Carbon Neutral Conference

Working together…

… to offset some of the carbon footprint generated by the EuroIA 2018 Summit. Taking into account the travel of the participants & the resources used as part of the summit itself.

Why

is this so important to us?

Because we care deeply about our work, our users and our planet

The EuroIA Summit is an amazing opportunity to bring people from all around the world, share ideas and expertise, and strengthen the IA community. But we must not forget the “price” we pay for this event: flights, cars, promotional materials production, they all generate CO2. Our desire is to try to offset as much of this as possible and have a conference that not only strengthens our community but also our environment.

What

do we want to do about it?

Awareness and action

Firstly putting a spotlight on the issue, making people aware of the initiative. Collect donations and partner with an Irish environmental nonprofit to plant trees in Ireland to offset a part of our emissions. We are also quite interested in showcasing other organizations that do the same thing, show them as a case study, learn from them and make sure that our participants are aware of their existence and efforts.

Partners

Together with our friends at Crann – Trees for Ireland we will be planting trees through their Schools Education Programme, not only planting but sponsoring the education of our young adults of the future. Financial contributions towards their Schools Programme ensures that trees are planted as well as going towards education workshops, the planting and maintenance of the trees. As ever, finding land to plant trees that is community owned or at least has community access is the perennial problem. For this reason, the Schools Programme is a perfect solution because they obtain the opportunity to educate and plant trees in an environment where there is maintenance and aftercare guaranteed.

How

are we going to do it?

Understanding the issue

How much CO2 is generated by your flight? Or train? Can you help? How much would that cost? Did anyone else do something like this, what lessons can we learn from them? The IA community is a wonderful mix of data and human-oriented individuals. Understanding the issue, seeing it in front of us and being given a way to fix it should be very effective. And that is what we will be doing. During the Carbon Neutral Conference time slot, we will: Show the data based on the previous editions of the conference. Give a plan of action. Getting donations and showing how the donations will be used by our partners. As part of this time period, we would want to show an interview (or have a speech) from someone that has already been involved in a similar initiative.

 

Contributing

We will give you, our participants, the possibility to donate when you buy your ticket. Also, there will be a way to donate during the event itself.