A Virtual No-Brainer

A wealth of ways to reduce event carbon footprint

As the dust begins to settle after the upheaval and social distancing of the COVID-19 pandemic, you’d be forgiven for thinking that virtual events no longer feature in business and training calendars. At Horizon Leeds, we beg to differ and encourage you to make full use of lockdown gains made in virtual meeting techniques and technology for a whole host of good reasons: not least, reducing our impact on the planet’s resources.

Here to support organisations’ environmental sustainability goals, we have invested in a permanent broadcast studio to complement our award-winning rooms and event services. For us, the future of sustainable business means using all the tools at our disposal to protect the planet. And, for any business serious about sustainability, virtual, low impact events should undoubtedly play a key role in their communication strategy.

It’s a fact that we’re social animals and face-to-face meetings are an important aspect of learning, networking, and doing business. However, it’s also a fact that climate change means we all need to be more considerate about our use of resources.

Virtual and hybrid events can offer an alternate and exciting complementary option in an event calendar:

• Reducing travel miles
• Reducing food consumption and waste
• Reducing production of paper materials
• Reducing single use plastics
• Reducing energy

At the same time…

• Increasing brand credibility
• Achieving CSR and sustainability goals
• Evidencing your commitment to environmental action

A virtual event can also mean reducing costs.

For businesses with an international audience it makes sense to park the planes and get together in other, more inventive ways. One main meet up, accompanied by a calendar of regular virtual events will go a long way to meeting CSR and sustainability targets and evidences a commitment to environmental awareness and action.

We have a client who uses our Broadcast Studio for international training. With our ability to host the event to different time zones throughout the day, this flexibility means world renowned medical specialists can share their knowledge with an international audience.

Content heavy seminars with little opportunity for networking? A virtual event can offer a great way to engage delegates and deliver materials in real time, online. For example, if an event is stat heavy, using the multiple studio screens we can create in frame clips that can be extremely helpful to attendees and presenters.

Flexible studio approaches can be used across all our online events, such as instant playback. This is used very effectively with a client who uses the studio to support patient engagement training. Once filmed, clips are replayed and the online audience can look in detail at the simulation, communication skills used and their effect.

Suppliers too, are looking to contract with environmentally aware businesses, whereby virtual meetings can help strengthen recognised environmental goals

Customers and employees are all part of what makes good business. More and more recruitment and buying decisions are made on an organisation’s cause related mission and values.

Good PR and brand promotion means that in our world of instant social media messaging, brand image is everything and businesses who lead from the front and highlight their environmental are creating loyal ambassadors.

With our experience in virtual events, our Broadcast Studio offers a wealth of ways to engage people, from down the road to all around the world. Tell us what you want to achieve, and we can create the type and style of virtual event you need. For example, set up in a studio style, we have found that speakers presenting together, bouncing ideas off each other, is much more engaging than remote presenters. We can bring ideas and answers to make any virtual or hybrid event a great success.

Experts at bringing people together. Let’s get creative and commit to reducing our impact on the planet.

Take a look at our Broadcast Studio and get in touch for more help and information.