I was looking over Corbin Ball's latest newsletter the other day and came across and article entitled, "45 Ways to Use Technology to Green Meetings." Because I am working on organizing the Annual NYU Hospitality Investment Conference I thought it would be an interesting read and possibly give me some ideas as to ways to make NYU's planning process potentially more green. Most of the recommendations were on ways to save paper. Some of the better recommendations were having an electronic database of meeting facilities rather than the directories and brochures that many meeting planners use now. Another was using electronic RFP's instead of sending out bulky Word documents to several different places. A third good suggestion was to use email instead of paper promotion for meetings and events, which I think is something that many meeting planners do already. The article also spoke about using virtual site inspections. I took issue with this one particular suggestion for a couple different reasons. The first reason being I personally feel like it is more beneficial to a meeting planner to see a site in person rather than in a small video box on the computer. Virtual tours tend to make spaces look bigger than they because of the angle and placement of the camera. I feel that virtual tours give a skewed perception of a room. My second reason is this; what if there is a site that does not have it's room inventory online for a meeting planner to explore. Then, a meeting planner is forced to do an in person site inspection anyway. Perhaps more event facilities should focus on putting their room inventory online so that this aspect of the industry becomes more standard and common place.
More ways to make meetings green included, electronic contracts and digital signatures, online housing and room block management, online registration and confirmation, electronic programs that would be emailed to phone/PDA systems, electronic systems. While I believe that all of these "be greener" recommendations are valid would definitely help reduce paper waste, I wonder how long it might take for them to become industry standards, and if they ever will prove to become such. It cannot be ignored that many meeting and conference planners prefer to have hard copies of important documents in their hands rather than looking at them through a computer screen. Also, I feel that people may not have a lot of trust in the electronic world as there is a real fear of system crashes and the possibility of losing data. I guess only time will tell whether meeting planners are willing to go more green through the use of technology.
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2 comments:
Well...yes and no.
As we all scramble to green our meetings, we're perfectly capable of turning to solutions that undercut the impact and value of face-to-face meetings, while missing the largest part of our industry's environmental footprint. If we're not careful, we will end up cutting 20, 30, even 40% of our footprint, but losing 80, 90, or 100% of the benefit we achieve through meetings. That's not a trade-off that our industry or our clients can afford.
For example: The shift in emphasis from live to virtual meetings is largely good news for greening, and it will likely accelerate. However, as meeting professionals, we *have* to guide our organizations and clients away from the trap of doing away with all live gatherings, simply because there are many times and places when they are essential. There's no disputing that the informal conversations in small table discussions or hallways often deliver the best results for participants -- and there's no realistic way of replacing those conversations on a webinar or a teleconference line.
You refer to saving paper with electronic publications. Our firm has produced well over 2,000 conference publications over the past 24 years. We've emphasized electronic formats for well over a decade, with one *very* important distinction: the finished format of any publication, whether it's a first announcement or an onsite newsletter, has to respect audience demographics and preferences, even as we try to shift our participants toward greener approaches.
We cover one annual conference where the average age onsite is 68. The average among consituents back home is 73. If we had suggested that this client shift to CDs or memory sticks, they would have stayed with their past practice -- which involved transcribing every word of a five-day meeting into a 200- or 300-page document. Instead, we summarize their meeting at a writing length of 40 or 50 pages, produce the material in 14-point type for readability, and still reduce their paper volume by 75 or 80%. The principle here is not that nothing ever goes to press, but that every page should be a wanted page.
And meanwhile...this entire conversation leaves out the building energy consumption and, especially, the air travel that should be our biggest green concern, and will be by far our biggest challenge. While we focus on quick fixes (largely because they're more obviously within planners' control), we are a part of a global economy that will have to cut its carbon footprint 70-80% in the next 15 years to hold off the worst results of climate change.
So, yes, we need to reduce our print runs and introduce virtual meetings where the format is appropriate to our clients' objectives. Every small improvement matters. But we're facing some bigger issues, as well -- issues that might come up at a hospitality investment conference, come to think of it. And we're running out of time to solve them.
Thanks for your comments. They made me think more about what I had written previously.
I definitely agree that face-to-face meetings are undeniably valuable. I would never presume to suggest that webinars should take over live meetings. The value of live interaction is something that can never be recreated over the internet.
I also agree with you point about matching a meetings use of technology to the demographics of its attendees. Technology will always be there but unless people are willing to put it to use, technology might not progress and improve as some might like it to.
As you mentioned the increasing issues of energy consumption and air travel, I couldn't help but wonder if the increasing cost of travel will lead to a higher usage of webinars for those not willing to travel the long distance to a meeting. Will we see a correlation between the two?
Thanks again for your comments!
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