Barbara Palmer

1 month ago | pcma.org | Barbara Palmer

Author: Barbara Palmer        Aurora Dawn Benton, founder of Astrapto, a sustainability and social impact consulting firm, has polled more than 1,000 planners and venue staff to establish the kinds of food items that are most likely to be wasted at events — “and it is the same stuff every time, over and over and over again,” Benton said.

1 month ago | pcma.org | Barbara Palmer

From untouched box lunches and platters of food quietly thrown in the trash to the trays of desserts that are discarded after events, the events industry is a significant contributor to food waste in the U.S., where nearly 40 percent of food goes unsold or uneaten. It is not that meeting professionals don’t consider controlling food waste a high priority — most do, according to a survey conducted in 2024 for the World Wildlife Fund.

2 months ago | pcma.org | Barbara Palmer

Humans have been interacting with each other in person for 100,000 years, points out Andrew Brodsky, author of the newly released Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication. “Compared to the amount of time that we’ve been emailing each other or having Zoom or team video calls, that’s minuscule,” Brodsky, a management professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, told Convene.

2 months ago | pcma.org | Barbara Palmer

Author: Tyler Day        Transforming an idea into a successful new event requires more than just creativity and a clear vision. Last August, mdg and New Hope Network (Informa Markets) worked together to introduce Newtopia Now, a natural, organic, and conscious products industry expo. Here are the lessons we learned. 1.Be audience-centric vs. event-centric — Too often, organizers start the ideation process by focusing on keynote speakers, parties, on-site activations, and all the other fun stuff.

2 months ago | pcma.org | Barbara Palmer

There are ways to connect with meeting participants by giving gifts that don’t have adverse environmental effects. Here are three ideas from Sonali Diddi, an associate professor in the Department of Design and Merchandising at Colorado State University (CSU) and a faculty affiliate at CSU’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability. Work with companies that create conference bags and other items made ofmaterials, like conference banners, that otherwise would be headed to landfills.