Carol is a journalist with a green heart who believes that presenting information in a positive and accessible manner is essential to activating more people to join the search for equitable and sustainable solutions to global problems. A native of Montreal, Canada, she joined the UNU communications team in 2008 while living in Tokyo and, after relocating to Vancouver, continued to telecommute to Our World as writer/editor through 2015.
Bye-Bye, Beta! Hello, New Design
It is our honour and pleasure to launch Our World web magazine’s new design. We hope that returning readers find it even more accessible than our newly retired beta version. First time visitors are encouraged to jump right in with both feet.
Having attained the mature age of 20 months, Our World has become an engaging and respected voice speaking (in English and Japanese) about the most urgent topics of our time. Our new look is simply the next step in our drive to combine a sophisticated magazine featuring high quality content with state-of-the-art design (2008 weblog awards ‘best design’ winner) and social media tools.
Back in our first post in July 2008, we outlined why certain global problems (originally climate, oil and food — with biodiversity being added later) were to be our key themes. At the time, during the height of the global financial crisis, we felt and still do that the world is witnessing a convergence of these critical issues like never before. People from varied fields of expertise and realms of experience must begin cooperating to solve the current and coming challenges.
We also spoke of how — just as Web 2.0 describes a new version of the web, one based on sharing and co-creation — we named the magazine to express our belief that the world was in need of the same collaborative spirit. With the launch of this new design, we recommit to exploring how to effectively use this powerful opportunity to help bring about widespread changes in the way the world works.
Over the past year and a half, we have been innovative in obtaining first hand and very personal indigenous perspectives on climate change and resource issues that are unfiltered and not widely covered. We have also distilled essential conventional scientific and policy information so as to make it as accessible as possible.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have contributed articles and all those who have allowed the use of their photos via Flickr.
Our biggest thanks goes to you, the readers. Thank you for your continued patronage, comments and feedback! We really appreciate it. We are particularly happy to know that so many students are using this webzine as a learning resource to support their studies.
For any first time visitors, we encourage you to become part of the Our World community — join us on Facebook, Mixi, YouTube, Vimeo, iTunes and don’t forget Twitter. If you like what you see, share us with your friends. Subscribing to our RSS feed is another great way to stay up-to-date with our stories. Handy buttons to do all of that are now at the top right of this post!
On our part, we will continue to strive to share original stories in the form of easy-to-read articles, short video briefs, podcasts and photo essays about outstanding people working for a more sustainable future. Our ultimate dream is to reach ever more readers, writers, viewers and commenters who can help us in upgrading our world!
Sincerely,
Bye-Bye, Beta! Hello, New Design by Carol Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
