Who's the coolest IT industry leader? Step right up and place your bets!

Posted by: mikeg | 27 May 09 | 5 comments | Permalink

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Today we launched the “Cool IT Challenge”, a campaign to turn IT industry head honchos like Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Intel’s Paul Otellini, and Michael Dell into advocates for strong global warming policies and providers of effective global warming solutions. (The video at the bottom of this post does a good job of explaining the campaign.) There are two main reasons why this campaign is so cool:

A peak in global emissions by 2015 followed by a rapid decline to as close to zero emissions as possible by 2050 is crucial to protecting the climate, and the IT industry has claimed to have the potential to cut 15 percent of total emissions via tech solutions like a smart grid. Many tech leaders have already established initiatives to green their own companies, but if they then turn around and help society as a whole implement solutions to get more energy efficient while still using all the fancy new technologies we’ve come to rely on (and some new ones we haven’t even heard of yet, hopefully!), who knows how big of a contribution the IT inudustry could make to stopping global warming.
This campaign was just made for the web. Check out the website, it’s got lots of cool features to play with. For example, you can place bets on which IT industry leader will be leading the pack at the end of the summer when we re-evaluate them all. And more games are coming soon! Plus there’s plenty of ways to invite your friends to play with you (yeah multiplayer action!), dig into our assesment scores for each industry leader (currently in first: IBM’s Samuel Palmisano, with a paltry 29 out of 100 — come on IT big wigs, you can do better!), email these IT leaders and urge them to be climate leaders, and, if you’re a blogger, get your blog added to our featured links list by linking to our page with the most creative content!

We’ve ranked the IT leaders that are part of the challenge based on five criteria: Public Climate Speech; Political Advocacy; Climate Solutions; Own Emissions Targets; and Renewable Energy Use. Check out the site now, find out how the IT leaders are measuring up, and place your bets!

Comments:

leahnelson23 [Visitor] on May 27, 2009 at 22:43

Thanks so much for the post!

Michael Brown [Visitor] on May 28, 2009 at 22:59

I have deep respect with movements trying to utilize alternative sources of energy/fuel. We only have one earth and all measures, big and small, are relevant if we want to still reside in this ever depleting planet.

kv1009 [Visitor] on May 29, 2009 at 07:38

Hai! Thank you very much for your article. Please do you explain deeply about the article. Ka --

Seducinguy [Visitor] on May 30, 2009 at 04:32

As a fellow IBMer, I would greatly put my bet on sam palmisano as the best IT leader in the Millenium who not only led IBM to growth & prosperity but was able to give great importance to stake holders after being in IBM for 30 years.

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