[Foundation-l] Green stuff.

[Domas Mituzas]

Hi!

> The purpose of my question was to examine the carbon impact on our  
> global
> environment by holding this meeting in Berlin

Ha! Dude, you're coming to organization that runs 100kW datacenter  
(when other sites of similar popularity go for 10-100MW facilities),  
and talking about carbon footprint? Haha!
I'll skip most of the nonsense about sheets (hotels don't actually  
change them daily nowadays, they are eco-friendly and suggest you put  
a card asking for sheet change.. ;-) and other stuff.

> I suspect it's part of the corporate culture
> to get the "backwater" taste of St. Petersburg (Florida, not Russia)  
> out of
> everyone's mouth, to select all of these far-flung, non-English- 
> speaking
> locales for a Board that consists mostly of North Americans who speak
> English, and who are funded mostly by U.S. dollars.

Have you ever been outside US? With statements like this you end up  
just bringing up shame upon your nationals.
English traffic is only half for us (and it includes overseas access  
too), so even if we'd be funded entirely by US, we'd have commitment  
to reach out to multiple parts of our world.

> than a "green" decision, but frankly, the two are often hand-in-hand
> outcomes.

"green" is marketing cover/buzzword for downsizing the business. I  
also work for fortune-something company and have seen various  
limitations on various travel because of economy - and even if we have  
whole VP dedicated to green and ecology, nobody tried the silly excuse  
that not doing the work and not doing the outreach is "better for  
environment". Organizations have their priorities and work to do.

>  Is the Wikimedia Foundation very "green" in its governance
> practices?  I know that Wikia, Inc. touts its dedication to "Green",  
> but
> what about the WMF?

Well, we have compacted our computational tasks into very tiny  
datacenters, and yeah, we can slap "green" on top of that, simply  
because thats what we could afford being ran on donations - yay green.
WMF staff takes public transit or walks to the work (and they can!) -  
yay green.

And, oh well, if we compare, we have millions of users who don't need  
paper encyclopedias, we have hundreds of thousands of contributors,  
who don't come to meetings, etc.

> Here's a 100-gallon aquarium:
> *http://tinyurl.com/100-gallon-tank*
>
> Imagine it full of jet fuel, then setting a match to it, sucking  
> oxygen out
> of the air, and replacing it with carbon-laden molecules.  That's  
> what each
> of the North American board members did to enable travel to Berlin  
> to hold
> their meeting which seems to have exhausted most of the attendees.


we're full of funny examples, aren't we?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rio_Madre_de_Dios,_Peru.JPG

This is tropical rainforest, it produces oxygen. What people without  
knowledge do - they light a match and burn it, in one way or another.  
Burning consumes oxygen too, no forest - no oxygen production as well.

And I have no idea why you put here 'exhausted' in a negative context.  
It was few very high bandwidth and very useful/productive days. I'm  
happy to be exhausted in that way :)

Anyway, in our business - facilitating the knowledge exchange - we're  
extremely efficient. Yes, we have to go to meetings, because they  
provide high bandwidth communication channels.
Yes, we have to fly somewhere, and you seem not to get that it was  
extremely efficient to fly _that_ group of people to Europe.
Yes, we have to use airlines, and if you want to talk about jet fuel  
efficiency, you should talk to airlines, they can stare at your tank  
images and contemplate about "oh, Gregory Kohs is attacking our  
practices, we should do something".

Though, as much as you don't realize what we're doing, you probably  
won't realize too much of anything else, so... why bother.
Go, better travel a bit outside US, then you'll either get some more  
reason yourself, or someone else will put that into you.
Blind bigotry isn't welcome anywhere.

-- 
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]