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News & Views From the Front Line
Thursday, 11 March 2010
Details for BASE 2010 sessions
The two sessions I'll be giving at Base 2010 show in London 16/17th March:
14:00 Tues Round Table: The Business Case for Sustainability
11.00am Wed: South Gallery Room 6, The Three Secrets of Green Business - presentation and book signing
# posted by Gareth Kane : 13:54
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Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Apologies...
If anyone has seen in the press that I'll be speaking at the Green Tourism event in Durham on 18th March, I'm afraid there has been a mix up - I won't be on the bill as I have to be elsewhere - crossed wires to blame...Labels: seminars
# posted by Gareth Kane : 10:08
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Monday, 1 March 2010
Low Carbon Business Seminar - 10 March 2010
It is continuing to be a busy year for events and conferences.Next week finds me at the Low Carbon Best Practice Exchange in Birmingham leading a round table on developing a long term strategy.
The week after I'll be doing a round table on the business case for sustainability and a seminar on The Three Secrets of Green Business (with book signing session after) at the Base 2010 conference in London (if you want a 20% discount, check out TLCA #25).
There are also negotiations going on about another couple of events, but I'm having to balance client needs vs speaking to wider audiences.
Labels: base 2010, low carbon best practice exchange, seminars, three secrets of green business
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:58
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Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Tuesday's Earthcast
The Earthcast went really well yesterday with an audience of over 120 from all around the world. Deborah Carlson of the Suzuki Foundation kicked off with the case for cost reduction and staff engagement. I followed that up by looking at new and emerging business opportunities in the low carbon economy. Good questions too - some really stretching my geographical knowledge!If you want to listen to the event again, click here.
Labels: low carbon economy, seminars, webinar
# posted by Gareth Kane : 10:25
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Monday, 8 February 2010
London Book Reception (& other book stuff)
Another successful, if smaller, reception for The Three Secrets of Green Business in London last Thursday night. A slightly different mix of friends, colleagues, business folk, journalists and interested others showed up. Thanks must go to LBi for providing the venue, and publishers Earthscan for their contribution to refreshments and for tidying up afterwards (as I was dragged off for a celebratory Brick Lane curry).Interesting questions again - the killer being "in what timeframe should companies act?" That's a really hard one to answer as some sectors can re-invent themselves in a couple of years if not months (eg smart phones, web 2.0) whereas others take decades to transform (eg the energy sector). I usually suggest to clients that they aim to transform themselves over a 5-10 year period, as I find this to be far enough in the future to consider major changes, but not so far ahead that people make unrealistic assumptions about technology. The guy who asked the question pointed out that in Japan 30 year planning is perfectly normal and suggested that's what we should be pursuing in the West. I'll have to mull on that one as it asks all sorts of questions about culture differences.
I also found time in London to interview Jim Hagan, CSR supremo at GSK, for The Green Executive, and have a meeting with the organiser of the Business and Sustainable Environment (BASE) conference in March. I'll be doing a couple of sessions at the latter and I hope to be able to offer a discount to partners and subscribers to The Low Carbon Agenda.
It was really nice to find 5 minutes to drop into Blackwell's on Charing Cross Road and see The Three Secrets on the shelves for the first time (although I had to remind myself that they didn't belong to me despite having my name on the cover). Blackwell's had 4 shelves of green business/CSR books, so the competition is heating up. As an aside, now I'm in the market, I've decided that it would be a conflict of interest to review similar books here in the future - particularly as I can be a rather harsh critic. So book reviews will be limited to books related to business and sustainability but which have a different focus.
Lastly, the local press did a nice piece on the book (and me) on Saturday.
Labels: books, seminars, three secrets of green business
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:45
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Friday, 29 January 2010
Newcastle Book Launch Report
The launch of The Three Secrets of Green Business went really well last night. A nice mix of friends, family, clients, business partners and interested others in the audience - some of them bought copies too (see pic for a satisfied customer). We had some very intelligent questions in the Q&A so all in all it was a great event. Thanks to Newcastle Business School for hosting and to Dr Ron Beadle for chairing - Ron stepped in at the last minute even though it was his birthday, so I was very grateful.We've taped the presentation and will be putting excerpts up here in due course. Don't forget there will be another one in London on 4th Feb. RSVP if you would like to attend.
My other good news is that the BASE 2010 conference has made a bulk purchase of the book - one for every delegate. I'll be doing a signing there and possibly a seminar. If your organisation would like to make a similar bulk purchase (which can include a company logo), the details are here.
Labels: seminars, three secrets of green business
# posted by Gareth Kane : 14:55
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Wednesday, 6 January 2010
London & Newcastle Book Launch Receptions
I'm delighted to announce that we'll be holding another reception to celebrate the publication of The Three Secrets of Green Business, this time in London. The event will be hosted by digital marketing/technology agency LBi, to whom we are very grateful. The details for London are:
Time: 6-8pm
Date: 4 Feb 2010
Location: Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London, E1 6RU (click here for a map)
Don't forget the Newcastle event:
Time: 6-8pm
Date: 28 Jan 2010
Location: Newcastle Business School, City Campus East, Newcastle upon Tyne (click here for a map)
During both receptions we'll have some mingling and drinking followed by a short presentation by yours truly followed by more mingling and drinking! RSVP - you are welcome to bring a guest, but please let us know for the numbers.
Labels: gareth kane, seminars, three secrets of green business
# posted by Gareth Kane : 12:06
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Monday, 21 December 2009
Sustainability in the Service Sector
I now have the details of the Sustainability in the Service Sector event on 11 Feb 2010. The event will run from 9 - 12 noon at the Newcastle Falcons Rugby Club. I'll be doing the main talk on sustainability in the sector and, as my conclusion is that branding is the key driver for the sector, my good friend Graeme Mills of GPM Network will go into green branding in much more detail. We'll have lawyers Muckle LLP and the Northern Stage talking about their experiences.
The event is hosted by The Service Network. They charge £30 for non members. Click here to register.
Labels: branding, seminars, service sector, sustainability
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
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Friday, 3 April 2009
Low Carbon Innovation Workshops
The two LCIN workshops yesterday went extremely well, with full capacity on each.The first, Long Term Environmental Strategy, was the more tricky for me as facilitator. When I asked the participants where they were at and where would they like to be, they all gave the same answer - "we haven't a clue". I had two choices, lecture them for an hour (and bore them to tears) or get them to think through the process stage by stage. I opted for the latter and it went very well, but it took a lot of patience to elicit the answers. We covered drivers (cost was surprisingly low on the agenda given the recession), baselines, targets, solution generation (including backcasting which no-one had heard of), filtering solutions, financial commitment, leadership and a little on staff engagement. That's quite a lot to fit into an hour with no powerpoint...
The second session was on eco-renovation of buildings. This time almost everyone at the table had some experience of the topic, so I could sit back a little and facilitate the discussion properly and there was some really great sharing of experience and expertise. We covered insulation, micro-renewables, upgrading HVAC systems, waste heat recovery (internal and external), natural cooling (particularly of server rooms), layout and user behaviour.
I also sat in on another workshop on "the boardroom imperative". My learning point for the whole day (every day is school day in this game) came from a guy from KPMG where instead of trying to find a fair financial incentive scheme, they have decided to give 50% of savings on paper use to charity. This has proved extremely successful and popular and avoids all the potential pitfalls of incentives payments going straight to staff. Genius.
Labels: facilitation, facilitator, low carbon innovation network, seminars
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
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Friday, 13 March 2009
Phew, what a week!
It is weeks like this that I sometimes wish Terra Infirma was being hit by "the current economic situation" - we are flat out delivering projects, responding to queries from potential clients (2 in different time zones), getting The Green Business Bible into the right format for 'proper' publication, and doing all the dull business stuff to keep the taxman happy.Highlight of the week was the Middlesbrough Climate Change conference where I was organising the workshops to make sure they did what the organisers wanted them to. During the workshops I was hopping from room to room, but I was able to sit in on the plenary sessions. Jeff Ridley from the Hadley Centre gave us the latest data on climate predictions, George Marshall of COIN gave a fantastic talk on communicating climate change, Joan Ruddock MP gave one of the better environmental speeches I have heard from a Government minister and there was an interesting session by video from Australia on what local Government can do. The whole thing was very well (and firmly) compered by Sara Parkin of Forum for the Future. There will be a report on the whole event, and, when I've finished compiling it, I'll post the link.
What I love about this job is there's always more to learn - I've been to hundreds of events like this and there is always a couple of gems you can take away with you. This time it was definitely George Marshall who castigated the standard 'pronouncement from above' approach to climate change communications and proposed three effective strategies:
1. Respect and reflect: make it directly relevant to core values of the audience (polar bears live far away so are useless as a symbol)
2. Peer to peer: use social norms and networks to engage people directly
3. Make action worthwhile: reward desired behaviour with money, status and/or fun
All food for thought!
Next week's schedule is looking a bit clearer, thank goodness, as there's quite a lot to get finished by the end of the month.
Labels: facilitation, green business bible, seminars, terra infirma, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:36
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Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Back to basics?
Looking back at the two seminars I gave at the North East Regional Business Fair last week, they went quite well. We had about 15-20 delegates at each with most of them attending both seminars. But I have niggling doubts about their effectiveness.On the first, Building A Low Carbon Business, I went through my five point model for transforming any organisation into a low carbon equivalent, ranging from better carbon management through to developing innovative products and services to help others slash their carbon footprint. I then discussed markets and marketing of low carbon products and services and the golden rule of green business.
Any questions?
"Should I switch my computer off at night?"
"Is recycled paper really better for the environment than ordinary paper?"
There wasn't one question about what I would call "Low Carbon Business".
Sometimes I think I pitch my seminars at too ambitious a target. There is still so much confusion over some of the very simple, everyday stuff, that there is probably a lot of scope for "20 Top Tips for Your Office" or something similar. On the other hand, how are we ever going to break past the 'rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic' level of understanding if people like me don't stretch the understanding and bring in the rest of the agenda?
Mmmmmmmmm.
Labels: low carbon business programme, seminars
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
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Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Don't forget...
...those two free green business seminars in Newcastle on Thursday.Labels: green business, seminars
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:41
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Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Two free seminars
I'm giving two free seminars at Business Link's North East Business Fair 25/26th Feb at Gosforth Racecourse in Newcastle.Both my sessions are on the 26th - they are:
1030 - 1100: Low carbon business strategy
1145 - 1230: 10 reasons why you must improve the environmental performance of your business
Labels: low carbon business programme, seminars, terra infirma
# posted by Gareth Kane : 13:46
1 Comments
Friday, 12 September 2008
Low Carbon Products & Services Seminar - 22 October 2008
I'm giving another seminar on developing, marketing and selling low carbon products and services next month, this time in lovely Harrogate. The seminar is part of the Low Carbon Innovation Exchange event which is certainly the best of its kind that I've ever attended.At my midday seminar you will:
Plus you will benefit from all the other seminars, panel sessions, one-to-one meetings and round table discussions in the Exchange. Oh, and there's a great lunch included.
Here's The Deal
If you register for my seminar, you will also get:
But, to get these offers, you must register via this link. You can see the whole programme for the day here, but you must use this registration link to get the freebies.
Labels: carbon footprint, carbon management, seminars, training
# posted by Gareth Kane : 13:53
1 Comments
Friday, 8 August 2008
Are they crazy? Or do they think I am?
Maybe it's just because it is summer, but I'm getting lots of crazy offers from telesales people recently.Typically the spiel is along the lines of:
"We're running this fantastic event about sustainable [procurement/strategy etc]. We've been given your name as you are a leading [reads something verbatim off the front page of our website - dead giveaway]. Would you be interested?"
The killer punchline, if I let the call run its course, is they usually want me to pay to give a seminar to a room full of people who are desperate to open their fat wallets, but who haven't a clue where to get help.
I now stop them in their tracks. "If you want me to deliver a seminar it will cost you £X 000".
My seminars are of value to attendees, therefore I charge. That's what I do for a living - exchange value for money. These people are looking for speakers whose sessions have negative value, otherwise they wouldn't have to pay to deliver them. You get what you pay for...
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:50
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A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
