O’Reilly & CMP Go Green: Web2.0 Summit’s Ultimate Swag Bag Gift

As my good friend Marc Orchant says when he really likes something: “This is so cool!” Which was exactly my reaction upon learning that it wasn’t what was in the gift bag I got today after checking in for CMP Media and O’Reilly’s Web2.0 Summit, but what came later in an out of the blue email surprise that for someone very concerned about climate change made my night…

Instead of giving attendees another item to either give away, pack into an overstuffed bag and drag across country only to either end up in the trash or packed away in a box (if it even made it that far before being tossed)- not to mention the wasted resources in creating the various give away items that we’re plied with at event after event - O’Reilly and the CMP Media team did something that I hope will become a standard across not just our industry but every industry; they gave everyone a tree to be planted in each of our names via TreeNation

In our case the trees will be planted in Niger, according to the website, they’ll be planting Acacia Senegal trees in a formation that commemorates this year’s summit. Recipients of trees can register their tree, name it, see exactly where it is planted and I guess even monitor its progress through the years.

What would be really cool is if companies make this a regular thing. Just think - I’ve been to about a dozen DEMO conferences. What if each time I’d attended they had planted a tree? Now multiply that by the 700 attendees at each event times 3 events a year times what? 25 years? That is a lot of trees. Now multiply that times the number of attendees at other events just in technology and you’re talking about a forest of trees.

Of course that doesn’t even begin to take into account all the savings from NOT MAKING the other eco-insensitive give away items, nor does it account for the possibility that people might step up and match the trees they’ve received with trees that they purchase themselves or for friends or family and you can see just how quickly this small but smart initiative can become something not insignificant at all.

I want to be the first to applaud the Web2.0 Summit Organization for doing something that is so smart, selfless and lasting; I hope that they do this for every event and that they get lots and lots of other companies to make a similar effort.

As people that have been reading my work of late probably realize, I’m not too optimistic about our chances given the fact that we’re not making nearly the kind of changes that we must make if we’re going to avert a climatological catastrophe that profoundly alters the lives of every person on the planet. To paraphrase what John Doerr said in his ground breaking presentation at TED recently “This is good, but it’s not nearly enough.” We need CMP Media and O’Reilly and every other company on the planet to make similar good decisions and even then it still might not be enough.

That said you have to start somewhere and this smart, creative effort was certainly a step in the right direction.