[OSGeo-Conf] Awake some awareness on leaving waste and raise our CO2 footprint after F4G events

Tue Jul 25 04:50:28 PDT 2017

Just some quick comments from the Boston team. I think it is fair to say
that we have an environmental awareness and are doing what we can. Some
things we can control, other things are controlled by the venue. But here
is some of what we're looking at (and we do support guidance to future
LOCs):

   - We are going +/- "paperless" for our program. Our web/phone app is
   already downloadable from the website.
   - Our gala will be using single-use but compostable place
   settings/utensils (our Aquarium, the gala site, is extremely eco-aware and
   eco-friendly)
   - Massachusetts has a strong "bottle bill" and all drink cans/bottles
   will be recycled as there is a $.05 return to be collected
   - We are in the process of finalizing a simple, practical, affordable
   attendee gifts including a reusable water bottle (loved the twitter chatter
   on the success of the GeoCat water bottle) and and a simple, reusable
   shopping bag; both of which can be used both at the conference and after
   - Jeroen's point is the most complicated. It is totally fair to observe
   that a summer conference interferes with the European vacation norm. But
   September interferes with the start of the North American academic year and
   it is difficult to travel during the start of the school year. And,
   September costs are significantly higher than in the summer in North
   America. There is no perfect time, and there will always be difficulties
   for some in making it to FOSS4G. I think it will be tricky to "bake in"
   that FOSS4G adapts to one particular community's schedule over others'. In
   other words, my perspective is that it should remain up to Conference Dev
   to choose the best proposal that balances timing and costs and the
   creativity of the LOC. Would it be terrible if some of the conferences are
   in Aug, and others in Sept, or Oct? By moving around within a window then
   each community has some conferences in the rotation that may be easier, or
   harder to attend.

We are looking forward to seeing many of you in Boston; and also to seeing
the new Call for Proposals for Europe 2019.

MT

On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 6:16 AM, Till Adams <till.adams at fossgis.de> wrote:

> +1
>
> I can start woth this these days if okay.
>
> (I already know of two teams, that are more or less waiting for the call)
>
> Till
>
> Am 24.07.2017 um 22:05 schrieb Steven Feldman:
>
> We have to start preparing the call for 2019 soon.
>
> Let’s update the RfP doc to include an environmental section. I expect
> there are several changes that will need to be made, perhaps a separate
> thread on the mailing list to gather suggestions
> ______
> Steven
>
>
> On 24 Jul 2017, at 14:09, Till Adams <till.adams at fossgis.de> wrote:
>
> Dear ConfComm!
>
> There is one issue I'd like to mention and perhaps this is also a topic
> on that we, as a responsible community, should adress to.
>
> Recently I've been to FOSS4G Europe in Paris and I recognized, that a
> lot of one-way cups and non-returnable bottles were offered during
> breaks. Thinking back to F4G Europe in Como in 2015 there was even
> single-use tableware offered for lunch.
>
> To make that clear: My goal is not to ask the organizers of the named
> conferences for justification !!! Both conferences have been phantastic
> events!
>
> I'd like more to awake our environmental awareness somehow:
>
> We also had this issue on a FOSSGIS few years ago; a lot of single-use
> stuff was used for break-caterings. Since this conference, we ask
> organizers to only offer recycable tableware and bottles on
> FOSSGIS-conferences.
>
>
> When on the one side one of the goals of our community is to contribute
> to a better world, it makes not much sense, when we leave amounts of
> waste behind us and have a raising CO2-footprint after every of our events.
>
> For Bonn we decided not to offer any non-recycable stuff, we also asked
> attendees to balance their CO2-emmission because of flights on a
> voluntary base (eg. atmosfair). To be honest, I don't know if anybody
> did, but at least we tried.
>
> Maybe that's because I am german and although we sell fraudulent
> diesel-cars, we have a favour for recycable bottles, cans and everything
> (even French winemakers put a green dot on their bottles, to indicate,
> that they are recycable in Germany ;-)) and I also know, that it is
> often not that easy to have this offer in other countries as well - but:
>
> How about adding a topic "Environmental Responsibility" to our
> "Conference Manual" and encourage future LOC's to have an enhanced eye
> on these kind of topics? We also might request that future bids include
> an abstract on how to handle this issue based on the local
> possibilities. It's up to every ConfComm-member, how to include that
> into his/her voting.
>
>
> Till
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
*Michael Terner*
*Executive Vice President*
617-447-2468 Direct | 617-447-2400 Main
Applied Geographics, Inc.
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Boston, MA 02108
www.AppGeo.com

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