On September 3rd, the Ning messaging server crashed.  I remained calm throughout the episode, being well-accustomed to server crashes.  But I was rather surprised when the server came back up minus two days of our group’s email.   I sent an email to the Ning help desk inquiring as to the status of our emails.  Here is the reply I received:

From: Ning Help Center [mailto:helpcenter@ning.com]
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 7:00 PM
To: Susan Labandibar
Subject: re: After your messaging server crashed, our group lost all of i.. [ ref:00D8cCLt.50048U0MV:ref ]

Hey There!

Unfortunately, do to the way in which messaging went down we weren’t able to grab these messages. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. We’ve since put some things in place to mitigate this from happening in the future.

Please let me know if there’s anything else.

Best,
Alex

As an English major, I take umbrage at this email.  First, there is the question of tone.  You have just lost my email.  Do NOT begin your email with the salutation: “Hey there!”

Second, I would have appreciated it if “Mr. Alex” could have at least formulated a grammatical sentence to inform me of the bad news.  Of the three sentences in his main paragraph, two are egregiously wrong.  “Unfortunately, do to the way in which messaging went down we weren’t able to grab these messages.”  May I suggest, Mr. Alex, that you meant to say “due to the way in which messaging went down?”  By the way, I love the way you write of a server going down, and the failure to “grab” the messages.  It’s as though the server was literally falling through space and the Ning staff was helplessly trying to nab these messages as they fluttered away.  Perhaps, instead of reaching out to grab the messages, you should have backed them up prior to the server crash?

I would also like to point out that, in the next sentence you promise that you will “mitigate this from happening in the future.”  Well, Alex, that’s just swell.  I hope you can mitigate yourself from being on unemployment, because that’s where I would put you if you ever worked on my help desk.

Sincerely,

Susan Labandibar

P.S.  I just checked my mailbox and the emails are back!  Guess those butterfly nets that they used to grab the messages worked after all!

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“It was really amazing to see how quickly these students connected with the importance of computer energy conservation.  Furthermore, before I could even make the case to them, the students were quickly applying these lessons to their entire living style; realizing that that the energy consumed by all of their electronics was quite costly,” explained Jason.

This is a perfect example of the relevance of energy action to the younger generations, as they were quick to grasp the necessity of the topic, while staying invigorated throughout the presentation “the day before vacation, which is almost impossible.” said one their instructors, Jack Casey.

Jason summed up the event by saying “all in all, the day was a huge success. Everyone involved, including myself, learned a lot and had fun while doing it!  It was quite inspiring to see these students respond so well to such an important issue.  We are looking forward to working with more students and schools to get this message out.”

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Now, imagine that your cheap printer stops working.  How strong is your motivation to spend money fixing it?   I have seen plenty of people throw out printers simply because they stopped working and they were reluctant to take the first troubleshooting step, which is to replace the cartridge.  In case replacing the cartridge didn’t fix the problem, they would then be stuck with an expensive new cartridge as well as a non-working printer.
At this point, in order to amortize their losses on the cartridge, they may bring the printer to a repair shop.  (In all probability, buying a new printer that takes the same cartridge is not possible, because the manufacturers deliberately change the cartridge design frequently. )

This is where repair shops like ours go crazy.  The printer is not manufactured to be repairable!

This lesson came home to me many years ago when I still spent a fair amount of time repairing computers.  Seeing that there were no Epson Authorized printer repair centers in the vicinity, I decided that we should become certified to fix Epson printers.  While most vendors were starting to have online training and exams, at that point Epson still had a training center outside of Philadelphia.  To become authorized, I had to attend a two-day class there.

The class was an amazing exercise in futility.  Although the program lasted two days, and only covered the repair of inkjet printers, our class was unable to actually fix the broken printers we were given.  Even with the instructor’s help, we were unable to clear clogs in the printhead, which is a chronic problem with Epson printers.

Not surprisingly,  the repair training facility was closed not long after.  Even at the time of my visit, the instructor–who had been training printer repair at the center for many years–knew that his job was becoming obsolete.  On the first day, he suddenly veered off into a diatribe about how today’s printers were junk.  He ended up telling us that we wouldn’t learn our lesson until the entire surface of the earth was covered with broken printers.  Too bad I lost contact with him afterwards.  I’ll bet that he loved the movie WALL-E.

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This is the concept of the servant leader that I spoke of earlier in the day.  My speech was called: Satyagraha for the Business Leader:

What is Satyagraha, and what does it mean for business leaders?
Has the business world anything to learn from the philosophy that enabled Ghandi to lead a popular movement that freed India from British rule?  The term Satyagraha was made from two Hindu words:  Satya, or Truth, and Graha, which means Firmness.  Satyagraha, therefore is Firmness in Truth.   It is a way of creating change by embodying the truth.  It’s a way of prevailing over others– not by force, but by force of example.

Now, compare the principle of Satyagraha to the principle of leadership given by this writer:  “You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”  It’s a quote from the #1 bestseller business book, Good to Great.

Good to Great is an analysis of how good companies become great companies.   Jim Collins, the author of the book, said that the leaders of these companies achieved spectacular results by blending extreme personal humility with unwavering resolve to achieve their goals.  Jim Collins originally called this leadership style “servant leadership” but later changed it to Level 5 leadership.   Ghandi originally called his leadership style passive resistance.  But the words “passive resistance” did not work for him just as the words “servant leader”  didn’t work for Collins.  Ghandi’s passive resistance wasn’t passive just as Collins’ leaders weren’t servants.  So Ghandi actually had a contest to name the movement, and this was the way the term Satyagraha was adopted.

If you are just looking at what it takes to make a great leader, it would seem that both Ghandi and Collins are in agreement:  A person who combines clear-sightedness with perfect self-mastery and enormous resolve, can do almost anything.  That is the power of Satyagraha.  But there is a point where the worlds of Ghandi and Collins diverge.  And the crucial point of difference is values. Some of the companies that Collins called “great” were NOT great.  Companies like Philip Morris and Kimberly-Clark generated a lot of money for their shareholders.  But, when it comes to values, they fall short. Let me read you a quote from the interviews Mr. Collins conducted with executives from Philip Morris and Kimberly-Clark.

In wrapping up my interview with George Weissman of Philip Morris, I commented, “When you talk about your time at the company, it’s as if you are describing a love affair.”  He chuckled and said, “Yes.  Other than my marriage, it was the passionate love affair of my life.  I don’t think many people would understand what I’m talking about, but I suspect my colleagues would. “  Similarly, Dick Appert of Kimberly-Clark said in his interview, “I never had anyone in Kimberly-Clark in all my forty-one years say anything unkind to me.  I thank God the day I was hired because I’ve been associated with wonderful people.  Good, good people who respected and admired each other.”

Okay, Kimberly-Clark is the number one driving force behind America’s love affair with soft and squishy bathroom tissue.  They are the creators of the Mr. Whipple ad campaign:  “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin.”  Do you know why Charmin is squishy?  Because its made with virgin paper pulp.  And Kimberly-Clark is–even to this day–proud to advertise on their website that Kleenex contains 100% virgin pulp.  Most of this pulp comes from Canada, where they are  clear-cutting  ancient  Boreal forests to make this stuff.

So this is the problem in the business world.  We have great people with tremendous leadership skills.  But what direction are they leading us in?

How do we know if we are–in fact–leading in the right direction?  Ghandi devoted his life to the pursuit of Satya, or Truth.  He wrote a biography called  My Experiments with Truth.  In this book, he said that all his life was devoted to a search for truth because Truth is God.  So, Ghandi was a “seeker” in the classic sense of the word.  But he was not content with merely seeking the truth.  He was also a doer.  He wanted to LIVE the truth.  And, for him, this meant devoting his life to leading India  back to the simplicity of her ancient civilization.   Maybe under other circumstances, Ghandi would have been content to live his life as a seeker, as many Indian gurus and swamis have.  But circumstances compelled him to become a leader of his people.

Today we are facing our own crisis.  And it is not just the financial crisis. No, the crisis I am talking about is much worse.  Our world is warming.  Our oceans are rising. And we, for the moment, at least, stand powerless to stop it.

Not that we need a reminder of more bad news, but over the last two years, scientists from over 60 countries have participated in a research program called “The International Polar Year.”  This $1.2 billion dollar program funded  more than 160 multi-disciplinary research projects.  The final report was released on February 25th.  It says that ice over both poles is melting much faster than scientists had thought possible.  And the rate of ice loss in Greenland is increasing as well.

Many of us urgently feel the need to stop global warming.  But it’s easy to feel powerless when we think of the task ahead of us.  How do you choose what to do every day when there is no path before you?  How did Ghandi, for example, decide that he would march 240 miles from his ashram to the sea to defy the British salt tax by making his own salt?  He thought the British would kill him for this, which would have ended his campaign.

This is the power of Satyagraha.  It is the power of the will to live the truth, regardless of the consequences.

Now I’m going to tell you a personal story of something that did a lot to deepen my will.  Although it had nothing to do with freeing India or stopping global warming, it taught me that everyday people like me and my Dad can summon the strength to fight these forces that are far greater than we are.  Now notice I didn’t say “fight these forces and win.”  Because we didn’t win.

Eight years ago, my dad was diagnosed with a very rare form of melanoma.  It was growing, not on his skin, but in his sinus.  And Dad and I fought that disease.  Dad fought his disease in order not to leave my Mom and the rest of his family.  And I fought it because he asked for my help.  For the next three years, I went to medical libraries, pored through listings of clinical trials, wrote to doctors all over the country, and fought with insurance companies.  I even created a website where I listed clinical trials and tracked my dad’s medical history.  And I did this knowing that my Dad was not going to beat this disease.

How did I know this?  Because, within three weeks of his diagnosis, I had found a retrospective study on melanoma of the sinus.  A retrospective study is when a researcher goes back through the records of many hospitals to locate every recorded case of the disease.  In the case of my dad’s disease, they hadn’t found even one patient who had survived for more than a few years.

So I knew he was going to die.  And I was almost positive that nothing I could do would prolong his life.  Actually, in some ways I made it worse because I’m sure Dad would have been a lot more comfortable, and he would have been in the hospital a lot less if he hadn’t gone through all those clinical trials.

But, for our family, what we did was right.  They say that “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.”  But they’re wrong.  Because, even though melanoma did kill my father, what he he endured to try to be there for his family was a shining act of bravery that will resonate forever for everyone that knew him.

One of the things that changed after my Dad died, was me.   In 2003, when my Dad died, I  was a successful entrepreneur.  My eight-year old computer business was profitable and growing.  But I wasn’t making a difference for any of the causes I cared about, like protecting the environment.  In fact, I wasn’t clear why I had started the business in the first place.  One day, I had picked up an old hippie book called Earning Money without a Job by Jay Conrad Levinson.  The advice was basically to start several businesses at the same time and see what panned out.  That’s how I started selling used computers to college students. It was such a rough and tumble affair, it seemed more like an adventure than a business to me. One day I was even held at gunpoint when I tried to repossess a computer.

Not really a credible beginning for a values-driven business.  The truth is, I didn’t start Tech Networks with a social purpose.  But after my dad died, I started to realize that I had the strength and courage to try to address real problems in this world.  Even if, like when I fought my Dad’s cancer, I didn’t think we would win.  So, over the last few years, I have changed my business.

My company still helps people use technology.  But we are also trying to reduce the environmental impact of computing. This has proved to be more difficult than I thought.  At first, we thought we would reduce computer energy use by making a more efficient computer. Our Earth PC was one of the first computers with a power supply that was more than 80% efficient.  It was endorsed by the EnergyStar program and by utility companies who gave us a $5 rebate for every PC we sold. The media loved us.  We even landed a front page article in the Boston Globe.

But how much energy did we save?  Actually, very little, even though we were very successful at selling them.  By recommending Earth PCs, we failed to take into account all of the other solutions that were actually more efficient.  Sure, an Earth PC used less energy than one that was exactly the same except for a less efficient power supply.  But what about buying a laptop instead of an EarthPC, or what about a thin-client solution?  Maybe our customers shouldn’t buy anything new at all.  If they just kept their existing computer and installed power management on it, so the computer goes to sleep when they are not using it, that would save more energy than anything else.

In fact, the deeper we dug into the issue, the more confused we became.  Some of the data we have found says that 81 percent of the lifetime energy use of a PC is expended during the manufacturing process.  So the very idea of replacing your computer to save energy becomes ridiculous.  Not only does it take a lot of energy to make a new desktop computer, but it takes a lot of resources.  In 2006 it took 528 lbs of fossil fuels, 38 lbs of chemicals and 400 gallons of water to make the average desktop computer.  That’s the same resources as it take to build a mid-sized car!  And when you dispose of these computers, you release toxic waste materials such as dioxins, mercury, lithium and lead.

So now we are asking people:

•    What problem are you trying to solve by purchasing new equipment?  Is there any way to reconfigure existing equipment to achieve the same result?
•    Are you buying hardware or software from vendors that promote equipment obsolescence in order to sell more stuff?
•    If you don’t need your equipment anymore, who else can get some use out of it?
•    And, finally, what will happen to your equipment when it dies?

Sometimes, these questions are as counter-intuitive for us as they are for our clients.  What is better?  To spend $500 on a new computer or repair your old one?  When you purchase a new computer, most of your money is sent to far-away companies that are polluting our planet . When you pay a technician to fix your computer problem, your money stays right here in the community, which sounds good, unless, of course, your repaired computer breaks again, and you throw it out the window.

So, how do I know if I am leading my company in the right direction?  Obviously, I don’t.  None of us ever do.  As Al Gore said at the climate conference in Fiji last year:  “Path walker:  There is no path.  You must make the path as you walk.”  Ghandi was a great path walker. He made a path that led India out of British control towards self-rule.  He did it not by telling others to change, but by BEING the change he wanted to see in the world.  Making a new path is hard.  But it’s the only way that we are going to get out of the blind alley we are in today.

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There are computers in the office, computers in the business center, and–in some hotels–computers in the rooms.  There are displays in the hallways guiding guests to their conference rooms, computers at the front desk, and in the kitchens.  Not to mention the wireless Internet access that is available throughout the hotel.

Server consolidation, server virtualization, and enabling power management are the three fastest ways to reduce IT-related energy consumption in the hotel industry.

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I thought I would try some back-of-the-envelope calculations to gauge potential power management savings.  The average computer at that time consumed 100 watts per hour.  The monitor, an old-fashioned CRT, added another 83 watts.  If there were 100 such computer setups in the exam rooms and administrative areas, the hospital would require 18.3 kilowatts per hour to power them.  At a rate of 15 cents per kilowatt, that’s a $160,300 annual cost just to power the a subset of the IT equipment.

When I got back to my office, I emailed the hospital’s CFO.  Three weeks later, I received an email from one of his employees.  He said that I had some energy saving ideas that might be worth exploring.  He invited me to come to his office for a meeting.

And that’s where the story ends.  Why?  Because I had a crisis of confidence.  I couldn’t believe that this prestigious teaching hospital with an annual operating budget of $500 million needed me to tell them how much electricity they could save through power management.  Besides, what if I was wrong?  Although Tech Networks had just been written up on the front page of the Boston Globe for our energy-saving Earth-PCs, I was by no means an expert on Green IT at that point.

Instead of going to meet with them, I referred them to a company that specializes in power management software. I checked in with the company’s sales rep a few months later.  He said that there had not been a sale.

If that hospital had implemented power-management software, they could have reduced the electricity required to power those PCs by 60%.  In terms of CO²  emissions, that’s the same as taking 83 passenger vehicles off the road.  What if I had managed to win them over?  

I drive a Prius.  But even if I drove my Prius for 100 years, I couldn’t match the CO²  savings achievable by turning on power management on this hospital’s PCs for just a single year.

I subsequently realized that my company has an important role to play in helping other businesses transition to a more sustainable form of computing.  Information Technology is a resource requiring massive amounts of labor and materials to design, build, deploy, use, decommission and destroy.   Our mission has always been to help people use this technology.  But our mission now is to help people use the right technology in the right ways.   And that technology must be respectful of our planet.

In order to be viable in the context of today’s economic challenges, it is important that each sustainability initiative be both cost- and time-effective.  Specific Green IT solutions make economic sense for some businesses but not for others.  Without a full understanding of business needs, it is impossible to determine what computing solutions will best meet them.

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I love the term “negawatts.” It invites us to re-examine every routine activity from a utilitarian perspective.  Does the client really need a redundant power supply on every server?  What if Tech Networks just kept a few HP server power supplies on hand in case of emergency?  If an hour of downtime for some servers is acceptable, why not save electricity and resources by ordering a server with just one power supply? Anyway, a server with redundant power supplies is not truly redundant.  The circuit board that allows power supply failover is a single point of failure.

Here’s another area where negawatts make sense:  Stop leaving your office computer on at night so that you can access it remotely.  There are so many other ways for you to get email and files without leaving your computer on.  Remote access software vendors need to own up to the fact that their software forces subscribers to waste energy.

At Tech Networks, most employees use their own laptop to access company resources.  Whether they are at the office, at home, or at an Internet cafe, the process is the same.

Many of us take the commuter rail to the office.  With a broadband card, we are able to hook up and get the day started early.  Our resource manager starts deploying the troops from his seat on the train at 6:00AM.

Tech Networks also pays for 50% of employees’ public transportation passes. I guess keeping cars off the road doesn’t earn us negawatts, but it sure counts as negamiles!

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It is for good reason that environmental writers such as Thomas Friedman and Bill McKibben deride the glib green-washing group of copy writers crowing over their ten easy steps green guides.  Bill McKibben’s group, 350.org, makes the case that we need to lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations to 350ppm as quickly as possible or risk global climate catastrophe.

Into this climate cacophony steps Greener Gadgets with their upcoming Green Gadget conference in New York.  This event was brought to my attention by Roger Bruist, our new Green Technology Architect.  My initial reaction was entirely negative.  A gadget is usually an ingeniously engineered article whose function is often less important than its design. I’m of the belief that we need to go back to basics to save the planet.  Too many of the gadgets I see around our office are cheap toys hawked by sites such as Think Geek.com

On closer examination, however, it appears that that the green gadgeteers have put together a program that addresses many of the same issues we confront as we build our Sustainable IT methodology.  Given the real energy and resource costs of PC manufacturing, when is it responsible to replace existing equipment with more efficient models?  How do we bring technology to the developing world in areas that need to develop a power infrastructure not based on our current carbon-intensive model?  It looks like I’ll be taking the train to New York in a couple of months to find out.

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The rapid evolution in computer technology has made seem that attempting to be frugal with office computers is penny-wise but pound-foolish.  Anyone who has tried to keep a computer longer than three years knows how frustrating it can be to wait for their computer to start up in the morning.

So you purchase a new computer.  But what happens to the old one?  No one seems to know what to do with all these outdated  computers.  Of the 63 million tons of U.S. computer equipment taken out of service annually, only 25% is recycled or landfilled.  The rest of our electronic waste (e-waste)  is stockpiled, like nuclear waste and other toxic substances that are not conveniently disposed of.

E-waste contains many substances that are harmful to human and animal health, such as barium, beryllium, cadmium, mercury, lead, and dioxins released when the computer is burned.

How can you make sure that you are not contributing to the problem?  In this article we list eight new rules for sustainable computing in the spirit of good old Yankee frugality.

(Re)-use It

• 1. Buy EPEAT-certified equipment.

The Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) was developed by the Green Electronics Council.  EPEAT-certified computers are ranked based on criteria such as power management capabilities, the amount of hazardous material it contains, the amount of recyclable materials used and how easily the unit can be disassembled when it reaches end of life. 

• 2. Give your old computer to charity The trick here is to make sure that the old computer still has useable word processing software and that it can browse the Internet. No one wants a computer that takes ten minutes to load a web page. If the computer is not suitable for donation, make sure that you dispose of it responsibly. Consult the Basel Action Network (www.BAN.org) for a certified recycler who will not export your computer overseas.

(Don’t) Wear It Out

•3.       Enable power management on your computer.

Power management software is used to put your computer in a sleep state if it is not used for a period of time. A computer and monitor left on can use over $300 of electricity per year.  Computer equipment will last longer if it is set to “hibernate” when not in use.

•4.       Get longer wear from your laptop battery 

Laptops use about half as much power as a PC.  But the battery can be a source of additional pollution and expense.  Batteries are only capable of a finite number of charges.  To extend the life of your laptop battery, remove your laptop battery when your laptop is plugged in to a power outlet.  To know when to recharge your battery, you should determine if it is lithium-ion or nickel cadmium.    A lithium ion battery should be recharged before it is completely depleted, discharging it completely once per month. A nickel-cadmium battery, more commonly used in older laptops, should be fully depleted and recharged each time. 

Make It Do

•5.       Move to thin client computing.

A thin client is a device that depends on the main server for processing.  A thin client has several advantages such as decreasing the need for technical support, being less susceptible to viruses, being smaller and less costly, and storing data more safely.   Thin clients do not “wear out” or become outdated like personal computers.  Feeling even more frugal?  You can use any old workstation as a thin client without any upgrades at all.

• 6. Turn your computers and equipment off.

Plug your computer into a power strip that can be shut off when it is not in use.  So-called “Vampire power” (power used even when the device is turned off) can consume up to 10% of your electric  bill.

Or Do Without..

•7.       Consolidate your servers.

With server virtualization technology, one server can take the place of four or five servers.  This means that many small businesses can safely reduce their servers down to a single physical server.

• 8. Use web-based software.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is software you run while connected to a server on the Internet.  Data is stored online, which means that you will not lose your work if your hard drive dies. Web-based software is convenient because it can be accessed anywhere at anytime and it never needs upgrades.  It also can reduce or eliminate the need for your organization to purchase a server.

I wrote this article to appear in the December 2008 edition of the Third Sector New England newsletter.

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With these super-machines, we will confer upon ourselves  supernatural powers, such as genius intelligence, high morality, perfect beauty, day-long ecstasy and even immortality.  That is, of course, if we can just get through this current rough patch where we have invented machines powerful enough to kill us but not yet powerful enough to save us by making us wise.

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