Transparency waste
We are forced to take back-up transparencies to conferences because the organizers do not guarantee that the laptop-projector combo will work. This generates a tremendous amount of waste and hurts the environment.
"I'm not willing to take the risk of not being able to deliver the talk because it's too important to me", you say. But consider the analogy to gasoline waste:
Think about the amount of gas used and pollution created when someone commutes to work. Of course, each day's attendance at work is worth much more than the amount you pay for gas. But, taken together, everybody together generates a huge amount of waste.
Why don't people like to use car pools to go to work? People rationalize it by saying that in case they need to leave at a different time from work, they can. So, instead of 10 people in one van, each of the 10 brings a car and spends on gas, parking etc. But almost everybody arrives and leaves at exactly the same time almost everyday. So, by not making that small sacrifice, everybody is spending a lot for a backup option they probably will never use.
The story with transparencies is analogous. Consider a midsize conference with about 500 attendees. Say 450 use electronic slides and have 15 slides each. If nobody's talk fails, then 6750 transparencies are just waste, not to mention the ink and time spent on printing them. That's a small mountain of plastic waste. OK, we've all been in a situation where the speaker couldn't start the talk on time because something failed. But what happened? Did they pull outtransparencies? No, they somehow fixed the problem, spent some time on that (even though they had the plastic slides) and just gave a shorter talk. So, even there it was a waste.
It's ridiculous that conferences always put out disclaimers regarding LCD projectors ("we advise you to bring backup transparencies") or do not provide them at all. This is hardly new technology anymore. There are workarounds if an organizer doesn't want to provide a support technician for the conference. One way would be for all speakers in a session to load their talks into a single laptop before the session starts. This laptop should have been tested for compatibility and all that. I saw this being done at a small conference recently and it worked!
I have made it a point of principle not to take backup transparencies with me. I went to my last 4 conferences like that and survived. If the computer doesn't work - no talk!
"I'm not willing to take the risk of not being able to deliver the talk because it's too important to me", you say. But consider the analogy to gasoline waste:
Think about the amount of gas used and pollution created when someone commutes to work. Of course, each day's attendance at work is worth much more than the amount you pay for gas. But, taken together, everybody together generates a huge amount of waste.
Why don't people like to use car pools to go to work? People rationalize it by saying that in case they need to leave at a different time from work, they can. So, instead of 10 people in one van, each of the 10 brings a car and spends on gas, parking etc. But almost everybody arrives and leaves at exactly the same time almost everyday. So, by not making that small sacrifice, everybody is spending a lot for a backup option they probably will never use.
The story with transparencies is analogous. Consider a midsize conference with about 500 attendees. Say 450 use electronic slides and have 15 slides each. If nobody's talk fails, then 6750 transparencies are just waste, not to mention the ink and time spent on printing them. That's a small mountain of plastic waste. OK, we've all been in a situation where the speaker couldn't start the talk on time because something failed. But what happened? Did they pull outtransparencies? No, they somehow fixed the problem, spent some time on that (even though they had the plastic slides) and just gave a shorter talk. So, even there it was a waste.
It's ridiculous that conferences always put out disclaimers regarding LCD projectors ("we advise you to bring backup transparencies") or do not provide them at all. This is hardly new technology anymore. There are workarounds if an organizer doesn't want to provide a support technician for the conference. One way would be for all speakers in a session to load their talks into a single laptop before the session starts. This laptop should have been tested for compatibility and all that. I saw this being done at a small conference recently and it worked!
I have made it a point of principle not to take backup transparencies with me. I went to my last 4 conferences like that and survived. If the computer doesn't work - no talk!
posted by Kurma at 6/01/2005 09:51:00 PM
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