How Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing Can Drive the Twin Transformation in Business Events

A couple of years back, a figure caught my eye: According to the World Economic Forum, digital solutions, if brought to scale, could reduce global emissions by 20 % by 2050 in the three highest-emitting sectors energy, materials and mobility. Applying this to the business events sector, it struck me that while both digital and sustainability transformation efforts are firmly on our agenda, we might not (yet) fully harness the powers of technology to put events on a sound sustainable footing.

So, how can we make the twin transformation happen for business events, combining digital and sustainability strategies to accelerate the transition? At the GCB, we believe that collaborative platforms for learning and knowledge sharing – both digital and in person – are key. Here are three examples how we’re trying to drive the twin transition in business events, through industry-wide international partner initiatives and local offerings.

SHE: Empowering Event Professionals to Drive Sustainability

If we want to build sustainable events, we need to enable the people on the ground to get things done. The recently launched Sustainability Hub for Events (SHE) is taking a very practical perspective, using the power of data to provide professionals in the event industry with actionable and customised AI-powered insights, in key areas such as carbon offsetting and measurement, waste management, sustainable catering and eco-friendly travel planning.

The platform was developed by Gevme in collaboration with the Net Zero Carbon Events (NZCE) initiative, and the Strategic Alliance of National Convention Bureaux of Europe, of which the GCB is one of the co-founders. SHE is international in scope and currently available in 20 languages. Crucially, it’s a collaborative work in progress relying on data to enhance its capabilities. So far, several European destinations – Germany among them – have emerged as top contributors to the SHE solutions engine and the platform is accepting contributions from multiple stakeholders (yes, that’s a call to action!).

Sustainable Events Conference with Twin Transformation Deep Dive

It’s been more than ten years that, together with the EVVC European Association of Event Centres, the GCB first organised a sustainability conference for the business events sector. In recent years, this has morphed into SECON (Sustainable Events Conference) and for our next edition in February 2025 we made the conscious decision to create a programme that exclusively revolves around the twin transformation. We want to educate business events stakeholders and provide them with hands-on content that they can take back to their respective places of work for direct implementation and impact. Therefore, the German-speaking SECON includes sessions on mobility, carbon emission measurement or energy efficiency that showcase digital tools and how to use them for sustainable business event creation.

How to Twin Transform: Professional Training for the Events Business Community

Offering continuous professional training for event professionals has for many years been a core element of the GCB’s work. Our seminars have become important platforms not just for learning but also for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. They are therefore an important piece of the twin transformation puzzle, making sure that the people that matter are trained accordingly. In practical terms this means that with our professional training programme we not only provide seminars on the digital transformation and on sustainability separately, but that we also integrated new formats on, for example, “Data-Driven Sustainability”. The latter is focusing on how to use AI for more efficient and sustainable event organisation.

These three examples are by no means exclusive. We know there is more that must and can be done. It is also very clear that as an industry we need to come together to work on solutions. So, in the spirit of collaboration, I look forward to starting conversations and learn from the international business events community how we can make the twin transformation happen.

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