Carbon Footprint
Next Entries »Downturn? What Downturn?
Thursday, January 8th, 2009As a meeting professional, how would you have felt if you’d received the following RFP?
Meeting dates: December 15-31
Scope: Nation-wide (United States only)
Estimated participants: 50,400
Room nights: None
Venues: 4,200
Average participants per venue: 12
Food and beverage: Provided
Audio-visual requirements: None
Air travel: None
Carbon footprint: Local ground transportation; public transit and carpools encouraged
Mythical client: US Department of Health and Human Services
As [...]
A Virtual (R)Evolution-Part 2
Monday, November 24th, 2008Part 2: Greater Than the Sum of the Parts
There’s a tremendous opportunity brewing for meeting professionals and the organizations they serve. Some parts of it trace back to recent U.S. election campaigns that have become a proving ground for an unprecedented mix of live and online learning, persuasion, and mobilization.
It’ll be a while before we [...]
A Virtual (R)Evolution-Part 1
Friday, November 14th, 2008Part 1: A Recipe for Disaster
Start out with a well-rounded, well-founded measure of enthusiasm for the latest virtual meeting technologies.
Add a healthy dose of concern about climate change, with a dollop of unintended greenwashing.
Factor in a preoccupation with cutting meeting costs to the bone, without pausing to consider what may be lost along the way.
Subtract [...]
A Time to Renew
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008SAN 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 strategic [...]
Learning to Fly Right
Friday, September 12th, 2008Imagine 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 to rising [...]
Dinosaur Economics
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008The power of the Internet is partly about the unexpected connections that help people share knowledge and build community, often in ways that make services more affordable and environmentally friendly.
In meetings, we’re just scratching the surface of what might be possible online. Not simply to try and replace live meetings with virtual ones, or print [...]
“Water Where It Didn’t Used To Be”
Friday, August 29th, 2008The Arctic is changing so quickly that it’s become one of the many early warning systems for global climate change. Each year brings new reports of ice sheets breaking off into the sea, along with a mad scramble to plan shipping routes and resource development projects that would have been difficult or impossible a generation [...]
A (Meetings) World Without Oil
Friday, August 8th, 2008Last February our professional association, Meeting Professionals International (MPI), attached the title MeetDifferent to its annual North American Professional Education Conference.
The intent was to bring together ideas and strategies that would suggest smart new ways of organizing and supplying conferences. For me, one of the highlights was a long conversation with the “serious game” [...]
Content Keeps Meetings Afloat
Sunday, August 3rd, 2008Higher air fares, fewer flights, and rising supply costs are the new reality for conferences around the world.
Live meetings will survive the crunch because there is still no more effective way for people to share ideas, knowledge, and solutions. But the future could hold
Fewer live meetings
Regional and local meetings filling the gaps between less frequent [...]