Powering Sustainability through Influence and Mentorship

Recently I attended the 2012 GMIC Sustainable Meetings Conference in Montreal, Canada. As a GMIC Member, I look forward to the annual conference as a way to "reconnect, realign and reinvigorate". The energy at the annual conference is palpable, as like minded individuals gather to share information and their vision for the future of the sustainable meetings industry.

One of those individuals is Richard Aaron, President of BizBash Media (and recently appointed Vice Chair of the GMIC Sustainable Meetings Foundation). Richard brings with him a wealth of experience in the event industry and is acknowledged as "one of the foremost experts in pioneering the modern event industry". As the President of BizBash Media, Richard Aaron manages over 30 tradeshows, conferences and award shows annually in 9 markets for the organization.

Richard Aaron is an educator, lecturer and sought after speaker and I was fortunate to spend some one on one time with him during the conference.

In this interview, Richard provides valuable insight about using influence to further the message of sustainable meetings and events, and the importance of mentorship.

Control versus Influence - A Love Story

Did you miss Shawna McKinley and my session at the 2012 GMIC Sustainable Meeting Conference? Our presentation introduced Get Your Green On, a game that was created for Event Camp Vancouver and illustrated the power of influence that the industry has to change behaviour and promote sustainability. See the video where Sheldon and Cool first meet - after a rough start....they decided to work together.



Would you like the link to the Get Your Green On Report? You can find the link here

There is an "Elliephant" in the room!

Join Shawna McKinley and myself as we present the session, "Control versus Influence" at the 2012 GMIC Sustainable Meetings Conference Monday, April 23rd at 1:45

GMIC Sustainable Meeting Conference by Judylaine on GoAnimate

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"CAUTION" Learning Curves Ahead

When I was little and I would screw up (which was often), my mother would say to me, “Now Judy….what did we (meaning me) learn from this?”. I would scrunch up my face and wrinkle my nose (all indicators that I had my “thinking cap” on) and try to figure out the appropriate response. I sometimes came up with a good answer, but I also developed a deep wrinkle at the bridge of my nose.

I replayed this many, many times as I was growing up. Yup....I tended to screw up often.

Recently, I realized something. Why don’t we ever ask ourselves that question when we succeed at something? Of course, we learn a lot from failure, but we learn from success as well.

Last year, I was lucky enough to work on a project with Shawna McKinley, Director of Sustainability, MeetGreen (Shawna also has a great personal blog located here) and the team from QuickMobile. We collaborated to create an interactive mobile "Sustainability" game called Get Your Green On that was embedded into the Event Camp Vancouver mobile event application. 

It was a tremendously rewarding project and I walked away with a sense of accomplishment unlike anything I have experienced before.

I thought I would share some lessons learned along with some mushy “hug a puppy”, “share your feelings” stuff…..

1. It is more difficult than it looks: Working on a game requires a unique thought pattern and it took me a while to get my “game brain” in gear.  I was concerned that I wouldn't have enough experience gaming to be able to contribute to the project. We had to think about the game from the perspective of the player and imagine what they might be thinking as they tackled each challenge. You find yourself working backwards from the end result to troubleshoot and identify any potential problems. Definitely a learning curve for me, but one that I enjoyed immensely. 

2. Trust is defined as “Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing; or something committed into the care of another.” Although I knew and highly respected everyone on our team of collaborators, we had never worked together on a project. We were separated geographically, which meant that much of our contact was done online, via telephone and email. We needed to have trust in one another to get the job done. We all had to be invested and committed to the end result. I don’t like to throw words like “serendipity” around, but that is what it felt like. We were brought together by Tahira Endean (Event Camp Vancouver was Tahira's brainchild) and Shawna, James and I just clicked! I had complete faith in my fellow collaborators.

3. Share: In a project like this, you have to be willing and able to share your ideas and sometimes it can be difficult to fully articulate what you are thinking. James Hu from QuickMobile was like Yoda…..he intuitively knew what we were trying to express and he would respond back with solutions.

4. Everyone crosses the finish line together: There is a commercial on television showing a race where a child stumbles and the others stop, come back, help the child up and then they all cross the finish line together. That is how it felt working on this project. We were determined to cross the finish line together. When we felt that there was a loss in momentum, we stopped, came back, identified the bottleneck and then moved forward. Good/bad, success/failure….we were all in it together.

5. Yes we can! I am incredibly proud of what we accomplished with “Get Your Green On”. I will look back on this project fondly, with the knowledge that I contributed to a project with such a positive outcome and was able to create lasting friendships.

If you are interested in downloading a copy of the complete “Get Your Green On” Report – it is available for download here.

Judy

Things you didn't know about me...

So…last evening after a long day driving home from Edmonton, I was lounging in the bath with a glass of white wine and rereading my dog-eared, water stained (borrowed from someone, but I can’t remember who [Gordon] and they probably don’t want it back now [not in that condition anyway]) hard copy of UnMarketing by Scott Stratten.

After the water had cooled to an uncomfortable temperature and the wine had warmed to an undrinkable temperature, and just when I was ready to hop out of the tub, I happened upon Chapter 49, titled “Viral Marketing”.

What? Had I missed this Chapter the three (okay….five) previous readings of the book? Non? Slipping down further into the water to stay warm, elbows firmly propped against my….err chest, my UnMarketing book barely treading water….I began to read about the time Scott wrote a blog post titled, “25 things you didn’t know about me” and the reaction he received after posting it.

My mind began to race (perhaps it was hypothermia or maybe the wine). Would anyone care to read something like that about me? Dear Lord…what if people DID read it? (Disclaimer: Sometimes I think that the only people who read my blog posts are very dear friends, a handful of colleagues and of course….my mother)

And honestly, what can I say that I would want everyone to know?

So, I went out to Scott’s blog and found the post from 2009. Do you know what I thought after reading it? I might just try that for kicks and giggles.

So I did.

1. I am not a hugger. I don’t give hugs freely and you know what? That is okay. I just have a larger personal bubble than most and don’t invite many people in it. If you see me giving away lots of hugs, chances are something bad has happened.
2. I love dolphins
3. I have “un petit” OCD (please read this one with a French accent)
4. I have taken lessons for piano, flute and bluegrass banjo and have also played guitar and mandolin. Disclaimer: If called upon, I could not recall any of my previous abilities….they have left me.
5. I love to whistle! My husband hates it when I whistle, but I don’t care….whistling makes me happy. In my head I am a fabulous Whistle(er) and can riff whistle any song including the classics (ABBA)
6. I wish my inner voice was a real person because she is Bad Ass! She would be riding in one of those cars with the hydraulics, painted glossy red and some Blondie would be coming from the equally Bad Ass speakers! Frankly she terrifies me just a little.
7. I am super short but am still the tallest amongst my siblings…which brings me to…
8. I have three sisters (there are 4 of us!!! Oh my gawd) and….all of our names begin with “J”. I don’t want to state the obvious, but we were doing the “same first initial thing” before the Duggars. My parents took it one step further. How so? All of our middle names begin with “L”.
9. I grew up on a farm in Northern Alberta, Canada (cross reference #9 with #4)
10. My grandmother died of Alzheimer Disease and I try to support the Society whenever I can. Did you know they have a “Walk for Memories” every year?
11. I have two kidlets and they are amazing….just sayin’
12. I have run three marathons, a couple of half marathons and many, many 10K’s. (Unfortunately, that was a couple of years ago and right now I probably couldn’t run a km without stopping many times).
13. I have ridden a snowmobile to school
14. I love, love to watch Curling on television. For those of you unfamiliar with Curling, it is a game where people slide 38-pound rocks of granite down a sheet of ice. It is like shuffleboard only you need to dress warmer. It is fascinating and I would love to play like the pro's do. Dare to dream...dare to dream
15. My dad was a private pilot and he used to have a little Cessna airplane that was kept in a hangar located in our yard at the farm. He built an airstrip on the property so that when he needed to go somewhere, it was simply a matter of going 100 feet outside the front door to the hangar and leaving. Do you want to know the kicker? When my dad was 39 years old he suffered a massive heart attack and almost died. What saved him? The air ambulance flew in and landed on our homegrown airstrip, taxi'd to the front yard, loaded dad and took him to the hospital located 90 km away. Pretty cool!
16. I am terrified of spiders and bears which keep me from vacationing in super warm locale’s (huge spiders) as well as hiking (huge bears).
17. I prefer Tim Hortons coffee over Starbucks. Don’t hate on me people.
18. I once lived on an Island but had to move…. Perhaps there were too many spiders or perhaps we wanted to move closer to where my dad worked. Your choice.
19. My favourite writers are ones who use footnotes (random reasoning) so therefore, they include Jen Lancaster and Scott Stratten.
20. I am scared of sharks...duh
21. My bucket list items include sky diving and writing a book…the latter being one I should do first in case I don’t survive the sky diving thing.
22. I have a freakish love for small buttons that say pithy things
23. In another life…one where I had enough courage and confidence, I would try Stand Up......once. What’s stopping me? What if they don’t laugh? I. am. terrified.
24. Once upon a time, a goose stole my shoe (true story)

As the brilliant Meryl Streep said in that period piece called "The Devil Wears Prada"......"That is all"

The End

Judy