This Week in MCJ (4/24/21)
Can member communities make Slack work long-term?
Hey everyone!
I have a few things for you this week.
One is, as mentioned below, our MCJ Town Hall is this Friday! Open forum to get to know more members, share what is on our minds, and hear what is on yours! I look forward to these each and every month. You can register here. And if you have topics you want us to cover, reply to this email and let us know!
The second is, as many of you are far too aware, the free Slack plan only shows the last 10k messages. As our community gets bigger and more active, the window these 10k messages stretch back is continuing to get smaller. So, you might have a GREAT back and forth with another member in a channel or in private messaging, they might send you some great advice and links to check out, and when you go back to reference them 3 months later, you can’t access them! The cleanest answer would be to upgrade to a paid Slack license, but it is like $8/user/month, meaning there is no way we could make that model work unless we raised membership dues meaningfully, which we really don’t want to do. So, there are 3 primary options we are considering:
Option 1: Stick on free plan and suck it up with the message cap.
Option 2: Upgrade to paid plan and raise monthly membership dues accordingly to cover the additional cost.
Option 3: Migrate to Discord or something like it, which would get rid of the cap on message history but would be a whole new platform to navigate and get used to.
Most of these communities fail. Ours is working pretty damn well! The last thing we want to do is mess with it, and we worry if we leave Slack it could tank engagement. But the message cap is eating at us, and a lot of you, and really holding back the value we could be providing the community, as that message history really matters.
If you could, reply back and let us know which option above you think is best! We are approaching decision point one way or another, and wanted to take your temp before moving forward.
On another note, I made this list of areas climate tech startups need help in:
If you are startup founder, how does this map to your current needs? Let us know!
And lastly, here is another idea I’ve been thinking about:
If you are looking for a job in climate tech and would like to be included on such a list, please reply with your linkedin profile and a note about what types of companies/roles you are looking for.
And one final addendum, congrats to our friends at Congruent Ventures and at Charm Industrial on their respective big news this week.
Have a great week, everyone!
Jason
🎙Episodes
🌍This week's episodes include a great discussion with Val Miftahkov, Co-Founder & CEO of ZeroAvia. We’ve been working our way through the zero-emissions aviation topic, and it was great to learn more about ZeroAvia as they work to revolutionize hydrogen-propelled flight. And Bill Weihl returned! Bill joined me on our Climate Careers show. We discuss what he’s working on at ClimateVoice, and how to get big tech corporations to lobby for the climate.
✨Highlights
📰Climate News this week! XPrize announced the two winners of $20M NRG Cosia Carbon XPrize: CarbonCure Technologies and CarbonBuilt. Both teams are creating valuable products out of CO2 emissions. Energy giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC are pushing carbon capture and storage—where carbon is gathered and buried underground—as part of a drive to reduce both their own and their customers’ emissions. As another Earth day has come and gone, here’s a look back at The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change. And President Biden hosted the White House's Earth Day climate summit on Thursday and Friday. Amongst other announcements, Biden pledged to halve US emissions by 2030. Check out BBC’s full coverage of the summit.
💼Climate Jobs
Jobs, fellowships, and career opportunities shared by members of the MCJ community. More opportunities can be found in #climatejobs in the MCJ Slack.
Various commercial roles at Li-Cycle (US & Abroad) (job listing) (careers page)
Head of Marketing at Building Ventures (Boston) (job listing) (careers page)
Synbio Associate at Lowercarbon Capital (job listing) (careers page)
Electrical/Firmware Engineer at unspun (job listing) (careers page)
Engineers focused on circularity and battery recycling at Nth Cycle (job listing) (careers page)
Product Manager at Terra.do (job listing) (careers page)
👋 Welcome New MCJers!
You can learn more about new members on #introductions, where you can welcome them to the community.
Jamie Knowlton: Jamie is the co-founder & former CFO of Better Place Forests. Jamie is extremely passionate about climate tech and health, and the power of business to improve the world.
Garry Cooper: Garry is the CEO/Co-founder of Rheaply. Prior to Rheaply, he received his PhD in Neuroscience and worked as a consultant at Ernst & Young. He is interested in the circular economy, carbon accounting, and recycling topics.
Daniel Teo: Daniel is a marketer looking to transition into the climate space, with a keen interest in climate policy, agriculture, and innovation.
Bruno Dagnino: Bruno is the co-founder and CTO of Metrica Sports. He’s been following the MCJ movement and is super pumped to be a part of it.
Brice Walsh: Brice is the Chief Product Officer for a 30+ person healthcare scaleup. Looking forward to joining this community of like-minded people.
Zach Livingston: Zach is Head of Sales for ClearTrace. He is looking to leverage the MCJ community to network, have interesting dialogue, and find out about events.
Craig Lawrence: Craig is part of the new energy-focused venture capital fund Energy Transition Ventures. He is excited to participate in the community.
Brian Liston: Brian is a founder/product person and spent the last seven years founding and operating Seed CX and Zero Hash. Brian is relocating to Lisbon this summer.
Mick Liubinskas: Mick is a climate tech investor, closing a new $100m fund, focus is on seed stage, all categories.
Cass Marketos: Cass is a digital strategist & budding naturalist based out of Los Angeles, CA.
Tim Cull: Tim is the founder of Pollen Analytics. He is especially interested in meeting collaborators and potential business partners to help figure out what to layer on top next.
Mac Kennedy: Mac is the CEO of Mote, a company removing carbon and producing hydrogen from waste biomass. He’s excited to jam on carbon removal in MCJ.
Denise Taliaferro: Denise is an in-house counsel focusing on technology and intellectual property trying to balance her day job with her interest in all things related to taking action on climate.
Gabe Kronstadt: a long-time nature-lover and environmentalist, Gabe is in the relatively early stages of learning about the climate crisis, and about all the amazing innovative things that people are doing to address it.
John Wolthuis: John is one of the co-founders of Twilio. Looking forward to learning from folks about this fascinating and complex problem space.
Erbil Karaman: Erbil is a tech exec (former Facebook, Lyft, Earnin) & early-stage investor, focusing on the intersection of humanity & tech.
📌Community Board
News and initiatives from members of our community. MCJers mentioned can be DMed in Slack.
👨🏫MCJ Office Hours needs May mentors! "mentors" can be a daunting word but we think of mentors as anyone who has skills that could be valuable to other members! Could be because you made a career transition into climate, are an expert in a relevant area (whether it be project finance, soil science, etc), or just have a perspective other members might find valuable! We'd love to have balanced representation between men and women for May. If you are interested in participating as a mentor please reach out to Sarah Adams via Slack DM or email.
🎟Climate Events
Check out the MCJ Calendar! Stay up to date with all things MCJ. We encourage members to host community events such as expert Q&As, book clubs, topic discussions, location-based meet-ups, and more! If you want to add your event to the calendar, email us the details at events@myclimatejourney.co. For third-party events, please use the #events channel in the MCJ slack!
Upcoming
Women in Climate Monthly Meetup (Wednesday, April 28th at 10 am MT)
This is meant to be a safe space for women to discuss, collaborate, celebrate, share knowledge about their climate journey and support each other. We follow a Lean Coffee format and always get through a variety of topics. Email hannah.davis@techstars.com for a calendar invite.
MCJ Town Hall (Friday, April 30th @ 4 pm ET)
Join us for the April Town Hall. Town halls are an open forum to ask questions, share feedback, and get more visibility into what we’re working on at MCJ. RSVP here!
Meet-an-MCJer Icebreaker (Friday, May 7th @ 1 pm ET)
Meet a fellow MCJer from the comfort of your computer. Enjoy several 10-min 1:1 casual conversations with a fellow community member, facilitated by the video chat platform Icebreaker. RSVP here!
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