With climate change as an international conversation and cities moving toward cleaner experiences, event planners are likewise embracing environmentally friendly events. Problem is, sustainable events are often a bit tough to tackle.

“Are you shying away from greening your events because it seems like more work?” Shawna McKinley, sustainability event expert, asks in her latest Event Manager Blog post. “Have you stopped paying attention to green because you’ve tried before and feel your efforts did not deliver the results you were hoping for?”

Learning from her past efforts, McKinley shares everything she knows regarding successfully holding a sustainable, clean, and green event.

“Over the years I’ve made a lot of mistakes when it comes to sustainable event efforts,” she admits in her writing. “More often than not they happened because I didn’t know what I didn’t know and had to learn the hard way.”

There’s advice such as not starting the planning process too late, communicating your needs in understandable ways, and always focusing on real-world stories over what the data says. It’s refreshing, as McKinley says green event planning allows for more purposeful work.

“Sustainable events became a much more effective process when I stopped solely looking at the minutia of practices, and focused on the intention of the process as well,” she says. “Suddenly things got goal-oriented. And creativity blossomed.”

Read more of her insights at the Event Manager Blog.

“With Is Greater Than What”

Look at who you’re with—not just what you’re seeing. That’s the insight nonprofit marketer Colleen Dilenschneider, ‎chief market engagement officer at IMPACTS Research & Development, uncovers in her latest Know Your Own Bone blog post and video.

In a dive into IMPACTS’ own research, Dilenschneider highlights that many people who go to cultural events and facilities value the people they’re with as a key part of the experience—not just the cultural artifacts they’re experiencing. It’s a phenomenon that could offer some important lessons outside of the world of zoos and museums as well.

Check out the video above to get a feel for the data.

Other Links for Your Day

Social media scheduling may have gotten easier. Management platform Buffer just launched its new social media calendar feature. Check it out.

Watch how you communicate. Peter Economy wrote at Inc. about nine surprising statements that can make you look unprofessional—or just not cool—in the office.

Get on your content! There’s so much to share and so many platforms to deal with. Aditi Prakhash shared six tools at SocialFish for content managers to utilize in streamlining content work.

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