Ummm, Greg? Psst! That photo of actress Jeri Ryan – her character on Star Trek: Voyager was called Seven of Nine. It really has nothing to do with the title of your post.
Greg? Me again. That song by Meat Loaf? It’s called Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad. Once again, you are oh so close but yet so far away.
So what point are you trying to make?
Yesterday, the Convention Industry Council (CIC) announced that eight of the nine APEX/ASTM Environmentally Sustainable Meeting standards are complete. The ninth standard is currently undergoing final balloting through ASTM.
Let’s take a moment to let this settle in. Four years ago (2007, to be precise), the CIC issued a call for volunteers to join their Green Meetings and Events Practices Panel, as part of their APEX initiatives. An oversight committee was formed (I jokingly referred to this as the Mother Ship) that was chaired by Amy Spatrisano, along with 9 subcommittees on various topics:
- Audio-Visual
- Communication & Marketing Materials
- Destinations
- Exhibits
- Food & Beverage
- Meeting Venue
- On-Site Office
- Transportation
- Accommodations
I was lucky enough to serve on the Meeting Venue task force and would like to think that I made some meaningful contributions to the project. There would be countless emails, conference calls, heated discussions, drafts, revisions and more changes over the next eighteen months. At one point, I remember commandeering a computer at the internet station for IAEE’s Expo! Expo! in Miami for a 90 minute conference call as we were making the final revisions before sending the draft off to the Mother Ship. I got a few strange looks from some of the other attendees at the time.
Discussion groups were held in cities throughout the United States to review what had been prepared by the task force and to get input from the industry at large. This input was funneled back to the various sub-groups and the proposed standards were further tweaked and revised.
Somewhere in the process, the decision was made for the APEX Green Meetings and Events Practices Panel to partner with ASTM International. ASTM is an international standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards. This action really gives these sustainable events standards some “teeth” and gives them more credibility around the globe, rather than just a United States based focus. This decision also slowed down the process, as ASTM had their own systems and processes that had to followed. In addition, ASTM was not familiar with our world of meetings and events and looked at our issues through the eyes of mainly engineers. So this accounts for the name change to the APEX/ASTM Sustainable Meeting Standards.
The ASTM membership was sent the standards for their review and comments. These were incorporated into the standards and again were sent to the ASTM membership. Any negative concerns had to be addressed on an individual basis to try and convince the disagreeing party to sign off on the proposed standards. Take into consideration that you had some industries trying to protect their special interests during the process. This is an incredibly tedious process and a huge round of thanks should go to Karen Kotowski and Lawrence Leonard from the CIC for their patience and diligence in walking through this political minefield. I probably would have had to bitch-slapped someone during this process.
For the past 18 months, if you asked when these standards would be released, the answer was “soon.” Back in May, the Green Meetings Industry Council held Train the Trainer sessions that I attended to have the first wave of instructors available for when the standards would be released to the public. Well, finally 8 of the 9 standards were approved in October (only the Accommodations section remains to go through the balloting process) and it is believed that the approved standards will be published this month by ASTM. I am looking forward to putting this training to use in the near future now that the standards have been approved.
Are these standards perfect? Heck no! It is a start and a good one at that. These are the first standards that places responsiblity squarely on both the planner and vendors shoulders – in the past, this mostly was the planner’s headache. No longer will it be a one-sided equation. As we go forward, these standards will need to reviewed and tweaked as they are put in process. Having read drafts of the various standards – they are not sexy and are rather dry. They also can be very intimidating at first. This is why the GMIC training program will need to be a major factor as the standards are rolled out.
Many folks throughout our industry and various government agencies gave of their time and efforts for this project to come to fruition. You can find a listing of these people here. I am proud to call many of them as my friends.
My thanks to Nancy J. Zavada’s excellent Pretentious Musings of a Meet Green Martyr blog for sharing the good news about the first wave of standards being approved. It’s one of the few blogs I have been proud to include in my blogroll, which you can find over in the right hand column.
One last attempt – how about Eight Standards Out?
