Citation
(1999), "Video-conference delegates save the equivalent of five return trips to the moon", Work Study, Vol. 48 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.1999.07948aaf.005
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 1999, MCB UP Limited
Video-conference delegates save the equivalent of five return trips to the moon
Video-conference delegates save the equivalent of five return trips to the moon
The world's first ever full-scale video-conference with a fee paying audience dramatically reduced costs to both the planet and the pockets of delegates when it took place last September.
The conference, which tackled the issues of climate change and corporate social responsibility (CSR), was broadcast around the world to 28 different sites ensuring attendees avoided the airfares, the time-sapping journeys and, importantly, the millions of MJ of energy that would have been consumed by over 600 international flights.
The event called the Tomorrow Exchange Interactive Conference was hosted by BT and the international business and environmental publication, Tomorrow who staged the event, in part, to provide a live example of a viable and environmentally sound alternative to traditional conferencing.
According to the organisers, the 950 delegates would have travelled 4.5 million km (2.8 million miles) to attend the event personally in London the equivalent of more than five return trips to the moon. Collectively they would have spent £435,000 on air and rail fares and lost well over 4,900 hours in wasted travel time. If that journey-time is valued at £40 per hour, the total travel bill rises to in excess of £630,000.
Had all the attendees travelled to London then significant costs to the environment would also have been incurred. Calculations reveal the transportation of the delegates to the event would have consumed 11,000,000 MJ of energy itself sufficient to run BT's entire telecommunications network, and to provide heat, light and power to all its buildings for the duration of the event.
By comparison, for the same three hours of the Tomorrow Exchange Conference, the primary energy required to power the ISDN2 videoconference and audioconference calls was about 2,600 MJ over 4,000 times more energy efficient.
The financial costs are similarly reduced to just $4,000 per site and $1,500 for each subsequent site producing a total cost of just $95,000 (£56,880).
The conference drew high-profile panellists including the environmentalist, and program director at Forum for the Future, Jonathan Porritt and chairman of the committee of managing directors at Shell, Mark Moody-Stuart.
Tomorrow Publishing's managing director Astrid von Schmeling said: "Globalisation is going to demand ever greater interplay between regions of the world yet air travel is already responsible for 5 or 6 per cent of annual greenhouse gas increases. Solutions like this must play a role in the future of conferencing if it is ever to become sustainable."
Conference attendees from satellite sites around the world were invited to pose questions to panellists located at London's BT Tower while cameras at each site delivered live images of speaking delegates to the entire audience.
Attendees spanned corporates, students and government representatives.
The interactive conference addressed the two most burning environmental issues for business last year: climate change and corporate social responsibility. The climate change panel were asked what real changes will happen when emissions restrictions bite and if there is any way of turning the situation to a company's advantage. The corporate social responsibility panel were asked whether CSR is window dressing or whether it is necessary for company survival.
Jan Walsh, BT's head of global corporate social responsibility said: "It's fitting that this major conference, tackling issues at the heart of corporate responsibilities, itself pioneered the first commercial use of sustainable video-conferencing. We hope it has provided a powerful example for other future events to emulate."