University of Michigan Green IT Symposium

deatkins — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 03:02:06 +0000

On October 8, 2009 the University of Michigan (UM) climatesavers@M group sponsored the UM Green IT Symposium. The U-M Green IT Symposium was a half-day conference for U-M IT professionals. The goal of the event was to share and encourage the adoption of green IT practices, and to learn what other campus units are doing and how they can incorporate similar money- and resource-saving tactics in their own department!

Atkins presented the opening key entitled Greener and Better IT: A systematic challenge and opportunity. After describing three dimensions of Green IT, the talk goes on to discuss saving energy through moving bits rather than moving atoms, in particular in the context of the future of the university in the digital age. The fundamental figure of merit of IT investment, we argue, is the extent to which it supports the activities of knowledge communities. A more coherent coherent, efficient IT infrastructure could also be the platform for supporting such communities in better ways by enabling teams/communities/organizations to function in all 4 quadrants of same and different time and place. Among other benefits is the possibility of scale-up of universities to included broadened participation on a global scale.

Download pdf file of slides
Video of the presentation (may take several minutes to initiate)

About this Blog

deatkins — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:49:08 +0000

This is a WordPress blog site created and maintained by Dan Atkins to facilitate communication and conversation about a variety of projects with which he is involved. We will also include miscellaneous items that we judge others may be interested in. The overarching theme for all of these projects is the use of information technology, or platforms of cyberinfrastructure, to enhance the work of knowledge communities. By knowledge communities,we mean communities of people engaged in the creation, dissemination, and/or preservation of knowledge.

Some related projects and topics under this general theme (with the category tag in parenthesis) include the following:

• The nature of the research university in the digital age (University in the digital age).

* Creating a more coherent, effective, economic, and environmentally responsible research computing environment for the University of Michigan. (Research cyberinfrastructure).

• Achieving better definition and broader participation in the “community informatics” activities at the University of Michigan School of Information. (Community informatics).

* Development of the National Educational Technology Policy for the Obama Administration. (National Ed Tech Policy).

• Better understanding and promoting the creation and effective use of open educational resources. (OER).

* Retrospective and prospective review of the e-science programs of the the Research Councils of the United Kingdom. (UK e-science).

Dan Atkins Blog (atkins@umich.edu)

University of Michigan Green IT Symposium

About this Blog