Four Tough Challenges that Make Sustainability Easier
Earlier this month, a colleague shook up my thinking about green meetings with an idea that could shift any organization’s sustainability program in a more practical direction. And here’s the twist: the surest way to simplify our industry’s approach to sustainability might be to sharpen our focus on the toughest sustainability issues we face. Thanks [...]
Action Against Carbon Emissions will Raise Travel Costs
The end of cheap oil could affect the meetings economy in a number of different ways, but panelists in a Tuesday morning breakout on peak oil agreed that the industry must adapt to an era of volatile energy prices and drastic reductions in the carbon emissions that cause climate change. Economists may debate whether oil [...]
Top 10 Reasons to Attend the Sustainable Meetings Conference
With the 2010 Sustainable Meetings Conference coming up in Denver February 9-11, the Green Meeting Industry Council is circulating the top 10 reasons that this is a must-attend event. This might just be the best, most in-depth green meetings conference the industry has ever seen. But the 10 reasons point to a bigger, wider value [...]
After Copenhagen: How Meetings Can Kick the Carbon Habit
By the end of this week, the 192 countries represented at the Copenhagen Summit may or may not reach a global deal to control climate change and reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. But whether or not humanity rises to the challenge, the science doesn’t lie. With or without an agreement, this is the moment for industrialized [...]
A Quiet Sense of Duty
Late last month, I received a surprising email that will shape the lion’s share of the volunteer time I devote to our industry over the next two years. I wouldn’t normally be quite this excited about an opportunity to pack dozens of extra hours into a schedule that is already overloaded. But this isn’t just [...]
Does Demand from Meetings Drive Airlines’ Greenwashing?
Whether or not it’s deliberate, a major travel industry association seems to be applying a touch of greenwash to its members’ steadily growing carbon footprint. And it seems likely that continuing demand from meetings and events might be one of the underlying causes. Sometimes it isn’t clear whether an organization has set out to mislead, [...]
‘It Sounds Like Fun’: I Beg to Differ
The reaction from friends and colleagues when I mentioned an upcoming trip to a conference in California speaks volumes about the gap between meeting professionals’ experience onsite and the way it’s perceived back home. It isn’t too big a leap from this particular tale to the perception of meetings as elaborate parties that has helped [...]
A Time to Renew
SAN DIEGO COUNTY—I spent much of the weekend in awe-inspiring company, attending the semi-annual meeting of the Concepts Worldwide Advisory Board (CAB). And, as it happened, not a moment too soon. Concepts is a company that formed 20 years ago, and has positioned itself as a world leader in the corner of our industry offering [...]
Learning to Fly Right
Imagine an industry that shows a cumulative net loss after decades of operation. Its main business model is a poster child for showing MBA students the strategies they should avoid at all costs. Imagine that this industry generates a large share of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Factor in that industry’s acute vulnerability [...]
‘People Will Still Have to Meet…’
The fact that he came over to chat had very little to do with me. I was sitting on the patio at Bridgehead Trading, the funky, fair trade coffee shop that serves as an informal meeting room and home-away-from-home for our office two blocks away. One of the counter staff came over to visit with [...]
