We just discovered usedeventstuff.com and we loved it.

Better late than never, we stumbled upon Used Event Stuff (thanks @carmenhere for the tip).

Well we all know we produce an awful lot of waste with our events, specially the big fat exhibitions.

Here is their take:

We have seen the waste that is endemic to the industry: beautiful, usable goods thrown out at curbside at the end of the night. Nobody wants to waste all those goods, but designers and clients can no longer afford to keep or re-use materials because the price of storage is so high.

It is not just a waste economically, but is an environmental burden, as much of these usable goods wind up in a landfill. From beautiful event to garbage heap, taking decades or centuries to break down

Start thinking about it naughty boys and get involved!

Anyone who has worked in the meetings and events field for any length of time will admit there is a great deal of waste and trash produced by events, in particular trade shows. There was a Price Waterhouse report issued several years back citing trade shows as the second most wasteful industry. In the summer of 2008, the Convention Industry Council (CIC) through its Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX) formed a Green Meetings & Events Practices Panel to write standards to make our industry more “green” and environmentally responsible.

Photo by janusz l via Flickr

The Results

During the past year, there have been many conference calls, meetings, and emails to produce drafts of standards in nine (9) different areas of event management. The 9 drafts that have been produced are: Destinations, Meeting Venue, Transportation, Accommodations, AV, Communication, Food and Beverage, Exhibits and Onsite Office. (Disclosure: I was a member of the subcommittee that developed the Meeting Venues standards.) Copies of all these drafts can be found at http://wp.apexsolution.org for your review. There is a lot of detail in these drafts so think twice before deciding to print out all of them!

What can I do?

Between now and September 11, 2009, APEX is conducting City Discussion Groups in several cities throughout the United States. Locations, dates and times can be found at http://www.apexsolution.org. Sign up to attend one of these “town hall” style meetings where you can discuss the drafts with fellow industry professionals and other event planners. The facilitators in each city will be gathering your feedback and sending your input back to the APEX Commissioners. (Thinking about becoming a Certified Meeting Professional or need to recertify? Attendance at a CDG is good for two points on the application or renewal!)

Not able to attend one of the City Discussion Groups? You can participate in a Virtual Discussion Group online! Just post your comments online at http://wp.apexsolution.org. Be sure to read the blog’s “How to Post – Procedures and Policies” first!

What happens next?

APEX has been working in partnership with ASTM International, a world-wide membership group that serves as a open forum for the development of standards used around the globe. By working with ASTM, it will help facilitate these green standards to be adopted as best practices by many different government agencies. Once approved, CIC will work closely with its member organizations to roll out the standards into the field.

Are the drafts perfect? No. But it is a much needed start to a difficult topic and these standards can then be “tweaked” as we go forward.

How it used to be

Ten years ago the basics use to be a great mix of performers, a great mix of sponsors and a great location.

It didn’t get further than that.

The job of running events was all about putting the three above together. Most of the times it wasn’t about quality, it was about budget.

Our point

Let us save you some time and get straight to the point, basics have changed.

Why?

- Because current economic environment sucks. Sponsors are not willing to give away generous portions of their budgets as they used to.
- Because networking, which is a great motivator for attending events, is happening for free both online and offline.
- Because technology is changing the way we consume events.
- Because the world we live in is not as it used to be. Or at least, we are now more aware of it.

What are the new basics?

1. A powerful concept
What made you pay the rent yesterday is not gonna work today. Putting names of famous speakers or performers is not enough anymore. You need to engage in new ways. The same old event structure means you failed.
Want two positive examples? Pecha Kucha and Unconference

2. Respect for the environment
If you don’t offer recycling, if you don’t source locally, if you are not sustainable, you failed.
Your environment is also your people.
If you don’t think about the disabled, if you prefer excluding instead of including, you failed.

3. Use of Technology
Technology is part of our lives, whether you like it or not. Although we notice a lot of people talking about it, we are not seeing a lot of implementations. If you only talk about it, you failed.
If you are running a conference for seniors and assume they don’t know what Linkedin is, you failed. I met online people from 20 to 80 years old. If you think events are separate from online communities, you failed.
If you don’t integrate online and offline, you are actually saying no to extra streams of revenue.

Who are you to tell me that?

Last time we talked about these issues we received aggressions, threats and a lot of anger.
We understand change is not easy to digest.
You should listen to us because we were talking about twitter when Lehman Brothers was still up.
We were stimulating user generated events when Linkedin had 20 million users (it is now 35 millions).
No it’s not easy to accept, but you have to deal with it and you have to do it soon.

If you are a traditional event manager (or studying to become one) and think that recession is the major threat for your career, I think you are not on the right track.

There are several trends in event management that are making the role as we know it obsolete. I am convinced that we are trying to sell CDs during the hype of the MP3 era.

Of course this could be arguable. Events will always take plae and there will always be someone in charge of management. But the skills required are completely new.

Here are few of the trends who represent a threat for the traditional event manager:

- User generated Events

BarCamps, unconferences and Meetups have given the power to the user. Scientific committees or sponsor panels can no longer control content. In the future if you’ll ask to pay 400$ for a one day conference, you’ll be probably laughed at and find yourself in a budget drama.

- Technology

Technological changes are making several professions redundant. Webinars, online conferences, Second Life meetings and events to name a few require new management skills. Just have a look at the video below and draw your conclusions.

- Environment

The environment is claiming back what has been abused. We need to learn fast how to make our events sustainable, source local products, reduce waste and communicate that to our attendees. Consumers are getting extremely educated about what being green means and that will soon be a given, not an extra.

All of the above could be seen as threats.

In these trends I see he future of our profession. We need to start to integrate them in our practice immediately, to grow our set of skills.

What we see in front of us is just a matter of perspective. My view is positive and enthusiastic, what about yours?

Most of my afficionados know that I’ve worked in the past two months at ecoCamp, a BarCamp about the environment, ecology, sustainability and energy. The event took place yesterday 29th of March 2008 in Conversano – Italy. This post sums up what happened before, during and after the event, from an event management perspective. As a planner I learned a lot from this experience and I invite you to participate in a BarCamp close to you because it will definitely help the way you approach your career.

Why ecoCamp?

I organized ecoCamp with Carmen Boscolo, a fellow blogger and environmental consultant, and I will use “we” referring to me and her. We both fell in love with the BarCamp formula. Open access, no pre-scheduled sessions, interaction and the Internet sounded like a great mix. In conceptualising the event we came up few things we wanted to experiment:

– Usually BarCamps host presentations. We didn’t like that . We thought that presentations are a subtle way to control a session and kill interaction. We decided to tell our audience that we wouldn’t host any presenter but just “promoters”. We borrowed this role from Harrison Owen’s Open Space Technology. At the beginning of ecoCamp, the promoter suggested her/his topic and got immediate feedback in terms of participation to the session. The promoter had the duty to guide and facilitate the session, collect the names of participants and manage time as well as take responsibility of the room and logistics.

– Usually BarCamps share the content, in that the organizers publish slides and materials of the presentations. We did not like that as well. We thought that the chance of having a large number of people working together could not be wasted. We were sure that the energy of the event would have been great. In order to collect and funnel that vibe we thought about creating a document, again inspired by Harrison Owen. We called the document “ecoCamp@world“. The promoter of every session was given a template to fill out during the discussion. We asked few questions:

– What have you discussed?
– Why have you discussed it?
– What were your conclusions?

The participants of the session got their name on the document, which would have been published on the official wiki, open, free and accessible.

Promotion

I have to say that in our case what worked the most were Social Media. I’ll go in depth.

– We used a wiki as the main platform where we put everything about the event. If you want to know more about starting and planning a BarCamp and its wiki, I collected few resources, you can find them here.

– We then created a blog to deliver news and updates.

– We created a badge and put the HTML code on the wiki for other bloggers to grab and paste on their platform.

– We coordinated a database of blogs on environmental subjects and sent the invite to use the badge

– We set up a “posting day”. We published a round-up article on the main blog and 10 other blogs posted about the event, trackbacking to that article.

– That same day we posted on Italian Social Media Networks clones of Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.

– We created a Twitter account for the event and inserted a Twitter badge in the ecoCamp wiki with live updates about the event.

Promotion Results:

– We generated buzz. We got free press coverage on every single local newspaper. In some instances, we didn’t even send the press release. Journalists went on the wiki and grab information. I was interviewed by radios and TVs before and during the event.

– A web TV made a documentary which is going to be online soon

Things to consider about promoting with Social Media

– time to build relationship with other bloggers

– striking content

– knowledge of Social Media Networks and key influencers there.

Location and Sponsors

Most of Barcamps do not take place because of the lack of a location. We managed to find one in two weeks. A business incubator which gave us two big rooms and free internet, plus buffet area and AV equipment.

We set the date of the event the 15th of March. Therefore we had two weeks to work on it. Our approach was: if we get no location or sponsors it means that the event has not to take place.

Three days before the event we contacted sponsors. We did not have any urgency to get buffet or gadgets but at a certain point in time we decided to give gifts to the brave participants. We managed to get on board one of the biggest Italian producer of energy saving light bulbs and photovoltaic panels. They gave us an energy saving light bulb for every estimated participant plus tons of promotional materials, block notes and pens. We got on board local producers of organic cheese, organic groceries, patisseries and cafes. We ended up with a huge buffet.

The great thing was that at no point in time we needed to give numbers or show media releases or participants profiles. The interest of sponsors was proactive and genuine from the very beginning. We told them we managed no money and that we were just intermediaries of the community.

Attendance and Statistics

The most successful BarCamps have 300-400 participants (Los Angeles, Toronto – millions of people and efficient public transportation). We are in a 20,000 inhabitants city in Southern Italy, far from transportation. The biggest city nearby is Bari (300,000 inhabitants), we got 80 people attending. We had more than 100 requests to follow online. Huge response.

The day before we set up a streaming on Ustream with 2 webcams in 2 different rooms. The promoter of every section was in charge of the streaming as well. In this way people living far away did not have to use transportation, therefore we got rid of unnecessary carbon emissions.

Experience and Feel

No one of the participants ever heard before what a BarCamp was. They left the location willing to attend another Camp immediately. We collected feedback such as “Wonderful”, “One of the greatest experiences of my life”, “I only wished we had more time to keep discussing”, “Thanks very much for putting this together”.

We registered people from 10am to 10.45am. You could tell everyone was a bit unsure of what to do and how to proceed. We then gathered in the main room and I illustrated, after thanking sponsors, what was the process.

We had two computers in two different locations. At one station, promoters could suggest their topic, give a brief description and tell their name. In the meanwhile participants looked at the projector where the sessions schedule was quickly building up. At the other station we collected participants for each session and their preferred session time for the day (morning/afternoon). We immediately had numbers and it was quite easy to generate the schedule, merge sessions or eliminate those with not enough participants. We printed out and distributed the schedule and then started off.

We did not have a coffee/lunch break, instead we left buffet accessible at all times for everyone to enjoy, respecting the session in progress .

Response was astonishing. Great, quality topics together with pragmatic and inspiring discussions took place. We had,from time to time, to “hold time and space” as Harrison Owen would suggest, indicating that there were 5 minutes to go and that the promoter needed to draw conclusions.

Conclusions

At the end of the day I saw participants cleaning up tables, collecting and recycling waste. They have been given the possibility to return, instead of wasting, unwanted sponsors’ material. It’s been of utmost importance for us to be consistent with the content of the event. We made sure every bit of ecoCamp was coherent with the theme of the event. From recycling to organic buffet, from promoting carpooling to giving energy-efficient bulbs as gadgets. The ethics of the organization contributed to set up an ethic environment, were people found themselves at ease to interact and produce something.

I saw engineers talking with farmers, lawyers engaging in discussions with media and marketing people, students sitting next to business men and accountants.

We needed to tell people that there was going to be ecoCamp2 somewhere and sometime in the future, because they simply needed to know there was going to be another meeting like that.

As a planner and a conference planner I have seen delegates leaving meetings bored and maybe drunk by the buffet. I have seen people sleeping during endless bullet point presentations and showing up just to follow a super guest star and leave the rest of the event to others.

This experience is a wake up call for those working with traditional conferences because things are changing, and quicker than we think.

ecoCamp

Last week I had the chance to read about De-growth. I am very convinced now that less is actually more. I think the concept behind the movement outperforms every green/sustainable theory so far. It is quite embarrassing there is no Wikipedia entry about it in English. I will commit to translate it from Italian.

There are several hundreds of posts around the blogosphere on how to green your event. You can follow my Blogroll to stumble upon a few. As a matter of fact most of the green/sustainable practices cut emissions, waste, etc. My point is that it is not enough. I’d suggest that what you do in your event actually generates value for internal (participants) and external (community) stakeholders.

To guide you through my point I’ll reference to the first example of how to achieve the optimum level of satisfaction and being useful.

Sustainable Dance Club. Outstanding. People dancing generate energy. What about collecting that energy and generate electricity to light the club.

Use Fon for your wireless. Most of the times you won’t use all of your bandwidth, with Fon you can share the signal with people close by either by charging them or for free, securely. Opening the wireless could be a great business card for the community where you operate, think about it. The wireless signal is also sometimes perceived by some as pollution and intrusive, making it an opportunity for the community to connect to the Internet can be a way out.

Choose location within your premises. In order to make such a courageous choice you actually need powerful content. If your attendees participate for other than content reasons you might want to skip this step. Location can be used by event planners to incentive participation. An attractive location can move extra (i.e. not-motivated) people. On the other hand, if you manage outstanding content who actually “sells itself” you might want to sort the location within your company/organization. The room/space you will use is already there and will be running anyway, so why not taking advantage of existing premises and cut costs as well as transportation emissions and extra energy to run your sessions.

Promote locally. I have found myself involved in paranoid activities aimed at promoting my event to the whole World. I thought that making people move from London to New York for an event would be a great success. I had to think again. I think the greatest success would be to involve all the potential participants who could use local public transportation to get to the location. For the rest of them there has been a great invention called the Internet who can actually ensure presence (and payment maybe of a smaller fee) and participation. We are going to use Ustream for our next event. Easy, free, scalable, interactive and controllable.

Produce a document. I think this whole principle is not only limited to the environment. It strikes the whole concept of meetings and events from within. I am getting bored by just thinking about gatherings of hundreds of people with no tangible end results. Why are you moving the masses and not getting anything out of it? A multitude of people coming together should be addressed at producing a document outlining their interaction. Verba volant, scripta manent. Writing a participative document about the session could be a great bonding experience and facilitate networking as much as a coffee break.

Few months ago I remembered reading astonishing news while I studied for my MBA in Australia. A McDonald’s shop was closed after few months of fierce competition from the local bakery. It all happened in Italy and few miles away from where I live. The story got so popular that even the NY Times wrote about it.

Today I went to check out the bread there and I must say it was incredibly tasty.

The first thought that I had was how many times do we forget our local strengths when designining a conference, a social program, but also a concert or a fashion show.

I must admit that sometimes the choice of the location is mechanic and possibly ignorant. I say that because it ignores the local produces and gems. I think that great locations with great local products should be preferred to dull choices. The power of a local product brings people together. Local products have been inherited through the years and represent symbols that capture the unconscious of the participants

My second thought of the day was that leveraging on local products and unique locations helps the environment. Why would you need to source from abroad or even from 200 miles away. Exotic meals and so forth are very cool and maybe you’re guest will love it. But what about serving a bit of reality in your next event and telling the attendees that you are actually concerned about the environment.

So when you’ll find yourself planning for the next location, think have a look at the Altamura bread next to you, and stop staring at that McDonald’s (with all due respect)!

What is councils’ decision process toward events?

Of course a big portion of it it’s contextual and needs to be checked before the event in a feasibility study. A strict or helping council could be a threat or an opportunity of your SWOT analysis.

Nevertheless it is of utmost importance to check with the local council before making any decision. It is likely that permissions will be needed and that procedures must be followed

A standard procedure is summarized by Austrailia’s New South Wales
Department of Local Government:

A good practice is to come up with a checklist of impact, crowd spectrum, security requirements, risk assessment before contacting any council.

Green meetings have been defined as a “meeting that incorporates environmental considerations throughout all stages of the meeting in order to minimise the negative impact on the environment.”

A small meeting may not seem important, after all what difference does a few dozen cups and napkins make?

But think about what happens when it is on a large scale. For example, during a typical five day conference, 2,500 attendees will use 62,500 plates, 87,500 napkins, 75,000 cups or glasses and 90,000 cans or bottles. Plus there are all the greenhouse emissions from people travelling to and from the conference and paper and plastic waste from conference handouts.

A typical 5 day conference for 2,500 attendees will use 90,000 cans or bottles, 750,000 cups and 87,500 napkins (Meeting Strategies Worldwide, 2003).

Here are 10 top tips for green meetings available withouth purchasing.