At last week’s PMI North America Congress, we were lucky enough to be at sponsor DeVry (Keller) University’s booth signing our new book and getting to chat with many project managers about Green Project Management.  Between that experience, getting to meet many of the really outstanding contributors – you know who you are – with whom we had only previously communicated electronically, and having President Bill Clinton not only address us as Project Managers, but to specifically challenge PMs to take on climate change, it was a fantastic week.

In conversations during the book signing, many of you reflected on situations in which you work in IT and so, you say, have “no effect” on the environment.  Also many of you said that there was nothing besides ‘altruistic’ reasons for trying to change your projects and your companies to do more to work towards sustainability.

We beg to differ.  On both counts.

And lo, upon our return, we were greeted with a great feature in Thursday’s Boston Globe business section called, “Taking a Different Measure”, a story about Akamai Technologies’ command center.  In the article is a great quote from Akamai’s chief executive, Paul Sagan, when asked:

“I’d say half of my rationale was altruistic, but I was also thinking that the day was going to come when our customers were going to expect us to report our carbon footprint, and their carbon footprint, on our network.’’

That’s funny because we responded to some of you with a very similar answer.  We said that half our rationale to create this site and write the book was altruistic, but we also know that this is an area that needs and deserves attention and we want to be there to (successfully) serve the needs of this market.  That’s precisely – almost to the word – what Paul Sagan is saying.  And the irony is that he really knows serving – after all, Akamai operates about 70,000 servers.  Their servers handle peak internet traffic for big name companies – such as Best Buy and ESPN.

The article features a description of how Akamai now includes carbon emissions as a core part of how they measure their performance.  And they are actively reporting to the Carbon Disclosure Project – which maintains corporate climate change information.

We suggest you read the article, and think again about how you can serve this cause – even if only for 50% altruistic reasons.  That’s the reason our book has a tree on the cover – a tree sprouting money.  As we assert – it’s the right thing to do, and it will help you do things right.