The Green Meetings Portal went live earlier this week.

Earlier this year, we announced that The Conference Publishers was joining with the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC) to launch the world’s first conference content portal. I’m tremendously pleased and proud to announce that the promise is now, finally, a reality.

The Portal begins life with coverage of GMIC’s 2009 Greening the Hospitality Industry Conference, which took place February 24–26, 2009 at Pittsburgh’s David L. Lawrence Convention Center. In the weeks and months ahead, we will seek out the best conferences dealing with green meeting practices, policies, and technologies, draw the strongest content from each program, and report it on the Portal.

Over time, we plan to build the Green Meetings Portal into a one-stop source of knowledge and education in one of the most important subject areas on the meetings industry agenda.

The Portal concept is based on two assumptions.

The first is that the content presented in a conference hall matters. In fact, it’s almost always the part of a conference that matters most.

The second assumption is that, in any subject area, there will be dozens or hundreds of conferences per year, each of which tells some part of the story, presents some part of the solution, fills in a couple of crucial pieces of the puzzle.

No one has time to attend all of those meetings. If they did, they’d be too exhausted and jet-lagged to tell us about it.

But that means there’s an information gap to be filled by a website that brings together a global community of interest around the best, the brightest, the most current and compelling content that any conference can bring to a podium.

Readers of this blog know that our firm is very serious about its commitment to sustainability, and we’re particularly proud to be launching our new online format in partnership with the world’s leading proponent of green meetings and events.

But before we get much farther into this adventure, it’s time to thank the people who’ve brought us to this point.

Amy Spatrisano, Nancy Wilson, and the Board of the Green Meeting Industry Council had the vision and commitment to take a calculated risk with an online content concept that makes perfect sense in principle, but has never been tried before.

GMIC Executive Director Tamara Kennedy-Hill has fit us into a back-to-back schedule, making sure we receive timely feedback on text, design, and the underlying concept of the Portal itself.

The Vancouver Convention Centre is the lead sponsor for the Portal to this point, demonstrating an enduring commitment to sustainability and green meetings.

On our own team, Senior Project Manager Biljana Zelenovic has made a heroic effort to make this one of the few Web projects on record that very nearly launched on schedule.

Managing Editor Karen Irving, editors Errlee Carruthers and Mary Keenan, and freelance writer Doug Small worked from our existing style guide and adapted it on the fly, giving life to a vibrant new reporting strategy for a brand new Web concept.

Now, it’s your turn. Please visit the site. Let us know what you think. And don’t forget to bookmark the page and subscribe to our e-update or RSS feed. The Green Meetings Portal will be updated early and often—selected content from the March, 2009 Green Travel Summit is in production, and many more conferences will follow. We’re looking forward to working with a growing community of practice to make this an online home for anyone who’s concerned about greening our industry.