Picture via GMIC 2014 Sustainable Meetings Conference Flickr
The 9th Annual GMIC Sustainable Meetings Conference (April 14-17, 2014) draws a network of meeting professionals to explore solutions for sustainable meetings and event design.
Fairware’s own, Denise Taschereau, on the GMIC Board of Directors attended this year’s event in San Francisco along with other thought leaders to gather insight to keep in front of trends in the green meeting industry.
Here are her top 3 takeaways:
- Sustainability needs to become synonymous with innovation and creativity. It’s not just about getting rid of the water bottles at on site events anymore – it’s about designing events that support outside the box thinking, creative and pre-competitive collaboration and truly enable big ideas and big a-ha’s to emerge. Framing ‘sustainable events’ as innovative events might also get new people to the table.
- Brands aren’t the hero’s – their customers are. I loved the presentation by Jonah Sachs of Free Range Studios on the power of stories and myths. His 4 lessons of brand storytelling were impactful and bang. Here is a short video on the key messages – it’s worth the 5 minutes! Also be sure to check out his book the Story Wars.
- Structuring Engagement – the design of GMIC was unique and turned the ‘talking heads’ model, well, on it’s head. While there were awesome and talented speakers to ‘spark’ a conversation, it was the attendees then that massaged the meaning and opportunities from what we heard. I like the dialogue structure and felt like I left the event with deeper connections than I’ve had in the past.
It was an awesome event – would love to see you there next year.
