Economic impact, water & carbon footprint of 400,000 wheels of Parmesan

Round stacks of cheese stored on shelves in factory warehouse. Photo: kgtoh (Kheng Guan Toh) via Bigstock images.

One of my newest favorite tweeps to follow is Jonathan Bloom @WastedFood, who tweets regularly about sustainable food issues. Yesterday he sent a link to a video showing 400,000 wheels of cheese that had been lost in a 6.0 magnitude earthquake north of Bologna in Italy on Sunday morning.

I love aged parmesan, and so I was saddened by loss of the cheese itself, but what I found most devastating was what this means in terms of the people who produce it, as well as the environmental impact. My grandfather and uncle each had vineyards in Argentina, and I remember hearing the story of a Christmas celebration when an unexpected hail storm brought an end to festivities as the family tried in vain to salvage a year’s crop of grapes. This earthquake served as a powerful reminder to me of our extreme vulnerability to environmental forces.

So what is the impact when we lose 400,000 wheels of Parmesan?

Economic stats:

• I’ve seen conflicting reports on the economic value. This GlobalPost article pegs the loss at $300 million, while this NYDailyNews (AP) article has a more conservative estimate that total agricultural losses from the earthquake (including cheese) are estimated at $254M from the earthquake.

Social stats:

• The work represented 2 years of work for 7 cheese producing companies according to the NYDailyNews article. A devastating loss even if insurance covers some or all of it.

Environmental stats

• The NYDailyNews article makes a reference of an 86 pound wheels of cheese. Assuming that all 400,000 that were lost were this size, it equals 34,400,000 lbs of cheese, or 15,603,577.5 kg of cheese.
• According to stats on Waterfootprint Network’s Product Gallery, 1 kg of cheese has a water footprint of 5,060 litres/kg. That means that it took 78.95 billion litres of water to produce this amount of cheese. If an Olympic swimming pool holds 2.5 Million litres, that’s 31,581 of them.
• This report out of the University of Wisconsin states that “The life cycle GHG emissions of a kilogram of hard cheese is about 8.8 kg CO2-eq, similar to driving a car 20 miles or leaving an incandescent 100 w lightbulb on for one hour.” That pegs the carbon emissions related this at 137,311,482 kg of CO2e, equivalent to driving a car 312,071,550 miles. If the average distance to the moon being 238,857 miles, that’s like driving there and back 653.26 times.

Creativity and Perseverance

Everywhere I turn these days, I seem to run into information on creativity – and it’s great. I loved the video of John Cleese video discussing his creative process, and I’m looking forward to reading Jonah Lehrer’s book Imagine (reviewed here in the NY Times) in preparation for the MPI WEC Book Club.  The most important lessons I’ve learned about the topic come from the two most creative individuals I’ve ever met:  my 4 year old and my 8 year old.

What I’ve learned from the young artist:

Our 4 year old is the artist, constantly drawing and filling every corner of the house, car, stroller and fridge with her art work. We’ve collected many of her masterpieces, including those she has titled “Hula Dance at the Beach”, “I’m Making a Movie Theatre” and “Sparkly Ariel and the Bad Sea Witch”. I’m hoping she’ll do one soon based on her love of the “Eiffel Towel”.

A few things that I’ve learned from her are:

• Creative types love to collaborate, on their own terms: She loves drawing together, and talking about what we’ll make, and asking me to do parts, but it has to be on her terms. Nothing is worse than someone coming along and adding something to her drawings that she didn’t want. I have to agree as well that I love to work projects with other people, and then there are some things that I take great pride in having done on my own. Having others make suggestions (even great ones) doesn’t always go over well. It’s not that I don’t want it to be the best it can be, it’s that there are some projects where it’s not just about the final product, it’s also about the creative experience and that sense of personal accomplishment.
• What you see isn’t what everyone else sees: When it comes to her art, I’ve learned not to assume that I know what something is. Like the time I commented on the great picture of our family, only to corrected that it wasn’t a picture of our family, it was a picture of “Walking O’s”. For creative types, this means realizing that sometimes you’ll need to explain things and have a bit of patience for those that don’t get it right off the bat. For those that work with creative types, it means not jumping to conclusions, and asking inquisitive and open-ended questions.
• If it’s someone’s birthday, they get to pick the crayons they want: She announced this one day at a friend’s birthday party and had me laughing. But everyone agreed and they set aside their own ambition for the pink and purple crayons and allowed the birthday girl to pick first. What I took from this is that creative people are willing to share both resources and spotlight provided that they understand and accept the rules of the game, and know that they’ll have their turn to have first pick one day as well.

What I’ve learned from the young musician:

Our 8 year old is the musician. He wakes up and heads to the piano, usually to experiment, sometimes to practice. He plays the guitar and ukulele as well, but more at our urging than through an internal personal drive. He’s written a few of his own songs, and one of my favourites is “You Might Find You Can Fly”, a song about perseverance. What amazes me the most about this song is that every time he plays it, he does something a bit different, constantly experimenting and changing the way he plays it.

A few things I’ve learned from him:

• Creativity flourishes only under the right conditions: Stress and fatigue are creativity stiflers. He loves to write music, but if he tries to do it when he’s tired, or if someone makes a suggestion just before a performance, he gets frustrated and upset. I see thing with the many talented people I know in the meetings industry. With time to create a vision for an event, creativity can flourish, but trying to put together something inspired when fueled only by adrenaline strains relationships and limits the possibilities.
• Great works need great inspiration: He writes songs about things that profoundly affect him. His first song was about the earthquake in Japan. He wrote a song about going to camp for the first time, and one called “Sometimes the World Needs a Little Hand” about helping others. I think we all need something powerful to inspire us to be creative. For me, creativity is usually inspired by a connection I’ve made with someone – an idea shared, a tweet I saw or a face-to-face meeting where that collective energy sends the words flying through my keyboard.
• Don’t give up: I’m constantly amazed by the things that he says. His school this fall was doing a class project on expressing emotions, and he decided to write a song (also to comemmorate his “Pianoanniversary”) about perseverance. I can’t express any better than he did, so here are the lyrics:

You Might Find You Can Fly

Verse 1:

Sometimes I feel like I can’t do things right
I try something new and it comes out a fright
But then I remember the things I can do
That once upon a time seemed impossible too

Chorus:

Don’t give up up up up
Don’t give in in in in
Persevere, and you’ll win
If you try-y-y-y
And don’t cry-y-y
You might find you can fly

Verse 2:

Learning new things can seem so hard at first
Then all of a sudden it’s like there’s a burst
Frustration and troubles come to an end
Welcome back understanding my very good friend

Chorus

Verse 3:

Learning the basics is all that you need
Before you can write you need to learn to read
First you learn how things work, then you create
Don’t give up when things get tough because you’ll be great

Chorus

Don’t give up, don’t give in
Persevere and you’ll win.

MM

GMIC Sustainable Meetings Foundation – Idea Auction

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
– George Bernard Shaw

Have you ever had an idea, one that you believed in even though you didn’t know exactly how it would work? That’s the case for me with the GMIC Sustainable Meetings Foundation Idea Auction.

The GMIC Sustainable Meetings Foundation is relatively new, and we’re just getting started in our fundraising campaign. The foundation will be supporting innovation and education in sustainable meetings and events. As a trustee on the Foundation, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how typically foundations focus on donors that can make those major 6 or 7 digit dollar donations. Something that I, as a small business owner, can’t do (unless that lottery ticket comes in). I can’t help thinking though that I do have things of value that I can contribute, but they’re not financial contributions. They’re ideas. And you know what, I think ideas are valuable.

So I decided to try something new – an idea auction.

I wasn’t really sure how it would turn out, but I wanted a way of gathering ideas from sustainable event practitioners – something that we can all share. A way for “the little kids to play” even if we don’t have deep pockets. These ideas would then be somehow made available by donation to the foundation. A key part that would be different than most auctions was the idea that since ideas can be shared, there wouldn’t be just one winner. In fact, the more the ideas are shared, the more we all win collectively from the dissemination of ideas on sustainable events. I’m grateful for the support from the board, including Chair Mitchell Beer and the Foundation’s Executive Director, Tamara Kennedy-Hill.

So… how do we implement this?

It all sounded great in principle, but we needed to figure out the logistics.

Our goals were as follows:

• Make it easy for people to donate ideas and for us to make them available for people to access by donation to the foundation
• Capture the excitement of a live auction format
• Generate interest in donating and in participating in the auction
• Help people to recognize the value of their own ideas

How did we do it?

It’s been a bit of a figure it out as we go along process. Some of the basics of the system were:

• We created an online form for people to donate ideas. We included both a teaser and the full idea description. The full description would be only available to people who donate to the auction, and the teaser would be used to generate interest in the idea.
• We promoted the auction at the GMIC Conference in Montreal, and encouraged participants to donate ideas.
• We introduced a “carding” system, where people would give someone a playing card when they heard a great idea during the conference to encourage people to donate the idea to the auction. This was part of our process for helping people to recognize the value of their own ideas.
• The highlight was the online top idea selection system at the conference. I’m thrilled that Richard Aaron, President of BizBash (and foundation Vice-Chair), agreed to be our auctioneer for this phase. We benefited from his talents as a former Broadway actor, and his singing really brought the event to life. We divided the ideas into categories (people, planet, profit and wild card). And we used a body voting system introduced to use by Adrian Segar.
• Once the top ideas in each category (selected based on innovation and triple-bottom-line impact) were selected, we created an online store for the ideas. We compiled all the ideas into an idea book as well that includes not only the top ideas, but all the other contributions as well. There are some true gems in those as well, proving that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover or an idea by it’s teaser.
• We introduced a three-tiered pricing structure (honor system) that allows people to self-select the price category that best allows them to support the foundation and participate in the auction. We made recommendations for each price category, but left them open to anyone. Prices range from $5 to $25 for an individual idea or $25 to $150 for the idea book. All proceeds go to the GMIC Sustainable Meetings Foundation.

For more information on our planning process, check out our video:

 

How you can participate

Right now, we’re in the ideas by donation phase, and only for another day (so there is still time to participate!). To receive ideas (either individuals ones, or the idea book – my recommendation), you can make a donation online here. Check out our second video that explains the donation process below.

 

Future plans

Well, as with all new ventures, we’re seeing ways to improve it for next time. Definitely some things to keep, including the live aspects. Some adjustments would help on the technological side, and I have some ideas on how to make it work better. In the meantime, I hope you’ll help make the idea auction vision come true.

Thanks

In addition to Mitchell Beer, Richard Aaron, and Tamara Kennedy-Hill, there are many people to thank for their help in putting this together. Amanda Ulbrich, Vanessa Adelmann and Jessica Nelson were instrumental in getting the technical aspects to work. Elizabeth Henderson and Judy Kucharuk were amazing onsite getting things to work. And, of course, an idea auction wouldn’t be possible without the idea donors – thank you for sharing your experiences, creativity and wisdom.

MM

Game ON! Revisited

NOTE: The 2012 GMIC Sustainable Meetings Conference just wrapped up in Montreal.  To mark this, here is a blog on last year’s conference.    It is a little longer than our regular blogs, but hopefully you will find it interesting.

Ever watched someone play a video game?  Chances are, they are totally immersed in playing.  They wouldn’t notice if World War III broke out around them.  They are focused, sometimes obsessively, on the objectives of the game.  Harnessing this power of engagement for meeting and events isn’t a remote possibility: it’s been done.

It’s July, 2010. The Board of Directors of the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC) was presented with an innovative concept: how the GMIC annual conference could reinvent itself using game mechanics, changing not only how the event looked, but also how attendees, sponsors and partners participated, interacted and learned.

It was a major innovation, but also a huge risk: the annual conference was one of two major revenue streams for the association.  The executive director of the GMIC , Tamara Kennedy Hill, says, “Failure was not an option for us that year.”  Kennedy-Hill adds, “Some of the initial reservations were simply unfamiliarity with the concept. Gaming?  What did that have to do with sustainability? How does it work? What if people are afraid to participate? And yet, the timing was ideal to introduce a radical approach to our conference design.  After the concept presentation was delivered, the Board saw that this experiment could increase engagement, structure networking and provide a concrete way to demonstrate and assess sustainable learning outcomes.  The other benefit was the innovative design; the GMIC was fast realizing that the traditional and technical approach to sustainable meetings was not reaching a mainstream audience.  Gaming allowed sustainability material to be delivered in an exciting experimental format”.   The result was Game ON!, the 2011 Sustainable Meetings Conference, which took place in Portland, Oregon. It was a brilliant – but not unqualified – success.

The intent of Game ON! 2011 was twofold:  first, it was to immerse attendees in a sustainable event universe. Second, it was to meet the GMIC organizational goals for the conference, which were: 1. To gain insights into sustainable meetings through field learning and interactive team activities; 2.  To build a network of experienced professionals who have moved beyond green meeting checklists into strategic sustainability action plans; and 3.  To develop sustainable solutions to issues raised by a rapidly evolving meetings industry.

Kennedy-Hill says, “Sustainability is a new skill set for many people. Just listening to a speaker isn’t enough to change behavior.  With this new format, attendees could have fun, be challenged, practice new skills and network while applying new skills to solve realistic sustainability challenges”.

The inspiration for using game mechanics in a conference setting came from the book Total Engagement by Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read, which outlined several key areas where players of massive multi-player games demonstrated beneficial traits or affects.  These key ingredients, and how the GMIC integrated them into the recipe for Game ON! 2011, include:

1. Leaders.  Leaders are a key success factor in multi-player games because they help to interpret the situation for others, act as relationship builders within the team, and act as a point person to focus efforts into execution.  At conferences, often “leaders” are found as talking heads on stage or attending “leader’s forums”.  In a game context, leaders can actually demonstrate and refine leadership ability.  Game ON! 2011 recruited leaders for teams in advance, and held an orientation session for them at the start of the event.
2. Avatars.  Since James Cameron has already successfully introduced this term into popular culture in the 2009 blockbuster movie Avatar, we don’t need to define avatars here.  What is important is that having an assigned role can help to increase your engagement with the game.  While avatars, or roles, were envisioned for use in Game ON! 2011 they were not implemented due to time constraints other than giving general roles to each group through interpretation of their assigned case studies.
3. Narrative context.  Storytelling is important in many business situations, and it is essential to a successful game by providing both context and the motivation to participate.  Game ON! 2011 provided the context through the use of specially developed case studies. Since the primary mission of the GMIC is to inspire sustainability, each case study tied an economic, environmental and/or social sustainability issue to a meeting/event situation.  Teams were asked to crack their case using specific information from conference sessions, and were given a list of applicable sessions to attend to get the relevant information.
4. Feedback.  Feedback – usually in real time – is essential to gamers.  It provides not only the current status of players, but gives the motivation to improve that status.  Feedback is often lacking in business situations, and most often, the feedback in conference situations goes one-way, from the attendees to the conference organizers.  Creating a 360-degree feedback opportunity that includes attendees, or “players”, at a conference has the potential to enhance engagement and learning.  Game ON! 2011 used a customized app to provide instant feedback to teams, through the use of a leader board viewed on a tablet or smart phone.
5. Ranks and reputation.  While feedback lets you know how you are doing, ranking lets you know how you are doing in relation to everyone else.  To a gamer, your reputation is based on your rank.  Integrating ranking into a conference situation creates a new dynamic among the attendees, potentially increasing learning, engagement, camaraderie and friendly competition.  The Game ON! 2011 app leader board was an innovation that allowed teams to not only see where they stood in relation to other teams, but to see in which possible scoring categories those teams had accumulated their points.
6. Marketplaces.  Marketplaces provide a place to use virtual currencies in on-line games to acquire items that might increase your success.  In a conference situation, a marketplace could be used in either virtual or real formats, allowing attendee players to transform points into something concrete for immediate or future use.  A marketplace also provides a natural link to program partners and sponsors, integrating them within the context of the game.  This provides more complete engagement and integration than many traditional ways of integrating sponsors and partners, such as logos on signs or PowerPoint presentations.  The marketplace was not fully developed in Game ON! 2011.  However, destination partners were integrated into the narrative context of the case studies, encouraging teams to look at in-depth information for each destination under consideration.  The mobile app stats prove that this engagement did happen to a great degree, giving partners immediate and verifiable return on their investment directly with their target audience.
7. Competition.  Competition is a product of ranking, and is a powerful way of increasing collaboration, networking and learning on-site.  Some conferences and events might offer stand-alone competitions; designing the meeting or event itself as a competitive framework is innovative outside of sporting events.  This is what Game ON! 2011 accomplished; the leader board incorporated in the custom game app enhanced the competitive atmosphere.
8. Teams.  Networking is often seen as a primary goal and benefit of attending a meeting or event.  Working on a team creates an automatic network for team members, especially helpful for those who are not natural connectors at large events; these then have the potential to create long-lasting relationships beyond the time boundaries of the meeting or event.  Teams also foster allegiances and create natural competition between different teams.  Game ON! 2011 assigned attendees randomly to teams.  The randomness was purposeful; psychological research into a phenomenon called “in-group bias” indicates that people will automatically identify strongly with whatever random team they are assigned to.  Teams did, however, evolve to include virtual team members communicating through channels such as Skype, an unexpected, organic and serendipitous result that improved the original design.
9. Parallel Communication Channels.  Using various ways of communicating is important.  Not only do people often have preferences for visual or spoken communication, sometimes the context determines which gets used, and with whom.  Voice, text or other visual means of communication should be implemented, and in addition, the channel should allow both private and public communication within a team and beyond the boundaries of the team.  Most conference and events formally use one-way communication, although the rise of social media such as Twitter has allowed two-way dialogue to occur in various situations.  Game ON! 2011 allowed teams to communicate internally at meetings and externally to other teams via the app.  Twitter was integrated as a points-earning activity with moderate success.

10. Time Pressure.  Time pressure in a game gives a sense of urgency.  Conferences lend themselves naturally to time pressure, as they are constricted to specific days.  Game ON! 2011 used case studies designed to challenge players within available time constraints.  This was intentional, to mimic many work situations where meeting professionals need to perform well under pressure.

The 2011 event was a successful experiment, due in large part to the creativity of the design team and the willingness of GMIC’s logistic partners, including Three Squares International and its mobile app partner, QuickMobile, to try out something new and test it for the event.  There were, however, some things that could be done differently, and done better.  For example, as Kennedy-Hill says, “There were a lot of moving parts, and not always clarity on when to stop the creative process and focus on execution and planning.  For future years, we decided that we like elements of experimentation, but they need to be balanced with clear goals and outcomes.  There were many last-minute, unplanned elements that could have been executed more smoothly with better planning or a clearer understanding of what it would take to bring the concept to life.  There are times when you are in a creative space and can benefit from defined scope and boundaries; yet, lacking those boundaries, we still produced an excellent event.  We want our future events to benefit from creative vision but still build on best practices for execution.

We want to perfect planned organized chaos.”

The 2012 Sustainable Events Conference will be held April 22 – 25 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The design team reviewed all comments from the 2011 event to revise the concept for 2012; the goal is to keep the elements that most people liked, and to adapt those elements that received constructive criticism to become better able to meet expectations, enhance learning, and change behaviour. It will feature the next generation of the organized gaming chaos envisioned by Kennedy-Hill.  She says, “The next generation of the game ties onsite gaming to the learning experience and to attendees’ personal sustainability education plan.  The game will have two levels; the first level is focused on individual accomplishments and learning, while the second level offers the opportunity for those who want to participate in teams to solve real-life sustainability challenges.  So if one person is more of a gamer or a team player, they will find spontaneous challenges and hands-on CSR challenges that they can solve in collaboration with others, but if another person is more of an independent contributor, they will have the opportunity of tracking their own learning and receive virtual rewards”.

A long-term goal for the GMIC is integrating conference-specific gaming activities into a year-round member learning and rewards program to enhance member engagement, the ability to track member learning and to celebrate accomplishments in a concrete and comparable way.  “The innovative gaming concept helped the GMIC rebrand itself to be seen as an organization open to innovation, adaptable to market change and demonstrating how sustainability has everyday business relevance for the events industry.  It gave everyone from the Board to the design team to the attendees permission to experiment and test concepts in a safe environment.  The success of the experiment has generated a lot of industry discussion and a wave of events that are also experimenting with gaming to enhance learning and change behaviour”, says Kennedy-Hill.  One thing is certain: game mechanics will continue to influence not only the GMIC, but also influence the meetings and events industry into the foreseeable future.  Game on!

Ode on a Bedbug

On April 6, 2012, meetings industry magazine Successful Meetings ran a story on the most influential people in the meetings industry.  Out of a total list of 25, they released the names of the first fourteen:

1. Reggie Aggarwal
2. Corbin Ball
3. Ray Bloom
4. Eduardo Chaillo
5. Cimex lectularius
6. Roger Dow
7. Jack Dorsey
8. Abdalla Salem El Badri
9. Jim Evans
10. Michael Gehrisch
11. Richard Harper
12. G.J. Hart
13. Roger Helms
14. Reid Huffman

All great people, probably very deserving, although I confess some are completely unknown to me.  But…

Notice anything odd?

Actually, three things.

First, the odd coincidence of almost half the list starting with the letter “R”. But that is just a coincidence.  Anyone notice this?  They are, with one glaring except, all men.  And then, there’s the bedbug. Yup, Cimex lectularius.

13 men.  No women.  One bedbug.

So, what gives?

Why are there no women? (BTW, Successful Meetings, which is releasing the rest of its list on a weekly basis, says that there are ten women on the list.  Just not alphabetically in the first half).  If you were blinking, you might have missed the conversation that followed.  Not just the fact that in an industry dominated by women (about 80% is the most recent estimate we could find), there seem to be no women of influence with names beginning with the letters A through J (Successful Meetings last update was the addition of a dead man, Steve Jobs), but WHY this might be so.  And this started a conversation.  Women, you, me, and others started speaking out. Using our voices to say

HEY!  LOOK AT ME!  I AM A WOMAN AND I AM INFLUENTIAL!

And this is half the battle.

Personally, I credit the bedbug.

And so….

I wrote an Ode.  To a bedbug.  An Ode is a poem meant to praise the subject of the title. With deep apologies to Keats, who wrote the famous, beautiful and timeless Ode on a Grecian Urn, from which this borrows shamelessly:

Ode on a Bedbug

Thou celebrated bug of influence

Thou demure denizen of the mattress

Sucker of glorious ruby-red human essence,

You trumped women like a duchess.

What fringe-legged legend guards our sleep?

Or, wakeful, haunts the pages

of magazines?  What truth is this?

Fame comes monthly, it comes in stages?

What do I hear? We all do weep.

We speak.  We Tweet. We do not dismiss.

Ah, happy, happy bugs! Thou cannot shed

your fame, nor ever bid the mattress springs adieu.

And, happy Cimex Lectalanus unwearied

Forever sucking blood forever new;

More happy bugs!  More happy, happy bugs!

Your fame hath brought focus to our voice

Which, silent no more, states our case.

And, listening, event professionals rejoice!

No bugs, no shrugs, no Bah! humbugs!

Your bloody fame we will displace!

Sustainable systems are diverse. Diversity is strength.  Women of the events industry, speak out!  Because you are influential.

And…

Thank you, you bloody bedbug.

French Phrases for Event Sustainability: GMIC Conference Preparation

Update: Quick Tip for Getting to the Hilton:

#GMIC Conf: 747 Express airport bus runs 24/7 stop 5 close to Hilton. Buy $8 fare in Intl Arr Hall ow.ly/aonUr

— Meeting Change (@meetingchange) April 19, 2012

 

We can’t wait to get to the GMIC Conference in Montreal and have been practicing our French in preparation. Of course, you don’t need to speak French to experience Montreal, but it is such a beautiful language and a great way to immerse yourself in the local culture. Special thanks to Marion Ancel, Tourisme Montréal’s Eco-Consultant for reviewing our translations and providing images. You can follow her on twitter @MarionAncel.

Sustainable Transportation in Montreal: There are 5,000 Public BIXI bikes for rent all over the city.

Here are a few phrases to help you stay on track with your personal sustainability goals while attending the event.

Arrival and Hotel Check-in

• May I please have directions to the Metro? I am going to the Bonaventure station.
• Pouvez-vous me dire où est le métro s’il vous plaît? Je vais à la station Bonaventure.

• I would like to participate in your towel and linen reuse program.
• Je voudrais participer à votre programme de réutilisation des serviettes et des draps.

• Could you please tell me about your green or socially responsible features such as recycling, composting, waste management, water conservation or energy conservation?
• S’il vous plait, pourriez-vous me parler de vos pratiques écoresponsables ou socialement responsables telles que le recyclage, le compostage, la gestion des déchets, la conservation de l’eau ou de l’énergie?

Refreshments and Dining

• May I please have some tap water?
• S’il vous plaît, est-ce que je peux avoir de l’eau du robinet?

• May I please have some fair trade tea/coffee in my reusable mug?
• S’il vous plaît, est-ce que je peux avoir du thé / café équitable dans ma tasse réutilisable?

• Could you please recommend restaurants that specialize in local foods that are within walking distance?
• S’il vous plaît, pouvez-vous me suggérer de bons restaurants spécialisés dans l’alimentation locale et qui sont à quelques minutes de marche?

Experiencing Montreal

• May I please have walking directions to Old Montreal?
• Pouvez-vous m’indiquer comment me rendre à pied au Vieux-Montréal?

• Where may I rent a public BIXI bike?
• Où est-ce que je peux louer un vélo BIXI?

• Where can I go to hear live jazz?
• Où est-ce que je peux aller écouter un concert de jazz?

Montreal’s Biosphere is full of interactive exhibitions aimed at increasing understanding of major environmental issues.

Meetings EIO: Ethics, Influence and Outcomes

Today’s #eventtable tweetchat, moderated by the talented Jenise Fryatt, has left me thinking about what really matters in our industry and what really matters because of our industry. 

From the AIG effect to Muffin Gate (seriously, we’re calling it that!) to the more recent GSA event, it is becoming increasingly evident to me that we need to revisit what is really important in our industry. I believe that this comes down to a few basics the EIOs of meetings – Ethics, Influence and Outcomes.

• Ethics: The examples above demonstrate that our industry is being held to a high ethical standard. We need to ensure that the way we conduct our meetings, and the way that we conduct the business of meetings is above all, ethical. This means being responsible with our spending and transparent in our business transactions.
• Influence: There has been a bit of talk this week about influence in our industry and who has it. Let’s take this further and ask: how are we using it? In 2009, Meeting Professionals International (MPI) set a theme for its World Education Congress: When We Meet, We Change the World. Well, what if we don’t, or worse, what if we change it for the worse? Just because we have the potential to change the world doesn’t mean that we make use of this opportunity. Let’s think about what we need to do to harness the power that comes from a meeting and how we can direct it towards the type of influence that we need.
  
• Outcomes: We need to focus on outcomes: what is the purpose of the meeting, how are we going to achieve it, and how are we going to measure our success. Are we providing the high quality education our stakeholders need? Are we creating environments that foster meaningful connections and spur innovation? What do we need to differently to get this done? We need to measure the results and be able to prove conclusively that meetings do make a positive difference. Fortunately, there is are lots of tools to help quantify this – including the work of by Jack Phillips and Terri Breining on ROI for Meetings and Events. Ultimately, without tangible outcomes from meetings, our industry is in bigger trouble than scrutiny on the price of muffins.

I think it’s time to get back to these basics.

MM

The Art of the Tweet

Last week I had the opportunity to live Tweet at a conference.  Despite being an almost five-year veteran of Twitter, I found that live tweeting an event is both an art and a science.

My role was that of a hired gun: part of a writing team assigned to cover the event.  While half the team did traditional content capture of the sessions, my role was to listen to the speakers and then Tweet content using the conference hashtag at an average of one Tweet every two minutes or so.  It sounds so simple.

But what it really means is that you need to focus hard on what the speaker is saying, because your job is to distill what they are saying into something understandable, relevant and still interesting…in 140 characters or less.  Actually less, because of the need to both attribute the speaker and use the conference hashtag.  So, let’s say that your little flash of brilliance needs to be less than 122 characters long. Including spaces.

At that length, you need the concentration of a laser beam and the writing brilliance of a Shakespeare, or reasonable facsimile.  As the AV guy said to me, it may look like you are writing Twitter haiku.

After the first day I was so tired I fell asleep on the light rail transit going home.  Luckily I get off at the end of the line.

To help you become an artist of the live Tweet, keep four points in mind:

1. Concentrate:  The speaker is your source of brilliance.
2. Craft:  Short. Sweet. Powerful! Is your mantra.
3. Check: Interesting, no typos, not over the character limit.  Right hashtag. Go!
4. Repeat!

In haiku form, this might read:

The art of Twitter

Concentrate. Craft. Check. Repeat!

Laser beam Shakespeare.

That little piece is 74 characters, with spaces.

To help you be a live Tweet scientist, here is a bit more detail:

• Write down key points as you hear them on a notepad or laptop. Write fast.
• If you have the luxury of waiting until after the speaker to Tweet, great.  You will have time to craft each one for maximum brilliance.
• If you don’t have that luxury, try to type as you go into the Tweet box.  Judicious use of colons, semi-colons and commas will be necessary.
•  So will the ampersand (&) and various cheats like “2” for “to” or “w.o.” for “without”, but keep those at a minimum.
• Try starting off with a word or short phrase that gives context, such as “Keynote:” or “At the trade show:” or “Opportunity!”
• If possible, use Tweetchat (www.tweetchat.com) as this will automatically enter the right hashtag for you. If not, you may want to copy the hashtag and then paste it into each one to avoid making a typo.
• Pick your points.  You probably don’t want to Tweet everything, and you may be able to link related concepts in one Tweet.
• Proofread before hitting “send”.
• Get lots of sleep the night before!

EH

SMART Goals for Event Technology

How do you measure success for event technology?

Yesterday’s #eventprofs chat focused on event technology, and with Liz King’s leadership, we started talking about how you measure success.  I proposed that traditional SMART goals, although a bit formulaic can be helpful.

It got me thinking about what I really want from event tech, and I then proposed the following new meaning for the SMART acronym:

Event tech should be social, meaningful, app-ifiable, relevant and time and money saving.

I propose that all event tech, from apps to hybrid to presentations to websites should all be designed to reach SMART goals. Now to put some more substance behind that acronym.

• Social: Event tech should help promote interaction between event participants. This can be those in the room, but also those participating virtually and through hybrid format. It should also promote easy integration with social media. And it should be fun – think gamification.
• Meaningful: Let’s make sure that the tech is actually beneficial to the event, and that it is designed to maximize the benefit. For example – spending thousands of dollars on video is great, but it is so much better if you spend a bit more and get some readable content, summaries and transcripts added to it.
• App-ifiable: OK, so it doesn’t need to be an actual app, but it should be mobile device friendly. This also applies to websites, registration sites, and onsite programs.
• Relevant: (Admittedly, this one is pretty close in theme to meaningful, but that’s what happens when you come up with an acronym in the spur of the moment. As my 4 year old was saying this morning, “you get what you get, and you don’t get upset.”) Your event tech should actually be relevant for your event, not just a sparkly new object.
• Time and Money Saving: Event tech needs to save you time and money, or generate more time and money for you. If an event app brings in more sponsorship money – great! If an online presentation management tool makes it possible for speakers to upload, edit, review presentations and instantly update mobile device programs directly without going through the event planner – great! If it is more work, or a crazy amount of money… well you know where this is going.

#eventprofs chats are held every Thursday at 9am Pacific / 12noon Eastern.

We are the 80% – Our Picks for the Most Influential Women in the Meetings Industry

April 28, 2012 – Please also read Ode on a Bedbug, our follow-up post.  Note that as of April 25, the list included 15 men and the bedbug…so perhaps the ten promised women is down to nine?

April 9, 2012 – Breaking News: Editor-in-Chief of linked list just posted that it will include 10 women out of 25. Just none until May 1. We look forward to seeing the names and to seeing if any of them match our growing list of women admired in the industry.  We continue the call for women in our industry to step up, promote themselves and their female colleagues.

UPDATE: In looking over the linked list again, we noticed that it is alphabetical. We are holding out hope for the women in team I-Z, there are many great names on that list. We also recognize that our list is far from perfect, there are many aspects to diversity and geographic range that should be added as well. Nevertheless, we believe strongly that more women should appear in any list of industry influencers.

Elizabeth and I started our company saying that we would measure our success by laugh lines and (triple) bottom lines.  We are not laughing right now. This week, I came across a list of the most influential people in the meetings industry. I got to the bottom of the list and it struck me – not a single woman on the list. That said, bed bugs made the cut. I didn’t think it was possible in an industry where there are so many strong and influential women that not a single one was mentioned. (We struggled to find the exact percentage, a somewhat dated source pegs women as 82% of meeting planners, and this seems to match our estimates.) At the same, time, Skype rings, and Joan Eisenstodt comes on the line. I tell Joan the news, and she immediately jumped on this and started the social media #boyzandbugs buzz. It was later brought to our attention that the list is only the first 13 of 25. Even if there are women on the remaining 12, I am somewhat stunned at the editorial choice that didn’t catch the omission and placed a bug in the top cut. Plato once said that “Your silence gives consent.” Elizabeth and I agreed that we could not and would not give our consent to this and decided to co-author a post on the issue. As she sat down to write, she came up with these powerful words:

Women of Influence: The Rant

We are the 80%.

We are inclusive, inventive, innovative, organized.

We are the original social media, the social revolution, the spinners of strategy.

We are the Cassandras, the caretakers of community, the key stakeholders.

We are the people who make the business of creating connections through events come true. 

We are the quiet leaders and the not-so-quiet leaders.  Our voice may be marginalized and minimized, but we are the majority.

We are not the fairy tale, the handsome prince, or the old boys network.

We are the women in meetings and events.  You should honour us, promote us, and recognize our influence.  We are the 80%, and we will not be silent.

Our Counterlist

There are many women that we feel should be on any list of the most influential people in our industry. So here is our counterlist: These are the women we feel should be honored for their true influence on the meetings and events industry (in alphabetical order):

• Terri Breining: Although we would add her to the list for her accomplishments alone, we consider her influence as a mentor to be one of her most powerful contributions to our industry. Terri regularly and selflessly takes time to support others in our industry.
• Joan Eisenstodt: Joan is the conscience of our industry and a voice that should be heard. She raises the tough questions about ethics, social and environmental issues and we are grateful for the conversations that she starts.
• Tyra Hilliard: Tyra brings a much needed focus on risk management to our industry, and combines her legal and academic background to help shape current and future leaders. Her motto “Carpe everything” is both inspired and inspiring.
• Jane McGonigal: From outside our industry perhaps, but this author of Reality is Broken has had a profound influence in the rise of gamification in this industry, including helping to shape the thoughts of our own Elizabeth Henderson.
• Fiona Pelham: Fiona started us down the British Standard down the path to the industry’s first sustainable event standard BS 8901 and has been the Chair of the ISO 20121, the international version of the first standard.
• Christine “Shimo” Shimasaki, DMAI’s Managing Director of empowerMINT.com is revolutionizing how meetings are valued. Her work that is developing metrics for calculating the economic impact of an individual meeting in a destination has the potential to change how negotiations between planners, suppliers and destinations take place.
• Amy Spatrisano and Nancy Zavada: They spearhearted* the sustainability movement in our industry. The founders of MeetGreen and the Green Meetings Industry Council have had a tremendous influence on our industry bringing sustainability issues and the need for measurement to the forefront.
• Shawna Suckow: The founder of SPIN (Senior Planners Industry Network), now the world’s largest association comprised strictly of senior-level planners is changing the rules of the game.  She recently released a book “Planner Pet Peeves” that provides insight into planner and supplier negotiations.
• Denise Taschereau and Heidi Thorne: These two women (Denise with Fairware and Heidi with Promo with Purpose) are raising awareness about social and environmental issues in the promotional products industry.
• The Bee: If we’re going to add a bug to the list, it really should be the bee. The Queen bee and most workers are female. Their economic impact is estimated as $217 Billion USD and they are responsible for 1/3 of our food.

*Spearhearting is a word that Elizabeth and I use to describe crafting an initiative that precisely targets relevant results with consideration, concern and care for all stakeholders.

Why we care about this

For us, this isn’t about simply an oversight, or a lack of recognition for the influence of women in our industry – it’s a financial bottom line issue as well. Our industry needs women’s voices at the table. Countless studies have shown the importance of a gender balance in financial performance. A small sample include:

• Catalyst Research Women Board Directors (WBD) Align With Strong Performance at Fortune 500 Companies
• McKinsey Research Unlocking the full potential of women in the US economy
• HBR Blog How Women Have Changed Norway’s Boardrooms

Ultimately, in an industry that is vulnerable to economic fluctuations not to mention environmental, social and governance considerations, we need all of our assets working to keep us on track. This industry would be crazy not to leverage the talent, wisdom and influence of the women in the room.

Why didn’t any women make the list and what do we need to do differently?

I have to ask why didn’t any women make the list? I have a few theories:

1. Women need to be better self-promoters: This article in Forbes really drills into the issues around this. I really like the “Princess Myth” concept that they discuss where many of us expect that if we’re good enough, people will notice. We need to be better about telling the world that we are fantastic and not feeling uncomfortable about it.
2. Assertive women are (too) often viewed negatively: Assertive men are viewed as strong. This post focuses really well on the double standard that exists when it comes to leadership. For women to achieve and be accepted in stronger roles, we need a paradigm shift regarding perceptions of women who demonstrate assertiveness and leadership.
3. There is no “Old Girls Network”: Frankly speaking, men are better at developing informal networks and using them to help each other out. This article discusses some of the issues that contribute to why women are not effectively joining these informal networks. More importantly, they do make a difference. I’m hopeful that social media will spur the adoption of asynchronous informal networks that will cross gender boundaries.
4. Mommy tracking is alive and well: In a 2010 National Bureau of Economic Research study, it was found that having a child costs the average high skilled woman  $230,000 in lost lifetime wages relative to similar women who never gave birth. I believe this extends to promotions even within volunteer structures. I recall being offered an administrative volunteer role once, assuming I wouldn’t be interested in a leadership role with a young child at home. We need to stop making assumptions, and start making opportunities.
5. We expect to, and need to, be asked: When it comes to applying for awards, or leadership roles or board positions, I think women wait to be asked. For my MBA research on high-performing association volunteers, I found women rarely say no when asked to volunteer by senior staff, volunteers or industry leaders (between 78-82% were very likely to volunteer when recruited this way), but more than 25% would ignore passive approaches such as an open call for volunteers. If we want women in influential roles, we need to ask, encourage and provide role models and mentors.

Our Challenge To Industry Women

This week, in MPI’s One+ Magazine, David Basler wrote an article titled “What’s your 118”, referring to lessons from Jeffrey Hazlett on fine tuning your elevator pitch (a topic Elizabeth also wrote about) to within 118 seconds. We issue a modified challenge: What’s your 118 – twitter version: come up with your own stake in the ground self-promoting statement in 118 (retweetable length!) characters. Knowing that we as women need to promote ourselves more, let’s start a #my118 campaign and let’s #EIR (engage, inform and retweet) each other to show support for what I know is nerve wracking. As I issue this challenge, I sit here wondering, “What is my 118, and how will I drum up the courage to post it?”

So we ask, what is your 118, and who is on your list?