ACS Victoria Conference on Greening ICT, 15-16 May 2009

The ACS Victorian Branch 2009 Conference, 15-16 May 2009 will be on the topic of Greening ICT. I am doing a symposium workshop on The Carbon Footprint and a professional development session on Learning to lower costs and carbon emissions with ICT:

Draft Program 2009 Conference
Day 1
8.00	Registration
9.15	Chairman Welcome
9.25	Symantec Presentation: Paul Kastner Director, Industry Solutions and Alliances, Asia Pacific and Japan
	Green IT: The Colour of Money With ever-increasing data growth, more densely packed data centres, and ubiquitous endpoints, power costs has become a very major concern for CIOs and CFOs. Power now comprises the second highest IT operational expense for most enterprises. Just as worrisome, our data centres are running out of power capacity, forcing many enterprises to consider very costly data centre migration or power enhancement projects. Finally, and often overlooked, PCs and other endpoint devices account for over half of all energy consumed by IT devices. With the unit cost of power steadily increasing and with the government moving toward prospective carbon cap and trade schemes, the issue for IT is: how can we maximise our energy efficiency, thereby reducing IT costs while also protecting the environment. What’s needed is a multi-pronged approach to the Greening of IT, with software playing a leading part in improving overall IT asset efficiency and energy usage. Acting on this important issue now will significantly reduce IT operating costs, satisfy potential regulatory mandates, and best serve the community. Using real-life examples from Symantec’s own Green IT program this presentation provides an overview of how enterprises are using software to implement Greener, lower-cost IT.
9.45	Keynote Speaker 1: Paul Cooper Industry Director, Public Sector and Cloud Computing Solutions SMS Management & Technology
	Cloud Computing: Buying a Stairway to Heaven - is all that glitters gold? During 2008 cloud computing has proved successful as a viable means of powering small business operations for some key "utility" functions such as CRM, email and office product functionality. But to what extent are the emerging capabilities proving themselves for large corporates and Government? Do they have such different requirements that the benefits translate differently for them? Indeed what are the steps that corporates and Government can take to maximise the advantages of cloud computing in lowering costs and improving collaborative working?
	Lindsey Room
10.30	Morning Tea – Wattleseed Foyer
11.00	Keynote Speaker 2: Sean Casey Business Development Manager, Enterprise Solutions Group, Intel Australia Pty Ltd
	Intel Eco-technology: Delivering Energy Efficiency and Innovation Intel will discuss its environmental policies and holistic approach toward eco-technology, looking at industry initiatives and technology optimization for the datacentre and client fleets and the real opportunity ICT has to impact industries larger carbon footprint.
	Lindsey Room
11.45	Keynote Speaker 3: Jesco D'Alquen Chief Executive Officer, Tradeslot Pty. Ltd
	Hibernate or Navigate: The IT Perspective in the new Carbon Economy Jesco d’Alquen is the CEO of Tradeslot Pty Ltd, a specialist auction design and technology company, Member of the ETS Advisory Panel of the Australian Department of Climate Change and contributor to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme White Paper. Jesco’s 45 minute presentation will cover general points as well as items specifically relevant to IT professionals: Immediate to-do's around carbon footprint reporting (NGERS) Demystifying carbon permits Who must have permits / who can have permits How the carbon permit auctions will work How CIOs, CFOs and Heads of Sustainability need to jointly prepare for auctions Software tools for carbon management and financial planning The supply chain effect How your company is affected whether you need to buy permits or not The role of data Examples of companies creating competitive advantage through carbon Examples of IT contributing to carbon reduction initiatives Training options
	Lindsey Room
12.30	Chairman of the State Board Address - Update on ACS initiatives
12.45	Lunch – Restaurant – Harvest 383
1.30	Symposium Workshops
	Topic 1
	The Carbon Footprint Tom Worthington Topics may include but are not limited to; GHG emissions from: the office, manufacturing, distribution, ICT (2% worldwide: same as airlines)! Resolutions: strategies, immediate plans
	Topic 2
	Virtual IT Environments Stas Lukaitis
	In the spirit of Greening ICT for a Sustainable Future, virtual environments have been touted as an interesting solution. Topics might include but are not limited to... The impact of server virtualisation on capital and recurrent infrastructure overhead Can one "over-virtualise" – is there a sensible balance? Are there any impacts on the TCO of a virtualised desktop environment and the attendant issues of acquisition, deployment, management and retirement? Storage virtualisation has been around now for a while with iSCSI, NAS and SAN. Do they work well with other virtualised environments? What about "Cloud Computing"?
	Topic 3
	Innovation & New Technology Richard Hogg
	Greening and sustainability could well be the triggers for new technologies and innovations. Topics might include but are not limited to... Is innovation and the development of new technologies the product of external drivers, such as greening and sustainability, or are they somehow independent? How does an organisation encourage innovation and development of new technologies? What are the enablers and inhibitors? What is our Government’s role? What is the experience elsewhere? Universities are traditionally the source of research. Since Dawkins, research has changed with different drivers and rewards. Has something gone wrong? Is there a solution?
	Topic 4
	ICT Sustainability & its Impact in the Environment Andrew Parbury
	Effective management of an ICT environment can work against ICT sustainability and environmental responsibility, for example the practie in amany organisations fo leaving PCs switched on at all times. This session seeks to explore and reach conclusions about the optimum balance between effective management of ICT and minmising environmental impact. The session will be interactive, and will rely on active involvement from those present. Topics may include ICT sustainability realtive to: Insourcing versus outsourcing for efficient 24 hour operations Recycling of materials in waste disposal Efficiency of production (manufacturing – energy star rating) Efficiency of production (project management – do it once, do it well) Planning ahead – ensuring that company strategic planning for ICT includes environmental responsibility and sustainability Realistic service level expectations of ICT, consistent with company triple bottom line responsibilities
	Topic 5
	Recycle & Reuse Brenda Aynsley
	Where does your old computing equipment go? Old paradigms – burn bash or bury What is this re-usability? It doesn't affect me ... does it? Yes it does We can't recycle because we have sensitive data on the hard disk? Yes you can How much technology equipment do you dispose of each year? Computers? Monitors? Mobile phones? Cords and cables? Printers and toners? other? What should companies and individuals do with them? Recycle and re-use Where do you find out about recycling and re-use? We'll explore this in the workshop
3.00	Afternoon Tea Wattleseed foyer
3.30	Symposium Workshops - Continued
4.30	Symposium Workshops - Presentation preparation
5.30	Free time
6.30	Pre Dinner Drinks
7.00	Conference Dinner - Hepburn & Creswick Room
Day 2
7.30	Breakfast
9.00	Keynote Speaker 4: Rob Gell BSc (Hons) FRGS FEIANZ, World Wind Pty Ltd
	Sustainable Business The indicators are slowly lining-up. The way we have been doing business for the last fifty years seems to have served us well but there is now a sense that "business as usual" may not achieve the outcomes we would wish in the future. The concept of sustainability is now part of everyday dialogue, but what does a sustainable future really mean? How far beyond "business as usual" will we need to move in order to leave a planetary inheritance we would be truly proud of?
9.45	Keynote Speaker 5: Dr Robert Argent AWRIS Project Director, Water Division, The Bureau of Meteorology Vice-Chair, IFIP WG5.11, Computers and Environment Mixing Water and Computers: The Australian Water Resources Information System In 2007 the Bureau of Meteorology was charged with collecting, holding, managing, interpreting and disseminating Australia's water information. These functions require the Bureau to ingest water levels, volumes, ownership, trades, uses, quality and restrictions from over 250 organisations across the country; to harmonise and check these data; to augment, analyse and report, and then to deliver data and value-added information to the Australian public. To achieve this, the Australian Water Resources Information System (AWRIS) is being developed as a world-first system for end-to-end management of our water data. This presentation will cover AWRIS development to date, and highlight business and IT design and development challenges and solutions.
10.30	Morning Tea
11.00	Symposium Workshop Presentation - Continue
12.30	Lunch - Restaurant - Harvest 383
1.30	Professional Development Streams
	Do More With Less - Lean Techniques for IT Professionals Richard Durnall
	In the 1980's Japanese industry stunned the world with its ability to produce high quality products at incredibly low costs, triggering a quality revolution. By the 1990's Toyota were developing three new vehicles in the time it took the big three US manufacturers to develop one. In 1991 MIT's Auto Industry Programme and the best-seller that came out of it 'The Machine that Changed the World' revealed why: Lean Thinking. This session will explore the processes, tools and philosophies applied by Toyota Corporation to become one of the most successful companies in the history of the world and it's 7th largest. It will address how lean can be applied to IT, to start delivering real return on your IT investment. Learn how Lean techniques were used by two of Australia's largest websites to reduce product delivery cycles from over 12 months to every 4-6 weeks, by a large international bank to reduce the time taken to capture project requirements from over 3 months to 2 weeks and by an international financial services company to halve the cost of a 12 month program of work.
	Environmental responsibilities in Project Management Andrew Parbury
	Virtual Worlds Stas Lukaitis This professional development stream will talk about server and workstation virtualisation. The main players in this technological space will be identified and their respective strategies identified. A typical virtualised environment will be illustrated with some of the more interesting issues confronted and discussed. Virtual server libraries will be addressed, sand box environments discussed and the impact on an organisation’s capital and recurrent budget discussed. The cost of ownership issues surrounding workstations will be reviewed taking into consideration that a virtualised workstation is a very different animal to the standalone workstation sitting on a workers desk. Attendees will have the return on investment of actually seeing and interacting with a running virtualised environment, seeing a brand new server deployed in about 2 minutes and participating in a lively discussion about the hidden pitfalls of these new solutions.
	The Green Business Analyst Keith Majoos Being Green is a philosophy; but how does it affect the business analyst, the business analysis process and deliverables? Apart from not printing reams of paper and switching off our computers when we go home, how does the Business Analyst Reduce, Reuse and Recycle? I’ve often wondered if there is a graveyard for all those Visio diagrams. How often do we re-use processes and process patterns? Do we participate in functional obsolescence and/or do we deliberately postpone functionality for later enhanced-versions?
	Learning to lower costs and carbon emissions with ICT Tom Worthington The first globally accredited Green ICT course for computer professionals was commenced on 18 January 2009. ICT professionals can now enhance their career prospects by skilling up to meet the carbon emissions requirements the federal government is imposing on private and public sector organisations. Higher energy costs will require new skills to assess new aspects of computer procurement and also create new opportunities to help business re-engineer its operations and scope to expand the ICT function into new technology areas. See how to: Estimate the carbon footprint of the ICT operations of an organisation Assess ways to reduce the carbon footprint of an organisation, by changes to policies for procurement of ICT, changes to the ICT operations and revising business processes
3.00	Conference Close
3.30	Afternoon Tea - Wattleseed Foyer

Please note the Conference Program is subject to change