Two lessons learned from attending IDC's Directions conference in San Jose on Wednesday: companies are freaking out about the economy, and green IT is still a foreign -- or at least distant -- concept for much of the IT industry.

In addition to the dedicated Green IT track sprinkled throughout the daylong event at San Jose's McEnery Conference Center, the bulk of the panels and presentations dealt with making the most of every IT dollar, as well as which industries are growth opportunities for IT companies and how the federal stimulus and tax incentives will boost those opportunities.

The bulk of the presentations were not focused on green issues; indeed some presentations were decidedly un-green, albeit necessary from an operations standpoint. (One presentation discussed the cost benefits of doubling the refresh cycle for PCs rather than maintaining or upgrading machines -- sort of an anti-Reduce, Reuse and Recycle platform.) But even though the green IT track seemed shunted off into a corner of the event, the conference centered on that place where green IT shows the most promise: where computing can be good for the planet and the bottom line.

From the opening presentation from IDC Chief Research Officer John Gantz, panels throughout the day, lunchtime discussions, all the way through to author Nicholas Carr's closing keynote,  virtualization and cloud computing were the driving themes of the event.

"These are areas where IT tends to focus its energies," explained Vernon Turner, a Senior Vice President for research at IDC. "Because that's all in our comfort zone." The challenge, he said, is not to find info on green IT, "The hard part is to figure out what it means for us in the next 2, 5 or 10 years."

The demand for green IT expands well beyond the cloud, although as the event showed, there is plenty of demand for that at the moment. Turner walked the audience through IDC's G.R.A.D.E. certification program for asset management and responsible disposal, explaining how current or near-future government regulation will make drive companies toward businesses that can provide this kind of work.

But the recurring theme of Turner's overview was measurement and benchmarking as a key to managing IT for the biggest cost and environmental benefits. Many of the services he highlighted as opportunities for growth within the green IT space boiled down to developing, measuring and managing a host of CO2 and environment-related projects.

In a change from the high-level discussions of the IT industry, one of the green track presentations explored printing as an often overlooked element of green IT. Angèle Boyd, the general manager of IDC's imaging team, laid out the huge impact printing systems have on the environment, beyond the sheer amount of paper needed to water, energy, toxics and waste involved in getting that toner on the page.

Printing, it turns out, has significant business opportunities as well -- especially important for people who see every email not printed as a hit on their pocketbook. In addition to promoting lower-impact and less energy-intensive print technologies, printing manufacturers and managers can promote scan-to-email technologies, make duplex printing mandatory, and switch to soy-based inks.

All in all, IDC Directions was both encouraging and discouraging. In some senses it's too bad that green IT gets sequestered in its own space, especially in light of the encouraging fact that so much of what passed for "regular" IT discussions and presentations at the event were also heavily focused on green.

Next up: Data Center World. The conference starts on Monday in Las Vegas and we're looking forward to seeing the green that comes from there.