Another cool thing is a new program we’ve rolled out called our Bubbleship Program. As cute as it sounds, it’s a serious, dedicated partnership to non-profit organizations that sign on to a series of Thought Bubbles rather than just one. In this kind of arrangement, not only can we create several Thought Bubbles committed to the ongoing message of one organization (for a lower cost might I add), but we’ll also inherently give exposure to a lot more issues on our youtube channel, which is great news to our supportive bubbly audience. We love our youtube audience, and they always ask us to make more Thought Bubbles. Well this is one way we’re going to try to do that. If you’re interested in the Bubbleship Program for yourself or your organization, shoot us an email and we’ll tell you all about it. We have a neat little PDF package that explains it too.

As you may already know, we’re also partaking in the production of a feature documentary film called Sapience, and that’s been keeping us busy both on and off work hours, for almost 18 months. We’re so excited to launch a Kickstarter campaign for the film this coming week, which I promise you’ll hear about very soon.

And finally, there’s Crash Course. If you’re a long time Thought Bubble fan, you might recall one of our first Thought Bubbles for John Green, on the topic of healthcare reform. That was, and continues to be our most successful Thought Bubble in terms of view counts and reception. Well now we’ve teamed up with the Green brothers (Hank and John), on a new YouTube series they’ll be hosting called Crash Course. Smart Bubble’s the graphics team for John Green’s episodes on World History; contributing graphics to his weekly show with a 1 minute Thought Bubble, as well as supporting graphics outside of it. His brother Hank’s series is on Biology, and he’s got his very own graphic team who we’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with. Both shows are representative of Crash Course as a YouTube series that will educate audiences in a fun, engaging way. It’s no wonder we’re thrilled to be involved!

You can read a great article in the LA Times about John Green and Crash Course here, and be sure to check out the first episode of John Green’s World History on Crash Course which launched today! Hank’s first Biology episode will air on Monday. We won’t be posting these episodes on our channel, but you can subscribe to Crash Course’s channel and see our featured Thought Bubble in John’s show every Thursday.

So needless to say, we have big things in the works, and we couldn’t be more grateful and appreciative of the continued love and support from our audiences!

Until next time,

Bubble Out.

When I first met Jonathon and Suzanna (founders of Thought Bubble), there were a handful of things we had in common; the books we’d read, documentaries we both liked and our love of Democracy Now! Soon the conversation turned to authors and activists we admired and I quickly told them how much I respect Naomi Klein. Seeing Naomi in The Corporation and reading No Logo opened up my eyes quite a bit as a teenager and led me onto the path where I am today. I was very pleased to find out Jon and Suz were fans too. After that, we often talked about creating a Thought Bubble for Naomi as soon as we could. Two months ago, the opportunity arose when a video was published of Naomi giving a speech where she spoke of how absurd it was that Canada’s Tar Sands oil had begun to brand itself as ‘ethical oil’.

You might have heard it before (and if you haven’t, it’s worth looking into), but Alberta’s Tar Sands are a true embarrassment for us Canadians: a human rights crisis for the Indigenous communities living in Alberta and British Columbia and an environmental disaster of epic proportions. Many pipelines transport this dirty oil all around North America, and our exports make us the United States’ biggest provider of oil. In the last few years, a new extension to a current pipeline has been proposed to carry Tar Sands oil all the way to Texas, putting some of North America’s most fragile ecosystems and waterways in serious peril. Recently, Bill McKibben and his team at 350.org helped spearhead a movement called Tar Sands Action and enlisted the help of people all over the US and Canada willing to express their dismay and anger about a possible new pipeline. As of November 6th, thousands of people have risked arrest, standing in front of the White House, as well as Canada’s Parliament in Ottawa, to protest.

When we heard this impassioned speech that Naomi Klein delivered at the Washington, DC Tar Sands Action Rally back in September, we knew it should be our next Thought Bubble. We hope this video will help spread this message and pay homage to all of the people fighting this cause. And for those who know little about it, we hope you will do as much research as you can and decide if the Tar Sands represent a healthy future for us and the Earth.

The truth is our time is running out. We should seize the moment and demand that we come off of dirty oil and push our politicians to hear our voices: No to the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Please take a look at Naomi Klein’s Thought Bubble and feel free to spread the video around, we’d sure appreciate it!

Naomi Klein’s Thought Bubble: Ethical Oil?

Speech by Naomi Klein

Original Speech Edited by: Julia Nadeau

Sound Design and Music Composition by Allan Levy

Illustrated by: Nick Counter

Animated by: Alexey Terehoff

More info on this Thought Bubble.

If you’re a regular fan of Thought Bubbles, you may have noticed our slightly desolate YouTube channel channel over the last couple of months. No, Thought Bubbles haven’t lost their importance in this world, nor have we become lazy in our quest to put mindful media out into the weberspace. We’ve taken on an incredibly exciting new project, that we’ve been dying to tell you about.

We’re currently in production on a feature documentary film called Sapience. The word is derived from our species’ title, ‘Homo Sapien’, which is latin for “wise man” (we’re going to go ahead and update that to “human”). In the film, the question we ask is, in the face of all the epic challenges and crises facing us today, are we truly acting wise? We’ve been compiling a cast of people who are wise; great thinkers, activists, authors of our time, and who can speak to this notion. People like John Perkins, Chris Hedges, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Clayton-Thomas Muller, Micah White, Dacher Keltner, Ernest Callebach, and more.

We have several months of production still ahead of us, but we have a lot in store in the weeks to come (including the release of our first trailer), and we hope that you can support us through this journey, and this most important ‘thought bubble’ of all (but don’t get it twisted, it’s not a thought bubble).

We’re continuing our regular Thought Bubble production, of course, so although we may be a bit slower than usual, we’ve still got some great ones coming your way. In the meantime, it’d be awesome if you could LIKE, TWEET, and spread some virtual love for Sapience as it progresses.

Here are ALL of our wise online outposts:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Vimeo | YouTube | Flickr | Newsletter

Finishing my one-year stint at Thought Bubble feels much like finishing high school. In fact, writing this blog post reminds me of that time over two years ago when I was writing my final yearbook message, thanking my friends and my teachers. The comparison is fitting in many ways, seeing as I’m “graduating” from my job here in order to pursue a university degree, but also because Jonathon, Suzanna, Peter and the rest of the TB team have really become both friends and teachers to me (yes, that includes Fable). When I first became an intern at the studio, I couldn’t have imagined all the projects and adventures that were in store for us, and, although we all had so much in common, I was so pleasantly surprised to develop such a close friendship with the crew.

So many moments come to mind when I think back at my time here this past year: celebrating my 19th birthday with Jon, Suz and Peter, trips to the park with Fable, seeing some of our favourite authors speak (and sometimes meeting them afterwards!), watching dozens of documentaries together, discussing the daily episode of Democracy Now! and sharing all of our ambitions and project ideas. I can’t thank them for the fun times we’ve had together without also mentioning all the help and support they granted me in my professional and personal endeavors. From learning basic skills on Photoshop and Illustrator, being taught how to shoot on a 5D, and so much more, I have the team here to thank for helping me nurture my talents, as well as prepare for (and get accepted into!) school.

As this phase of my life is coming to a close, I’ve been reflecting about everything I’d hoped to do during my year off. Although some of my goals are still left unchecked on my to-do list, so many events that took place this year were both unexpected and fulfilling and, looking back, nearly all of them involved Thought Bubble. This is most likely because of the faith and confidence Suz, Jon and Peter and put in me since day one, something I’m endlessly grateful for.

Although this is the end of my year at Thought Bubble, it certainly isn’t the end of our work together; there are many projects in the coming months that we are all very excited to share…Just wait and see!

Unicef Canada Gifts of Magic (Part 1: Girl)

Unicef Canada Gifts of Magic (Part 2: Boy)

What do spacemen, mythical creatures and a jungle have in common?

What we hope is a fun, awesome demo reel.

It’s to show the work of our studio in combination with our sister company (who we literally share a studio space with), called Trouble and Maker New Media. You might remember this company through some of our past collaborations: TEDx Vancouver, our Thought Bubble promo 2010, and City of Vancouver’s Greenest City project.. We’re separate entities, but when we fuse our talents together, we’re like a happy marriage. This reel represents our combined creative introduction to the masses. Since we assume you already know a lot about us, here’s a link to Trouble and Maker’s website if you’d like to learn more about our friend: http://troubleandmaker.com.

We’ll be putting a reel out a couple times a year to highlight our work, but until then, enjoy our Smart Bubble + Trouble&Maker 2010 edition!

Our latest project is a mission to create a Thought Bubble for the Facebook Users Union, but we need your help to do it. The way our business model works, is that we subsidize (pay for) our Thought Bubbles with commercial work (more info here). One day, we hope to function solely on donations, thereby eliminating our dependence on commercial work completely. At times, it’s a challenge to meet the necessary costs of creating a Thought Bubble, and so a lot of them don’t get made unless the organization has a budget to spare.

The Facebook Users Union is asking the question, “how much do you think you’re worth to a social network?” As Facebook users, we create content and provide personal data that’s used to generate profit. Without us, there is no Facebook. Facebook has 500 million members, and is currently valued at about 13 billion dollars. The Facebook Users Union wants users to demand that 10% of their annual value to the company gets donated to a good cause. Simply put, if you’re worth $1 to Facebook a year, you’ve generated $1 of value. If you ask them to donate 10%, that’s 10 cents. Multiply that by 500 million Facebook members, and the figure becomes quite substantial. (Check out this article about the cause in The Guardian).

At Smart Bubble Society we believe in the need to educate people about their role in Facebook’s success, and more importantly, in Facebook’s social responsibility. With a company that large, social responsibility has to come into play. And as assets to the company, we have the right to demand it.

We need to raise $2500 by the end of October. When we reach our goal, we’ll make a Thought Bubble that will not only cover this compelling topic, but we’ll credit you in it as well! Our top five donators will also get free Thought Bubble tees and mugs. Click below to pledge a donation, and only once we reach our goal and the ‘jar tips’, will your donation actually go through. If you have any questions, email us at info@thoughtbubble.org!

If you can’t see the widget, you can go directly to The Point to pledge.

Illustration by Mike Mitchell

Here at Smart Bubble Society, we firmly believe in the prospect of a greener future, so we were pretty excited (no, ecstatic actually) to partner with an organization like Greenpeace; a pioneer in the world of eco-activism. Collaborations like these give us a chance to meld our expertise in the field of communications with our desire to inspire change. Not just a generic sense of change, but in this case, a call to action to shift our perspective and dependence on oil.

In Canada, we’ve got a hefty problem on our hands because we’ve got the Tar Sands. Not only that, we’ve also got a slew of offshore drilling projects both in northern and eastern Canada (including Chevron’s new oil rig off Newfoundland, one of the deepest offshore oil wells to date). All those things are not synonymous with less carbon emissions (which might be why we didn’t commit to anything reasonable at Copenhagen last year), nor do they support any hope for a greener Canada (remember when Canada used to pride itself on being an environmentally-minded nation?).

Greenpeace’s Go Beyond Oil project is working to demonstrate how we are implanted in a system directly tied to the to the consumption of oil. In fact, the team shut down a Cairn Energy offshore drilling rig located in Greenland on Monday morning by climbing and fastening themselves to the rig.

Unfortunately, we’ve become pretty accustomed to hearing about oil spills, offshore drilling, human rights violations in oil-rich countries, and damage to wildlife and our planet in general. It’s another day of headlines. But with Greenpeace, we hoped to remind our audience that the measly fines these multinational corporations pay, often just to tidy surface damage and quiet people from making an uproar, can never truly repair the damage already done. Nearly twenty years after the Exxon Valdez spill, 26,000 gallons of oil remained in Prince William Sound’s sands and water. The effects of these disasters typically last much longer than they are expected to, which is important to highlight given the recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, oil that is spilled into bodies of water never truly disappears; it forms deposits near the bottom of the sea, evaporates as gas into the atmosphere, and in smaller particles, gets absorbed into various aquatic life. You’ve heard about the dispersing agents, right? All they really do – with their undisclosed, secret concoction – is speed up the process of breaking the oil down to those smaller particles. Bottom line, the oil doesn’t go away.

But don’t walk away slumping yet, we’re happy to report that we did find a glimmer of hope, in a little publicized piece of legislature called The Climate Change Accountability Act or, Bill C-311. This bill could very well be the government’s chance to put Canada on par with the rest of the world, and make up for its shameful standing at last year’s Copenhagen Climate Conference. It’s important that our country picks up the pace, and breaks up with its longtime, climate trashing boyfriend the US.

No matter how redundant the news seems to get, we ask you to do one thing; and that’s to stay on top, stay informed, and don’t lose hope. Read about C-311, about Greenpeace UK’s actions to help us Go Beyond Oil, and think about ways that you, yourself, can start to get there. It could be as simple as walking to work tomorrow, boycotting petroleum-derived products (plastic bags), or buying your first, electric car (make that second, if you’re one of those people from Who Killed the Electric Car).

To check out the Thought Bubble we created for Greenpeace’s Go Beyond Oil campaign, click here.