Association News

December Focus Forum The Convene Green Alliance Focus Forum held in Washington, DC showcased the planned green initiatives for the PCMA Convening Leaders Conference to be held January 10-13, 2010 in Dallas, Texas. Session speakers and other participants included (back row, left to right) Mary Grimley Rosenbohm, Director of Sales-Eastern Regional Office, Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau; Jay Marsh, Director of National Sales, Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau; Jack Sammis, President & CEO, IMN Solutions; Phillip J. Jones, President and CEO, Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau; Kelly Peacy, Vice President of Meetings & Events, Professional Convention Management Association and Frank Poe, Director, City of Dallas Convention & Event Services. Shown in the front row (left to right) are Tracey Messina, Executive Director, Convene Green Alliance and Casandra Matej, Senior Vice President, Sales & Services, Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Convene Green Alliance hosts sneak preview of PCMA 2010 Conference Green Initiatives

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Convene Green Alliance (CGA) offered a sneak preview of the green meeting features of the upcoming Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) Convening Leaders Conference at a CGA Focus Forum session on Dec. 9, 2009.

“PCMA is positioned to lead by example within the meetings industry and their commitment to green their annual conference is the perfect living laboratory for meeting professionals looking to make their events environmentally friendly,” said CGA Executive Director Tracey Messina. “We were thrilled to have this opportunity to highlight what PCMA is planning for Dallas.”

The PCMA Conference will be held in Dallas, Texas, and Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert kicked off the Focus Forum by explaining how his city has become of the nation’s greenest cities.

“Dallas was the first large city in the United States to implement comprehensive green building standards,” he said. “To advance our economy we had to build our commitment to green development, and that’s how we have framed it in our community.”

For example, more than 40 percent of the energy purchased by Dallas is renewable, which earned the city membership in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Green Power Leadership Club, a distinction given to organizations that purchase 10 times the minimum amount of green power designated by EPA.

Leppert described many other citywide green initiatives and noted that many new parks have been opened to make the city greener and tie together different parts of the downtown area.

Jack Sammis, President of IMN Solutions, an association, foundation and meeting management company that founded and manages the Convene Green Alliance, added, “This upcoming PCMA conference is the perfect example of how an association and its destination partners can work together to create truly green meetings. We hope this sets a powerful example and prompts other associations to work with their destinations in the same way.”

Casandra Matej, Senior Vice President, Sales & Services for the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau (one of the Founding Industry Members of CGA), moderated a panel discussion featuring Frank Poe, Director, City of Dallas Convention & Event Services, and PCMA Vice President of Meetings & Events Kelly Peacy, who discussed the PCMA green initiatives and the partnership the two organizations have built for the PCMA Conference.

“We looked at all aspects of the meeting to see how we can green each area, including the destination, accommodations, food and beverage, communications, and operations,” she said.

Peacy described a wide range of green programs lined up for the conference, including booking a destination and facilities with an extensive track record of green performance, maximizing the use of locally grown organic foods, donating leftover food to a local food bank, composting other unused food, participating in a soap recycling program with the Hyatt Regency Dallas to benefit people in developing nations, and more.

“New this year is a carbon offset program we are doing in partnership with carbonfund.org, which allows attendees to find out how many offsets they need to buy to offset their travel to the meeting,” Peacy said. “They can then purchase the offsets at the conference.”

PCMA also worked with Centerplate catering at the Dallas Convention Center to find a way to serve local organically grown food to its thousands of attendees for a fixed budget. In the end it was not possible for PCMA to achieve all its goals for food and beverage (especially for an early January meeting given available fresh food in the area), so it compromised but still made it as green as possible.

Poe explained that the Dallas Convention Center is one of only two exhibit facilities of more than 2 million square feet to have earned ISO 14001 certification for its green programs. The center invested more than $18 million in capital improvements to add features such as wind power that provides 100 percent of its electricity, solar panels for hot water, high efficiency chillers and lighting systems, new heating and air conditioning controls, and automatic high speed overhead doors.

The center also has an Environmental Management Committee that governs how it deals with environmental issues, finding alternatives to hazardous materials, better ways to dispose of materials, creating recycling programs, and more.

“This committee is the filter through which these programs flow,” Poe said. “We have systems and processes in place to mitigate the effect on the environment. We also soon expect to be the only existing convention center — not a new construction center — to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold or silver certification,” he added.

In reviewing the green features of the PCMA conference, Peacy noted that the PCMA Environmental Mission Statement not only talks about the goal of conducting green meetings, but also educating members on green meeting practices. To meet both objectives, she explained that the green aspects of the PCMA meeting will be announced at conference general sessions, described in the show daily newspapers, displayed at a green meetings booth in the convention center, and demonstrated online at www.pcma2010.org with video clips of chefs talking about what food will be served at meal functions and where it came from.

Peacy and Poe also explained the philosophy that organizations and meeting facilities need to have to make a difference in the green area.

“You don’t just go out and suddenly become a green organization,” Peacy said. “You have to build on it. You need to decide how high green ranks on your list of organizational strategic objectives. We asked that question and determined that it was very important, so we put significant resources toward it. At PCMA it is half of one person’s job. Every year we build new objectives. If PCMA can be recognized as an industry leader to educate our members about green that would be a success.”

She also reviewed some of the past PCMA green initiatives and what the organization learned from them. For example, one year they placed reusable water bottles in each registration bag at the PCMA conference in hopes that members would fill them at water stations positioned throughout the meeting instead of using disposable water bottles. But they found that few members used them because they thought they needed to wash them before using them, and found no place to do that. So finding a solution to that issue remains a work in progress. In another example, PCMA used recyclable coffee cups for the popular coffee-to-go station at the conference, but didn’t provide lids because they were not recyclable. In that instance the lack of lids caused an inconvenience that was unacceptable to members, so a compromise was made.

“We never know what the reaction will be from attendees to a green initiative, but we need to listen,” Peacy observed.
PCMA surveyed members to find out whether they want a printed program or just want an electronic program they can download to their personal digital assistant (PDA) and found that 60 percent still want a printed program. So PCMA produced a downsized printed program on recycled paper. It also found that 60 percent still want a registration bag, so PCMA makes these from organic materials and offers an option to donate bags to a local school after the meeting.

“We have to understand our attendees – their psychology, goals, and preferences,” Peacy said.

Poe sees two concurrent trends among meeting clients that come to Dallas. One is a set of clients that are still trying to determine what they want to do in the green area. For them, the city, convention center, and local hotels have a set of turnkey programs that are built into meetings and events regardless of client buy-in.

At the same time, a smaller number of clients – such as PCMA – come to Dallas with defined goals and strategies, and the city and its local partners work with them to develop new creative ways to expand green initiatives.

Internally, Poe noted that educating the convention center workforce on new ways of doing things – replacing old habits with new habits – is vital to achieving true green performance. Even little things such as changing how waste is handled and using new cleaning products requires some time and ongoing training.

“You need to look at your facility as a true partner,” Peacy explained. “Sit down and talk about your specific goals. Show them that when we are successful you will be successful. But you can’t put the onus on the facility – you have to drive your own green efforts.”