Any Other Eco-Friendly Joomla! Web Developers out there?

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Permalink Reply by Parth Lawate on July 21, 2010 at 10:52pm

Hi Andrew,

We actually started out as wanting to be a Green Energy & overall green related Business. We evolved out of a group that started an NGO working towards afforestation & urban forestry..

Unfortunately with ppl getting out of Student mode & focusing on Careers , it started becoming difficult to sustain the group ... So with a vision to keep it going by involving interested ppl in a Green Business which would eventually help sustain the NGO in some way ... We havent got their yet.. So i will talk more about it when we have success with it..

As a company we focus a lot on Joomla & try to work when possible for Greens & NGOs.. Though thats not a focus, we provide special discounts to such.
Though we havent had a chance to expand into other green businesses yet, that still remains one of our top priorities.

One of our divisions is a Eco Tourism & hiking company & the other division is focussed on Web Development.
The Web Development Wing, Tekdi Web Solutions http://tekdi.net is focussed on open source technologies & also helps out people in adopting open source..

On an individual basis i help out some NGOs in Open Source adoption.. not just Joomla but OS Technologies in general to help them with their processes. ..

Regards

Parth

Permalink Reply by Justin Kerr on July 22, 2010 at 9:03am

Hi Andrew:

I built and help maintain the Web site for a great organization called Openlands (http://openlands.org), which is a Chicago-based not-for-profit organization that focuses on regional environmental and conservation issues. Joomla has been a great fit for their organization as now multiple staffers can participate in updating the site, and they've been seeing a lot more traffic and interest.

From a business perspective, have you considered specializing in one particular area of "green" media services? The functions and business needs in the green sector vary widely ... a lobbyist NGO will be a lot different than a wind-turbine manufacturer, for example. I wonder if a special "package" could be tuned to each sector as a specific offering.

Permalink Reply by Andrew J Holden on July 22, 2010 at 9:08am

Hello Parth,

Thanks for the information. I am certainly sympathetic to the difficulty in transitioning from NGO-based Environmental work to a (sustainable) business mode.

We had originally primarily worked with 'Green' Not-for-Profits (our background is in anti-environmental-racism and human rights work) and we decided that we needed to focus more on Renewable Energy and 'clean' Technologies about (2) Years ago.

As you know, NGO's have low budgets, lots of turnover and a lot of needs. Business clients tend to be more streamlined. We felt that working with the RE Industry was ultimately better for the environment anyway, so it was an easy decision for us to move that way.

Keep in touch with me! - We have a few eco-tourism clients and it sounds like we are interested in the same things (ecology & open-source software).

Best,
AJH

Permalink Reply by Andrew J Holden on July 22, 2010 at 9:19am

from a business perspective, have you considered specializing in one particular area of "green" media services? The functions and business needs in the green sector vary widely ... a lobbyist NGO will be a lot different than a wind-turbine manufacturer, for example. I wonder if a special "package" could be tuned to each sector as a specific offering.

Absolutely. CartaNova (www.cartanova.ca) is very specialized in serving the Renewable Energy Industry, mostly new Commercial and Residential Technologies, at this point.

We do work towards specific growth in Renewable Industries - Wind, Water, Solar, Rural Biomass. That's partly coming from our own experience and partly the result of an environmental committment (we wouldn't work with biofuels, for example).

We also provide *direct* Wind-Power Web Hosting, from the Biglow Canyon Wind Farm in OR:
http://cartanova.ca/green-community-blog/item/53-wind-powered-web-h...

In terms of 'product orientation', RE clients have about the same general level of knowledge as anyone else about web design and marketing. Most new businesses in the 'green sector' are technically-heavy and often led by engineers so we focus on *simplicity* - which is a good web design & engineering principle.

NGO's of course, have much more complex needs on average, as you mention. One of the things that I've done this year is to use the limited budgets that not-for-profits have to really push them towards simplifying their web marketing and content. This saves everyone a lot of time and is almost always more effective as well.

In summary, I'd say that from a business perspective, the best 'product' for marketing to green companies is excellent, reliable service. There's so little of that in our industry, and word-of-mouth marketing is really effective in that regard.

Also:

@ Openlands

Interesting site - it's clearly active and vibrant.

Totally friendly suggestion: I would drop the vertical dividers in the left column (to be more 'open') and change the 'donate' graphic to a HTML link, and place that right under the logo.

That will allow your stakeholders / sponsors to get a little higher on the fold. I'd also suggest changing the social network links position with the tag-links (get information about..), and then making those tag-links an actual tag-cloud (k2?)...although that's more of a personal preference.

Nice Site!