Linh Do for the Speak Your Mind team

L-R: Karuna Rana (Mauritius), Willemien Calitz (South Africa), Linh Do (Australia), Julian Koschorke (Germany), Nagida Clark (Australia), Awa Momtazian (Australia) and Tim Hall (Australia)

I started Speak Your Mind after attending the COP15 climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. I was disillusioned with how the media was covering pivotal negotiations that have an impact on people. What difference does it make if people know Obama was in attendance but the world is likely to face four degrees of warming?

Speak Your Mind works on communications to aid advocacy where we communicate the crisis whilst advocating the solutions. We’re

the intersection of a traditional media organisation and NGO.

Speak Your Mind has focused on covering the UN climate change negotiations; as such for a month there is intense on the ground coverage. In 2012, there will be delegations to Rio+20 and COP18 in addition to year long coverage.

Speak Your Mind has had readers from 128 countries and contributors from over seven countries. We target readers who are already deep inside the environmental space and also those who are the most uninformed but able to act.

Speak Your Mind isn’t just focused on building it’s own audience, it also focused on communicating through the traditional media. We have a syndication strategy where we act as a wire service, providing coverage of the negotiations to publications ranging from the local paper to the Spiegel in Germany.

Speak Your Mind works with civil society to highlight the advocacy work that NGOS are carrying out. We report on their perspectives in an objective manner whilst also taking into account what governments and businesses have to say.

Speak Your Mind has received a great response from readers with many visitors and also a willingness from traditional publications for syndication. We have also had the opportunity to work with a number of high profiled individuals including Bill McKibben and Rajendra Pachauri. Speak Your Mind was recently shortlisted as “Blog of the Year” by Earth Hour.

For more information on Speak Your Mind please visit the following links:

www.symnews.orgwww.twitter.com/symnewswww.facebook.com/symnewswww.youtube.com/user/changeandswitch.orgwww.flickr.com/photos/71015487@N03

For more information on Linh Do please visit the following links:

www.linhdo.changeandswitch.orgwww.twitter.com/lmdowww.facebook.com/linh.dowww.au.linkedin.com/in/linhmdowww.flickr.com/photos/lmdowww.youtube/use/linhdo125