In terms of the office, buy a few devices like this and measure a base-line electricity load for the office, determine who is responsible for what, and put it into a public spreadsheet to show who uses what in then office (name and shame!). Then buy power boards with switches on each socket, or timer switches to turn things off automatically, unplug everything you don’t need, replace items with more energy efficient versions where the ROI is paid off in 5 years (i.e. where the annual savings in power bills will pay for 20% of the replacement item), use energy efficient light bulbs (I’m still waiting for LED mains light bulbs to appear and become affordable, as it is the most efficent light-generating method, dunno if they’re available in the US yet, but if not use the fluoro ones), use solar hot water heating, use tinting on windows to reduce cooling and/or open a window, etc, and generally challenge everyone to decrease their footprint. Then measure power use again once you’ve done it all for a few weeks, and publish the spreadsheet again. Then consider perhaps buying green power (e.g. made from 100% renewable electricity built post-1997) for what remains (typically costs 10-15% extra here, dunno about in the US).

For the air travel for Wikimania, well that’s a location optimization problem (to get the most people to Wikimania and back with the lowest cost and carbon output). Strictly speaking, for the environment you want least total carbon output (so hold it in Antarctica, 5 people attending = very low carbon output!). Practically speaking, what you’re really optimizing for is lowest total cost to attend, least carbon output, most attendees, and widest pool of attendees over a few years. So for each possible location that’s bidding, you take the location of each person who would like to attend Wikimania in general, the maximum total amount that they will pay to attend, and you crunch the travel cost of getting everyone there (based on cost of airline tickets from a single travel site), and add the cost of their accommodation and registration. That gives you a total for and a bell curve for cost of attending, a total for and a bell curve for carbon output (which will be quite similar to the cost of attending, since the cost of most air tickets correlates generally to the amount fuel required), the number of people that will attend, and an idea of how many people will attend who normally would not go. Based on this map and this map, the results can probably be guestimated: The optimal pattern is probably to hold it on a 4 year cycle, with Europe one year (in a central and accessible location like Holland or Germany or the UK or France or Italy, near an airport and major rail station), somewhere else one year (e.g. South America, Asia - especially Japan, middle east, etc), hold it in North America for one year (e.g. Atlanta, Chicago, etc, anywhere with great transport links that’s semi-central), hold it somewhere else for one year (e.g. South America, Asia - especially Japan, middle east, etc - but different from the one before), and then repeat (but in different locations each year so as to increase attendance). Actually a 3-year cycle could even be more optimal (Europe, North America, other, repeat) - someone would have to run the numbers and see, although it depends on the weight assigned to the different factors. Oh, and of course, great video links for people who cannot attend. And encourage regional conferences. That’s probably about the best that can be done (both from an environmental perspective, and for potential attendees), short of stopping/changing Wikimania and/or jumping onto the carbon offsets wagon.

http://www.apsathome.org/

What do you think about making teleconference meetings? For example, instead of expensive Wikimania every year, we would have a number of regional meetings at the same time with video links between all places?

It is not so easy to organize, but it is not impossible And, of course, it is green

I guess you have to say once Wikimania is more junket-y than useful, you should do it purely web-based. But I think that is a few years away yet, especially as more and more people outside western Europe and north America get involved.

I am not saying that Wikimania is not a good event. But, we may have them in four years cycles. Also, it will be much bigger event if it is not every year.

The most of job may be done at the local and regional level. Personally, I would like to see a real network behavior: Wikimedians from Serbia are talking once per year with Wikimedians from Hungary, Wikimedians from Hungary are talking once per year with Wikimedians from Austria and so on. Maybe every WM chapter should organize meeting once per year with the accent on regional matters?

Such organization would make much better communication between people as well as it would make much better predispositions for spreading free knowledge.

And, of course, it will be more green