treehugging

Well, I am feeling rather pleased with myself this afternoon. I have finally discovered how to put the little tree with a windy path symbol into your email signature to go with the ‘Please consider the environment..’ sentence, thanks to some eager treehuggers on www.treehugger.com. Most of you techie webbies reading this probably already know that the tree symbol is not in fact some special logo, it’s actually a Webdings character in Microsoft Word symbols!

In my quest to make the JISC events corner a little ‘greener’, I thought perhaps putting one of these messages on my email signature would be a good start…even if I’m not sure whether that’s being pro-active and actually making a difference or just easing my conscience (a bit like carbon-offsetting..oops did I say that out loud? Best leave that subject for another days blogging). Let’s face it though, my conscience is pretty heavy being part of an industry that creates as much waste as the events industry. A very useful blog which my colleague Matt Jukes pointed me to back in April (http://blog.web2expo.com/2008/04/reduce-reuse-recycle-in-that-order) makes some very good points about needing to think about reduction before recycling…not generating the waste in the first place is far more beneficial to the earth surely? ‘Reducing’ is indeed the real goal. The 3 R’s is now my mantra: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (and in that order)!

It is with this goal in mind that I embark on the next stage of my ‘green’ quest: to put together a list of ways in which we at JISC can make our events greener.

I have already managed to infiltrate into our events the policy of ‘electronic delegate packs’, whereby delegates don’t receive a wad of documents in a pretty card folder along with a nice new paper notepad. Instead they receive the necessary documents as a pdf or url link to a webbased document in an email. These can be downloaded onto a PDA, saved onto hard drive of laptop or if they really wish can print themselves. Finally, we encourge delegates to bring their own notepad, which means most don’t bother and type notes straight onto their laptop. The point being JISC don’t print anything. This caused a few murmers as you can imagine…but on the whole well received. The main thing you have to ensure, if you are not giving out printed copies of the programme, is that there are plenty of monitors and screens around the venue, showing the electronic version of the schedule for the day.

The other trend I have noticed on the JISC and partners event circuit is the gradual abandonment of the old favourite money spinner ‘the delegate pack insert’. A brazen and shockingly wasteful, yet rather effective way to raise a bit of cash for little effort. Yes, we at JISC Towers are guilty of this act in all previous annual conferences. I am determined to put the delegate pack insert to rest, firstly by killing off the delegate bag in general. Lets face it, the only reason we give a delegate bag out at JISC Conference is to put all the inserts in! Some organisers seem to be offering potential sponsors the electronic alternative of a pdf document included on a USB stick, which is handed out to delegates. A step in the right direction, but I believe equally useless as slinging an insert into a bag which the delegate is never going to take notice of. Is Mr Delegate really going to put the USB stick into his laptop and open every single file over a nice cup of tea at refreshment break and mosey through all the adverts? I think not. If however you offered sponsors the chance to buy 1 or 2 slides on a rolling presentation which is shown on monitors around the venue, this might be a more effective way of reaching a captive audience. Particularly if the monitors also show the schedule for the day and information in general about the event. So JISC Conference 2009 will see the dawn of the ‘electronic advert’. The paper delegate bag insert is officially dead, may it rest in peace.

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