** Important update: This event has been postponed. We'll keep you posted as to when it will be rescheduled. **

Anna Jaeger and I will be participating in a very interesting online green IT workshop for nonprofits and foundations on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific time. The four hour event is open to everyone and is sponsored by NTEN and a new nonprofit green IT project that is forming called the Green IT Consortium (in which TechSoup is involved). The online event is called Greening Your Nonprofit's IT – How to Save Environment and Money. The cost to participate is $60 for NTEN Members and $120 for non-members. However, Anna Richter of NTEN, is generously offering a discount to TechSoup readers. You can register at the $60 member rate by writing "GreenIT" in the "How did you hear?" field.

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Innovative telecom solutions are making it easier for organizations like yours to work in alignment with their social and environmental values. New technology from TechSoup can help your organization be more flexible, run more efficiently, reduce operating costs, and shrink your environmental footprint. It can also help you create more flexible and productive work experiences for your teams. And all of that adds up to a happier, greener, more successful organization.

This TechSoup article is a great place to begin learning how unified communications systems are changing the way we work. You'll find an introductory overview of the ideas we highlight below and links to a helpful discussion between other nonprofits implementing these strategies.

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I wasn't able to go to the 2010 CES Consumer Electronics Show this year, but I'm assured by TreeHugger, which reviews the show each year, especially the new green tech gadgets, that it was largely nothing much new. The CES show takes place in Las Vegas every year and showcases all the new electronics gizmos. The show hosts 110,000 visitors who view the offerings of 2,500 companies. The event sprawls over 1.8 million square feet of exhibition space. It's a huge show. I went last year. The reason that it's so big is that according to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the average U.S. household spent $1,229 on consumer electronics products in the past 12 months. Becky wrote about some new e-reader technologies that swept the show by storm in an earlier post.

Despite few new green tech break-throughs, there apparently was plenty of new interesting stuff.

In automobile technology, or Car Tech, best of show was the Ford myFord Touch interface. The thing is a computer interface for new Ford cars that sports two screens or dashboards: an instrument cluster display shows vehicle information such as engine speed, temperature, and trip data; and the other dashboard shows audio, phone, and navigation information. Very soon the thing will work as a mobile Wi-Fi hot spot when a cellular modem is plugged into the car's USB slot. Ford also plans to include a web browser. The fully computerized car has arrived.

In the Computers And Hardware category, it's the year of the tablet computer, a type of device that has been around for a long time, but is emerging anew as a device that combines attributes of e-readers like the Amazon Kindle, touchscreen smartphones like the iPhone, and slate computers that digitize handwriting. Best of show was the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, a round notebook similar to the old clamshell iBooks, that is both a conventional laptop and tablet computer.

In TVs it's the year of 3D-compatible HDTVs. Best of show was the Panasonic TC-PVT25 series which is expected to be available in the Spring of 2010. To view the TV in 3D, you'll still need 3D glasses that the company provides with the device — just like the 50s.

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Join TechSoup for a free webinar about procuring refurbished computers. Learn how you can get the computer equipment you need at the lowest cost while at the same time ensuring that you get high quality PCs that you can depend on.

Avoid the Junk: How to Get Quality Used Computers
Thursday, January 28, 11 a.m. Pacific time

More and more we're finding that nonprofit offices have a lot in common with small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). Nonprofits and small businesses have computer systems that typically have a few dozen or fewer computers. The local area networks they need are often similar, using one or two servers to connect the office to the Internet, serve databases and email, do back-ups and software updates, and the list of similarities goes on.

Find recommendations below from Climate Savers Computing Initiative's Pat Tiernan for IT energy conservation for nonprofits and SMEs. Pat is a former Hewlett-Packard sustainability executive, and is now the executive director of Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which is the most prominent green IT project in the world. It's a membership-based nonprofit composed of eco-conscious consumers, businesses, and conservation organizations dedicated to reducing the energy consumption of computers. The initiative seeks to reduce IT energy consumption and reduce global CO2 emissions by 54 million tons per year. It now has more than 500 companies and organizations in the initiative, including of course, TechSoup Global. If you or your organization would like to join Climate Savers to add your weight to the IT energy conservation movement, it is no cost, and simply entails that you set power management on your computers.

Here are Pat Tiernan's tips for IT cost cutting:

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Setting power management on computers so that they shut off or sleep when not in use has been one of the GreenTech Initiative's primary topics. Recently we've profiled some freeware called Verdiem Edison, which helps you set sleep settings on individual computers and also calculates cost and energy savings.

What we haven't talked about yet is Verdiem's main software product, which is called Surveyor, which does much the same thing, but over a network. Verdiem Surveyor software is not free, is of course more complex than Edison, and is targeted at mainly enterprise or very large computer networks. It is suitable, however, for nonprofits, libraries, and small- to medium-sized businesses with networked PCs. It solves many of the problems that make reducing power use over a network difficult, including how to save energy while still being able to do automated maintenance, software updates, and back-ups.

Below are excerpts from Gavin Clabaugh's very entertaining account of his experience with the software.

You may be getting your donated and discounted software from TechSoup, but did you know we have computers, networking equipment, and other hardware in stock? This, the first installment of a four-part "New Year's Technology Solutions" series, brings you information about some of our hardware programs and links to featured articles to help you make the most of your new hardware in the coming year.

Below are five sources of upgrading your hardware through TechSoup:

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This year the Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI), a joint project of the Skoll Foundation and Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology, and Society, will focus on green technology. They are looking for 20 or so people or social enterprises that are interested in providing electricity in some way to people in developing countries — and providing them with full scholarships valued at $25,000 each for the GSBI program, taking place from August 14 through 28, 2010 in Silcon Valley, California.

Now in its eighth year, the Global Social Benefit Incubator is a year-long capacity-building program for leaders of social benefit enterprises. The core of the program is the two-week in-residence session (mentioned above), but perhaps more than that, GSBI provides participating social entrepreneurs with membership to a network of educators, professionals, mentors, and other well-placed people willing and able to help get innovative projects successfully off the ground.

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Update: This post was originally published in December 2008, but since it holds lots of useful information for closing your office over a holiday break, we wanted to update it and put it at the top of our list for the 2009 holiday. Enjoy!

If your organization is like many other offices in the U.S., your office may be closed for several days during these next two weeks. Here are a ten items to check off your list while shutting down for those days. In addition to helping the environment, you will also save money on electricity and prolong the life of many of your office electronics.

1. Shut down all computers; don't just put them in sleep mode. Computers in sleep mode still use a lot of energy.

2. Consider turning off servers that will not be used. Obviously, you can't shut down the server running your website or email, but do you need the file server or the print server running? Before unplugging computers and servers, please check with your IT department if you have one. They may be planning upgrades and backups while you are away from your computer.

3. Turn off all peripheral accessories like monitors, speakers, docking stations, etc. This can be easy if you have a smart power strip.

4. Turn off other office machines; don't just put them in sleep mode. Copiers, printers, scanners, projectors, and maybe even your fax machine. Look for those machines around your office that have a little green light glowing on them. If you can, shut them down or unplug them. Unplug TVs, VCRs, and DVD players. Unplug chargers for computers, cell phones, iPods, and other chargeable devices. Shut off as many power strips as you can.

According to Green Home Huddle "Your cell phone charger, iPod charger, laptop charger, etc. keep drawing electricity even if your phone/iPod/laptop/etc isn't charging. So if your phone says "charge complete" (or worse, isn't even attached), pull out the charger."

In addition to your technology, look for these other resource-wasters:

Holiday LED lights use a fraction of the energy than conventional incandescent holiday lights. To be exact, LED lights are 44 times more energy efficient and inexpensive to run. They're lower-cost to buy than ever before and some stores will even offer a discount on purchasing new LEDs if you bring in your old, inefficient lights to recycle.

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