JavaOne Greens its Conference Without Sacrificing Quality

By Nancy Mann Jackson – www.expoweb.com

Does going green cost more? Organizers of Sun Microsystems’ JavaOne Conference 2008 say no. The conference, held at The Moscone Center in San Francisco May 6-9, implemented a number of eco-responsible initiatives, including virtual marketing, aggressive recycling and food composting, but organizers say the green initiatives they incorporated averaged to a zero sum.

“Each line item has its own positive or negative expenses, but the new expenses were replaced by the savings we incurred by initiating environmentally friendly practices,” says Wendy Yamaguma, Sun’s Senior Director of Global Events. “We definitely haven’t seen any negative impact from being more responsible.”

But the almost 442,000-square-foot JavaOne Conference wasn’t focused solely on going green. Instead, organizers were interested in extending Sun’s corporate initiative of eco-responsibility and meeting corporate goals for carbon consumption and emission reduction, while at the same time accomplishing the objectives of the conference, which brings together 15,000 Java developers, users and supporters from across industries and across the globe, and a variety of exhibiting companies that want to reach this community.

“Certainly you can spend more to be green; you could pick a city or venue just because of its solar panels, or you could bring in hybrid buses,” says Scott Schenker, Vice President of Program Strategy and Experience Design for George P. Johnson (GPJ), the experience marketing agency that partners with Sun to produce the conference. “But hopefully that’s not the driving force. It should be the impact, cost and ease for all parties involved.

Before applying environmental tactics to the event, Sun started by defining its goals for eco-responsibility and by crafting an energy usage impact strategy. Working with GPJ, Sun then looked at “every single line item of the event” and determined how reduction, reuse or recycling could be applied, Schenker says. While each tactic to reduce waste is important, “equally important is filtering through its impact and cost, not just on the environment but also on the attendee,” Schenker continues.

For instance, from 2006 to 2008, JavaOne eliminated a half-million printed materials from the conference, implementing everything from virtual postcards to a virtual program guide. By switching to virtual direct mail campaigns, online surveys and feedback forms, JavaOne estimates that it saved 4.63 tons of total paper, reduced greenhouse gases by 13 tons, and saved 111 trees. Simply eliminating a printed program guide saved “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Schenker says. And while the virtual program guide enhanced attendees’ experience, allowing them to search for a particular term or speaker, Sun stopped short of eliminating all printed materials, as “that would have had a negative impact on the attendee experience,” Schenker says. “The objective is not ‘green at any cost’; it’s ecoresponsibility, while continuing to meet conference goals and attendees’ needs.”

Eight tons of carbon dioxide was preserved by the “Bike to JavaOne” program, which encouraged alternative transportation in all conference materials and offered free “bike valet” services through the San Francisco Bike Coalition. Each day of the conference, more than 100 attendees took advantage of the bike valet services.

Sun also partnered with Moscone to coordinate a food donation program and to use locally grown food for the event. Rather than holding an off-site opening night party, the group eliminated transportation by partying in the park next door to Moscone.

Despite the environmental focus, “we aren’t trying to make it a green event; we don’t promote it that way,” Schenker says. “From a Sun Microsystems business perspective, being eco-responsible is a corporate initiative,” Yamaguma says. “It’s a natural extension of that corporate initiative to produce an event that cuts back on energy usage and looks at how we can operate more responsibly for the environment.”

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JavaOne's Strategy

Goal: Incorporate as many green initiatives into an existing conference as is feasible for maintaining attendee experience and achieving meeting goals.

Strategy: Incorporate virtual rather than printed materials, minimize off-site events, institute a biking program, and eliminate water bottles.

Results: More than 4 tons of paper saved, more than 27 tons of greenhouse gases avoided, use of 170,000 gallons of water avoided, and tons of food donated.

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Nancy Mann Jackson, a freelance writer and editor, writes for a number of associations and corporations. She has worked on the editorial staff of Convene and is a college writing teacher and marketing communications consultant. Contact her at nancy@writeshoponline.com.