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Gerry McGovern

Gerry has developed Top Tasks, an information design framework that helps identify what truly matters to people, design an information architecture, and measure the ability of people to complete top tasks.

It was developed over a 15-year period and has been used more than 500 times. Microsoft, Cisco, NetApp, Toyota, IBM, the European Union, US, UK, Dutch, Canadian, Norwegian, and Irish governments have used it.

A highly regarded speaker, Gerry has spoken about designing simpler digital experiences in more than 40 countries. He has written eight books. His latest is called World Wide Waste: How digital is killing the planet and what to do about it.

The Irish Times has described Gerry as one of five visionaries who have had a major impact on the development of the Web. He has appeared on BBC, CNN and CNBC television, partaken in various radio shows, and featured in numerous print media publications. He is the founder of Customer Carewords, a consultancy that implements the Top Tasks framework.

Gerry McGovern's Talk

Reducing Digital Waste

December 7 – 8:50 AM

Digital is physical. The Cloud is on the ground in mega data centers. We now need about 100 million servers to store our data. Each server causes 1–2 of CO2 to manufacture, and will end up as e-waste, poisoning the air, water and soil. 90% of the data we create and store is waste.

In this talk, Gerry McGovern will show that we — as digital professionals — can do so much more to clean up our data, and have a direct and positive impact on the environment.