By David Garrels 

Ok, this entry won't have very much to do with Green Storage.  But I had the opportunity to attend the SIBOS tradeshow in Vienna a ~week ago and thought I'd share some observations about the show and about "green" in general (SIBOS is a Banking show focused on Payment system & tools and HP was there talking about our products & services in that space).

First the show: it was good to be at a very industry-specific event that drilled down on the real pain points of that industry.  A lot different than a technology show where it's all about feeds, speeds, and features.  We had great conversations with customers about how we can help them with the storage infrastructure supporing their payments systems.  The interesting thing, however, was the timing - it was the first of the announcements we've seen in the last week about the banking/credit "crisis" and there were lots of distractions for the conference attendees.  Certainly that was the talk of the week and we heard that many of the attendees ended up leaving early.

A few thoughts on Green:  At the end of the day, I'm disappointed that not much has changed to make travel & conferences more Green.  The airline I was on didn't separate items (plastic cups, etc) to recycle.  The convention center had minimal recycling opportunities.  Vendors and publications still print lots of handouts (HP had only a few copies of a 4-page brochure, the rest was all available online or via cd).  Still too many cars, taxis, and buses driving around (although great subway/trains in Vienna that make it easy to get around).  The hotel did the standard "we won't wash your towels every night", but not much beyond that - no recycling bin in the room for water bottles, etc.  I'm sure there are conventions that do more, but I think in general we have a long way to go.