presentation and Speaking Skills
* Nature Based Activities
* Enabling Change
* Environmental Education Professional Development
* Climate Change
* Waste, Water and Energy
* Biodiversity
* Community Development
* Community Sustainability Practitioner Professional Development,
* Sustainability Street Approach Train the Mentor.

A few years back I wrote a story for Tadhg, aged 2 about a walk in nature. It was illustrated by Sharyn Madder, who is awesome. You can download a pdf here. Let me know what you think!

Ian McBurney is an ecological sustainability practitioner who has inspired and enabled tens of thousands of people in business, government, schools and communities to move towards a better future. He believes passionately that at this time in history, when every natural system is in decline, it is people and therefore culture change that will gift us a sustainable society. That society will be better for us in every way. We'll be more local and connected, happier, healthier, more profitable and more proud of who we are.

"‘Life creates conditions conducive to life. It cleans air, builds soil, cleans water, creates the complex mix of gases that we need to live. Like the rest of life on earth, we must find a way to do the amazing things that we do, while making of this place an Eden."

- Janine Benyus, Biomimicry

Coming Up ...

In the next few months I'll be Speaking/Facilitating and MCing in Bendigo, Macedon, Mount Alexander, Hume, St. Kilda and Brisbane. I'm working with Hume and Iser on a great retail project to be launched in October and Kyneton Toyota is beginning my business mentor program. Catch you next time!

Forward to Friend