LIGHT SIDE OF THE ARK
Kathryn Edwards

Computerworld Australia
01 October, 2009 01:00

It’s time to Do Something! about paper usage by harnessing
technology. Planet Ark founder, Jon Dee on technology and the
environment.

What was your first job?

I actually created my own job. I was 17 [1981], at school and I got
to know the rocker band ‘Yes’. They needed someone to run their fan
club which was a semi-commercial operation, and so I agreed to do
that. I ended up becoming totally hopeless at school because I was
spending all my time organising their magazines and handling all the
fan enquiries and everything else.

The benefit was, as a 17-year-old, that I got to meet Pink Floyd,
Queen, Led Zeppelin and everyone else, so for the geeky kid in the
class it was kind of a promotion. As soon as I left school I carried
on in this position to pay the rent — the only thing is I flunked
my major exams! But since then I’ve either worked for myself or set
up my own organisation, so it was a very useful experience. It was
my first entrepreneurial activity.

While everyone was listening to Human League, I was listening to Pink
Floyd and nothing’s changed!

What was the inspiration behind the Do Something! campaign?

Pat Cash and I first met back in 1990. I had set up an organisation
called ‘Rock Aid Armenia’ to try and raise money for people who had
been affected by the Armenian earthquake. I was living in London at the
time so I called David Gilmore from Pink Floyd and said, "I’m going to
do a remake of Smoke on The Water. Will you be on it?" He said yes,
so I ended up with this line up of Queen, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple,
Black Sabbath — all on the one record.

Actually, in October I’m re-releasing the album globally on iTunes
for the 20th anniversary, and I’m getting some of them back together
to launch it in Armenia in October.

The record was a Top 40 hit in the UK and I ended up doing a remake
n and Roger Daltry from The Who all involved. Straight after that
Pat and I got very drunk one night and we decided to set up Planet
Ark. About a year and a half ago Pat and I felt that we had really
achieved what we wanted to achieve with Planet Ark. It’s a tremendous
success and continues to be so, but we wanted to back to doing what
we were doing when we first met. We started talking about the 20th
anniversary of Rock Aid Armenia and thought we should celebrate it in
some way. Then we started talking about all the other social issues;
Pat is very concerned about depression and mental illness and poverty
is a real issue for me. I just wanted to do something about it.

‘Do Something!’ struck me as a great name for an organisation
about getting people to go out there and do something. Listen to
people’s conversations in pubs, around the dinner table, around the
work environment — so often we ask, "Who’s gonna do something about
it?" and I thought, "What a great name for an organisation that covers
a variety of issues". So Pat and I decided that we would leave Planet
Ark, kind of reluctantly because it was our baby. But we thought
it was time to try something fresh and new, where we do our social
campaigning — as well as carry on with the environmental stuff —
and work a lot more closely with the business community. We’ve raised
close to $1 million since October [2008]. In terms of campaigning,
we’ve gotten off to a great start. It’s been a very exciting ride
over the last year.

How can we better use technology to save the environment?

The potential to significantly reduce our paper use is finally
here. We’ve reached the sweet spot. The cost of the equipment,
the ability to scan documents and recognise what characters are
on the paper, the backup and storage is now so much cheaper and
the bandwidth has increased. The Paper-Less Alliance is something
which I’ve dreamed up for years and I’ve followed the progress of
the hardware, the software and the whole infrastructure behind e are
at a tipping point, where there are plenty of examples of companies
that have put in place systems that have not just reduced the usage
of paper but have made them more efficient and a lot more productive.

What I decided to do in embarking on this Paper-Less Alliance was to
seek out the very best case studies, to show off the companies that
are achieving success and get them to share that with people. That
way, rather than start from scratch, companies could look to others
for inspiration and case studies that they could use in their own
organisation. We wanted to show that saving paper was about saving
money, but more importantly improving your company’s productivity,
efficiency and improving the bottom line in the process. The campaign
itself is not primarily driven on environmental issues; we are driving
it on efficiency and productivity and decreasing your bottom line
issues, and then pointing out that all of this also has a great
benefit to the environment.

What’s your preferred method of communication?

I’m really into electronic media. I’m addicted to Facebook. I’m a
‘Facebook-a-holic’! I’m also a big fan of Evernote. If I had to look
at the way I structure my life, I have a portable USB-powered scanner
and any paper I do get, I instantly scan it and the characters are
recognised on the page. If I end up writing something down on a napkin
while I’m at a restaurant, I can take a picture of it with my phone and
email it to my Evernote account, which syncs to my Evernote software
on my home computer and will read my handwriting. It’s about looking
at how we access information.

I did have a tablet PC but then I found that Vista was too clunky and
just kept falling over. I did too many presentations where Vista just
crashed and I just thought, "That’s it! I’m gonna use Mac".

What type of computer are you using now?

I’m using the MacBook Pro which I bought recently but I’m really
hanging out for the Mac tablet which is supposed to come out this
year. I’m looking forwa d to that because what I did enjoy about my
Windows tablet PCs was the interaction with the pen and hands. What
we’ve seen with the iPhone is what I believe is going to be the way we
interact in the future. Bringing out a tablet PC that has something
akin to the iPhone where you can use your fingers. And that’s when
we’ll see the death of the modern computer as we know it because
it will then become a more natural interface of how we are used to
handling documentation. The high-end monitors that allow you to use
your fingers to move things around are so much more intuitive than
the way we operate at the moment.

I’ve always been fascinated by tablet computing. I had the first
Panasonic tablet PC many, many years ago and I believe that’s the
future of computing. Once you’re able to hand-write notes effectively
and easily onto a screen where you can then manipulate your handwriting
and search — that is when I believe we’ll have the ability to change
the way we use our computers. And I think we’re already seeing at
the moment, all of the companies within the Paper-Less Alliance
campaign really understand that they can save a lot of money and
they’re starting to put a lot of processes in place, for example,
using electronic forms to replace paper. It’s a no-brainer from an
efficiency, productivity, and costs point of view. Electronic storage
is replacing paper-based storage. For example, the Australian National
Audits Office, who contributed to the new Web site, is saving $1.3
million per year by storing stuff electronically.

The Sydney office chairman of Deakins law firm, Nick Abrahams, has
written an opinion piece on our Web site saying that it’s not just
about money saving and accessing old files more quickly, it’s also
about more cost effective compliance.

And then there’s the issue of posting. Australia Post delivers 4.2
billion business related items every year. Now, a lot of that can
now be done electronically, so we’re calling on business as part
of this campaign. Of those 4.2 hat can be sent electronically. The
financial savings for business and the savings to the environment
from that would be enormous. You’re talking, many, many hundreds of
dollars, and you’re talking millions of tones of greenhouse gases
that we can eradicate. I’m really passionate about this dynamic
electronic alternative where you can search through every word on
the document. You can search through your hand-written notes on
restaurant napkins using free software now. Technology has changed
dramatically. The good thing is that rather than it just being me as a
ranting ‘greenie’ with a theory, now we’re seeing many companies saving
millions of dollars by going down this route. With this campaign, I’m
being an evangelist for the paper-free approach by getting together the
best case studies and the best role models, and share that information
with other companies so that they don’t have to learn from scratch.

Over the years, what’s been your most memorable tech moment?

I remember the first time I got my Panasonic Toughbook, I had a pen,
and I was able to handwrite notes on the screen and send an email to
somebody. I remember that whole thing of people ringing me up going
"How did you do that?" It was expensive — it cost me $10,000 —
but what I liked was that you could handwrite a note to somebody,
and it was so much more personal than just emailing them text. That
to me was a special moment. But the thing that was really the
‘eureka moment’ for me was seeing the World Wide Web for the very
first time. I launched the Planet Ark Web site back in 1996 and
it was so far advanced for its time. We had QuickTime videos of
all the television ads I had made with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman,
Dustin Hoffman and the like. We had a weekly podcast, but it wasn’t
called a podcast then, it was a weekly world environment news update,
playing in the earliest versions of the Real Player.

Before I set that up, I had been shown the Web and I thought, "This
is where it’s heading", where you’re going to have this interface of
multimedia, and whoever has the content, if they do it in the right
way, can really influence change. I find that very exciting.

What’s your focus then for the next 12 months?

Making sure that we build on the huge successes we’ve had in out
first year of Do Something! to get the maximum results possible. The
Paper-Less Alliance campaign really excites me. When I’m 65 and I look
back, the one thing I hope I can say then is that I helped contribute
to the switch from the old business approach of using paper, and to
drive the shift to a more paperless office. It has a lot of benefits
for businesses in terms of efficiency, productivity, compliance,
and improving th ottom line. It also will bring about a massive
environmental difference. So it’s one of those win/win projects. If
you’re a financial director and you don’t implement paper reduction
methods, your organisation needs a new financial director because
you’re not taking your responsibilities properly to maximise your
business’ bottom line.

This article originally appeared in Computerworld Australia’s
August/September print edition.