EVENT GREENING FORUM

Rethinking sustainability

Recently, in the middle of the week, I sat in back-to-back online meetings for an entire day. One after the other, the hours went by, my cellphone happily buzzing away with notifications adding to the never-ending to-do list.

By Gavin Burgess, marketing chairperson of the Event Greening Forum

My cellphone was oblivious to my anxiety over the amount of productivity lost. You know the drill by now. When I next looked at the time it was already after 16h00.

I thought, “16h00 and my workday has only just begun”. I still needed to accomplish everything I had to do that day — and I was totally exhausted from being in online meetings all day long.

Working from home during lockdown has highlighted how exhaustion leads to mistakes. A person is not nearly as productive as they have the potential to be when they are well rested and energised. If you are itching to get back on site to an event or exhibition build, you know exactly what I mean.

‘Events’ is not just in our blood — we live and breathe for them. Our industry is so passionate that even after twenty months of no work, we all crave being back in action. Many people I have engaged with during this time feel wronged, that their passion has been replaced by the sheer enervation of just trying to keep their heads above water.

At the Event Greening Forum, we embrace the sustainability terms ‘reduce, reuse, recycle, and rethink’. The most important of these now is ‘rethink’, and the most sustainable thing you may do for your business is to prepare yourself and your teams for readiness to enter the world of events again.

What I have observed (and experienced first-hand), is that the businesses who have been fortunate to survive up to this point, probably have teams of burned-out individuals whose passion for the industry has been zapped away. This is the part we need to rethink.

Sustainability is not only about the greening of an event or calculating a carbon footprint. Sustainability is also about making sure that you and your teams are well rested and ready for the imminent return of the events sector.

Considering we spend so much time in online meetings these days, we as an industry have the ‘meetings’ part of the business events sector down to a fine art — at least in virtual form. If you’ve been in the industry for long enough, you are now not only a meetings expert — but you’re also an online meetings expert too! The question then becomes, what about the rest of business events?

In the events industry we all operate as a multidisciplinary team. Our organisations are both competitors and colleagues; and our industry thrives on this symbiosis. Over the past – almost – two years, there have been remarkable developments in the repositioning of incentives, conferences, and events. Yes, under the current circumstances we sometimes stumble and fall; but, as events professionals, we are a resilient group, and it has been amazing to see how this has led to innovation.

In 2019, the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ or 4IR was all the rage. It was the buzzword that epitomised imagination of the future. Well, the pandemic certainly catapulted us into the 4IR whether we liked it or not. And it is far from what we imagined it would be. Previously, innovation was about being product-focused and customer-centric. Our new concept of innovation is the reinvention of not only our business models, but also our minds. The advantage here is that instead of technology shaping the way we think, we can rethink how to shape technology in a manner that will serve us well.

Look after yourself. Consider managing your energy rather than your time. Set boundaries and stick to them. But above all, keep up the passionate enthusiasm that will enable us to return to work stronger, and far more sustainably, than ever before. Rethinking the successful and sustainable return to events and exhibitions is not only our shared passion, but also about to become our lifes’ work.

Who is Gavin Burgess?

Gavin Burgess is the marketing chairperson of the Event Greening Forum. By trade he is a systems analyst and the managing director of Technology Partners, a technology services provider to the business events industry.

About the EGF

The Event Greening Forum (EGF) is a non-profit organisation that promotes sustainability within the business events sector. It does this by hosting educational sessions for industry and lobbying government in an effort to implement sustainability principles into the daily operations of the events industry. The EGF was established through dedication and support of eight industry associations who are recognised as founding members. The founding members are key industry associations working together to promote South Africa as a destination for various types of events.

Want to know more?

If you would like to know more about event greening, visit wwweventgreening.co.za where you can browse the free resources, sign up to the monthly newsletter, or contact them directly with any queries.

Contact: Lynn Mcleod

T: 082 891 5883 E: lynn@eventgreening.co.za