Green IO

Have you ever heard “The complaint of the lonely sustainability champion”? Its IT sector version? Here it is “I listen to the Green IO podcast and others as well, I read newsletters and articles from CAT, GWF, Boavizta, Greenit.fr, GSF, etc. But I’m isolated as a green software champion. I have the feeling that I cannot achieve much by myself. How could we actually do green software in my company?” This episode is all about sharing one concrete use case of someone, Annie Freeman, who achieved to build and deploy an internal tool monitoring carbon emissions in a SaaS company, Xero, with more than 4M users of its accounting software across a dozen countries. This achievement, among others, has won her to be named a finalist in the New Zealand Sustainable Business Network Awards in 2024 And she started it all by herself when she raised her voice in 2022 at a Xero’s internal technology conference despite having joined the company as a software engineer just a few months ago. In this episode, Annie Freeman shares great insights with host Gaël Duez on: 💪 How two motivated engineers can start a movement in a 4K employees company, 🔎 Tracking the cultural change signals, 🔄 Bringing carbon awareness in existing process rather than creating new ones, 🎓🛠️ Making Community of Practices & tooling working hands in hands, 📊 How Data management primes over UI when deciding to build a carbon dashboard, 🎙️ Why listening to Green IO actually helps (not Gaël saying 😉).

3 billion gamers worldwide, billions of devices, terabytes of data streamed, the gaming industry comes with pretty big numbers starting with its $455 billion sales in 2023. Is its environmental footprint as big? (Not) fun fact, not a single executive in this sector could answer the question. A new non-profit initiative, the Sustainable Gaming Alliance, is trying to get these numbers right and to equip the industry with the right framework. Its Managing Director, Maria Wagner, and its Research and Standard lead, Dr Benjamin Abraham joined this Green IO episode where great insights were shared on: 👿 The periodic table of torture for gaming device, 🖼️ The Gaming industry dependency on graphics to boost its sales 🕹️ Why “this game is beautiful” should be replaced as a praise by “this game is so enjoyable” 📋 Why GHG protocol is not adapted to the gaming industry 🌋 How to shake up a multi-billions industry in 10 weeks ? 🔄 Why the project mode in the game industry - and elsewhere? - doesn’t help a GreenOps culture to flourish 😴 Energy consumption at idle state

They both went to this job interview to hone their skills, and got a dream job at Microsoft! In its fast-growing and AI-pioneered Azure division. With a romance on top of it… Yet several years later, they decided to both resign. Why? On sustainability ground, and more specifically for the lack of support on “enabled emissions” issues. Holly and Will Alpine are now the Bonnie & Clyde of Azure and give us insider perspectives, in a nuanced and well-documented way, on this “elephant in the room” about sustainability claims in all big tech companies. In the final part of this 2-part episode, great insights were shared on : 🤯 What is enabled carbon and why it offsets by far all Microsoft achievements 😈 Devil is in the details from tailored solutions to “carbon-neutral” oil company not following standard definitions of “net-zero” ✨ Can responsible AI principles really not mention anything about the environment? ⚖️ Why regulation will ultimately be needed ♀️✊ And … the Pussy Riot!

They both went to this job interview to hone their skills, and got a dream job at Microsoft! In its fast-growing and AI-pioneered Azure division and with a romance on top of it… 💕 Yet several years later, Holly and Will Alpine decided to both resign. Why? On sustainability ground, and more specifically for the lack of support on the “enabled emissions” issues. 🕵️ Holly and Will are now the Bonnie & Clyde of Azure and they provide us with an insider perspective, in a nuanced and well-documented way, on this “elephant in the room” in all big tech companies: are their sustainability claims offset by the so-called enabled emissions? 🐘 In this first part of this 2-part episode, Holly and Will shared great insights with Gaël Duez on: 🌱 Microsoft’s employee grassroots sustainability initiative which gathers now more than ten thousands people ⚖️ The opportunity cost for most middle management to support sustainability initiatives 🛠️ The difference between attributional and consequential methodologies and why it impacts the adoption of SCI enabled tools 💰 Can investing millions in local community support justify the increasing data center expansion?