Tomorrow I will be presenting my paper “The New School, CARE & Ajkem’a Loy’a: A case study in learning in intensive and immersive global programs and in cross-cultural and bilingual collaborative work” at the GLIDE ‘08 (Global Interaction in Design Education) conference.  However, I will not travel further than my desk and I will not see any faces other than their bio headshots on a wiki.

I will have actively participated in an academic conference, delivering a 30-minute presentation about my paper that was double peer-reviewed, and all of this, without increasing my carbon footprint.  That is precisely the premise of GLIDE ‘08 – how can we create more sustainable academic exchanges?

This conference won’t have such advanced technologies as others propose but I am certainly looking forward to the experiment.  All participants logged into an Adobe Connect conferenc room and phoned into a conference call, with all watching PowerPoint slides change as the presenter delivers the paper.

The biggest loss – the chance encounters that happen at the coffee and cookie table during the break!