Masterclass on Solving Climate Change with IT Service Management

I will be talking on "Solving Climate Change with IT Service Management", at the IT Service Management and IT Architecture Special Interest Groups in Adelaide on 21 April 2009. Therefore I need to adapt the usual talk I give on Green ICT to emphasise Service Management and IT Architecture. In addition the COMP2410 students at ANU asked for more help on how to write a report on an ICT issue. I therefore offered my draft for the Green ITSM talk for a masterclass. The idea is that my fellow lecturers will critique my work with the class watching. They can then get more of an idea of how writing happens. Also they will see that everyone makes the same mistakes and has to go through the sames process.

The topic:

Like the students I have a set essay topic for my rpesentation:

"Solving Climate Change with IT Service Management"

Green ICT is the study and practice of using computers and telecommunications in a way which maximises positive environmental benefit and minimise the negative impact. A common misconception is that Green ICT is for engineers and environmentalists, but this is a management issue where IT Service Management specialists can apply their skills to contribute to the business as well as the environment.

Green ICT seeks to inform accepted management practises to achieve efficient and effective business interaction. The same skills which IT professionals apply to management of projects can be used to estimate, report and reduce carbon emissions, helping organisation to meet the new requirements imposed by governments.

The Australian Computer Society has produced the world's first online postgraduate course in Green ICT, specifically designed for IT professionals. The course is modelled on the ACS's IT Service Management course and designed to align with the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA). The course content is available free online.

This is for a one hour presentation. Normally I would prepare the equivalent of eight A4 pages of notes for a one hour talk. This is also about the average lenght for an paper in an ICT journal, such as JRPIT. The notes for a talk need not be as formally structured as a journal paper, it should still be defensible and readable.

Unlike the students I have some existing material to work from, rather than starting from scratch. But the students have been given a carefully structured description of the problem and suggested readings, whereas I have to make all that up myself.

As with any written work, the starting point is to decide what it is you are trying to say and who you are saying it to. With an academic paper, the audience is reasonably clear: it is the person marking the assignment, or the reviewers of the paper and ultimately your peers. n the case of this seminar, the audience is ICT professionals with a background in the specialist areas of IT Service Management and IT Architecture.

The aim of the presentation therefore is to tell the audience about Green ICT (which they are assumed not to know much about) and relate it to IT Service Management (which they know about but I don't). I therefore need to learn a little about ITSM and see if anyone has previously related it to Green ICT.

If this was a full paper I would do a literature search. But that is not needed for a talk. The structure of the Green ICT course I will be discussing was based on the IT Service Management.