AWARE of time 4 Change

‘Twas the night before all hallows eve, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse, er... ah... well, that was so not true.  ‘Twas the night before all hallows eve, and the keyboards were clicking, the databases were churning, I's were being dotted, and Google maps were caching.  With the witching hour nearing and mere hours counting down to an Antharian* wedding, we quietly launched the Project AWARE Foundation's (PAF) new web initiative.

Already nominated for a Webby, American Media Award and Web Design 2.0 Award, the Project AWARE Foundation website is the cumulative effort of four international offices (United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Australia).  Sleep schedules be damned, and Skype credits fully loaded, the core team of 13 individuals initially embarked in July 2009.  While not all 13 people were present in body, all were present in mind and good times, or at least loads of sugar, were had by all.

Before & After

The Project AWARE website before and after (top to bottom):

Project AWARE?

Many folks ask me what PAF does and I think it is fair to say that everyone has their elevator speech. My mini version is this... we've all heard of Earth Day, and we know what it is to do a "clean up" or "trash pick up" at a local park, well, fool, that applies to the Ocean too.  The Project AWARE Foundation is the hub of underwater environmental conservation.

 Ha!  I did it.  End elevator speech :)

Project AWARE works in over 180 countries and territories and is the largest geographical project that Antharia has undertaken.  Not the first international client for Antharia, but the Project AWARE Foundation has one of the most prominent and active international presences.

Fully loaded, the new Project AWARE website makes use of the complete FortyFourFish suite of products, but this time with a spin or two, again emphasizing that FortyFourFish remains one of the industries only "can be off the shelf, fully supported, fully customizable" solution.  Just a few of the highlights:

• Fully integrated on a global scale are Google Maps. Visit the website to find the closest beach or underwater clean up. Locate your nearest Eco Operator. Learn about and track Whale Sharks and Coral Reefs. The real time integration into Google Maps feeds five comprehensive sections of the website where visitors can choose to get involved or take action and become an operator.
• Allowing each Project AWARE office to brand, and maintain financial independence, the PAF website supports donations and ecommerce transactions in multiple currencies (USD, AUD, GBP, EUR) based on the purchaser's billing and shipping address.
• Well we said International, didn't we? As always FortyFourFish supports all Western Languages, and maximizing onContent's Knowledge Base, Project AWARE makes numerous publications and educational materials available in multiple languages.
  

Kicking it off in Style

To start things off in style, Claire (@wingcolor) and I packed up our bags and headed down to the DEMA 2009 conference in Orlando, Florida.  There we met up with Project AWARE and set up an interactive booth for conference visitors to experience the new website first hand.  Visitors to the Project AWARE booth were greeted with gleaming sights of teal and captivating pictures but nothing got more attention than the Google map integration.  Visitors to the PAF from all over the world were overjoyed and delighted with the ease of use of the new site and the new MyAWARE section where patrons, operators and subscribers to Our Blue World can manage their information, preferences and details.  A few other highlights of the PAF booth:

• Wyland, he who has no other name than Wyland, was live and in person signing posters at the PAF booth. These posters helped to raise money on site and the few remaining will be sold on the new PAF site to garner additional funds.
• Dr. Mark Eakin from NOAA, he who has so much awesomesauce (ask @wingcolor, that one is on her) that he can Google Earth me any time. Mark & Jenny (Director of PAF) gave a great session called Hot & Sour Soup: A Bad Mix for Coral Reefs... all about how to lower temperatures at coral reefs and now all Claire wants to do is swim out to reefs with a garden hose and ice water. Er, don't ask me. Not covered by workers comp.
• Free iPod Touch, come on what is there to be said but free? Ok the deal here was to win you had to use the new MyAWARE section to update or confirm their address, email or phone and poof they were entered. Pretty cool.
  

Liquid Sprawl

Ok, my turn to rant a bit.  Or maybe it is just my turn to get up on my virtual soapbox.  It was 18 years ago when I received my Associate of Science Degree in Marine Technology and thought my life was going to be filled with adventure as a MedTech.  Hyperbaric chamber ahoy!  Oddly enough, I thought that spending weeks on and weeks off (much like a fire(wo)man) on an offshore rig or some submerged research station was going to be the way to go (let's keep in mind, this was pre Al Gore, pre the Internet).  I may have even had dreams of going to Scripps of working at NOAA but hey, a girl has to dream, and you might as well dream big.

Before ever being accepted to the tiny school that offered the under-known degree in Marine Technology I had to become a certified diver and well, that is where the fun began.  I lived in southern California and well, I was living in posh Santa Barbara at the time, where a wetsuit was mainly a fashion statement and not a necessity.  The water was almost always 70 degrees, the grunion run every year, you could bob up and down in the water with the baby seals and well, the best chowder could be found down the long pier at State Street when you properly avoided tourists.

For those of you that know me, and well those of you that don't you are about to know me better, I am not one to be shy.  Share and share alike and the best way to learn is by others doing.  My final dive, time to grow up and pass, ohhh here we go... we head out to the channel islands (beautiful if you ever have the chance) and well... I pee my wetsuit.  I am thinking many divers pee in their wetsuit but I am not so sure, it is not really talked about or at least it was never covered in my classes.  So why did I add a bit of myself to the Ocean?  I saw my first and only shark... a blue shark.*

Back in my time machine of 18 years. I am more than sure waste and heating up the reefs were of issue then, but somehow it did not even enter my radar, but let's think about it.  As we as humans populate more and more of the earth, the actual ground and dirt, we produce more and more waste and as we produce more and more waste, that waste drifts and falls where it may, and where it has come to rest now is on our beaches, reefs, rivers, oceans and aquatic floors.  I can remember my commute to school: a long drive of nothing but beautiful mountainside.  If I drive along that same stretch of California roadway today I am faced with one pop up community and home after another.  Waste and trash, paper and particles, all elements waiting to find their way to a final resting ground.  It's just sad to say folks that our pollution efforts have come full circle.  We've long dug holes in the earth to bury our trash, we already know that we are trashing the Ozone, and well doesn't it make sense that the last place left for our waste to fall is the aquatic floor that covers the majority of our planet?

*Sam & June Matics: Congrats to June & Sam on their nuptials.  June (who use to work at Antharia and is now roommates with Dan) & Sam (Ben's older brother) were married on Saturday October 31, 2009.

*Blue Shark: Reach up to 13 feet in length and weigh 300-400 pounds. Feeds primarily on small fish and squid, but can take larger prey. Blues may pose danger to humans if they are encountered in large groups. Second fastest sharks, next to the mako shark.

Posted by Jordan Dossett on November 09, 2009 at 09:23 pm EST

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