High Tech with Low Impact: "Green Events"
by Erik Jay

Any convention, sporting event or corporate meeting that brings hundreds or thousands of people to the same location can, with appropriate planning, reduce waste, save energy and minimize the physical impact of the assemblage. In fact, “green event planning” is a firmly established trend in the worldwide tourism and convention industries. Cities around the world have built special “green and sustainable” convention centers, with more planned.

Green conventions are planned and operated so as to minimize or eliminate the environmental impact of large-scale events. Environmentally friendly practices for resource allocation, energy use, facilities operations, construction, accommodations, transportation, food service and waste management are all brought to bear on the planning for green events.

The Olympic Games in Italy, Sydney, Utah and Greece and the 2004 Democratic and Republican National Conventions all implemented green practices with different degrees of success. Live Earth, a series of global music concerts held in July of 2007, inaugurated a three-year campaign to showcase sustainability practices. A number of publications and websites have evolved to provide continuously update information on these practices.

High-tech helpers

Since green conventions, meetings, conferences and events are here to stay, everyone has a part to play. One of the most conspicuous waste items at any large even is paper, so reducing its use (and abuse) goes a long way toward minimizing the environmental “costs” of the events. Solving the paper problem creatively will help bring about the era of “high tech with low impact.”

Tablet PCs are a big part of this new equation. If you prepare properly, instead of printing tens of thousands of programs or reports, you could provide tablet PCs to attendees and make event materials available over a wireless network. For each attendee using a tablet PC, you could save scores of sheets of paper, and eliminate the costs associated with clean up, waste and disposal.

The “4P” method

“Planning prevents poor performance” is the “4P” method. In the situation at hand it means that, as a CEO, you cannot just announce that your convention is “green” and rent a hundred tablet PCs. One of the crucial parts of the sustainability formula is planning, because efficient allocation of resources is not a hit-and-miss proposition, but a complex equation.

You will need to plan your wireless network coverage, first of all. Then you will need to coordinate the production of cross-platform digital documents, such as Portable Document Format (PDF) files, and provide instructions for network use and access. Most important to this equation, of course, is the human component.

Perhaps you will provide the tablet PCs to all the 60 or 80 people at your intra-company event. On the other hand, you may be producing a convention with hundreds of attendees, so you may need to factor the cost of the rentals into the conference fees. Of course, you could also instruct attendees concerning the “green convention rules,” and make them responsible for bringing a wireless tablet PC – or paying a premium for paper materials. That (small) fee could then offset the clean-up costs.

There are numerous ways to plan and operate a green convention or event, from just a few people to a few thousand, or more. A growing number of large-scale green events are now being produced around the world, and the trend will not abate anytime soon. As far as sustainability, the future is now.

With wireless technology supporting the new tablet PCs as a benign, low-waste, mobile computing platform, the tools are already here for both equipping, and sustaining, the new generation of “green conventioneers.”

Do your research, talk to a few experts, and find out exactly what “high tech and low impact” can mean to your company and its next event. Whatever you need to do to accomplish your meeting, convention and general business goals, you can find good, green ways to go about it. It’s worth the effort.

Published on the website of one of the largest computer rental companies in the world, May 2008.