Green Meetings Industry – All Together Now! Making Waves
At Green Event Ninjas, we’re new to the green meetings block but we’re confident that we’re going to be making waves. Not the rock the boat, annoy others in the industry kind of waves, but the sweet and harmonious, “all together now!” kind of waves.
Seth Godin, the marvellous creative genius we all (should) know and love, wrote about this notion in one of his latest blog posts, “Us vs. us”. He had a great line that immediately led me to think of the green meeting community:
“Call me naive, but I think it’s possible (and likely) that the digital tribes we’re forming are going to actually change things for the better.”
The green meetings industry is still in its early stages but there are many signs of major coordinated effort. Take, for example, that it was only in June of 2012 that an international standard for event sustainability management – ISO 20121 – was published. It’s a big deal! The 2012 London Olympics were held according to its rigor.
A community for the green meetings industry
This effort has come from a community of practitioners – event planners, sustainability professionals, policy-makers, etc. – that have rallied around a shared vision for more responsible events.
In Seth Godin’s piece, he writes specifically of online communities and the fragility of them when people begin to game, cheat, or disrupt them for their own selfish gain. To this Seth asks,
“Is it open, fair and good for others?”
It’s important that green meeting practitioners ask this question of themselves on a regular basis. The international dimensions of the events industry will force many of its conversations, and therefore communities, online and if sustainability is to become a mainstay, it must be approached in an open and cooperative manner.
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