Earth Day reminds us to do whatever we can to help save our environment because its resources are limited and fragile. And one of the things we now understand is reducing our “carbon footprint”. This means to reduce our emissions and use of resources and one of the easiest ways to do this is to reduce our travel whether it is by car, train or plane. There is no easier way to reduce your business travel then to replace your in person meetings with a conference call or a web conference.
In person meetings are great. You get to shake hands, look people in the eye and connect with others the way you can’t when you are on a remote meeting. But every meeting doesn’t need to be in person. If you know the people you are meeting with and have met before you don’t really need to meet in person every time. And by doing some of your meetings by way of conference calls and web conferencing you can hold just as effective a meeting as if you were in person without the travel expense and do your part to reduce your carbon footprint. Holding a conference call or web conference has never been easier. Services are widely available, affordable and very easy to use. At this point just about everyone has been on a conference call that utilizes a toll free number and a pass code. You simply dial the access number and put in your code and you are connected to the other people that did the same. You can meet with hundreds of people at once if you like and you can meet any time you like. A web conference is just as easy and allows you to share your desktop or do a presentation from your PC as easily as if the people were in the same room. You can even use a camera and send participants your own video feed if you really want to add that in person feeling. And while you are being a good steward of the Earth you also will be saving a good amount of money and time using conference call services as an alternative.
If only a fraction of meetings today were replaced with conference calls and web conferencing we would save millions of tons of carbon emissions. And lets face it, there are a lot of meetings that are not worth the gas to get there.
And using a conference call instead of driving to an appointment is many times just a matter of thinking to do it. So on Earth Day it gives us one more reason to think to do a conference call benefiting everyone concerned, even the Earth.