+ Mary-Lou Jepsen at the Greener Gadgets Conference 2008

We attended the Greener Gadgets conference back in February of this year and one of the most important speakers was Mary-Lou Jepsen, the project leader for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. The OLPC program is committed to bringing education about and through technology to the poorest children in the world by creating the XO laptop, the world's greenest laptop. It's revolutionary. Operating at 2 watts (1W idle), it is half the size and weight of a conventional laptop, the battery lasts 4X longer than regular batteries and breaks down into fertilizer, plus many, many more 'green' qualifiers, including it's color.

The conference itself brought industry, designers, and media together to focus on how gadgets can become greener, and Mary-Lou had some of the best advice. This six minute video of her speech was made by Inhabitat.com (conference sponsor) and the full speech can be seen here.

Although classes on sustainability in design are available, the green movement is ever evolving. With each project we learn something new about how things can be made better & 'greener', these conferences and lectures are vital to continuing education in the field.