Comments on: Carbon account, meet lifestreaming. Lifestreaming, meet carbon accounting!

By: Mira

Mira — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 06:51:59 +0000

Just do me a favor and keep writing such trncenhat analyses, OK?

By: Alison Erlenbach

Alison Erlenbach — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:53:21 +0000

Read my mind! I’ve been tracking carbon accounting since I decided to start a training program to teach it over a year ago. It is amazing how much more attention it’s gotten in the past few months, especially the software. This field has seriously blown up, and the people who make money are looking into it–this means its going to go mainstream any minute.

I just hope I can get my foot in the door before it’s too late…

By: janos csizmadia

janos csizmadia — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:54:58 +0000

Elfin Gardens is please to announce the launch of its crunch carbon footprint entreprise on the Fourteenth of February 2009 and we ask you to take part in our “love your partner, love your planet” day on the fourteenth of February 2009.

Janos

By: Lifestream Posts & Pages for July 8th 2008 | Lifestream Blog

Lifestream Posts & Pages for July 8th 2008 | Lifestream Blog — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:48:49 +0000

[...] Carbon account, meet lifestreaming. Lifestreaming, meet carbon accounting! at Greenmonk: the blog – Will carbon accounting software and its requirement for constant inputs from all levels of business bring lifestreaming applications into the Enterprise 2.0 fold? [...]

By: gblnetwkr

gblnetwkr — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:30:53 +0000

@asa BPMS stands for Business Process Management System which is a special kind of xml-driven server that is used to coordinate multiple activities. Business and technical analysts can sit down at screen and diagram how they want the processes to flow. It is often used as a way to orchestrate web services.

What is different about the Intalio offering is that it was designed from the beginning to operate in a world where there would be many servers working in a flat federation, not a hierarchy. A concern with federated computer to computer interactions is that they could potentially lock up in what is called a “fatal embrace”. AFAIK there is no other BPMS product on the market that can handle federated deployment.

The question is whether it is up to the kind of complexity that we have been discussing. I hope to explore this more next week in my talk at the Intalio User’s Group meeting in SF, http://intaliocon.com/sessions.php#newaspirationsforbpm

For more of an intro I would look at the Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Process_Management

Jose De La Cruz’s Intalio intro site: http://intalio4people.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/the-mortals-guide-to-initiation/

Since Intalio is open source, you can download and run the code

Sandy Kemsley’s blog: http://www.column2.com/

Ismael Ghalimi’s blog ( Intalio CEO ): http://itredux.com/

By: Asa

Asa — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:57:56 +0000

@gblnetwkr: OK, so you’re now over my head. Any recommendations for learning about what you mean by “BPMS”, “federated environment”, “fatal embrace”?

By: Carbon accounting meet lifestreaming II at Greenmonk: the blog

Carbon accounting meet lifestreaming II at Greenmonk: the blog — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:13:11 +0000

[...] About Greenmonk: a new advisory business « Carbon account, meet lifestreaming. Lifestreaming, meet carbon accounting! [...]

By: gblnetwkr

gblnetwkr — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:28:13 +0000

@asa Agreed that there are huge technology, process and ontology issues involved. Having Walmart ask for it would be a great forcing function.

Due to the complexities you correctly mention, I am starting to think that what may be needed is to embed a BPMS inside of the existing supply chain software. What we really to have is a very federated environment, where all the players have to be able to negotiate with each other without fatal embrace. In principle, this is exactly what Intalio’s open source BPMS was designed to do. As far as I know, Intalio’s BPMS is the only one that can actually support federated deployment.

BPMS in general suffered in the early years by being used for things for which other alternatives, such as work flow, could be used. IMHO federated negotiation among supply chain parters is a worthy goal for BPMS to aspire to.

By: Asa

Asa — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:05:49 +0000

@gblnetwkr Even “place of origin” is complicated — ore is mined in one place, shipped across an ocean to be refined into a part, which is then shipped by truck to someplace else, integrated into a larger assembly, which is then shipped to a final assembly plant to make a final part — “made in USA” — and then delivered to a consumer. Tracing this whole supply chain, by part number (identical parts may be sourced differently), will be a HUGE problem. And of course, no-one wants to share their supply chain with their competitors…. So, we need a real change in mindset up and down the chain. We can maybe drive from the consumer level if we reward companies going the right way (eg Timberland), but we need to make changes at the top of the corporate pyramid, too. If Walmart adopted AMEE (and forced it down their supply chain, like they are wont to do), what a day that would be!

By: gblnetwkr

gblnetwkr — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:52:49 +0000

@asa I strongly agree that Web 2.0 mashups can be very helpful in pulling together all the bits of the supply chain that contribute to total footprint. Adobe has done an excellent internal mashup of 30,000 sensors that is rendered in a 3-D model of the their 3 Platinum LEED buildings in San Jose.

I would like very much to see AMEE be the global repository. We probably also need a label, like the carefully designed nutrition labels in the US to show what the total input to a product is. See http://z.about.com/d/pediatrics/1/0/K/2/nutrition_label.jpg for one example.

When I spoke to PC vendors about this they all said that they were looking into it, but that it was a hard problem. Among other things, place of origin has a lot to do with the actual carbon footprint, not just type of thing you are making. There is some evidence from a Carnegie Mellon 2007 report saying that a desktop made in China could have 3x the emissions of one made elsewhere and that US totals would rise by 20% if we included the bit that comes from making what we buy from China

And I agree that we need to include services, not just discrete products. What we are talking about is creating a culture and awareness of measurement — that you would not buy or use anything unless you understood its carbon impact.