IDEA Conference

The IDEA Conference is a yearly conference about Information: Design, Experience and Access that is sponsored by the Information Architecture Institute. I’m looking forward to seeing David Armano (Critical Mass), Chris Crawford, Bill DeRouchey, Dave Gray, Andrew Hinton and Edwina von Gal.

CanUX

This Canadian UX conference is a great opportunity to meet other UX peers, hear some interesting speakers and maybe even learn some new approaches.

From Jess McMullin:

CanUX, the Canadian User Experience Workshop, runs November 16-18 in Banff, AB. This year we’ve got a great lineup of hands-on sessions with folks like Dave Gray (Xplane), Luke Wroblewski (Yahoo!) and Brandon Schauer (Adaptive Path). We’ve also got sessions from the Banff Executive Leadership program, a better method for designing with developers from Vancouver’s own Jerome Ryckborst, and how-to on nForm’s award-winning Swimlanes deliverable with more speakers to be announced soon. We’re also bringing back the Design Slam and our Show and Tell reception where you can show off your work and learn from others.

All of this for $899+GST, an all-inclusive price that covers two nights of accommodations and meals on site. That’s less than many other events charge in fees alone. To make the deal that much sweeter for you, our west coast friends, the discount code ‘vanue’ saves $50 so you pay only $849+tax.

On top of a great program, we’re also tossing in a copy of nForm and Adaptive Path’s latest books: Tagging, and Subject to Change, along with our regular sponsor prize giveaways.

We keep attendance capped at 70 so that participants get to spend plenty of time with speakers and each other in a casual setting. Last year we sold out, so register soon to confirm your seat.

Details and registration are at http://canux.nform.ca

Drink Outside the Box

A standard wine bottle holds 750 milliliters of wine and generates about 5.2 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions when it travels from a vineyard in California to a store in New York. A 3-liter box generates about half the emissions per 750 milliliters. Switching to wine in a box for the 97 percent of wines that are made to be consumed within a year would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about two million tons, or the equivalent of retiring 400,000 cars.

Source: The New York Times

Junk Mail’s Impact on Global Warming

…the logging, production, printing, inking, distribution, and landfill emissions of direct mail produce fossil fuel emissions surpassing the total emissions of more than 9 million cars, or put another way, the combined emissions of 7 US states.

Source: Report: Junk Mail’s Impact on Global Warming (there’s also a great interview with the author on Kevin Hillstrom’s blog

Clearly we all have a part to play in reducing our environmental footprint. What’s your company doing?