COMMON, the IBM midrange (System i, iSeries and AS/400) user group
(www.common.org), which is very similar to SHARE, began a similar
exercise about 5 years ago. They started distributing hand-outs on CDs,
instead of paper copies, to reduce costs and "save a tree". Many people
complained loudly and often, and the COMMON board of directors ended up
backing away from this decision to go "paperless." And not all of the
speakers went along with the program at first. Some speakers still
insist on hardcopy only.
COMMON still provides downloadable hand-outs on their web site, but only
to members who attended that particular conference. And, they still
provide the option for speakers to bring in their own printed hand-outs.
COMMON no longer produces CDs. And speakers can still indicate if they
want hard-copy hand-outs or not, when they upload their handouts to the
web site prior to the conference. COMMON has greatly scaled back the
size and cost of the on-site "copy center" at each conference.
COMMON also provides a nice pad of paper and pencils and pens in each
attendee's bag, so that you can "take notes" for sessions that do not
have hand-outs.
I think the last time I attended COMMON, about half of the sessions had
paper hand-outs; the rest were "on-line."
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