1) How do we make it profitable for companies to make clean products?

2) How do we get the government to pass laws that significantly reduce carbon emissions in every aspect of daily life?

3) How do we make “going green” as fashionable as the iPod?

To the first question, I am remarkably unqualified to provide a real answer. The idealist in me says we need to regulate big business in such a way that it’s impossible for the oil industry to get in the way of the production of electric cars that go 300 miles on a single charge and emit no carbons. The realist in me knows that will probably never happen.

The only way I know of to answer the second question is to answer the first one. If the government can prove that the economy can be sustained while manufacturers adapt to new rules and companies reinvent themselves, it’ll be much more willing to make it happen. Of course, that’s where the real work begins.

To the third question, my first suggestion is to stop calling it “going green”. There’s nothing sexy about this phrase. Not even if you put a 19-year-old supermodel in the commercial. Green is 1969. It’s not cool, it’s childish and naive. It reminds us of Birkenstocks when it needs to remind us of Chuck Taylors. It needs to be yuppie instead of hippie. It needs to be Cosmopolitan instead of LSD. So what do we call it instead? I honestly don’t know.

If you have ideas, speak up. It’s time to get creative. Saving the world will take one hell of a marketing strategy. If yours comes with white earbuds, all the better.

I believe in blogging. Blogs have the power to influence and change minds, serve as an avenue of self-expression, sell new ideas, dispute old ones, spread knowledge, and talk directly to anyone that will listen. You name it, it can be done with a blog.

My weapon of choice is the mighty WordPress, which I’ve turned into a makeshift CMS that powers this entire site.

So when WordPress-founder Matt Mullenweg asked me to speak at WordCamp 2007, I was happy to be able to accept.

If you’re heading to San Francisco in July for this two-day event, be sure to stop by and introduce yourself and tell me why you blog. If I get some interesting responses, I’ll talk about them right here. You know, on the blog.

I hope to see you there.

A brand new excerpt from the book is available over at the Adobe Design Center.

Special thanks to Jen Dehaan, goddess of the Adobe documentation team, for getting this worked out. Much appreciated.

So go. Go now. Check it out.

For the first time ever …

“This summer and fall, YouTube, CNN and a few engaged and engaging citizens will make political history by having the presidential candidates answer questions submitted via YouTube videos.”

Television is usually a very one-sided conversation, and it leaves many people wondering if their voices can ever really be heard by those elected to listen and act on behalf of the public.

But now, the communicative potential of the web is being tapped to level the playing field and facilitate a genuine, national conversation about politics in a time when it is desperately needed. The walls are being knocked down.

Take advantage of it.

Seth’s post about pricing today offers the perfect cue for me explain something: why it costs $2,000 (plus travel expenses!) to bring me out to your offices for one day for in-house training.

From the post:

“Ben Zander’s brilliant book costs $10.20 at Amazon in hardcover. Buying the DVD costs $1495.00.

If he wanted to sell the DVD in large quantities, he’d need to price it differently and sell it in a different channel. But if he wants to work with trainers and the distributors who sell to them, he’s exactly in the center of [the expensive side of things].”

The reason it costs $2,000 to have me come teach your whole team how to design better web applications is because I want to work with people who really want to learn something. I don’t want to spend all my time training just anyone who throws a few hundred bucks my way. I want to train people who really want to be trained.

Also, $2,000 is significantly less money than it would take to send even 2 or 3 of your team members to a conference. And there’s no guarantee that conference attendees will walk away with robust enough information that it can immediately be applied to a whole project.

But when I spend a whole day in your offices, talking about your products, talking to your whole team, you get a boatload of information. Everyone learns the same stuff (which means you can all continue talking about it without having to explain everything all the time), and a lot of new knowedge is gained. And everyone gets a chance to talk about very specific issues that can’t be addressed in a 60-minute conference session.

See? It’s really quite a steal.

So, there’s the rationale. Use it.