For the 50th episode of The Product Experience, we’re proud to have Chris Adams join us to talk about making your products more sustainable. One of the rare people who’s seen our world from all sides – Chris has been a developer, designer, researcher and product manager – he came on the show to share practical and implementable advice on how to move from intentions to actions.
If you take nothing else from this episode, we urge you to keep this The Ten Ton rule in mind: if you’re making a purchasing decision of more than $30,000 (Dollars, Euros, or Pounds), it’ll have an impact of 10 or more tons of Carbon – so you need to include sustainability as part of the decision criteria. Even if your firm ultimately doesn’t go for the greenest option, asking the question has a real effect on how vendors prioritise their own practices and development.
Quote of the Episode
I talk about carbon more than sustainability because carbon, in my view, makes it actionable – and helps us resist the temptation of what’s available [in favour] for what’s effective.
Listen if you’d like to learn more about
- Sustainability and how to put it into practice
- Influencing your vendors
- Tools for measuring your carbon impact
Links mentioned in this episode
- Follow Chris on Twitter, at Greening Digital, ClimateAction.tech, The Green Web Foundation, Team ReasearchOps, and LinkedIn
- Chris and Dr Sal Freudenberg gave a great talk on Tech, Climate and Mapping at MapCamp 2019. For an introduction on how to use the Wardley Mapping approach to illustrate the landscape and initiate change, check out their presentation.
- How to educate yourself – follow all of the Emilys, specifically:
- Emily Labram of the UK’s Government Digital Service
- Emily Cunningham
- Emily Atkin (featured on the What Next podcast on 15 Jan 2020)
- Emily Tulloh – and the overview on Workshop on Service design in a climate emergency – What do digital services in a world of net-zero look like?
- And some honorary Emilys:
- Maddie Stone
- The Beam Magazine and podcast
- How to understand your product or company’s carbon footprint:
- Learn more:
- The Greenhouse Gas Protocol
- ICTfootprint.eu, the European platform promoting the adoption of carbon footprint methodologies in the ICT sector. The goal is to support organisations in becoming more energy-efficient and reducing their carbon footprint, ultimately increasing their competitiveness.
- Sign the AWS open letter
- Examples of good corporate sustainability initiatives from Stripe and Google.
Hosts
The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.
Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. Now the Product Director at Symec, Lily also runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media and entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. Now a trainer, Discovery and Leadership consultant, he’s spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg and Manchester), the Business of Software, Turing Festival, a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford, and Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.
Music
Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. Listen to more on their Facebook page
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