Friday, May 14, 2010

The Grinch Effect

I have been cleaning out my office over the past couple of weeks. It feels like the arteries of both my office and my mind have been cleared with each box of recycling. I am through the paper stuff, and am now down to things, like the recycled glass business card holder that is a relic from a conference I co-chaired in 2003. It is "things" that are the hardest. I can't, for example, remember the last time this particular object was actually used to hold business cards. But looking at it makes me remember the conference itself; the work I did with my co-chair to make it happen, the branding I designed, even some of the sessions I attended. So, what happens with this thing? Do I recycle it (presumably, being glass, it can be recycled again)? Do I keep it as it has become a memory?

This is a hard question and is, I think, at the root of our attachment to "things" in the meetings and events industry. Things become memories. Is there another way to preserve a memory without a thing, thus decreasing our environmental footprint and our economic obligations through the supply chain? Become like Dr. Seuss's Grinch, whose revelation was:

"It came without ribbons! It came without tags! It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas -- perhaps -- means a little bit more"
Maybe meetings/events mean more than the ribbons and bags. Maybe conferences -- perhaps -- mean a little bit more.

2 comments:

  1. Oh, wow...what if everyone in our industry believed that conferences meant more than trinkets and trade show giveaways?

    About five years ago, I was driving my daughter and one of her friends to an activity of some sort. The friend was talking about all the great gadgets and toys her mum always brought home from the conferences she attended as a lawyer. Rachel piped up from the back seat, loudly enough that she knew I would hear: "Well, MY dad goes to conferences and brings back all these great canvass bags...no offense, Dad."

    Rachel has plenty of uses for canvass bags, probably more use than her friend's mum had for most of the "higher-end" giveaways. But the Grinch -- and the rest of your post -- capture a deeper point. If we could get back to the idea that conferences are fundamentally about the information and organizational needs participants bring onsite, the knowledge they share while a meeting is under way, and the results they generate when they bring that knowledge home, we'd suddenly see far less need for toys and trinkets. Maybe one of the surest roots to sustainability and CSR for meetings is to strip away anything that doesn't align with that sharpened sense of purpose...then marvel at how easily we've cut our environmental footprint and onsite costs.

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  2. Love this post and couldn't agree more. I appreciate so very much the thoughtfulness that goes behind gifts. When it is a sustainable item, or no gift in order to be sustainable, my appreciation soars. Real attention to sustainability, done out of caring for the planet and for each other stands out!

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