It's a name I came up with to recognize the people across the planet who speak up for sustainability and their voices are heard via the World Wide Web.  EarthSayers™ are experts, educators, students, leaders, and citizens from all walks of life.  After coming up with the name, I gathered together some friends and colleagues and together we launched a Website, EarthSayers.tv, the voices of sustainability: the unfiltered voices.  We do review videos for relevancy and quality, so as to have a collection without duplication and voices you have to strain to hear. 

There are plenty of EarthSayers out there without a voice on the Web yet. That's one of our objectives: increase the number of EarthSayers on our site by generating original content, and increasing awareness of the sustainability movement through sponsorships and partners,  but that's longer range.

Right now there EarthSayers on the Web who are not on our site because we haven't the resources yet to review another 3,500 videos (we have reviewed over a 1,000 and added 330 to the site) as www.earthsayers.tv is still at the prototype stage. We are looking for sponsors to build out the site and add an advocacy network.

And then there is the traffic issue. Since starting EarthSayers there has been a doubling of search on the term, sustainaibility, using Google. Today it's 33M+, six months ago, 15M.  A search on the term using Blinkx yield 73,000 videos, up from 21,000 a year ago. 

Once a person begins a search on the term, sustainability, we want to make sure that www.earthsayers.tv is in the top three to four listings, right there with Wikipedia (a new listing as once only institutes and consultants appeared on the first page of listings), so when individuals enter the learning cycle they have access to not only what it means, but who is practicing and advocating sustainable principles and practices.

So, what is sustainability exactly?

We start you off when you visit www.earthsayers.tv with the classic definition of the term.  And to make search more interesting and successful, we created a taxonomy we call a Content Map for the term so one can learn about it from the keyword up e.g. toxic waste or from the four major segments down. The four segments are: systemic change, planet, people, and prosperity. All keywords link up to 23 categories and all categories link up to one of the four segments. 

We are learning a lot about sustainability by producing EarthSayers.tv and will use this space to call out specific EarthSayers that should not be missed.  We draw from over 40 channels, a good 40% from YouTube, but we have programs from TED and Bioneer conferences as well as CNN news. Visit www.earthsayers.tv and make it a habit.