BizBash Most Innovative Event Pros

As promised in my blog yesterday, here are links to the story online:
The 68 Most Innovative Event Pros
http://bit.ly/lFekCe

Here’s a note about how we chose them:
http://bit.ly/l3eYPY 

Here’s a link to the story on the New York site:

http://www.bizbash.com/event_innovators_2011_the_68_most_innovative_event_pros/newyork/story/20626

The first of seven videos is here:

http://www.bizbash.com/video_event_innovators_2011_whats_the_best_advice_youve_received/newyork/story/20605

Here’s a link to the New York issue digital edition:

http://info.bizbash.com/Bicoastal0606NY.html

Los Angeles issue digital edition:

http://info.bizbash.com/Bicoastal0506LA.html

68 Most Innovative Event Pros

How cool is this? I’ve just been named by BizBash as one of 68 Most Innovative Event Pros, primarily for my work on the GMIC Sustainable Meetings Conference Game ON! concept.  I’m honoured to be in such amazing company.  To see the digital story, stay tuned — it will be released tomorrow and I will post a link here.

280 Billion Balloons of CO2e = 1 World Cup

For our first lab experiment, we decided to demonstrate what an event carbon footprint really looks like, and how easy it is to produce carbon dioxide from simple activities.

In our test run for the experiment, we used 1 cup of vinegar and 1 tablespoon of baking soda and were able to easily fill a balloon from the carbon dioxide created. Perhaps we were bitten by the Hollywood bug, because for this version, we decided to double the ingredients, perhaps a bit unnecessarily.

To fully inflate a party balloon (about 1 cubic foot of volume), you need about 10 grams of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e). To help to provide some perspective for the carbon footprint of some typical meeting and event activities:

• A night in an average hotel =  2,650 balloons. This is for a hotel with some “green” credentials, estimated as producing about 24 kilograms, or 53 pounds of CO2e.
• An air flight from Vancouver to Rome, return, = 300,000 balloons. This flight would produce just over three tonnes of CO2e, per person, economy class.
• A mega event, like The World Cup = 280 billion balloons. The 2010 World Cup is been estimated to have generated about 2.8 million tons of CO2e, including all of the air travel and accommodation of teams and fans.  This is the same volume of about 3,181,818 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

We hope you enjoy our first lab experiment!

AVGirl Advice on Prezi

I’ve been thinking more and more about using Prezi for my presentations. I’ve seen a few people use them now and they look great.

What is Prezi you ask? It’s a web-based presentation application that sets up your presentation on a visual canvas and you zoom in and out of concepts as opposed to the traditional linear “next slide” format used by PowerPoint or Keynote. You can see a demonstration of it here.

I’m a bit nervous about trying it though, so, as I usually do when I have questions about meeting technology, I asked Midori Connolly for her advice on getting started. She replied really quickly and, although we don’t typically blog about meeting technology issues, the advice was so helpful that I wanted to share it with others. If you’ve never met Midori, she is the Owner & Chief AVGirl of Pulse Staging. Not only is she an expert on event technology, she is also a sustainability leader and has excellent content on green practices related to a/v on her website. She gives great advice on twitter as well, and you can follow her @GreenA_V.

Here are her answers:

Why Prezi over PPT?

For me, it’s easier to create because I do not think in a linear, page-by-page fashion. Prezi is like working with a room with blank walls that I can write on! By its design it also reduced the overuse of text on a page.

Is Prezi in any way more sustainable (green) than PPT?

No. But if used properly it does offer a better transfer of information and increased retention rates, providing a higher quality of experience for attendees. I think that’s pretty sustainable for an educational program 🙂

What about handouts? I don’t always use them, but sometimes am asked to provide them.

You can print your transitions/frames to pdf’s…but handouts shouldn’t be a printout of slides anyways. I would provide the URL to your Prezi and encourage participants to access that way.

How long does it take to learn how to use it (assuming you have average tech skills)?

It’s less to do with tech skills, and more to do with your style of creation. Some highly technical people that I know still can’t create a decent Prezi. It has to do with your comfort in using a blank canvas.

How do I actually present using a projector? What equipment is optimal?

The same way you present from your machine. Best results are with full-screen mode. No special equipment required.

There are different options available – are the upgrades that much better than the free one?

I prefer the paid version so I can insert custom logo’s and edit/present from my desktop. Plus I can embed as much video/pictures as I need (the free version has a limit to file size).

What can I do from my iPad with Prezi? Can I present from it using a projector?

You can present from your iPad, but you need to have the appropriate DVI to VGA adapter (just like any other Mac). However, I have found the reliability to be a bit questionable and wouldn’t recommend yet.

If it is web-based, is it reliable? Can I operate it without an internet connection?

Not always. You can operate w/o Internet if you have the paid desktop version.

What are you most proud of having done using Prezi?

Two things:

1. I have opened online meetings and co-created sessions using Prezi.
2. I submit RFP’s in Prezi and my clients appreciate the interface.

What else do I need to know before I start using it?

I would recommend downloading the free trial of the desktop app to try it out and see if it works for you. Prezi works on both Mac and PC. And please feel free to get in touch with me, the AVGirl, if you need any advice. I love talking tech!!

I’m not sure yet if I’ll use Prezi regularly. I think it might work better with some of the subjects that we present over others, but I’m open to being convinced otherwise!

In any case, I’m grateful to Midori for her fantastic advice!

Associations: Let’s Date First

At ASAE’s recent Great Ideas conference, a recurring theme focused on how associations can recruit and engage young association professionals. It’s had me thinking about what makes me join associations.

What I came up with is that it has to do with the same principles that apply to dating. That might be an unusual conversation to open in a professional setting, but read on and see what you think. (By the way, I’m happily married and not looking to date!)

I wouldn’t date anyone that asked me through spam messages

Seriously – would you go on a date with someone who was inviting pretty much anyone that met basic criteria in the hopes that someone would say yes?

I’m much more likely to say “yes” to an association if

a)     a trusted friend makes the recommendation
b)    someone actually asks me, directly

In fact, if you’re somewhat relevant to what I do but only reach out to me through mass email marketing, I won’t actually say no by unsubscribing (letting you move on). I’ll just do the equivalent of screening my calls, by setting your messages to be marked as read and skip the inbox. You’ll think you have a chance, when (sorry) you really don’t.

I don’t actually want you to solve my problems

But I do want you to be there for me. Listen to me, encourage me, support me, even commiserate with me – but don’t try to fix things for me! I want you to make me stronger so I can solve my own problems.

I keep hearing associations talk about how they need to adapt their services to provide members with solutions to some major issue – like the economy.  To which I ask, “Does that line really work for you?” First off, I think that’s a pretty big undertaking and I’m not sure an association can truly deliver on that type of promise. Second, I guess I’m more of a modern-day Princess, ready to wield my own sword against the challenges I face. I’m not looking for a knight in shining armour, but I would appreciate having an association that can sharpen my sword for me between battles. A foot massage wouldn’t hurt either – after all, sword fighting in heels deserves special treatment!

Charm only goes so far

Flashy events, pretty newsletters and great parties might attract me initially. But I need real substance, such as high quality education, a strong return on investment and opportunities for my career, to stay involved or “get engaged”.

Can’t we just be friends?

Why is the goal always “engagement”? Sometimes, it’s nice to just be friends. For example, there are lots of associations that I think I would be interesting in following that are not in my direct field, but I’m not going to pay the full membership fee to join. I would, however, happily pay a modest fee to have some form of limited access. By recognizing tiers of engagement, associations could redefine membership, broaden their networks, and create new pricing structures that contribute to their financial sustainability.

I wouldn’t get engaged without dating first

If we can be friends first, or go on a few dates, I might be more likely to consider getting engaged. Too many associations are asking for big commitments too quickly, without giving me an opportunity to see if that’s really what I want.  The risks of this include that I won’t join, or that I’ll join something that isn’t a good fit for me and then I won’t renew.

I’m not like anyone (or everyone) else you’ve ever dated

I want to be able to personalize my relationship with you. Just because the last person you dated liked going to events and social networking, it doesn’t mean that I will. And that means I won’t see value in our relationship if that’s what you’re offering.

I’d like us to build a relationship that works for us. Instead of offering me a bunch of benefits I’ll never use, why not give me membership credits that I can use for the type of relationship that I want? If I’m going to a conference, I can apply my credits towards an event or advertising discount, or maybe as a certificate for your bookstore, or maybe for webinars. This way, I will see true, customized value in my membership.

Can we do some things that don’t cost more money?

As nice as it would be to go out for fancy dinners all the time, my wallet can only go so far. It seems to me that the cost of being involved in associations continues to add up. It starts with membership, but then the programs, events, silent auctions, raffle tickets, and travel costs continue to add up. Consider the cost, in Mommy dollars (or feel free to convert to your preferred currency), of some typical association fees:

• $50 Lunch Session Education Fee = Enough gas for 128 round trips to soccer games
• $400 Membership Fee = 1,161 Pull-Ups
• $600 Conference Registration Fee = 95 weeks of swimming lessons
• $2,000 Average conference expense claim = 10 weeks of group day care (honourable mention to 1,550 Justin Bieber downloads from iTunes)

Instead, maybe associations could offer something equivalent to frisbee-in-the-park activities, like a monthly downtown tweet-up around lunch time, where you can still spend time together face-to-face, but don’t need to spend anything else. These free activities won’t deliver an immediate revenue stream. But if they keep members involved (or even engaged?), they might just strengthen the organization.

While we’re on the subject of money, let’s talk about silent auctions. I’m not going to bid on anything the value of a mortgage payment. Even if I did want to bid on it, I don’t want to spend my networking time watching to make sure that I’m not outbid. Either offer affordable items, or let me buy tickets that I can use to enter a raffle for the items I like.

You said you’d call

It goes a long way to making sure that I’ll come to more events if someone follows up with me after I participate in something. It’s even more important if I have volunteered. I know, I’m a bit high maintenance (there’s a reason my husband calls me his city girl with an outdoor wardrobe) – but I want to feel like I matter. A quick note, card, message, balloon bouquet will make all the difference. I also want you to surprise me after the official courtship period is over so that I stay engaged – so I don’t end up singing “You don’t bring me flowers, anymore”.

For my industry research project for my MBA, I studied the motivation factors for high performing volunteers in a professional association. I found that the opportunity for personal or professional recognition is important to 77.2% of respondents, and that feeling appreciated is important to 71.4% of respondents.

On the flip side though… don’t call (or email) me too much. That’s creepy.

Associations depend on having solid market research to gauge what is important to members. I want to share my opinions and thoughts with associations that I am a member of, and will do so more thoroughly and promptly if someone reaches out to me directly. Last month I received 44 requests to complete surveys.  The only ones that I replied to were ones that were sent to me by a person that I know, and that knows me. I’ve invested in those relationships and want to help them be stronger.  I’d love to reply to more of them, but there’s only so much (survey) monkey business I can do.

Hey, that’s my line!

One of the best parts of bring in a relationship is sharing ideas. That’s how they develop into something really amazing. I love sharing my thoughts, time and energy with an association that I’m a member of and I don’t necessarily need recognition for it, but I don’t want someone else taking credit for it either. There’s a fine line between thought leadership and thought stealership. I think that when associations try too hard to “own the content” they ultimately make it faceless, and when they do, they make the relationship less personal.

I’m not alone in wanting to share my ideas and expertise – the same research I mentioned in the previous section found that utilizing personal expertise to address industry issues was very important to 65.7% of the respondents. I want to have a relationship that encourages me to share my best ideas instead of holding them back, that helps me to make those ideas stronger and that celebrates our achievement.

Building a relationship

I guess what this has all been about is that I get engaged with associations when I can have a good, meaningful relationship. What makes you get engaged?

Atlas, Shrugging

Atlas is the Greek god who supported the heavens on his back, sometimes shown as the Earth instead of the celestial spheres.  Whether you are a classical mythologist or not (probably not, but you never know), you know this is how we got the word atlas for books that show maps of the earth.

All very interesting, but where is this going?  We have our own Atlas today: oil.  Oil is holding up the earth as nothing before has ever done.  From global industry (and hence the economy) to your car, everything runs on oil.  Even your toothpaste probably has oil products in it, and if it doesn’t, it got to your supermarket using energy from oil.

As the price of oil fluctuates, responding to the political crisis in the Middle East and the earthquake/tsunami in Japan, energy security in the long run suddenly seems much more important.  The price of oil is higher than it has ever been, excluding the high of 2008.  That makes a lot of things prohibitively expensive, like airline tickets.  At the recent GMIC conference in Portland, Ian Lee of the Sprott School of Business talked about research on airlines that saw many major airlines in Europe fail starting at oil prices of $125.00/barrel.  As Jeff Rubin claims, your world is about to get a whole lot smaller.

When Atlas shrugs (apologies to Ayn Rand), where will we fall?  On renewable energy?  On nuclear (which most of us are thinking hard about, after the recent events in Japan )?  On energy efficiency, the panacea of the 1980’s?  How are you adjusting your business to be sustainable in the long run without the lubricant of cheap oil?

Oil has the power to change the map of your world.

This is not a statement of good or bad, just one of business:  when your frame of reference changes, when your longitude and latitude shift, are you going to be ready?  Because Atlas is shrugging.

R&D: Upcycling

Yesterday, a client from Halifax was in town and she stopped in to talk sustainability strategy.  We — Meeting Change — had recently created a sustainability blueprint for her business, LimeLight Communications, and she wanted to talk carbon philanthropy strategy.  She also showed me a thought-child come to life from the strategy — a cell phone case made of up-cycled fabrics by a local company.  So instead of “made in China”, she now has “made-in-Halifax” from fabrics getting a second life.  I’ve shared the photo here, so anyone can “R&D” this idea…that is, “rob and duplicate”!

Rebuilding Japan

It’s difficult to express my emotions about what has occurred in Japan this past week. I feel a need to do something in some way but it’s hard to know what to do. I wrote to a GMIC member in Japan to ask how things are there, and received back this message (with permission to post):

Dear Ms. Mariela,

Thank you very much for your kindly mail. I and my family and our organization members which is Sapporo Convention network in Sapporo are fine. We are all right and safe. But our member’s company have branches in Sendai city, we can not confirm they are safe or not.

In this case of big earthquake and Tsunami we never have any experience in Japan. We feel so bad, painful ,sad, and unhappy. Especially atomic-energy power stations had broken, which is we have worry about adverse effect of nuclear.

We believe  we can get over.

Best regards,
Yasushi Fujita

The focus on overcoming the devastation that they are facing is inspiring, particularly in light of so many frightening unknowns. So what can we do? I believe that there are two aspects to supporting Japan’s recovery: immediate aid, and long-term support to re-establish the economy.

There is an immediate need for financial donations. Resources for donating money include:

• Government of Canada info on how Canadians can help
• Canadian Red Cross: text ASIA to 30333
• American Red Cross

Long-term though, we need to start thinking about how we will help in rebuilding the economy.  I’m inspired by actions such as those by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists that recommitted to holding their annual conference in New Orleans in 2006 following Katrina.

To that end, here are three recommendations for supporting the long-term economic recovery:

• Look at how you can commit or recommit to doing business in Japan or with Japanese companies
• Ensure that aid you provide doesn’t inhibit local businesses from recovering
• Work with experienced relief organizations and support their efforts

Please add further recommendations for rebuilding Japan in the comments below.

Legal Considerations: CSR for Meetings and Events

For our upcoming book on CSR for Meetings and Events, part of the Wiley Event Series, we are working on a chapter on legal considerations. Let me start this post by saying: we are not lawyers, and this is not legal advice. With that out of the way, some of the issues that we plan to highlight in the chapter are:

1. Contracts and Vendors: Effective contracts play a key part in ensuring that sustainability objectives are met. Not only do they clarify expectations on all sides, they also set out how to address any issues that arise. Consider this: if you’ve set objectives for waste management for an event that you are planning, do you have an agreement in place with your key venues to ensure that they are following through with the objectives? What remedies will you have in place if the commitments are not met? Related to the contracting issue above is how the actions of your vendors can have an impact on your organization’s reputation and liability.
2. Gaming: Very often socially responsible groups will decide to raise money for a cause or charitable organization by holding raffles, auctions or contests. Most jurisdictions have regulations about this and some even prohibit this. Event planners need to research these in advance to ensure that they are not exposing themselves to unnecesssary risks. If in doubt: seek legal advice before proceeding.
3. Donations: Many event planners would like to arrange for leftover food to be donated to charitable organizations. Once again, regulations on this issue vary according to the jurisdiction. The 1996 Federal Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act in the US helped make it easier for food donations to happen by bringing standardization on this issue in the US and providing some protection. In Canada, related regulations are provincial. As examples, Ontario has a Donation of Food Act and a similar act to the one from the US was passed in British Columbia in 1997.
4. Volunteers: Some of my favourite memories from meetings that I have attended have been from community service projects. These events have sometimes involved activities with a certain degree of risk, such as hiking to remote areas, working with animals and construction work. In these cases, planners, in addition to implementing safety measures, should have volunteers sign release forms that provide not only liability protection but education to the volunteers on safety measures that they should take, such as appropriate protective clothing and footwear.
5. Greenwashing: Today I learned that the term “greenwashing” was coined in 1986 by Jay Westerfeld in reference to the practice of hotels promoting a towel reuse program but then not following through with other green initiatives that were not cost-cutting. While many hotels take sustainability very seriously, greenwashing does exist in the hotel industry and in meetings and events. A class action lawsuit in California is currently underway that illustrates the importance of having third-party certification and not misleading consumers (or, in the case of meetings and events, attendees) about environmental claims.

If you have best practices, stories or sample contract clauses that you would be willing to share in our book, please let us know. We are also looking for recommendations for experts to interview on the subject.

 

1908: The Conservation of Natural Resources

Today I decided to do a change my research focus – instead of trying to find the latest information on business and sustainability issues, I decided to look at some of the articles on the subject from 100 years ago. (Tip: if you’re going to research this as well, “conservation” is a better keyword than “sustainability” or “environment” for that time period.)

I found a gem written in 1908 for the US Department of Agriculture’s Farmer’s Bulletin 327. In this article, Gifford Pinchot, a Forester for the USDA  who later went on to become the first Chief of the Forest Service, submits the substance of a presentation he did for the National Geographic Society.

In one section, he uses an analogy of a family’s use of land and resources and comments that

Not only must we meet our own needs from this property, but we must see to it that our children come in for their fair share of it; so that after a while, the happiness we have had here may be carried on by them.

The quote above seems to be a precursor to another quote, written almost 80 years later. In 1987, the Brundtland Commission’s report “Our Common Future” presented what is the most today’s most widely used definition of sustainable development:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

The article is a fascinating read, covering a wide range of issues including forest resources, minerals, oil and natural gas and soil waste. Pinchot’s forecasts and his recommendations for improved mining methods, calls for conservation of mineral resources and a coordinated approach to conservation planning are insightful and amazing to examine 100 years later.