We are so excited at the response from the Story of Stuff. Our tiny little staff is working to make the Story available around the world in many languages, working with educators to share the Story in schools around the world and beginning to plan projects for “What’s Next”.

We’re also scrambling to answer the thousands of e-mails from you, our community, with offers of help, pleas for translations into many languages, and wonderful ideas for projects and collaborations.

Here are some categories of frequently asked questions and regular comments we receive. We hope these answer some of your questions, respond to some of your comments, and help you in general to share the SOS with your friends, families, and communities.

Contacting Us

If you wrote to us and haven’t received a response, we’re so sorry. Annie was not prepared to answer the several thousand e-mails we have received. We have a small staff now, and if you had a question or comment that isn’t answered here or on our Resources page, please try again.

To those of you who wrote to thank Annie, the film’s sponsors (Tides Foundation and Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption), and Free Range Studios for making the Story of Stuff, thanks for your nice notes and appreciation. Annie and the Story of Stuff team thank you for your interest and help spreading the word. We hope you’ll stay connected by subscribing (if you haven’t already) to our newsletter updates here.

Want to know more about the issues discussed in the Story of Stuff?

Many people have written to know more about our references for facts cited in the Story or to learn more about the issues covered in the Story of Stuff.  We recommend you check out the annotated script, the reading list, and the list of NGO contacts.  Also, if you’re a social networker, you’ll find a growing list of collaborators and organizations engaged in this work on our MySpace, Facebook, and WiserEarth pages

Upcoming book

Annie is working on a Story of Stuff book to be published by Free Press of Simon and Schuster. She’s busy writing now and would love your input. If there are specific issues in SOS about which you would like to know more or if you have other questions or ideas you would like to see covered in the book, please e-mail storyofstuffbook@gmail.com. Annie can’t answer these e-mails, or she would never finish the book, but she promises to ready every one gratefully.

Viewing the SOS online

Best viewing of the complete, original on-line version of the Story of Stuff is from our site. We are told there are also many versions, spin-off’s and translations on YouTube. We love our fans and we love that it’s out there (the more the better), but for our versions, translations, annotated script, and other resources visit either StoryofStuff.org or StoryofStuff.com.

Sharing the SOS

Yes, please share the Story of Stuff with friends, family, teachers, your communities and organizations. The Story of Stuff is protected under the Creative Commons licensing (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License). We ask that you not alter the presentation and that you do not show the film commercially. Here are some ideas and resources you can use to have your own screening of the Story of Stuff.

Translations, subtitles, and close-captioning

We are thrilled to have received thousands of requests and offers for translations in many, many languages. We are so excited to announce that we have received funding for an international page for the Story. We are nearly finished with the Spanish translation and hope to have it up in early September. Also coming soon are the Portuguese, French, German, Russian, Hungarian, Thai, Chinese, Hebrew, Turkish, and English close-captioned versions. We have also had offers for other languages which we will be getting to soon. You can stay tuned about the releases of these translations and all our other updates by subscribing to our newsletter.

If your language wasn’t mentioned here and you’d like to fund, coordinate, or do the translation into your language, please contact us. Put “OFFER TO TRANSLATE INTO [your language]” in the subject line so your request can get to the right person.

Teachers and classrooms

We have had an enthusiastic response from educators around the world about the Story. We’re working with Facing the Future: People and the Planet, a non-profit education organization that provides resources and action opportunities on global issues and sustainability for teachers, students and the public. We’re collaborating right now to figure out how to create a curriculum for use in classrooms. Stay tuned; we’ll have more information on this in upcoming newsletters.

Downloads and DVD’s

If you want a copy of the Story of Stuff, the best way is to download and share from your computer. We can’t help with download problems because there are so many variables in equipment, internet speeds, and software. If you have difficulties downloading, check with your internet provider or your operating system FAQ’s. You may need an updated version of QuickTime.

If you need a better copy or are sharing with a wider audience, we do have DVDs available. We would love to see thousands of uses for one DVD rather than one DVD each for thousands of people, so please feel free to copy and share your DVD.

DVD orders

We got off to a bad start in early 2008 because we didn’t anticipate the demand for the DVD’s. Recently, Hesperian Foundation, a non-profit publisher of books and newsletters for community health around the globe has stepped in to help with the DVD distribution. Hopefully we’re all caught up with DVD orders, but if you ordered and there’s still a problem, please send us an e-mail with your order date and the mailing address you asked us to ship to. We’ll do our best to track and complete your order quickly.

Collaboration

We have received many offers for collaboration with environmental, educational, NGO, and sustainability groups. At this time we don’t have the capacity to collaborate with all the amazing people who have contacted us. We’re working on platforms for collaboration on a broader scale for the future. We hope to keep the lines of communications open via upcoming Wiki and de.li.cious pages and our groups on social networks such as Wiser Earth, Facebook, and MySpace. If you have a project or collaboration in mind with the Story of Stuff team, please send an e-mail with the details of the project and the specific ideas for our involvement or join us on our Facebook, WiserEarth, or MySpace groups.

Speaking engagements for Annie and the staff

Annie’s speaking engagements are coordinated by Jodi Solomon Speakers Bureau.

Our link on your site

Yes! Please feel free to put a link on your site. Please see our downloads section for some useful materials.

Your link on our site

Currently we don’t have the bandwidth to update our site frequently with new NGO’s and cool people doing sustainability work. We wish we did. We’d love for you to list your organizations and websites on our sites on MySpace, Facebook, and WiserEarth.

What can we do?

So many options depending on what you’re able to do. One place to start is on our Another Way page. But, as you know, the nature of the problem is complicated and there is no single easy solution (here’s Annie’s blog about that). We’re looking forward to working with all of you in the Story of Stuff community to engage in the many areas of leverage in the system to create another way. As we learn more about you and develop our future projects, we can organize and share our resources with each other. We hope you’ll find the area that you are the most passionate about, find out how it’s working in your community, and that together we’ll find ways to create the changes we all care about.