How I went completely paperless (with help from my iPad)

How I went completely paperless (with help from my iPad) Note from Tierney: There are lots of us in the nonprofit sector who still rely heavily on paper. The dream of "going paperless" has been around for a long time now, and hasn't been achieved for many reasons - legal/policy reasons, technology isn't good enough, personal preference, etc. However I think Kevin's story illustrates how recent improvements in cloud & mobile technology offer some practical ways in which paper use can be drastically reduced while still letting you do everything you need to do. In his case he was working on his PhD, but I think what he's describing is also quite applicable to nonprofits. 

By: Kevin McDermott, PhD Candidate, University of Guelph

When I was just about to start my PhD program in Management at the University of Guelph, I had heard horror stories from friends and colleagues about the number of academic articles that I would need to print, read and annotate. Some called a PhD a Photocopying Degree, and others lamented about their boxes and boxes of printed articles laying around their basement or office.

It was also just around this time that tablets started to become more than just a novelty item, and applications and online services started to mature to make me think that maybe I could do it differently. Maybe I could do my entire PhD without printing out a single academic article, maybe I could do it all electronically without negatively impacting my productivity.

There are a number of reasons to do so, including:

1. The environmental considerations of reducing printed materials.
2. Over the long-term, reduced printing costs may offset the cost of a tablet.
3. I could carry all of my articles with me everywhere I go, simply by carrying around a tablet.
4. No need to store boxes and boxes of papers.
5. Electronic documents are searchable, printed/copied paper isn't.
6. You can backup electronic documents, printed documents are less resilient. Read More