Music Join us here at EMOL Access and we're at EMS in San Francisco. Today I talk with Paul Salinger of Oracle about green events and why it's important to be green when you're producing events. Let's listen in to the interview. Paul, thanks for joining me. Thanks. You're in San Francisco, your hometown. Yep, I understand. Born here. Yeah. And Oracle Open World is here. Oracle Open World is held in San Francisco every area. It takes over most of the city, I think. It takes over a close city. We kind of try to think of it that way. It's called painting the town red. We do try to give the impression that we own San Francisco during that week. One of the unique things about that is you close down one of the main streets. Not even just one street. We're up to like three streets now that we close. But the main street, Howard Street is a main traffic artery and we close it down for that week. But it closes a street over by the Hilton as well for Java 1. And actually we're now on two streets over by the Hilton that we're closing for Java 1. Why would you do that? You're just out of space and less gunning? It's a space issue. But it's also, I think we do it somewhat to create some buzz. That was one of the initial factors was we needed space for lunch. But we also saw it as a great opportunity for creating buzz for the event. And now it's become an integral part of the conference from the standpoint of we sort of look at Oracle OpenWorld as kind of a campus, if you will. Because we have very diverse audiences and very diverse product lines. We sort of have gone down the road of creating spaces where HR people can congregate with each other, where marketing sales and service people can congregate with each other. And then we kind of look at Howard Street as sort of like the campus quad, where everybody can come and come together. And it's close to the keynote hall. So it's an extension of the content from the keynote hall into the outdoor space, which is a great networking space. And we always hold the event in the fall when the weather is quite good. We used to actually tent it, but now we've created a big open closet, which is much more customer friendly, much more conducive to conversation, kind of sitting and hanging out. We put lots of recharging stations out there. We've run even content out there as well as, you know, entertainment in the evening. So it's really become kind of a hub for the whole conference. So just richens the experience. Totally. Totally richens the experience. And it creates a great meeting point for people to say, you know, just meet me at Oracle Plaza. Get you outside. Get you outside. Which is important. It's an important part of the sustainability piece that we are so kind of attuned to, is like we really care about the health and well-being of our attendees. We want to create a great experience for them from a number of standpoints, from the content to the networking to some of the fun things. But we also want to do it in a very sustainable kind of way. We've eliminated some of the art buses that we used to transport people because we think that, you know, getting out in the fresh air and walking a quarter mile to your hotel is not a bad thing. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So you were on the Green Meetings Industry Council? I was. I'm President of that body. Yeah. Why do event planners need to be thinking about green? What does it do for them? Well, I think there's a number of different things. I think we're starting to recognize and the new generations that are coming up are kind of even forcing this issue in terms of, you know, that it's about experiences and not about possessions, it's not about consumerism. So, you know, the traditional way of doing event marketing and things is to create a lot of stuff. You know, you have your conference bag, it's filled with a lot of stuff. So we're trying to reduce waste. We're trying to solve the climate change problem to some degree and be much more of kind of a low carbon economy. And the event industry plays a big role in that. I mean, we have people traveling all over the world, right? Count, you know, bringing lots of carbon into the air through air travel and transportation, all of those kind of things. Free, free, all of those kinds of things. So I want us to be a part of the solution as opposed to a big part of the problem. But there are also economic benefits. You know, we've saved over $2 million at Oracle through sustainable practices over the last few years. So there's a bottom line experience to it as well. If I can reduce, you know, the amount of stuff that I create, if I can reduce the amount of carbon that gets, you know, gets emitted into the atmosphere, there are environmental and social benefits to that. That I think that we need to start thinking about as an industry. And people are thinking about it. I know that people are thinking about it, but there's a long ways to go still. And I think that there's something to be said for, you know, just using kind of sustainable practices as one more filter in the way that you think about experiences. And millennials, in particular, young people, they seem to be very attuned to quite charitable causes, social causes. Absolutely. Do you message green to your attendees when you're at Oracle Open World? Will you see a sign that says we saved a hundred trees by not printing your catalog and things like that? Yeah, we do do that. We do that both through our mobile app and on the website. And we have a little bit of signage. We try and actually minimize the signage. But yes, we absolutely message that stuff. And we're just about to start a program with the nature conservancy to plant a million trees over the next four years. Because we have goals at Oracle that we're trying to get our conference to be a zero-waste carbon-neutral conference by 2019. That's something to really be proud of. Yeah, it is. It's like a million trees. Much as we're proud by the overall experience and winning an ex-award, you know, for the conference. Yeah. We are super proud of the fact that we are one of the highest-rated, sustainable conferences in the world. Yeah. I mean, this topic of green seemed to really jump on to the scene maybe what, five more years ago, five or more years ago, became a real topic. Is it continuing to be talked about in our event circles? It is. You know, and I think that if you kind of look back at the history of it, it kind of got a lot of momentum of 2008. Once that recession hit, people kind of abandoned it a little bit and went, you know, some different directions. Because in a lot of ways, there's a myth about, you know, doing green events is being more costly. Yeah. But I think, you know, the fact that we've saved over $2 million tells me that it doesn't have to be a cost-way. That if you build it in, and it's integrated, much like we talk about integrated marketing. If you integrate sustainability into your event planning, you can actually save money and see some operational efficiencies as a result of doing that. So I think that people are starting to clue into that message now a little bit more. So it's not just that environmental benefit. It's now people are starting to look at, you know, the operational efficiency and the cost saving that it can bring to bear. And they're starting to look at the social causes as well. I think that you're actually seeing a lot more kind of conversation around the social side of it, which was always a little bit lacking when it was just an environmental message. Yeah. But there's no question that you have to combine kind of the whole triple bottom line because of climate change, because of the risk that it presents to our industry in terms of new regulations, new potential taxes on carbon, those kinds of things, as well as the societal things where corporate corporations now are really looking at corporate social responsibility in a much more meaningful way. And the opportunity to create economic benefit as well, that it's something that event marketers and event people in general really should be looking at as a part of the way that they think about their experiences and the way that they build their portfolio and the way that they think about the planning cycle and how you build sustainability into it. Yeah. Well, you guys are doing great work. You have a lot to be proud of both on producing your show and all the screen momentum that you have. It's really awesome stuff you're doing. Exactly. Thanks for joining us. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you.