High-Tech With Low Impact – Green Conventions

Any convention, trade show or entertainment event that brings hundreds or thousands of people to the same location can, with good planning, reduce waste, save energy and minimize its “environmental impact.” In fact, “green event planning” is a growing trend in the tourism and convention industries around the globe.

City governments and private/public partnerships around the world have built special “green and sustainable” convention centers, with more planned. This is because more and more big events are planned and operated to minimize or eliminate the environmental impact of large-scale assemblies. Environmentally friendly practices for resource use, energy, building operations, construction, transportation, food service and waste management are all brought to bear on the planning for green events.

The recent Olympic Games in Beijing and the 2008 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, started a three-year campaign to showcase sustainability practices. A number of publications and websites have been created to provide updated information on these practices.

High-tech helpers Since green conventions, meetings, conferences and events are here to stay, everyone has a part to play. Much of the most obvious waste at any large event is paper, so reducing its use (and abuse) goes a long way toward minimizing environmental costs. Solving the paper problem will help a great deal to bring about an era of “high tech with low impact.”

Laptops and the new, small “netbooks” – small, 2-lb. laptops with built-in wireless – can be a big part of this new equation. If you prepare properly, instead of printing tens of thousands of programs or reports, you could provide wireless access to attendees to make event materials available. For each attendee using a PC, you could save scores of sheets of paper, and eliminate the costs of 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 stop there. One of the most important parts of the “sustainability formula” is planning, because a good allocation of resources is not a hit-and-miss proposition, but a complicated problem.

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, that will work on all types of operating systems (Macintosh, Windows, even Linux). The most important part of the formula, of course, is the human component.

You will need to instruct attendees, during the sign-up process, about the “green convention rules,” and make them responsible for bringing a wireless laptop – or pay a premium for paper materials. That (small) fee could then offset the clean-up costs.

Customize your own method 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 slow anytime soon. As far as sustainability, the future is now.

Since safety is as important as efficiency, event managers need to track crowd movements, provide security to attendees and make everyone feel safe, too. During the convention “set up,” video surveillance cameras can be placed in strategic locations, to be monitored in the security office.

Of course, with wireless and web technology working together, mobile security officers could look at video feeds on their own netbooks or even on cell phones. Convention goers will be pleased to know that the parking areas, the surrounding city streets and the convention center itself are secure and safe.

Inexpensive, high-quality video cameras and security systems are available right now to do this. A green convention can be a safe one, too, and all at a real cost savings over “the old way” of doing things. When thousands of people can come together to do business, enjoy a concert or see the latest concept cars from Japan – and do it safely and with good “environmental sense” – everyone wins!

By Scott McQuarrie, representing the EZWatch Pro brand, a leading provider of computer based security-cameras for business, commercial and government applications.