Couldn’t attend Green IO Munich?… Fiona got it covered for you

Though it wasn't intentional to host Green IO Munich during a sweltering heat wave, it was a constant reminder for all that what working on sustainability is critical for survival. On Day 1, participants braved the heat in a room with a broken AC to attend workshops on sustainable purchasing of IaaS and SaaS solutions, measuring the footprints of cloud (GreenPixie) and IT systems (ResilioDB), and convincing CIOs (Sopht & Accenture). The room was packed, standing room only for The Green Web Foundation's provocative workshop: "How not to destroy the planet with AI".

On Day 2 attendees were relieved to find the AC working for a packed agenda with a line-up of fantastic speakers.

Key Takeaways:

• Learning from ants: If we want to solve sustainability, we need to stop acting like solo problem-solvers and start moving like a swarm. (Claire Thornewill)
• Follow your values: "values drive sustainability, technology helps you implement it" (Steffen Müller)
• Green IT doesn't have to be a tradeoff: Mastercard is saving $28m cloud spend and 800 metric Tonnes of CO2 (GreenPixie)
• Tangibly there are two things that drive change: Money & Laws (Ines Akrap)
• Green IT is for everyone: no company runs without IT, no It runs without emissions (Laurie Servais)
• It is our responsibility: "Technology doesn't have a moral compass. But we do!" (Rainer Karcher)

Special mention: AI was the much discussed "elephant in the room", and there was great clarity and consensus. Since the AI boom we conflate Generative AI as all AI. It is Generative AI driving the explosion in data centers and energy consumption, but it is not Generative AI that will tackle climate issues. They were not physically in the room, but the work done by Hugging Face, Sasha Luccioni and Boris Gamazaychikov was much credited and talked about.