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Update 4-20-10: AND ONLY TWO DAYS BEFORE EARTH DAY: I just got word that RE:GEN is back! Michelle M (@MichelleMAtDell) works miracles and regeneration.org is back up, at least as a redirect. Thank you Michelle and thank you Dell for standing tall in the face of economic hardships. Because green isn't a campaign, it's a way of life!

Follow the link and flood Dell with warm wishes for this effort, or don't. I am happy to have been a part of the rebirth of Re:Gen.

++

Update 4-19-10: Michelle M from Dell responded to my lament about the demise of regeneration.org today. Her comments are at the bottom. Kudos to Dell for the reach.

++ Original Post March 14, 2010, during SXSW ++

It was a year ago tomorrow that I was part of Jon Lebkowski's Sustainability and Social Media panel. [Slides from SXSW 2009 panel.] Here are a few tidbits from that session:

"Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, ReTweet!" — jmacofearth.
"If sustainability is the goal, then social media will be an enabling technology."— jmacofearth.

+++

Fast forward to the present, and I have great news to report. Global Warming is a myth! There is no problem with big business! And the sustainability wars are no longer needed!

URRR! Um, if you pay attention to much of main stream media lately there have been enough unsubstantiated "scientific" studies and "debunking of Al Gore's science," that many of the poeple I talk to believe that we are no longer in a crisis. And with Toyota suffering some serious street cred, even my Prius doesn't have the pius sheen it had a year ago. And companies like Dell, who were claiming to be the greenest companies in America in 2009, have dropped their efforts off the cliff in 2010.

But wait… Does a COLD winter mean that global warming is a myth? Does a shift from weather related global disasters to earthquake-based disasters mean that the crisis was overblown?

+++

So one of the "campaigns" I'd like to highlight, that seemed to be running strong last year, and today it's pushing up 404 page errors is Dell's GREEN REgeneration campaign and website. [Here's a Google cache of the site assets if you want to see them: http://bit.ly/cache-regen ]

SELF-ID: I worked at Dell for two years 2007 – 2009. I launched a ride-sharing app internally for Dell employees to find other carpool-ready people to share gas, conversation and commute to the Round Rock and Parmer Dell campuses. I did not, however work on Dell's REgeneration program, though I tried to get that team interested in a widget I had been architecting.

That said, when approaching a Dell RE: person about two years ago to understand more about what the GOAL of RE:gen was, the answer I kept getting was, "Michael want's to give RE:gen to the world."

Here's how the rest of the conversation went both times I met with Dell RE:gen team members.

"Okay, so what is it your want people to do when they get to the Dell RE:gen site?"

"We want them to sign up."

"And what do they get for opting-in to RE:gen?"

Silence.

Granted this was a rather web developer, social media strategist, type of questioning. Things like Goal and Purpose were often not part of the discussion for some of the biggest "programs."

The unspoken goals of RE:gen were more clearly envisioned on Dell's DellEarth page. These are my recollections of what Dell RE:gen was about.

Michael Dell had stated that Dell was going to become the Greenest company on earth.

If people associate Dell with Green, perhaps some of the large-scale deals that were competitive on price might tip in Dell's direction, if the large clients believed Dell was the "greener" company.

A "green halo" effect was imagined, even at the consumer-level, where Dell would gain sales because they were perceived to be more Green than say Apple or HP.

Those are fine ideas, and the Press Releases to support the "greenest company" program were effective at getting Dell noticed. Heck at one point a Dell VP even challenged Apple's greenest notebook on the planet ads, not because anything Apple said was wrong, but because Apple had struck at the actual heart of Dell's imagined RE:gen concept. Apple was out-greening Dell and Dell had nothing to say. [You can Google it, the conversation is still going.] And here on the earth not RE:gen site is the most recent press release (5-20-09) on Dell's Green Leadership.

So finally I'm going to tell you that it costs NOTHING for DELL to redirect regeneration.org to point to dell.com/earth. But at some point Dell decided it was no longer profitable, or in the best interest of the company to keep pouring money into the RE:gen project. But what they did next defies common sense and good web practices. The killed the RE:gen site WITHOUT ADDING THE REDIRECT.

And I can assure you it is not may connection.

Here's a thumbnail of what existed the last time the page was shown.

And if you check the whois records you can see that Dell will OWN regeneration.org until mid 2011, so it's not like the URL isn't still pointed to the appropriate servers. I think I'll get in the queue to buy the domain when it expires.

And there's one other small problem in simply deleting an entire site of pages without any redirects. Here's the result of a backlink check on regeneration.org from Google: Results 1 – 30 of about 586 linking to regeneration.org And I would be willing to bet that over 200 of those links are from within Dell.com in some form or fashion.

But the biggest question is, how does killing Dell's Green program make any sense at all? Green is not a campaign! Green is not a marketing platform! And if it is, that's called Greenwashing. Shame on you Dell, or probably more directly, Dell's PR and marketing firm that would let this happen. So Green is not the most important issue on Dell's mind at the moment. Does the Green initiative simply go away? Is Dell still striving to be the greenest company on the planet? Or was that a 2009 advertising platform?

Final note: You can believe what you want about global warming, polar ice melt and the timing of the carbon turning point, but you cannot deny that we, as humans and businesses, are not doing a great job of mitigating the environmental impact on our environment. So use compact fluorescent lights, get a hybrid or hydrogen car, or simply hope that the scientists figure something out before we cross over the point of devastating and dangerous planetary climate shift. But please don't let GREEN be an advertising program that ends!

If you are committed to GREEN, that commitment can never end. It costs me approximately $14.95 to have and host a domain for a year. Dell, please consider redirecting all of the regerneration.org links to your dell/earth pages. Or better yet, GIVE regeneration.org to a non-profit environmental group. You spent so much money and so many man hours building up a brand/campaign and what we thought was a "movement." I promise you the GREEN TEAM within Dell, the employees who are working to reduce waist, reuse materials, and find better ways for Dell employees to be green, has not given up.

Last bit, the twitter/regeneration page is still up, with the last post being in October 2009, a self-promo piece by a Dell employee.

Yes, I believe Dell has done the first GREEN FACEPLANT. Let's see if they redirect the ol' site now.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/dell-green

Here's my GREEN twitter list.

From SXSW 2009:

• The Top 6 Lessons of #SXSW Interactive 2009 – What'd You Learn?
• #SXSW Social Media and Sustainability Meltdown #SMFS – Can We Agree?
• #SXSW TODAY 3-16: Sustainability and Social Media at #SXSW Interactive 09

A few more Dell regeneration.org facts:

Whois Record

Email Search:

is associated with about 5,964 domains
is associated with about 2,819 domains

Domain ID:D76811973-LROR
Domain Name:REGENERATION.ORG
Created On:03-Sep-2001 18:06:52 UTC
Last Updated On:16-May-2009 00:31:22 UTC
Expiration Date:03-Sep-2011 18:06:52 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Safenames Ltd. (R130-LROR)
Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:mmr-1674
Registrant Name:Dell Inc.
Registrant Organization:Dell Inc.
Registrant Street1:One Dell Way
Registrant Street2:MS 8033
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Round Rock
Registrant State/Province:TX
Registrant Postal Code:78682
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.5127283500
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:+1.5122833369
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:

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