Event overview
Green Tech South West welcomed Michelle Thorne, Managing Editor of Branch magazine to tell us all about the website, by and for people who dream of a sustainable and just internet.
Branch is a space for personal reflection, critical engagement with technology, and experimentation; to uplift fresh thinking for how to green the web technically, aesthetically, and politically.The articles strive to connect sustainability to root causes and to inequalities experienced at different intersections—gender, race, class, ability, and so on. Creating change requires all kinds of practices, so contributors include climate activists, open source technologists, indigenous leaders, artists, energy scientists, and degrowth experts.
Branch hope to not only articulate what these desirable futures are, but also to embody them with specific tools and art. That’s why Branch is a carbon-aware website. The site adapts to and reflects the physical infrastructure of the internet and the energy behind it. Utilizing data from a grid intensity API and the user’s location.
Branch is also a proud winner of the Arts Electronica Award for Digital Humanity prize in 2021.
About Michelle
Michelle is a Senior Program Officer at Mozilla. She leads OpenDoTT, a doctoral research program for the internet of things.
Michelle is interested in climate justice and a fossil-free internet. As a Senior Program Officer at the Mozilla Foundation, Michelle leads a PhD program on Open Design of Trust Things (OpenDoTT) with Northumbria University and research initiatives in Mozilla’s Sustainability Program.
You can read our short interview with Michelle ahead of her talk.
Watch the event video
To make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for, here’s the key timings in the video:
👋 08:23 – A welcome from your meet-up organisers, Ellen, Hannah and Mike with a brief overview of GTSW and what we’re about
📢 14:34 – Our famous 60 second intros – a chance for attendees to introduce themselves, ask for help and tell us about something the group might find interesting
💚 24:03 – Michelle’s talk
❓ 44:43 – Q&A session
🗓️ 01:07:11 – Round-up, other community notices and next event announcement
Resources and links
One of the perks of holding events online, and having such a wonderful and engaging community, is we share a huge amount of useful resources and information throughout the event. Here’s a summary of what we unearthed.
Michelle’s slides
Browse Michelle’s slides below:
Branch-Magazine_-SlidesLinks & resources
- Branch Magazine
- Prix Ars Electronica 2021 Winners
- The Sustainable Dev – directory of sustainable developers
- The Green Web Foundation
- The Ecomm Manager – The sustainable eCommerce handbook
- GTSW talk – How green is your cloud talk? Tools for reducing your cloud carbon footprint
- GTSW talk – Sustainable software engineering: building carbon-efficient applications
- Branch – The Museum of the Fossilized Internet
- Data Garden
- Solar Protocol
- Swirling Sulas: A Future Vignette by Superflux
- ALICE Interface – Active living infrastructure: controlled environment
- The Green Web fellowship
- Designing Branch: Sustainable Interaction Design Principles
- Cabin analytics
- GTSW public Cabin dashboard
- Fathom analytics
- Branch – Big Tech Goes Green(washing): Feminist Lenses to Unveil New Tools in the Master’s Houses
- Plausible analytics
- Github – Plausible analytics
- Logic mag
- Two Compost Digital
- The Beam
- Emergence Magazine
- Offscreen mag
- The Sustainable Creative Manifesto
- Leap
- Kapeli