Learning Footprint from ht2 - is your learning costing the earth?

Welcome to learning footprint.com

Learning Footprint is a website dedicated to helping organisations mimimise the environmental impact of their training and development programmes through the use of E-Learning.

Use the website links at the top of the page to find out more about the Learning Footprint, to calculate your current Learning Footprint and to find out what you can do about it.

Also be sure to read the Learning Footprint blog, below, to get our most up-to-date thinking.

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LOW CARBON SERVERS - MISSING THE POINT?

An interesting little battle emerged on my television screen last night as I dosed up on 'The Dragons Den'. An entrepenuer came to the dragons looking for a large investment in his new, eco-friendly, PC manufacturing business. My ears pricked up and I shuffled an inch or two closer towards the edge of the sofa as I recognised an area of interest...

I was rather skeptical initially. Being well aware of the very low margins in the hardware sector, I personally wouldn't invest in any hardware company (HP and Dell alone account for over 35% of all PC's sold according to Gartner). But this is me in Dragons Den mode; a scathing, hard-nosed version of my real self, able to toy with the lives of peons in the morning and play 18-holes at The Oxfordshire in the afternoon. And of course I'm not afriad to splash my cash on ideas that just might be crazy enough to work.

But then a twist. Unfortunately, its not a good one for a certain millionaire-in-waiting. Peter Jones takes the floor and dives into attack, showing that he knows a thing or two about eco-computing. He derides the idea, telling the entrepenuer that his vision of the future is not the right one. His thinking is out of date according to Jones. Making a server or a PC slightly more efficient is not going to make a difference in the future of the computing industry. This dragon is all about virtualisation; running many computers from a single physical device.

And he's right, virtualisation is certainly a more efficient way of working, both on the bottom line and on the environment. And with Cloud Computing starting to emerge as a commercially viable option, the way in which we use hardware is going to change soon. The linked Gartner report tells us that we all need to address the IT infrastructure which we work within. And E-learning has a massive role in this, both in educating users as to new ways of working and, perhaps more significantly, in reducing the barriers to creating networks of organisational knowledge.

But perhaps Jones did miss a trick; HP and Dell have indicated interest in the green server market (Google 'green computing' and spot the sponsored links) and even at the end of the virtual rainbow will still sit a good old-fashioned box or two.

Should he have invested then? No, he was right to leave it well alone. There is a market for green servers and it's a huge one. But I doubt a startup will be in any position to take on the bohemoths in the hardware manufacturer's game.

Especially one without any patents, any original parts and a chap with a dodgy looking beard at the helm.

-Ben @ HT2

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is your learning costing the earth?

We've decided to keep a little blog at the home of Learning Footprint, offering our opinion on the green computing issues of the day. We'll also keep a track of the Training and Development industry and try to pull out some coherent threads which will enable you to make better informed decisions on the Learning Footprint.

We think we've hit across a really simple idea here.

Its hardly a revolution, but a nice name always helps push concepts along!

Recently we've been receiving a lot more feedback on the Learning Footprint idea (as well as some nice praise for the calculator) and so its time for us to expand our reach back into the community and to deliver some more helpful info on E-Learning and the environment.

-HT2