The United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity and the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures.

Biodiversity refers to the variation of life forms in a given ecosystem. It is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems. The UN declaration puts focus on biological conservation efforts, in parallel with the 2010 Biodiversity Target originally set by EU Heads of State in June 2001 and later adopted by world leaders. Loss of biodiversity can be attributed to many factors: habitat degradation, overexploitation, introduction of alien species, pollution, disease, climate change. With gestures big and small taken in our daily lives, we have the ability to positively impact the situation and prevent more biodiversity loss.

Diversity is a source of richness in our lives. From the excitement of watching different bird species fly by to the delight of tasting an abundant variety of desserts, the world is filled with simple pleasures. We invite you to enjoy these diverse pleasures and to make choices in your everyday life to help preserve them.

Playing Akoha to help the cause

Here are a few missions you can play to celebrate the International Year of Biodiversity.

- Have a discussion with a friend or a stranger about Biodiversity
- Buy organic food from a local farmer’s market
- Take public transportation for a week
- Replace a light bulb with a compact fluorescent

Over the next three weeks, we’ll list suggestions on Twitter from our staff as well as from the community. Feel free to comment with suggestions of your own! Finally, check out the Convention on Biological Diversity to see what’s going around the world to celebrate this event.

On behalf of the Akoha team, we wish you health, laughter and love in 2010. Happy New Year!

Dear Akoha players,

Thank you for making the past year a wonderful journey. From our beta launch at TechCrunch50 to our visit to TED2009, we’ve been inspired by your stories of playing-it-forward.

We’ve witnessed missions spanning 65 countries including:

Greece, Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Chile, Netherlands, Canada, Malta, South Africa, Norway, Ireland, Indonesia, Senegal, United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, Switzerland, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Romania, India, Turkey, Japan.

From missions confirmed in America to Asia, we’ve been humbled by the dedication demonstrated by you and other players who took the idea of “playing-it-forward” to heart and have spread the gift of kindness.

Thank you.

A Look into The Future

Akoha was founded with the goal of making it fun for people to change the world, one small act at a time. Since we launched the beta site at Techcrunch in September 2008 we’ve learned many invaluable lessons through several months of testing with our beta community. There’s no doubt that we have many more lessons to learn in the months ahead but we feel that we’ve made great progress from where we started and everyday we’re a step closer to our goal.

As the new year approaches, there is a renewed sense of excitement at the Akoha offices and we can’t wait to be able to share some amazing new features with you in 2010. With that in mind, we have a major announcement today:

Akoha play is going virtual. After listening to the community for the past year, we’ve come to the conclusion that physical cards make playing Akoha more difficult than necessary. From the cards being forgotten at home, lost in the bottom of a backpack or eaten by the dog, your feedback to us is that mission cards interfere with the primary goal of Akoha: to use the power of play to make the world a better place. While the mission of Akoha will stay the same we are hard at work exploring new ways to make Akoha faster, easier, and more fun to play.

What does this mean to you, the player? You will no longer need to buy a deck in order to play. In fact, we are discontinuing deck sales as of Dec. 3rd. If you have cards on hand, you will still be able to play them; however, we will no longer be accepting orders at the Akoha store after Dec. 3rd. For new players and new missions in beta, you’ll be able to skip the purchase process and simply print out mission cards (or use the Mission ID) to play.

Akoha beta is now open to the public. We hope that by making Akoha open to everyone it will encourage more people to jump in and give it a try resulting in many more acts of kindness around the world. The goal of Akoha has always been to make it fun to have a positive impact on the world, and we believe that this takes us a step in the right direction.

Akoha is evolving. In parallel with Akoha play going completely virtual, we are cranking up the development gears again. Based on your valuable feedback, we are actively working to improve the player experience to make it easier for you to complete missions, create positive experiences with friends, and to share your experience with the rest of your network. Stay tuned as we release some exciting new features in 2010!

What do I do if I bought cards and have not played them yet? For those who have purchased decks, we would like to thank you for your support during our beta phase. We continue to support all physical cards actually in distribution.

This Holiday Season

Finally, if you had planned on gifting Akoha decks this holiday season, our team offers these suggestions for the holiday season:

1. Donate children’s books (http://roomtoread.org)

2. Donate a tree (http://www.treesforlife.org/)

3. Make a micro-loan (http://kiva.org)

4. Endow a scholarship (http://educationgeneration.org/)

Hi!

I’m happy to be writing my first post as Community Caretaker here at Akoha. Although the title might sound fluffy, I am seriously committed to keeping you in the loop at what we’re doing here at Akoha, and what our plans are going forward. I’m always available if you’d like to reach out with questions or feedback. Feel free to contact me anytime

For today’s post, I wanted to pop in and let you know that we’ve been working hard these past weeks on improving the Akoha experience. We’ve got some exciting ideas for redesign, and I can assure you that you’ll enjoy playing Akoha even more in the future! In the meantime, here’s a glimpse of our idea-generating sessions.

“We can has Post-It Notes?”

As you can see, we are very fond of our local stationery store (and yes, we do recycle these afterward).

NEW HOME

In other news, we have moved into ou new office on the sixth floor of the Cooper building. Instead of M1, all fan mail can now be directed to #615 - 3981 St-Laurent, Montreal, H2W 1Y5.

Here’s Alex posing during the move. I’ll post up new pictures once we’ve settled in!

After a long search, we’re happy to introduce Alain Wong as our new Community Caretaker. I’ve known Alain since he joined our friends at Standout Jobs two years ago, and he really made an impression on me, both through his warm and open personality, as well as his interest in social entrepreneurship and community-building. Alain embodies the Akohan spirit, having recently biked 3000km from Vancouver, Canada to Tijuana, Mexico to promote and raise funds for micro-credit.

When he’s not biking around the world or helping us spread the Akoha love, Alain teaches and competes as a professional swing dancer. Stealing a line from my friend Ben Yoskovitz, that’s just the type of person we like to have on our team, passionate and multi-talented.

• Alain Wong

  Community Caretaker

  Fresh off his previous adventures — working at his first startup and then riding his bike down the Pacific coast — Alain will do anything to put a smile on your face. Having studied business, law and the art of gifting, he works hard everyday to keep the the Akoha team focused on you, the player. More than anything, Alain is a good listener — so don’t be shy!

  In his spare time, you can find Alain cutting a rug to traditional jazz, teaching Lindy Hop, DJing, and blogging about the swing dance scene.

  

We’re still on the lookout for more great people who share our vision at Akoha. View our job openings here.