Hey there!

A month has passed, and we’re back with a new newsletter, just as promised 😇

Today, we want to tell you how our April fundraising event went and dive into the first Ponder focus topic – building a sustainable/green website. Off we go!

We collected funds and had fun.

Last time, we talked about taking action and our plans for the first Ponder fundraising event. Then we did it.

Ponder’s first physical fundraiser event, SOLIDARISPREE, took place on the 10th of April. We’re beyond thankful for all the collaborators and creatives involved in it!

We saw kids, dogs, friends and strangers coming together for a one-day spectacle. We saw sweat, heat (during the auction), laughter, and much warmth and openness amongst our guests.

Thanks to @yogalaborberlin, our youngest visitors were happily occupied with kids’ yoga before the main attraction – our art auction – took place. It was great fun and a big success, thanks to the generous support from many brilliant artists such as @jaydanielwright, @krashkid, @rah_rah_studio, @tonyfutura, and @allisillus (to name just a few).

Towards the late hours, the fantastic @anissacarrington (from the inspiring @slic_unit DJ network) served us a plate of carefully handpicked tunes that couldn’t make us stop dancing for hours.

And to save the best for last:

Together, we raised a fantastic € 2.235! 🌈

All of the event donations will go to @bridgesoverbordersberlin – a community-based collective aiming to support BIPoC, LGBTQIA+, and other marginalised individuals fleeing Ukraine.

Thanks again to everyone for the great atmosphere and all the support!

In other great news:

Our online fundraiser has collected an additional €545 going to GiveOut’s LGBTQI Emergency Fund. 🙌
Please keep an eye on our social media accounts to find out who won the raffle to get a free Ponder-designed website!

Building a greener web

An early motivation in founding Ponder was to do things more responsibly, more fairly. And we take that seriously. In our project work, we take care to use processes and develop solutions that are fair, ethical, and sustainable.

But, of course, we start with ourselves first: What does being fair, ethical and sustainable imply for our own company, our infrastructure, our partners, our tooling? And: How can we go beyond obvious measures like buying recycled paper and fair trade coffee?

In today’s issue, we’ll focus on how the aspect of sustainability applies to digital products. And we’ll share some lessons we’ve learned while building our website – with practical tips for you to follow. Sorry if the next bit might involve a little tech jargon, but please hear us out!

What is this about anyway, you ask?

Let’s start with a quote from the sustainable web manifesto, which has been a big inspiration for our approach at Ponder:

“If the Internet was a country, it would be the 7th largest polluter.”

This might be old news for some of you, but it’s essential to be aware of it for anyone who runs (or builds) things on the web.

So far, so bad, but what can we do?

There are two issues that we can address:

1. Websites are delivered from servers located in data centres that consume immense amounts of energy (for the operation of the computers, but especially for their cooling).

2. Websites require computing power and electricity when displayed on the user’s screen – especially if they use bright and shiny colours and many (moving) images.

Honestly, we’ve been quite lucky on the second issue. That is simply because our brand design features an energy-efficient dark background colour, and we don’t have substantial amounts of content on our website (yet 😅).
As this might be different for you, we’d like to recommend this article by Kiersten over at M21D. She writes about the issue in more detail and explains how they lowered their website’s emissions through sound design decisions (and how you can do that, too).

Now, let’s have a deeper look at point 1.

Well, data centres. As mentioned above, they use a LOT of energy to keep what we experience as “the cloud” running. And although there have been constant efficiency improvements, this is the main problem in our current footprint equation.

So what can we as website builders do?

Choose a data centre powered by green/renewable energy. Simple – in theory.

In practice, it can be pretty tricky. For example, all the popular “easy to use” website-building platforms (Wix, Squarespace, etc.) don’t give you much choice in where your data lives. And most of them aren’t hosted green either.

So if you have absolutely no alternative to using those services, you might be out of luck this time. We’ve spent quite some time looking for green options – and couldn’t find any. Instead, you could consider finding a way to measure and offset your hosting emissions elsewhere (another potential world of pain altogether).

But there’s still hope.

Suppose you’re willing and able to go the extra mile. In that case, you can opt for a custom-built website (often a good idea anyway) and host that with a provider who is using clean energy.
Luckily, testing your current host and potentially finding alternatives is painless. We, for example, made use of The Green Web Foundation, which offers a testing tool and a global directory of over 400 certified green web hosts where we searched for (and found) a good match for our project.

Although we had started by experimenting with a couple of site-building-tools initially, we ultimately went down the “custom-built” route. This gave us more control over the design and experience. But, most importantly, it allowed us to host https://ponder.haus at a data centre using green energy – and being located in Germany. Of course, the location also solves many other issues (GDPR, anyone?), but we’ll keep those for another episode.

So yes, you might need to overcome a little discomfort or take a detour – but we think it’s worth it. And there are always small steps that you can start with.
For example, if it’s not changing the web host, maybe it’s thinking twice about putting that cat video in your blog post.

If you’re genuinely interested in further technical details regarding our website, please send Moritz a message.

For everyone else: We’ll leave it at this for now. Thank you for reading 🙇.

Weekend send-off

You almost made it to the end! But, before we let you go, here’s one last thing:

We send out our newsletters on the first Friday of every month – so that’s always a special day for us at Ponder. But it’s also a special day for independent music creators – the so-called “Bandcamp Friday”.

What is Bandcamp Friday?

In response to the severe economic pressures during 2020, Bandcamp, an online music store for independent musicians, took a stand. They announced that all sales through the site during 24 h would go directly to the musicians.

That day took place on a Friday. And according to the company, users spent 15 times more than on a regular Friday.

Since its success, Bandcamp has introduced “Bandcamp Friday” as a monthly 24-hour event where all proceeds go directly to the musicians. So now you know when to spend that little extra money on the tracks and groovy digs you really like. Oh, and there’s even a website to check the date.

In this spirit, here’s a music recommendation to wrap up this month’s newsletter and send you off into a fun, entertaining and ponderful weekend:

The Cool Greenhouse We’re big fans of this London based post-punk band (who also happen to be our good friends). Since they debuted with their first album in 2019, they have already caused a stir on the underground DIY scene with sold-out records and tours across Europe. They describe themselves as “music to lose scratch cards to”. So, expect catchy guitar riffs accompanied with humorous lyrics about late-capitalist absurdities, 4chan and Margaret Thatcher’s living room. Please go, have a listen, and support them at thecoolgreenhouse.bandcamp.com

Thank you so much for reading!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter. If not, please let us know what bothered you before you unsubscribe. We’re always happy to hear your feedback and use it to make the newsletter more relevant for everyone. Here’s a simple form to submit your thoughts.

That’s it. See Read you again in a month – or earlier, if you’re up for a chat and a coffee at our sunny Haus of Ponder. Please drop us a message whenever you feel like it!

Cheerio,
Your friends at Ponder