For the first time in my life, I can say I am proud of the company I work for. I’ve had good jobs in the past and worked with some amazing people, but I’ve never felt connected or overly proud of the company paying my wages. That changed yesterday.

Yesterday, we had our quarterly all-hands meeting where the big heads in the company rolled out the new branding and the Let There Be Light marketing campaign. It’s cool on its own, but the part that got me excited was the new Insight collaborative data analysis website. It’s going to be place for people to post vast sums of public data and use Business Objects tools to analyze it to come up with solutions to tough problems. The first project will be coming up with solutions to reduce CO2 emissions.

Yep, Business Objects is going green in a big way, and I couldn’t be happier. As a company, we’re rolling out tons of green initiatives to reduce our own carbon footprint. Yesterday, we all received compact fluorescent light bulbs and were encouraged to take part in bike to work week. There’s also a contest right now encouraging people to submit suggestions on how to reduce or C02 emissions.

And today, there was a big announcement with Toronto Mayor David Miller, at the C40 Climate Summit in New York. Business Objects, the City of Toronto, and ZeroFootprint.net are teaming together to reduce Toronto’s carbon footprint with a new initiative called Zerofootprint Toronto. And they’re challenging the mayor’s of the world’s largest cities to take up the fight.

Miller’s green plan ‘cool’ – Toronto Star
Can Web 2.0 really save the planet? – ZDNet Blogs
New web tool helps Toronto map its eco-footprint – CBC
Carbon Tools Scale up for City-Wide Footprinting – WorldChanging