Monthly #19

July was an amazingly busy yet rewarding month of travel, connection, and delivering some sick projects.

🇩🇪 Green Web Away Days 2025. The month began in Europe, heading from Zurich to Munich. In Zurich, I got to catch up with Romain Jacob, whose work I've followed closely for years. In Munich, I met up with the rest of the Green Web Foundation crew for a couple of days of strategising and enjoying each others company! We ate well, spent an afternoon at a lake, and somehow still managed to get through a heap of work.

In Munich, we also attended the Green IO conference for a couple of days. There were some terrific talks during the conference, but for me the highlight was being able to meet friends old and new. Being remote, and working with a lot of folks on the other side of the world to me, these opportunities to connect with folks in person are priceless.

🏉 Connecting with the Dutch Touch community. After a week in Munich, I headed to The Netherlands for a week. It was a mixed week of work and play. I presented the Grid-aware Websites at a WordPress meetup in Amsterdam and gave our funder SIDN an update as well.

I also had the chance to catch up with the Touch community in The Netherlands. Over my first weekend, I joined their national teams for a training camp, and over the next 7 days trained and played in Amsterdam, Den Haag, and Rotterdam. It was great to have a run with folks, pass on some knowledge, and pick up a few new things to boot.

🌲 Redesigning grid-awareness on the Branch websites. Near the end of the month we also got out a redesign of the Branch magazine website alongside a new issue. A big part of this redesign was applying our Grid-aware Websites project to the site. It was a big shift, but we made it! You should check out the new site and read the articles in Issue 9 too.

Part of the redesign included creating a info bar to go at the top of the site which would give users information about their local energy grid, as well as control over their grid-aware experience on the site. I built that as a web component, and I can't begin to describe how pleased I am with how it has turned out. I'm hoping to write about it a bit later this week.

These are my current Start, stop, continue items for 2025.

• Tracking habits daily: 😔 Nope.
• Carrying a water bottle with me: 😄 Yes! Zurich and Munich both had me covered for public fountains to refill from, but in The Netherlands I was a bit parched.
• Drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning: 😔 Kinda. Started up again after I got home.
• Making a weekly "Links & Listens" list: 😔 Nope. But I made a links page ... I've still not updated it.
• Cooking more regularly: 😔 Nope.

• Reaching for sugary (fizzy) drinks: 😔 Nope. I defaulted to fizzy when eating out during my travels.
• Not waiting for things to be perfect before releasing them: 😄 Yes!

• Trying to get Touch into more local schools in Taiwan: 😔 Nope. Hoping to get down to a local school later this month if they can get something setup.
• Getting in a 20-30 minute walk during the day: 😄 Yes, most days when there's not a typhoon in the area!