ComputerWorld’s David Haskin called me a week or so back to get my take on being a road warrior and how you can be green without really sacrificing much.
Some Background
For starters my team has been getting more and more used to my being out of the home office that I’m fortunate to have going through renovations. You see, starting last October my entire community of coastal town homes is going through what is literally a rebuild. My wife’s house in Sacramento isn’t really suited for full time “Andy” working as it too is going through renovations, so between all the conferences, trade shows, events and client activities I made the conscious decision to become a Global Nomad or Bedouin for about a year, floating between San Diego, Sacramento, the Bay Area, and wherever my agency’s clients need me to be.
With a growing international client base, that meant that being more in Europe than normal also meant more face time and easier coordination of activities in real time.
When I realized what I would be up against, I quickly realized that being green (I hate to even give out a business card because I dislike hurting trees) would take on a new meaning to me and the business.
For starters I made the conscious decision that I would eliminate as many “one day” meeting days and only travel when I could combine trips to avoid back and forth and reduce my carbon footprint. I’ve given up taking my car to the airport, sharing rides or using an already on the road car service to get there.
I’ve taken to asking hotels to get the room set to the temperature I desire before I arrive hoping they utilize the daylight hours to help keep the room warm naturally, not require a jolt of hot air at night. They can accomplish this with open drapes and daytime warming of the room where the heater won’t have to work as hard. I’ve taken to asking for extra towels when I check in, and on some days skip housekeeping service to reduce the use of vacuum cleaners and detergents. From a flying standpoint, I’ve been taking fewer flights, using trains to get around Europe when possible, especially when going between London and Paris or between Brussels and London.
Related to work as well was a decision to travel my staff as minimally as possible, and when they have to travel to keep as many of them on the road as possible. We’ve also made extensive use of three or four collaboration services to cut down on who has to go on the road by using our clients’ platform..
For video conferencing we’ve taken advantage of SightSpeed. The record a video and record the video call features make things far more permanent than written notes, makes a better impression and makes it easier to see what someone is talking about.
I’ve also been taking advantage of Yugma, iotum and Vapps. We use Yugma for web conferencing, and VAPPS or iotum’s Free Conference Calling to talk between each other and with clients. The sound quality of VAPPS High Speed Conferencing when I call over Skype is unbeatable. With iotum’s Free Conference Calling, the management tools are super to use. We can also record the calls with both providing a permanent record for later.
Lastly we’ve really been getting more and more hooked on cloud based apps like BaseCamp, Jungle Disk and the Google Apps suite. All of these are cutting down on paper at the very least, and also reducing my on computer storage. I’ve also bought a lighter laptop, the Mac Book Air, which draws less power than my other two Mac Book laptops and lasts longer on the battery (slightly.)
To be green means to think green. By planning my tool kit and by working and traveling smarter my road warrior life is as green as I can get, without walking, riding a bike or sharing rides. My idea of a ride share is sadly a flying metal tube at 37,000 feet for now.