Since reduction of power consumption was one of my 12 Days of UC wishes in December, when my colleague Samantha Kane-Mackay started an Earth Hour 2008 group on Facebook, I personally glommed onto it. It sounds like a simple thing; turn off your lights for an hour. Sydney, Australia did it last year. On March 31st 2007 they turned off the lights in the city with the result of reducing their power by 10.2%, which is the equivalent of getting 48K cars off of the road for that hour. Started by the Australian branch of World Wildlife Fund, this year the effort is going global. As of this writing they had dozens of cities signed up, 376 companies, and thousands of individuals. March 29th, 2008 is the day, at 8 pm in your time zone. Go check out Earth Hour 2008 and sign up yourself and your company.
I’m going to do it, and encourage others too. Samantha has gone beyond that by getting several companies in the UC space to say that they will too. I’m going to also encourage companies to do so. As we get closer to the date and those promises solidify, I’ll let you know who they are. I’ll let you know what the results are too if they track them as Sydney did.
It sounds like a simple thing. It is a simple thing – powerful and simple.