What is the Green Project?

Project Scope
The Midwest Lotus User Group Conference 2009 brings together the Lotus community throughout the Midwest region of the United States and provides a forum for collaboration and the exchange of knowledge. As part of the conference through the Green Project, a design team will design and build a signage fixture for the conference that embodies the vision of the conference while taking into account the effects that the design process and final product would impact our environment.

The designers will create three different designs for consideration by the evaluation team. The designers will create 3D Solidworks models of each design for the evaluation process. The selected design will be built and displayed at the conference.

Project Criteria
The signage fixture needs to be portable and fix in a box that is no bigger than 1' x 1' x 4' so that it can be carried on the Metra train and not break while going to the IBM Center in Chicago and can be carried by a single person. It needs to fit through the security scanners at the IBM Center and be easy to assemble. The fixture needs to stand approximately six feet tall when assembled and occupy a footprint of no bigger that 2.5’ x 2.5’. The materials used to create the signage needs to be made from renewable and recyclable materials.

Project Goal
The team will evaluate different materials that may be used to create the signage fixture. In evaluating the different materials they will consider a number of criterions including how much energy was used to create the material, whether the material is recyclable, whether the material is created from renewable resources, and whether the material can be sourced locally in order to minimize the carbon emissions resulting from the shipping process.

In developing the design, one of the major goals of the Green Project is to track how much carbon output is saved by using online collaboration tools. The team will use established carbon emission guidelines to track how much carbon would be emitted if they met in person either taking public transportation or personal vehicles versus performing the same task using Lotus Quickr and other online collaboration tools.

From the Green Project site, visitors will be able to follow the designers as they develop the design and see how much carbon emissions is being saved by using online collaboration tools. The blog will include the development time line and video blogs of their progress.

Richard
Phora Group