ACM / IEEE Computer Society: "Website Design: Addressing Climate Change"

PRINCETON ACM / IEEE-COMPUTER SOCIETY CHAPTERS
NOVEMBER 2024 JOINT MEETING

"Sustainable Website Design: Construction and Presentation Methods to Address Climate Change" - Michael Blank

With climate change already here and its effects all around us, it's urgent to continue efforts across all industries to reduce CO2 emissions. But what about the information technology sector?

The World-Wide Web we depend on enriches our lives in many areas: education, commerce, government, news, communication, and more. However, the infrastructure that enables it uses a lot of electricity - not all of which is generated from renewable resources (hence its CO2 generation).

Combining the fields of computers and the environment, a relatively new Website construction method called "Sustainable Web Design" is gaining awareness. This software-based approach reduces non-renewable energy to lower CO2 emissions so the people of today and tomorrow can benefit from everything that the Web offers.

How a Website is constructed and presents its information has real-world effects! A Website can be built to serve smaller files, use less resources, and require less processing power - all of these help reduce non-renewable energy use and associated CO2 emissions. Sustainable Web Design also has side-benefits: a faster Website, better mobile device battery life, higher-placed mobile Google search results, and better accessibility.

This presentation will introduce how to determine a Website's sustainability, identify elements which can slow down a Web page, describe basic sustainable Web design strategies and techniques, offer easy to take actions and examples, present the perspective and advice of a Website Designer/Webmaster who remade his organization's Website to be sustainable, and list additional resources to follow the latest developments.

Michael Blank has been involved in the World-Wide Web since it was still relatively new and finding its way. He has been Webmaster of the Princeton Macintosh Users' Group since 1995, and a member since 1989. Michael also manages the group's Mastodon and Instagram accounts. His day job is that of a Website Designer (and HTML & CSS Developer, Graphics Designer, and more) for the Princeton Internet Group, where he makes/manages its customers' Websites. Prior to that he worked at the Asbury Park Press's IN Jersey Website design group (beginning in 1996, a few years after the Mosaic Web browser was released), and at the paper's Online News department as part of IN Jersey.

Date: Thursday November 21, 2024, 8:00 PM EDT
(Note: Refreshments and networking start early - 7:30 PM.)

Place: HYBRID MEETING (both in-person and online)
In Person: Princeton University Computer Science Building
Small Auditorium, Room CS 105
35 Olden Street, Princeton NJ

How to register for the online meeting:
Send email to PrincetonACM {AT} gmail {DOT} com
OR Register on Meetup.com (https://4142298.xyz/ieee-princeton-central-jersey-section)
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/87381698647?pwd=apBWCmnCVx3jfHsUKJWHc9JlaRzbj7.1

On-line meeting notice:
https://PrincetonACM.acm.org/meetings/mtg2411.pdf

Princeton ACM / IEEE Computer Society meetings for the 2024-25 season will be "hybrid." You have a choice: attend the talk in-person, or view the meeting online from home. To join the online, you must register in advance, and you will receive an email with instructions for how to connect to the talk.

A pre-meeting dinner is held at 5:45 p.m. at Applebee's (3330 US 1, Lawrenceville, near Quakerbridge Mall). Please send email to PrincetonACM {AT} gmail {DOT} com in advance if you plan to attend the dinner.

All Princeton ACM / IEEE Computer Society meetings are open to the public. Students and their parents are welcome. There is no admission charge, and refreshments are served.

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Future Princeton ACM/ IEEE Computer Society Meetings
Thursday Dec. 5 - AI in Education: "How are you feeling? Improving Social Emotional Learning and Mathematics through AI-enabled Tutoring," Bev Woolf, Univ. of Massachusetts
Thursday Jan. 16, 2025 - TBA
Thursday Feb. 20 - Computer Music, Andrea Salgian, The College of New Jersey
Saturday Mar. 15 - ISEC 2025 (Integrated STEM Education Conference): see https://ewh.ieee.org/conf/stem/ for full information
Thursday Mar. 20 - TBA
Saturday Mar. 29 - Trenton Computer Festival - TCF 2025 (at College of New Jersey): see https://www.tcf-nj.org for full information
Thursday Apr. 17 - TBA
Tuesday May 6 - TBA
Thursday Jun. 12 - Annual Elections and Planning Meeting