This was, of course, before the days when telecommuting or even remote access to e-mail was even (widely) possible, so working at home was not an option for many, and certainly not for the firm that employed me. But being me, and living about 10 blocks from my office, I put on my business suit and my heavy insulated snow boots and made my way to the office. As I walked the snow plows tried to clear streets, turning every curb into the closest thing to mountain climbing most Manhattanites would ever see.

I remember this day for two reasons:

1) I was one of only seven people who made it in that day, out of more than 3,000 who worked at that office.
2) I had a new employee starting that day - and no, she never made it in either (despite her best efforts)

So why do I bring up this story now, today? Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we narrowloy averted a strike by BART, one of our largest regional transit systems. As I thought about what it might be like for people who rely on BART to get to work today had the proverbial 11th-hour deal not been struck, it seemed that they might face a challenge similar to the one that I - and millions of others - faced on that January day in 1996.

The big difference? Now telecommuting is simple. Easy. And inexpensive (or, had the BART strike happened, free).

I have a different solution, and maybe more obvious one that will “Spare the Air” every day - don’t drive.

While I know not everyone can telecommute all the time, I’m lucky enough to be able to do so often. So I shared some of my story on how that works for me over on the WebEx: Ideas in Motion blog yesterday, and I thought I’d share it with you as well.

I started by asking the question: Where do you get your best ideas?

There are two myths I want to debunk:

1) I don’t own fuzzy slippers
2) I don’t (usually) get my best ideas in the shower

But I do something that is increasingly common: I tele-commute.

And tele-commuting comes with a set of stereotypes (like the one about working in your fuzzy slippers), most of which are rooted in the 1960s-era concept that anyone doing any serious business did it in an office. But I work from lots of places, and the people I work with are scattered, quite literally, around the world.

My friend and colleague, Andrew Winston, asks “Will Video Conferencing Kill Business-Class Travel?” and he’s not the first to suggest that tele-work technologies will replace a lot of travel and commuting (and eliminate a significant volume of carbon emissions in the process). Web Worker Daily asks if this is “The End of Cubicle Dwelling?” concluding that many jobs can be easily (and maybe better) done from anywhere.

My colleagues here at Cisco also just released a study showing that tele-commuting increases productivity, flexibility and job satisfaction.

Convinced? Good. Now back to my question.

If you’re like me, you have ideas. If you’re more like me, you love to talk with your colleagues, friends and other associates. And I know when I do, my ideas get better. New ideas get merged and hatched. And brilliant plans start to take shape. That’s how my ideas turn into initiatives that produce real results.

Sound familiar?

But when I’m sitting at my desk at home, there are no colleagues or friends there to talk with. Just me, my brilliant diagrams and my laptop.

This has been a pretty exciting Earth Day for me (and for all of us here at Cisco). Over the past 2 years, I’ve had the privilege of working with a wide variety of our customers to help them reduce travel, increase efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

But this year, more so than in the past 2 years, I am noticing that more of our customers (at least the ones using WebEx) are holding their own Earth Day events for their people. And, the fun part for me is that we’re being invited to participate!

So WebEx people are spending time today with employees of our customers showing them how to increase their business effectiveness while reducing travel and carbon emissions.

It’s great for our business, yes, but it’s also great to see that the number of companies paying attention is increasing, and the number of people contributing to making their own workplaces greener is also increasing.

But even more exciting is the very big step Cisco took this year in our own Earth Day celebration. We’re still holding employee events around the world, educating our people not only on what Cisco is doing and how we help customers, but also on key issues in environmental policy and action, and on what each person can do in their own lives to help the cause and reduce their own environmental footprint.

The big step? The event is completely virtual. No one is driving or travelling anywhere. No partners and volunteer organizations are driving to local Cisco campuses. No employees are driving to nearby Cisco parking lots to see physical displays. And no mounds of trash to remove at the end of the day.

We started at 10AM in Sydney, Australia (yesterday afternoon, for you US folks) and run continuously until 5PM in San Jose. 24 full hours of events, content and conversation. 

We’ll also be making some of the best pieces available to the public – check back for details, I’ll keep you posted as it becomes available.

I’ve talked a lot about taking little green steps, and that’s very important, but this shows that when you keep taking little green steps, you start to have a very big impact.

Now the challenge I offer to you: The other exciting news today is that Cisco has brought the “One Million Acts of Green” effort to the US. The Canadians reached one million acts a full five months ahead of schedule. Will the Americans be able to match that?
Tell us about your green act and become a part of the effort to turn little acts into a big impact.

Earlier this week, Cisco and NASA announced an initiative that embodies this idea: Planetary Skin. (press release; San Jose Mercury News article; project web site; introductory video).

Quoting from the site: “Planetary Skin is a massive global-monitoring system of environmental conditions that will enable effective decision making in the private and public sectors and in communities, with data that is collected from myriad sources including space, airborne, maritime, terrestrial and people-based sensor networks, analyzed, verified and reported over an open standards based Web 2.0….”

There’s a video which is well worth your time on the site, with more information there already, and it appears more to come soon.

The thing that struck me about this effort is the application of the “new level of thinking” that the Web 2.0 principle of distribution has brought about.

Information that enters this decision network comes from everywhere at every level (literally – from sea to land to air to space), which makes it possible to put it together in anyway that’s needed to identify and address problems as they arise.

Even more so is the accessibility of this information and the distribution (or, maybe, collective nature) of the decision-making to put it at the level and in the location where solutions can most effectively be implemented.

There are few if any problems we face as big as climate change. And, while I am admittedly biased, I’m excited to see how this new level of collaborative, distributed thinking will help us all develop new, innovative and practical solutions.

Of course, I’ll keep you posted here also.

While I spent my presentation on my usual soapboxes of how sustainability drives innovation and business improvement and the vital importance of accurate measurement, it was both refreshing and enlightening to hear Jennifer talk about how SunGard is making this happen, day-by-day throughout their business.

Jennifer discussed a range of different ways SunGard is reducing travel and GHG emissions from moving non-revenue-related meetings online to holding corporate all-hands and other events online to rethinking some of their business processes. Besides learning about all the different things SunGard has undertaken, one of the interesting things to me was how SunGard took the objective and grew their sustainability initiative step-by-step to become an ever-greener company.

But, of course, the thing she discussed that was most interesting was all of the business improvements SunGard is now realizing thanks to bringing sustainable thinking into the core of the business. And it’s not just cost-savings (though that is important in these challenging times!), its time saved (and not spent in transit),  and the improved customer and employee engagement and service.

We also discussed the importance of measurement, the traps you can fall into when you try to measure sustainability, and how SunGard is finding ways to measure - often and accurately.

I have the privilege to work with Cisco WebEx customers on their sustainability initiatives every day, from companies just starting out to those, like SunGard who are well down the path. And while I am lucky to be a part of the green steps many companies take, it isn’t until I hear someone like Jennifer tell the whole story at once that I realize just how far they’ve come, and how the simple, practical steps and decision made every day add up to a company that is more sustainable, more productive and more competitive.

Watch the recording of the webinar and see for yourself how green really happens every day in a real business.

I saw that on the news this morning and, being me, couldn’t help but think “how do we avoid all those greenhouse gas emissions?”

No, I’m not suggestion you hold a WebEx or even TelePresence Thanksgiving dinner (though if your loved ones can’t be with you, it’s not a bad idea!). But I am suggesting that it made me think about what we can do once we’re full or turkey, bored of football and ready to send the family home.

For the next month we’re all going to face lots of stress. Let’s see…

I’m sure you are getting the regular missives from your finance department about how it’s time to cut back on expenses. 

There’s holiday (pick the one you celebrate) shopping to be done, and on what’s likely a bit more of a budget this year

There’s more family to see (and to come visit)

And the ever-present string of holiday parties you just can’t resist (or avoid!) going to

Oh, yea, there are your clients, partners and suppliers to take care of – and they’re getting more and more demanding too.

First the BIG MISCONCEPTION: As companies cut back, one of the first things to go will be the green program – it’s expensive and isn’t directly related to generating business. As I wrote in this blog post, I’m beginning to think that we’re just looking at the question from the wrong angle (though I will add that more and more people I’m talking to are changing their perspective). Is reducing travel too expensive? Doesn’t letting your employees – especially sales people - work from home (or wherever they are) help them generate more business?

I saw this piece on GreenBiz.com that points to a trend that telecommuting isn’t a “work-life” benefit of large companies, but rather a necessity for smaller companies trying to find and acquire the best talent to help them grow quickly. Granted, it’s just one example, but it’s not hard to look around you and find dozens more just like it. They’re becoming (or starting out as) greener companies because it’s the best thing they can do for their business.

And remember the stories that IKON Office Solutions and Continental Airlines told at the Green Business Summit? It’s not just the smaller companies. In these days of belt-tightening and financial caution, these are stories of how taking green steps both cut costs and increased customer satisfaction – both of which have to be good for the business.

Second, there’s the market for green products, services and technologies. Again, things seem to be bucking the trend. GE, one of the largest green products companies in the world, is reporting stunning growth for their Ecomagination business. And new clean tech businesses are launching rapidly. The California Clean Tech Open (a business plan contest for clean tech start-ups) reports that just the recent alumni of their program have raised over $115 million.

While government support for green businesses varies widely, it seems the UN has picked up on the trend and is now launching the Green Economic Initiative to spur green investment globally. Deutsche Bank has also chimed in, saying that green investment will help prevent a severe recession.

All of this is pointing to one conclusion: green efforts, business and investment will help us climb out of recession and the recession is going to be a big boom for green efforts, business and investment. Meaning this is looking to be a very green recession.

Tell us your story: what are you doing to help your business grow and position itself for future growth that’s also green?

Lest you start to think that “green” is all about WebEx, here’s a video that will show you what our entire company is doing about the “green thing”

Just yesterday, ZDNet did a report on Cisco’s efforts to become a bit greener and to help our customers do so also. It’s worth taking 10 minutes to learn about the scope of Cisco’s efforts and the range of capabilities we bring to our customers.

Getting down to green business

And if you’re interested in hearing some WebEx customers talking about their success stories working greener with WebEx (and a few good sessions with industry experts also), check out the recordings of the conference sessions from our Green Business eSummit.

I’m sure you’ll find something that’s useful.

One of the most popular ways to get around this is really quiet simple – measurement. If you can determine, as WebEx customers can, the exact amount of greenhouse gasses you are not emitting as a result of not traveling (by plane, car, whatever), it would be hard for the press, the activist community or others to indict your claims.

But there’s a catch (isn’t there always?). Let me illustrate this and debunk that myth with two examples that are close to home:

Example 1: I live in San Francisco. I travel to a meeting in New York. My contribution to the airplane’s carbon emissions for that trip (round-trip) is 1.4 metric tons of carbon. So it is logical and reasonable to conclude that had I used my own company’s technology to meet on the web, I would have avoided 1.4 tons of carbon emissions.

Simple, right? Well, unfortunately, no.

Example 2: I host a meeting. There are 12 participants. 1 from San Francisco, 2 from Dallas, 3 from Chicago, 3 from New York and 2 from San Diego. We decide to avoid travelling and the associated carbon emissions with a WebEx meeting.

How do I calculate the actual avoided emissions, knowing only the number and location of the participants? The answer is I can’t. I have no idea where we would have held this meeting (maybe one of the locations with more people? Maybe a central location?). If we had to travel, might a few of the people not found it worthwhile? Would they have joined by phone? Or not joined at all? I can go on, but you get the point.

It is simply not possible to look at an individual web meeting and assume that everyone in the meeting would have travelled to the host’s location, and calculate carbon emissions avoided.

Another complication: As much as we as a vendor of web meeting services might hate to admit it, not every web meeting replaces travel. Sometimes they replace phone calls – no avoided carbon emissions there! And, as I know all too well, sometimes they are among people who sit in offices near each other in the same building (or even on the same floor) – not even a phone call avoided (though the avoided walking is not all that good for our collective health!).

So I ask you: Is it really true that when I use WebEx to meet with my colleagues in other cities instead of calling them on the phone, that I am avoiding carbon emissions from travel? (if you said yes, we need to talk further).

But some (maybe all) of the highly-touted carbon calculators out there make this assumption. They either assume that everyone in a meeting is travelling, or that everyone is travelling to the meeting host’s location.

DANGER! If you use the numbers from these carbon calculators to tout your avoided carbon emissions, you are in danger of being accused of greenwashing! (seriously, if I can pick apart those calculators in one blog post, imagine what the media and activist communities might do to your claims).

Stop overstating your carbon emissions reduction.

So what do you have to do to get it right? Know that only a percentage of your meetings avoid travel, and even for those, only a percentage of the people in those meetings are avoiding travel. Know what your travel carbon footprint looks like – how do your people travel, by what modes (plane? car?) and where? Then you can get an accurate view of your avoided emissions.

And then you can go to the press and make a valid, verified claim. You can report it in your annual citizenship or greenhouse gas impact report. And when the press and activists come calling, you can answer confidently and fully defend your claims.

(Ad: If you want to know more about how WebEx can help you do this, please contact me, and I’ll be glad to help)

To truly work green on that day (or any day, for that matter) please go to www.webex.com/sparetheair for a free trial of WebEx Meeting Center.  You can work from home and do your part in helping to clean the air, one meeting at a time!