Sustainable Meetings Conference delivers a Powerful Message

The Hilton Bonaventure Hotel vibrated with sustainable power when it hosted more than 200 international delegates at the Green Meeting Industry Council’s (GMIC) annual conference in Montréal on April 22-25, 2012. Significantly, the event began on Earth Day, a day dedicated to environmental initiatives and awareness.

This was my first GMIC Sustainable Meetings Conference, and it was invigourating! And it wasn’t just from a swim in the outdoor pool that was heated by a recently-installed energy recovery system that transfers waste heat from the building. Rather, it was from the highly energized and powerful program that combined case studies of successful sustainable meetings innovations with learning design tools and new techniques to help organizers get better results out of every meeting.

The inspiring opening keynote, cleantech and green building pioneer  John Picard, pointed to rapidly-emerging technologies that will help organizers empower themselves to clean the planet and save money at the same time. Chris Brophy, Vice President of Corporate Sustainability at MGM Resorts International, shared how nicely a 35% energy saving on a recent new development had reflected on the company’s balance sheet. The unmistakable message: Sustainability is about savings, not costs.

But reducing costs and consumption is not the only long-term benefit for planners who apply sustainable solutions from an innovative mindset. “These event organizers are experiencing increased stakeholder satisfaction,” says GMIC Executive Director, Tamara Kennedy-Hill. GMIC President Paul Salinger, Vice President of Marketing at Oracle Corporation, said “GMIC challenges us to think about how we plan and execute events differently to drive more value in a more responsible way.”

Regrettably, I learned that the meetings and events industry is one of the largest waste producers today, second only to construction; a fact that makes for easy political targeting and is fueling the efforts for change by GMIC and industry leaders. Meeting professionals can exercise considerable power by making responsible choices on destinations and venues, waste management, sustainable food sourcing, corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, and also on meeting design and execution. Something that Picard said still stands out in my mind: “Don’t wake up and ask what is wrong with the world, look at what is right and reach for what is possible.” If we all start by making the right choices, right now, each of us can become an integral part the solution.

GMIC has members in over 20 countries so it was an international group of likeminded professionals in the industry.  Ottawa’s own Jennifer Holly, Travel Alberta , Sonya Higgins, intertask -JPdL, Sandra Wood, Canadian Medical Association,  Mitchell Beer, The Conference Publishers, Doreen Ashton Wagner, Greenfield Services were in attendance. Special congratulations go to Wood, who has accepted a position on the 2012-2013 international board.

There was celebration in the announced release of the new APEX/ASTM Sustainable Event Standards after more than four years of painstaking research, and policy development. This set of guidelines will be a great new resource and tool for the industry (along with ISO 20121, and GRI EOSS). Many real-life possibilities were on display in presentations and case studies from Microsoft, Maritz Travel, and the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, which recently received the coveted Platinum designation under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED^®) program. I now better understand the pride our city can take for the new Ottawa Convention Centre with its Silver LEED^® designation.

GMIC Foundation Chair Mitchell Beer, CMM, announced a brand new fundraising campaign, which will underwrite many of GMIC’s new training programs. The foundation hopes to raise roughly a half million dollars a year to sustain the programming.

Also announced at the conference was an update to the Sustainable Event Management Tool, created in partnership with the Evolution Platform, which enables planners and suppliers to measure and report the environmental impact of their events through automated measurement tools. It is free to members of Meeting Professionals International and GMIC, according to Roger Simons, manager, CSR and sustainable events, in MPI’s Luxembourg office, and will be free to suppliers for the next six months or so.

Delegates enjoyed many meeting design innovations. A mobile app allowed participants to collect badges and connect with each other from their mobile devices. They were also encouraged to tweet using the hashtag #GMIC. One innovative session was the series of short Bl!nk presentations organized by Judy Kucharuk of Footprint Management Systems, where six professionals showcased a particular passion or insight given in two to five minutes, with accompanying slides. Another interesting format, facilitated by Adrian Segar, was a “conference weavers” session where volunteers publicly shared their key takeaways to provide additional peer-to-peer learning. Of course, there was a virtual option too, with about a dozen participants forming a “pod” in Amsterdam and other virtual attendees viewing selected sessions from their desks. Finally, dozens of “crowdsourced” action ideas filled the screens in the closing general session when the GMIC Foundation hosted an Ideas Auction, where participants could bid on promising options to make their programs more responsible.

The morning after the conference, there was a real sense of empowerment that propelled the delegates forward. Next April in Chicago is marked on my calendar because GMIC’s community is converting its energy to power, its knowledge to standards, and it’s a sustainable force for good.