Add environmental guidelines for planning GNOME events
I’ve not been able to find an up-to-date checklist for planning a GNOME event, so apologies if this suggestion is already implemented somewhere!
GNOME’s events (particularly conferences where a lot of travel is involved) are a significant part of the project’s overall emissions, so if we can make a few tweaks when organising events, that could help reduce their impact and reduce our contribution to climate change.
I’m focusing these suggestions on things which can (hopefully) be implemented unilaterally by the engagement team, without requiring input from the board. Wildly larger changes, such as hosting fewer international conferences or splitting them up into per-continent hubs, or anything like that, require a bigger discussion across the project, and I’m not suggesting them here.
Some of these suggestions come directly from the post-GUADEC 2022 survey responses, so are potentially addressing things which have been missed in previous events.
Suggestions (in no particular order):
- How is your event going to support remote participation, to give people the opportunity to attend without travelling?
- This could be via video conferencing, satellite events, or some other arrangement.
- Have you quantified your event’s environmental impact, if possible?
- This can help you identify excess costs or emissions, and helps GNOME track its emissions as a whole.
- Prominently document low-carbon transport options for attending the event, and encourage people to choose those options over higher-carbon ones where possible.
- Prominently document public transport options for during the event (for example for getting between accommodation and the venue).
- Locate your event somewhere with good public transport links, to allow people to attend using public transport.
- Locate your event in a building/institution which has a low environmental impact (such as being renewably powered).
- Provide more than one options for vegetarian or vegan food at all event catering, and make it clear how attendees with other dietary requirements can be catered for.
- Plan to eliminate single-use items during the event (such as badge holders, disposable dishes/cutlery/coffee cups, paper schedules, etc.)
- Many people have badge holders already; remind them to bring their old one(s) for reuse.
- Do not give out swag unless people have ordered it.
- Most people already have a good supply of quality t-shirts/pens/coffee cups/etc. and your swag is a waste of resources. Some people want swag, and that can be catered for if ordered in advance.
- If you feel you have to provide something to make an event registration fee ‘feel’ worthwhile, consider providing something with a positive or net-zero environmental impact.
- Provide a post-event survey which collects information about: whether event participants travelled to the event or attended remotely; country they travelled from; what mode of transport they used; how long the journey took; whether they combined the trip with another trip such as a holiday or other work engagement. For example, see the post-GUADEC surveys.
- This allows the event’s environmental impact for travel to be estimated.
- Collect data on how many people registered/attended the event, in-person and remote.
- This allows the event’s environmental impact for travel to be estimated.
- Further suggestions welcome!
It would be good to also remind event organisers that in general the three biggest contributors to emissions from an event are (biggest first):
- Transport
- Building heating/cooling
- Food
So if they have limited capabilities for considering the environment when planning their event, their efforts should be focused on those things, in that order.