Green IO Newsletter - March 2025
Building a greener digital world, one byte at a time
Hello responsible technologist!
🎉 HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY GREEN IO! Time to celebrate! 🎉
And so it’s time for our yearly transparency check, with some vanity metrics to kick things off.
Podcast followers: With several thousands of listeners per month, across 50+ countries, and more than 1.5K followers across different platforms, all indicators seem (cautiously) to be green.
Podcast guests: We welcomed 36 guests from 18 countries covering topics from hyperscalers to SEO, assessment matrix to the gaming industry. More than ever, Green IO is progressing as a generalist media within the IT sustainability niche.
Our top flops?
N°1 - YouTube. “Gaël, this is the rising platform for podcast”, “YouTube is the 3rd podcast platform now”,... Well, maybe, but not for our listeners. Time, money and wanting to remain consistent about digital frugality means for the moment we'll keep posting there for our few followers, though with minimum effort.
N°2 - Global South. Only 2 guests where located in the “Global South” over the last 12 months. This became a growing concern for me when I realized how a single episode with Paz Peña Ochoa and Pablo José Gámez Cersosimo was an eye opener on several topics. I'm actively looking to secure a wider geographical diversity of guests.
Looking back
I realized that me being really fed-up about the AI hype and nonsense meant I actually didn't cover it in 2024. Maybe it was a bit too much... I intend to put this right, and thorough discussions are already planned with responsible AI experts this semester.
I have also decided to stop doing country-focus episodes which are consistently among the lower performers. I will simply concentrate on securing guests from all over the world for topic-focus episodes and ask them also about the situation in their geographical area. Best of both worlds.
BTW, I went for a quiet March 8th. Because for the second year in a row, we comfortably reached gender parity. Because it should be the norm for any podcast including those in the IT industry. Because sometimes we should leave some room in these noisy social networks for people having important news to share.
So what next?
Last month I sent a message to a small group of Green IO fans asking them for feedback and ideas on the future orientation of our growing Green IO community. I received many insights to help me fine tune the initiative - it was invaluable, so many thanks again for your time and input. And now I'd love to test them all! And to do so, Green IO is opening its community space! 🎉
I always wanted to make the podcast – as well as the newsletter and the conferences - a collective exercise more than a one-man show. Starting this month, all regular listeners and readers willing to contribute to Green IO making (guest suggestion, episode feedback, promotion, etc.) will have the ability to join Green IO Slack workspace. Don't get me wrong, I do not intend to create a duplicate of the already amazing existing open communities such as ClimateAction.tech CIC, CNCF TAG Environmental Sustainability, Boavizta or GreenIT.fr just to name a few. This one will be focused in levering this community tool built for responsible technologists and more and more by responsible technologists which is the Green IO media.
I am really excited and energized by this new phase in the Green IO adventure, and look forward to all the future collaborations. Once again, many thanks for all the previous feedback - keep it coming!
Gaël DUEZ
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What’s been happening lately in the Green IO community?
🎙️ Podcast episodes
#55 “Decarbonizing Kubernetes” with Flavia Paganelli and Niki Manoledaki. Listen | 5-mins read
#54 “Agility & Sustainability” with Joanna Masraff & Joanne Stone. Listen | 5-mins read
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🔔 Never miss an episode!
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🎤 Green IO conferences
Singapore, April 16th 2025
The main IT sustainability event in South-East Asia. Check the full program and get tickets here.
New York, May 15th 2025
First Green IO conference in North America! Check the confirmed speakers here.
Munich, July 3rd 2025
First Green IO conference in DACH region! Get early bird tickets and check first confirmed speakers here.
London, September 24th 2025
Will London beat Paris this year in terms of attendees? We expect a massive turnout for this 3rd edition, so you should get early bird tickets here.
Paris, December 10th - 11th 2025
Expect this edition to gather the “crème de la crème” of Green IT thought leaders from all over Europe. Get an early bird ticket here.
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# Listen # Watch # Read # Tools # Participate # Attend
What else has popped up on our Tech & Sustainability radar?
# Listen… We’re all ears
Another great EV episode from GSF, as E99 dives into how newcomers to the topic can kickstart AI energy measurement, highlighting problems, pitfalls, and best strategies to employ.
Just discovered this new podcast Climate Shifted, not specifically on Tech but with tons of tips to better communicate on environmental topics and turn the tide.
As we all know that AI is anything but just virtual, this episode 06 from Code Green really pulls the blinkers off to expose the destructive nature of resource extraction and the dangerous underlying geopolitics behind this upward trend of gigaextractivism, echoed again in E267 of Tech Won’t Save Us.
# Watch… Sometimes video is worth its environmental footprint
The seabed as a last frontier? Following on from the Code Green podcast, here is a neat explainer on the mining of polymetallic nodules and why global mining companies are becoming increasingly interested in them in their race to procure important resources (e.g. Cu Co, Mn, Ni) to serve the ever-growing tech sector. (For more about seabed mining and the impact of biodiversity, you can read this WWF report). And Chris Adams is spot on with his talk given in Brussels last month about the environmental savings of web accessibility.
# Read… Our coffee-break reading this month
Spotlight on AI: This month saw a great article by Wilco Burggraaf, recapping recent research demonstrating how a new way to train HNNs avoids back propagation, leading to increased training speed and reduced energy consumption. AI forcing is on the increase, and so it remains to be seen if the EU AI Act, where certain measures came into force last month, can keep up with the pace, plus Big Oil is still influencing GenAI chatbots’ responses on the climate crisis.
The hard truths of carbon offsetting are exposed in the debunking of this financial tool, the GSF Fellowships 2024 share insights on Climate Justice & Digital Rights, and read an excellent overview on digital waste.
# Tools… Skill-up for a sustainable future
Spring is in the air, and new growth is on its way, and tools are burgeoning, so check out these 12 open source tools featured on GitHub for monitoring software energy consumption, as well as the new sustainability category on GitHub Marketplace. The Drupal team is keeping up the pace too, with an updated native web sustainability tool Carbon Impact Evaluator v1.2.2.
# Attend… Meet fellow responsible technologists
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, 1-4 April, London (UK)
Green AI Summit, 25-26 April, Harvard University & Boston University (USA)
GREENS 2025, 29 April, Ottawa (CA)
GreenTech Forum, 17-18 June, Brussel (BE)
Climate Innovation Forum 2025, 25 June, London (UK)
IEEE Software Special calls for papers targeting green clean software and greening through software.
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🎯 Looking for an easy way to make an impact in sustainability?
Forward this email! 📧
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One last positive thought
‘Is digitalization the new plastic?’
Our very own podcast host Gaël Duez switched to the other side of the mic earlier this month, participating in a podcast discussion on ‘Why we should care about Green IT’ (part of the Sydney Climate Week 2025).
See you next month!
Jill TELLIER & the Green IO Team