Firstly I’d like to apologise for having disappeared for so long.

To be honest, despite my lofty ambitions Fill The Dams didn’t quite spread virally while the Australian water crisis was a hot topic. Whilst raising $385 is nothing to sneer at, it is only a small drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things.  Witness my goofy photo below for the proof!

Suddenly we are facing a flood crisis in Eastern Victoria and the catchments are filling up faster than they were draining over summer. Just another case of one extreme to the other - typical in this country! So rather than shift the focus of this website to “draining the floods” I’ve decided to place things on hold until the warmer months when conditions dry up again.

Unfortunately, the citizens of this country continue to waste large quantities of water, and the situation is still touch and go in Queensland. I’m not convinced that the drought has broken just yet. We’ll be talking about water conservation again after the first month with lower than average rainfall.  Hence I am determined to follow through with this initiative when the time is right.

Also, upon watching the trends of the modern web, I feel the site concept lacks an edge or unique hook. Therefore when Fill The Dams is relaunched, it will be much more relevant and buzzworthy than its current incarnation.

I’ve formed some ideas to the rejig the donation system and promote the fundraiser on a global scale. Allowing everyday web surfers and bloggers to raise money without donating themselves is another aspect I’m keen to explore.

Please stay tuned in the coming months for exciting new developments. But for the time being, let’s all be grateful that our dams are finally being filled!

Have been absent here for more than a week, mainly due to other work committments and a Queen’s Birthday getaway that has put Fill The Dams on the backburner for the time being. Unfortunately little in the way of news and exciting updates has happened since I last posted, but I don’t want to delay this next post any longer than I have to!

It was a fair disappointment that the press release went largely unnoticed by the local and online press. Without feedback, it’s a little difficult to pinpoint the exact reason I couldn’t catch their attention. Perhaps the killer hook was missing, the subject matter isn’t appealing or the sudden downpur (including insane flooding in New South Wales) and onset of winter is just plain old bad timing. Received a curt “we’ll pass” from an MX reporter, and another journo responded that she didn’t have time to read it.

Will just have to dust myself off and come up with a Plan B, and hopefully we’ll start to see Fill The Dams gain some legs. One suggestion given to me was to phone and pester journalists to take on the story, but I don’t have access to any direct lines. Any well connected folks out there able to help with hooking me up?

I can definitely see a stroke of luck just around the corner

Tomorrow is World Environment Day, a United Nations initiative to help stimulate worldwide awareness of the environment and encourage political attention and action. To celebrate, many Australian councils, schools and community groups are organising activities to help educate others.

Today’s Age includes a fantastic environmental liftout aimed at children and teenagers, with some interesting feature articles on environmental learning across the globe and the pros and cons of different water crisis solutions. (Unfortunately I can’t provide a link as unusually, the articles are not reproduced online).

Victoria has enjoyed plenty of rainfall in recent times - hard to believe but it has been the wettest start to the year since 1995. The recent downpours and the scientific opinion that El Nino weather patterns are changing are great signs for the future, but we musn’t get ahead of ourselves.  As last month was the second warmest May recorded in Australia, high temperatures led to insufficient water run-off as the rain fell on highly parched earth.  So unfortunately, despite the heavens opening up there has been negligible impact on the catchment levels.  I have been closely watching the Melbourne water capacity percentage statistic featured on the front page of The Age for the past few months, and the figure continues to drop, albeit more slowly than before.

It’s clear therefore that demand is exceeding supply and we are simply using an unsustainable quantity of water in homes, offices and industry. Australian households have been found to have the world’s worst record for water consumption. After witnessing a few weeks of confidence-increasing unrelenting downpours, I feel the danger is that many will begin to slacken their water conserving habits if the message is not continually pressed home.

So until this is rectified, our water crisis will continue.  A lot of rain has fallen recently but not enough to ensure a positive outlook for irrigated agriculture.  Only after prolonged, above-average rainfall can it be announced that the drought has broken.

That is why I’m striving to promote Fill The Dams as a way to influence change in this country.

After the $385 donation, it was the perfect moment to distribute a press release on Fill The Dams to a range of online media, print press and related organisations on Tuesday morning.  The release can be found online at PRLeap here.

Some friends handed me the email addresses of influential reporters at the The Age and Herald Sun and I did a bit of sniffing around the web for some other contacts.  I’m completely green at this aspect of promotion and have zero knowledge of PR management, so hopefully I get a few emails and phonecalls in return! Polite and personalised follow-up emails have just been delivered.

The release has also been posted on a few news aggregation sites, so your job my loyal readers, is to vote and give the articles greater visibility!  Follow the links to help out:

• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• PerthNorg
• Plant Change

In preparation for the imminent distribution of a press release on Fill The Dams, I was pleased today to write out the first donation cheque for $385 - the total contribution so far. To celebrate I took a few happy snaps to prove that the donations are finally going ahead, and to inject some much needed colour on this blog!

Unfortunately my digital camera is a vintage 2004 model, so the close-up of the cheque below is almost unreadable. I know that middle digit kinda looks like a messy one or four, but the total is $385 I swear!

And as you can tell by looking at the lime green highlighting in this pic, my vintage Casio is on its way to the rubbish pile. This was probably the 20th shot taken, which explains my seedy half-smile, but unfortunately it was the best one available. I know you can’t read the cheque but you get the idea!

Hopefully this money helps at least one kid in a struggling farming family - though I’m sure it’s in good hands with the Salvation Army. I also hope this is the first of many (much larger) cheques that will be given out to help people and communities in need. The current donation pool now sits at zero, so if you like what Fill The Dams is all about please help out by donating or spreading the message!

By the way, if anyone can recommend a compact good-quality camera with a $300-odd price tag, please drop me a line!

The last blog post ended with a cryptic message about something happening at Federation Square, but I failed to mention exactly what I had in mind.  At the cost of a mere 20c I was able to have the following message displayed on the big screen during lunchtime - “Help raise money and awareness for drought relief! fillthedams.com.au”

Before you ask how I managed to obtain such prime advertising space, I simply took advantage of the new SMS Fed TV gimmick that is being run on selected days during May.  Anyone can SMS a message to the big screen and have it displayed with a random animation for roughly 20 seconds.  The irony is Federation Square hasn’t exactly been buzzing with traffic lately thanks to the inclement weather, but I’ll be posting messages to the screen over the next two weeks in the hope that a handful of people take notice.

Barring word of mouth, this would have to be the cheapest form of marketing possible, so any success that can be gained through these promotional texts is a bonus.  Any ideas on how to get Melburnians to flock down to Federation Square during lunchtime? Please suggest away!

Photos coming soon.

Newspaper articles and TV reports on the drought situation have been popping up like rash over the last few days.  Despite recent rainfall and the fast approach of winter there is still cause for alarm. It has been reported that water shortages facing Australia’s prime agricultural areas are worse than expected and that residents of the ACT may be completely barred from using water outdoors by July.

In Victoria we fell through the official 29.3% trigger point for stage four water restrictions, but surprisingly the state Government has ignored this fact.  The decision has attracted the ire of the citizens in the regional centre of Bendigo - whose water stores are down to an unprecedented 6.9% full!

In South East Queensland conditions are becoming ever more dire - the Queensland Water Commission have resorted to an educational campaign entitled Target 140, to encourage water saving in homes and small to medium businesses.

To be honest I feel almost guilty that Fill The Dams has drifted along anonymously for the past couple of weeks while the popular media and government agencies fret over the state of the crisis.  An extra effort will be made in the coming days to spread awareness although thankfully, one tank manufacturer yesterday expressed interest in contributing and the non-profit community group Beyond Zero Emissions has taken notice.

An interesting promotional idea for Fill The Dams has just sprung into mind which I will try to make a reality tomorrow (Thursday). Can’t give away anything yet but something might go down at Federation Square between 1pm and 2pm!

Slowly but surely Fill The Dams is beginning to find its feet in the online world. ActNow is a well-managed community organisation dedicated to helping people promote a range of admirable causes - from global warming to worker’s rights. I have joined the community and written a feature about Fill The Dams so I invite you all to visit the page and show your support by “acting now” and leaving some comments.

Also, the search for the first business contribution is still in earnest so please keep referring everyone you think will be interested. Once the ball starts rolling you will see a few ideas that have been brewing come to fruition. The plan is to introduce a new site feature which will allow visitors like you to raise money for charity without paying a cent! The details are top secret for now, but make sure you stick around and help promote the cause to ensure Fill The Dams doesn’t fall flat.