He's an avid surfer with a Zen-like mind-set. He sprinkles conversations with longboard lexicon: "So the dude says. . .," "Sweet!" and "That rocks."
Tyler is basing his strategy on Sydney's March 31 event, which this year conserved 25 tons of carbon dioxide that would have been released in the production of the energy -- the equivalent of removing nearly 50,000 cars from the road for one hour, Tyler said.
In the call to action, he's combining his environmental passions with lessons learned as a Google communications manager. Like many Internet start-ups, Tyler's effort is low-budget and high-energy.
He relies on an eclectic word-of-mouth campaign, channeled through his easygoing, hanging-out-on-the-couch personality.
Back from Australia, Tyler, now a freelance media consultant, devoted himself to developing a website. Then, he called his stepbrother.
Nick Rubenstein, a former graphics artist for a punk-rock record label, who designed album covers for the bands Offspring and Bad Religion, got married this summer. Tyler made his pitch the night before the wedding, as he sat strumming a guitar on Rubenstein's porch. He asked for help with website graphics -- free of charge, of course. He got it.
"He's not doing this for money," Rubenstein said. "If he was making some huge amount of cash, I'd say 'Look buddy, share the wealth.' But he's doing this because it's close to his heart."
Tyler also e-mailed friends with his Web page prototype asking, "Are you with me on this?" One introduced him to Mabel Liang, a freelance Web designer who was new to town. She cut her rate in half for him. And when it came time for him to pay the first installment, the pair agreed to barter: Tyler gave her an old couch and a coffee table for her effort.
When Tyler approached Exposure, a New York City company that specializes in nontraditional advertising, he hooked up with creative director Tom Phillips, who was floored by his enthusiasm and agreed to donate time. "I saw the sparks going off inside his head," he said of Tyler.
Phillips' team used copper wire and a pair of pliers to fashion the campaign's signature image: the website's name, lightsoutsf.org, in fluid cursive writing like the filament in a light bulb. Another artist created an image of a starry sky over San Francisco.
He brought on Brian Scott, a former Greenpeace activist who once chained himself to the Washington Monument to protest government inaction on global warming and who dreamed up the event's catchy slogan.
