Inaugural Convene 4 Climate Launching as a ‘Catalyst for Change’

NTT Data’s European headquarters of its Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence — Europe’s most sustainable office — will host a community mixer and tech exploration for Convene 4 Climate participants. (Courtesy NTT Data)

PCMA launches its sustainability platform for the global business events industry Oct. 2-3 with the inaugural Convene 4 Climate conference in Barcelona, Spain. The conference, hosted by PCMA and the Strategic Alliance of the National Convention Bureaux of Europe (SANCBE) and other collaborators, aims to deliver innovative solutions to address the critical challenges of climate change.

Felix Rundel will moderate the event.

PCMA Managing Director of EMEA Jaimé Bennett and her team have been organizing the event with the goal of creating a more unified approach to sustainability. “People are doing a lot of great work,“ Bennett said, “but we don’t have harmony as a global industry.”

PCMA, SANCBE, and partners have curated the list of invited attendees to bring together individuals representing the entire value chain of business events. This includes decision makers and people with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) responsibilities from both the supplier and planner sectors, as well as future collaborators from adjacent industries such as transportation and technology.

“We need to understand what barriers need to be broken down to bring adjacent sectors together next to our traditional partners,” Bennett said. “We need to think about who we need to help us transform [our industry’s efforts].”

Attendees will participate in a program designed for high interaction, mixing climate-tech project explorations with solution-driven workshops. The conference will start with a community mixer on Wednesday evening at NTT Data’s European headquarters of its Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence — Europe’s most sustainable office — where participants will experience a rotating tech exploration featuring four working climate-tech projects. The experience will “get them thinking about how technology can play a role” in sustainability strategies, Bennett said.

Paul Dickinson and Montse Guàrdia Güell

Thursday’s Main Stage will feature four speakers who will present crucial challenges to reaching ESG goals:

• “Why we are here.” — Paul Dickinson, cofounder and managing partner of consultancy company Transition Value Partners
• “Who we need.” — Montse Guàrdia Güell, chief people and culture officer of electronics company IDEADED and president of the UPC (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya) Board of Trustees
• “What are the barriers to be broken?” — Michael Nau, director of sales and sustainability, Lufthansa airlines
• “How to design our way out.” — Vojtech Vosecky, founder, The Circular Economist

During these presentations, participants will consider how the climate crisis impacts the business events industry, now and in the future, to prime them for the interactive workshops that are up next.

Participants will be split into four groups where they will consider this question through their group’s designated lens: What are the tactics we need today to guarantee a sustainable future for the business events industry?

Stephen Rose (from left), Lydia Kaufmann, Daniel Hires, and Inga Mende

Group lenses and facilitators include:

• Technology/data/measurement — Stephen Rose, head of communication services, and Lydia Kaufmann, event manager professional, both at Siemens
• Skills/people/mindset — Daniel Hires, executive board of directors, marketing & partnerships of nonprofit Inner Development Goals
• Business models/risks/growth — Vosecky
• Innovation and collaboration to drive change — Inga Mende, cofounder and CEO of offsite booking company cloopio

On Thursday afternoon, groups will dive deeper into how their tactics could be implemented during the second phase of the workshops. Moderator Felix Rundel, cofounder of strategy and creative agency futurehain, will tie together outcomes from the event and pose crucial questions about next steps to the audience, Bennett said. Among them: “Where do we go from here? What are the gaps? How do we continue this commitment, movement, community conversation? Because this event is meant to be the catalyst for change,” Bennett said. “This is just the start.”

On the Web

• Learn more about Convene 4 Climate.
• Convene 4 Climate follows PCMA’s Convening EMEA In Barcelona. Registration is still open for Convening EMEA.