Future planning at team trip to Germany, Wuppertal

The onedidit.com ecological backpack test is based on calculations that use the material intensity data provided by i.e. the Wuppertal Institute in Germany. One did it team decided to travel to meet people in Wuppertal Institute and also UNEP/Wuppertal Institute Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP).

The journey started from Helsinki-Vantaa airport at 5.30 am. in anticipating atmosphere, a few of us have slight fear of flying. We flew to Dusseldorf and took the train to Wuppertal straight to a meeting. The day was successful, One did it team got introduced and got more comprehensive view of Wuppertal Institute’s area of operation. We also discussed about the launch of the German version of the onedidit.com site by the summer 2009 and some other acts of collaborating.

The next day after refreshing night activities and delicious Turkish dinner, the team started a whole day internal workshop about next steps concerning the service itself. As the first version was launched at the end of the year 2008, we have already some great feedback from users. The near future plans are very clear, there will be eco-tips called Do’s for user to reduce their ecological backpack calculated with the test. This feature has been accepted by the Beta-version users and it has been developed further to provide better user experience. Among this launch there will be anticipated friend invite feature, a must function to compare and challenge friends to take the test to calculate their own eco-backpack.

One of the major outcomes of the workshop was to continue the planning of the Facebook application immediately. There has been an application launched with the Beta-version, but it never reached the actual users. The role of the applications generally in Facebook has changed decisively from the first version of One did it application, some changes to the approach have been made and the application should be in test among volunteer One did it Facebook group members during this spring.

It is also evident that the German version of the site will be launched right after the English release that includes the eco-tips and friend features. Time frame to that is April-June 2009. The workshop summarized a few more broad-minded plans for the second half of the year 2009 but the final path of future development depends much on user feedback that we hopefully get loads of.

On the last day there was a meeting with CSCP, which supports usage of creative tools in sustainability communication. Since the concept of One did it is both informational and entertaining there could be possibilities to work together to promote the theme of sustainability. This could be done i.e. with the means of photography or writing or some other user provided content on onedidit.com service.

The trip was a great way to get out of the office, sit together in the same table, have good conversation about the state of the service, make future decisions and meet people from collaborating instances while having a great time. Hope the near release reflects the productive times we had!