Coolest way planners (and speakers) can walk the green talk
Posted by Kristi Casey Sanders on February 26, 2009 at 10:03 am
Things seemed pretty straightforward at the 2009 Greening the Hospitality Industry conference in Pittsburgh yesterday (stainless steel water bottles, reusable china, local/organic cuisine, multi-stream recycling, composting bins) until the keynote presentation.
That’s when Green Meeting Industry Council Executive Director Tamara Kennedy-Hill introduced our keynote speaker, L. Hunter Lovins of Natural Capitalism Solutions. Lovins didn’t walk out on stage. Instead, she was beamed live from Boulder, Colo.
It was a fascinating example of how a little thought in the planning process can make a huge impact. Here we were, attending a conference on how to green our events, and the organizers surprised us with this brilliant technology that’s innovative, interactive, functional, fun, unexpected and which is a great example of how planners can use technology as a sustainable solution. Typical of most green strategies that reduce waste, booking Lovins’ virtual keynotes also cost less money than flying her in for a speech.
Lovins was still able to show us PowerPoint slides, crack jokes and answer questions. She could see and hear us, too. But, as she says in this short clip, she didn’t have to “move her protoplasm around” and got to enjoy her birthday at home, radically decreasing her carbon footprint and increasing her quality of life.
Check it out. The Web site she references in the clip, in case you want to see the whole presentation, is Natural Capitalism Solutions.
March 4, 2009 at 11:19 am
This is such a great story, thank you so much for sharing!
We’re working on more and more packages for hybrid meetings like this. We just did one for BMW that increased their reach by thousands while engaging both their live and virtual audience. Such fun technology that is eco-friendly (ecological and economical) :-)
Midori Connolly
Pulse Staging and Events, Inc.
http://www.sustainableav.com