It’s hard to express the excitement that some of us felt, heading into our first global summit. Sharing the vision of changing the culture of how software is built to make sustainability a core priority, members in 14 different countries embarked on the 12-day journey. In a mix of in-person and live meetings, technology enthusiasts around the globe engaged in a series of free events organized by the GSF.
One of our main objectives was opening the doors to networking and broad collaboration across the continents. We held various regional events, in-person, hybrid and virtual, culminating in the global closing ceremonies. It was amazing to see how so many like-minded individuals converged to talk about green software in an interactive and energizing setting. The Summit was about exchanging ideas, hearing contrasting opinions and different perspectives, and about finding common ground in the fight against climate change.
Read more about the GSF principles of Energy efficiency, Hardware efficiency
and Carbon aware computing:
https://greensoftware.foundation/articles/what-is-green-software
What we talked about and what we learned
The sessions guided our audience from the basics of what green software is and why we need to care about green software to clear actionable items, which can be directly applied to their software to kickstart their green software journey. We discussed the green future that each company is trying to work toward, and how we can collectively create a trusted ecosystem to grow better and faster. The shared GSF software engineering principles and green design principles will play an instrumental role on that path.
It feels like there was a consensus that the opportunity to make an impact is huge right now and, there was a sense of empowerment to come up with creative ways to reduce carbon in software. Especially with the ongoing ESG discussion and efforts that practically all major companies are involved in. We are forced to consider how to minimize carbon emissions in every decision within the organization. Measuring and reporting carbon emissions is quickly becoming mainstream.
Other interesting ideas that were discussed, included the shortening of travel distances for data and moving server workloads to locations with low carbon energy supply. Or as co-host Anne Currie of Container Solutions puts it: “We need to be thinking about the wins that require us to write less code and make our systems more resilient”.
Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) as key starting point
The audience had a chance to dive into the depths of measuring and mapping carbon intensity as well as defining actions to reduce the carbon footprint in software. SCI is one of the most exciting projects the GSF is working on at the moment. Measuring the carbon impacts of software is the
all-essential first step to any progress in greening software. We are on track to establish not only the yardstick to measure software carbon emissions on a reliable basis, but also giving developers an actionable tool to reduce carbon emissions.
Having created a structure and a defined methodology for calculating the rate of carbon emissions for a software system means broad adoption is now possible. It was great to see how the SCI approach resonated with the audience. As a next step, we will conduct workshops with member organizations to focus on case studies in the upcoming months.
Read more about SCI - https://greensoftware.foundation/articles/the-green-
software-foundation-releases-alpha-version-of-software-carbon-intensity
Big THANK YOU!
It is with great appreciation that we thank our hosts for their commitment to the Summit for one and to GSF in general. Without you the Summit is unthinkable.
Accenture, Avanade, BCG, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, NTT Data, Shell, Thoughtworks
Recordings
If you have missed any of the events, session recordings can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj0m2KL1yQzcCbmSj7AaAoA
We invite you to stay involved and continue learning! We are building a trusted ecosystem of people, standards, tooling, and best practices for green software – and that includes you! New events will be accessible through our Meetup page.
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