2013 - The Year of Garbologie

My first post for the year (how did that happen?), and I've returned from the few weeks off with some renewed focus and ideas around this blog. Well, perhaps two key ideas.

But before we turn to the ideas, the title. 2013 will be the Year of Garbologie. Why? Because I finish up my day job in May and launch Garbologie. The past year of gently growing Garbologie one day per week will lead to the denouement of Garbologie going live. This is all becoming real - my safe(ish) job is winding up and something new is taking its place. Hopefully something new and beautiful and truly marvellous.

But to the ideas.

Two ideas

The first is to blog more often. I think my experiment announced in Garbologie pause and take stock from September 2012 of blogging once a week only (down from almost daily) went a bit awry. Weekly is not frequent enough to maintain any form of momentum. Miss a week then the next week is that much harder to reclaim. So I will post thrice a week. Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Which leads into the second key idea. There will be some rhyme and some reason to my blogging.

• On Sundays I will blog about my thoughts on waste management. They will be the sort of posts that connect otherwise disparate ideas to come up with new insights (hopefully) into waste.
• On Wednesdays I will reflect on this personal journey that is me and Garbologie. I am so steeped in Garbologie that I cannot be separated from it, and my development of Garbologie has forced all sorts of rapid learning in myself (my Self).
• On Fridays I will blog about the development of Garbologie, primarily reflecting the work done over the past week. Since most of the work is done on Fridays, that's pretty straightforward.

And since different rhymes have their own rhythms, the posts will be shared differently. Sunday's posts will probably be shared on Google+, and maybe LinkedIn. Wednesday's posts will be shared on Facebook and Twitter. Friday's posts will be shared on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

This Friday

So to start the new regime with an account of what happened with Garbologie this week.

Truth be told, it has been an immense week, with developments in relation to glass (bear with me), vision and branding.

Glass

I had an epiphany a week or so ago in relation to glass processing. The operators of the DiCOM plant being established as part of my day job have a big challenge with glass. The DiCOM plant will produce significant amounts of glass, but there is no treatment path. To solve the problem, the thinking has been to build a small glass plant as part of DiCOM.

Glass cullet

The epiphany is perhaps obvious, but involves Garbologie establishing a glass processing plant to take not only glass from DiCOM, but also from Materials Recovery Facilities around Perth. You see, there is currently an immense problem with glass processing in Perth.

Perth currently has a single plant, operated by Colmax Glass, that was established with the assistance of a multi-million dollar grant from the State Government and industry. That plant has proven to be fickle in when it will accept glass, whether it is even open, and how much it will charge. The industry has had a gutful. An alternative would be welcome.

Nudging my thinking further down this path, Jim McLeod of Australian Glass Technologies designs a vastly superior plant and we get along well from past work together. In fact, Jim is a classic example of the importance of maintaining a relationship long after it seems to have lost its value. We kept in touch, and I have referred people to him for plants that I would dearly love to have built myself (why I didn't is another whole story). I may now have my chance.

Anyway, the week was spent sounding out operators, getting a sense of whether they would be interested in supplying glass. They are, though they're a bit cagey. I guess they're trying to get a sense of whether I'm serious or not.

It was also spent preparing a financial model. The model shows that the thing can work, notwithstanding some pretty serious headwinds (notably, glass to glass manufacturers recently ceased payments for glass cullet).

Next step is for a trip to Queensland to catch up with Jim again and understand if this really can fly. If it can, the race is on to get a site approved and the plant built and running. Simple. Not really.

Vision

I also had a great day today preparing up a "prospectus" document for potential employees. The idea is to have something that can be circulated around, hopefully passed from person to person through Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and so on. Attracting people who want to be part of the vision. I would love to never need to advertise for employees, but instead have people come to Garbologie to be part of something bigger.

It was about this time that I learned the immense power of Google+, and specifically the Google+ Communities. I shared the vision document to a community I'm a recent member of, "Building better places to work", and asked for a critique. Very soon I got great comments back from +James O'Sullivan and +Bruno Vela (at the time of writing). Their comments will lead to a much improved next cut. It shall be shared next Friday (if not before).

Reminding me that social media is amazing, and Google+ in particular is awesome.

Branding

Finally, today Garbologie received it's polished brand/logo options from +Clare S. Properjohn at +The Creative Arts House.

Unfortunately I haven't had a good chance to look at the options properly yet. In amongst all of the other stuff that happened today, I only managed a little peek. Pretty exciting!

When I do look properly, the main thing will be to make sure that the brand captures the personality of Garbologie. Not to fall into the trap of obsessing over what the brand looks like, but to give it proper attention. So that promises a very exciting Saturday.

So the big unveil looms. Soon Garbologie will look all grown up and ready for action.


And so that, in a nutshell, was the week of Garbologie.