Team Mightybytes (Tim, Joy, and Steve) recently returned from the 2011 NYC - DC Climate Ride, biking 300 miles over five days to support sustainable solutions and eight environmental organizations.

Yes, our legs and butts are sore, but we have some great take-aways from the trip. Before and during the ride, we learned a lot about each other, how to effectively raise funds using social media tools, and met dozens of sustainability experts who shared their wisdom with us. Here were some of the take-aways.

Joy and Tim recently presented at the Chicago Area Adobe User Group monthly meetup on the topic of transition from print to web and digital design, an intimidating prospect for many print-based designers.

Showcasing techniques and lessons learned from past Mightybytes projects, they provided valuable insights to a packed house of enthusiastic art directors, designers, and other industry pros at Ascend Training’s downtown location. Here are some of the take-aways from that presentation.

Peter Byck’s film Carbon Nation offers tangible take-aways for affecting change and implementing sustainable solutions on many levels.

On Sunday, April 17th I watched the screening at Facets Multimedia in Lincoln Park during the weekend of its Chicago theatrical premiere. Tim invited me and even though I didn’t have time to read about the film, I’m a vulture when it comes to learning about sustainability (look for my next post on favorite sustainability books). After a few minutes of environmental stats via awesome motion graphics, I realized that this wouldn’t be the doom and gloom evening I had anticipated.

When creativity consultant Pamela Meyer conducted a workshop at our office, we discovered one of the company's primary strengths was that "our commitment to work-life balance ultimately makes us better at our jobs."

We are involved in many personal endeavors outside of Mightybytes. Activities like training for the Climate Ride, adapting and performing children’s stories, and playing in the local Spazzball league are extremely important to us. I talked to the crew at the office, and they told me some of the tips that help them find a better balance between personal and professional pursuits:

We just got a new bike rack for the office. Several of us commute via two wheels as often as the unpredictable Chicago weather will allow and while Andersonville is a safe neighborhood locking our bikes to a parking meter on the street probably isn’t the most secure option.

So it is in the spirit of the warming weather and our fancy new bike rack that we offer up these wise tidbits for why we support biking to work: