Event planners continue to seek out innovative ways to ensure their meetings are sustainably run. That’s particularly important for a destination like Monterey, Calif. With beloved sites including Big Sur, Carmel by the Sea and Pebble Beach, protecting natural surroundings is a vital part of any gathering held here.

To understand these efforts, we spoke with Teresa Savage, senior vice president of business operations for See Monterey, the destination’s marketing organization. She discusses how sustainability has been a priority for the organization for decades, but so has evolving with new developments and demands from event planners — ensuring the destination is working with groups to put the most effective eco-friendly efforts into practice.

We discuss what’s next for sustainable events and, as Savage puts it, planners can “ensure that all travel paths contribute to a better quality of place and leaving the destination better than it was before.”

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Like almost every business sector, the events industry has been abuzz about AI for months. And the more widely these tools are adopted, the more rapidly they seem to evolve to better meet the needs of meeting planners.

At this exciting but uncertain moment in event tech, we spoke with Huong Nguyen, CEO and president of Shiloh Events who will be moderating a panel at this year’s IMEX on “Leading in the AI Era: Insights and Best Practices.” Here she shares a preview of what will be discussed during the session and shares her own perspective on where AI technology best serves event planners — and where it still may be falling short.

To this last point, Nguyen breaks some news about her own efforts to develop an AI program to better meet planners’ needs when it comes to on-site event execution. She also discusses how being based in California’s Bay Area, a hotbed of innovation, has helped fuel these efforts and inspired her and her entrepreneurial efforts.

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Kyle Jordan, chair of LGBT Meeting Professionals Association, discusses inclusivity goals and best practices for business events

Join Northstar's Loren Edelstein in a conversation with Kyle Jordan, chair of the LGBT Meeting Professionals Association, for an update on the nonprofit's efforts and the current state of inclusivity in the business events industry. Planners can do more to create safe spaces and accommodations for underrepresented groups, says Jordan, particularly the LGBTQ+ community. There's a lot of discussion in June for Pride Month, but this issue requires collective action year-round, he adds.

Topics covered:

• New leadership and brand identity for LGBT Meeting Professionals Association (1:00)
• The need for more inclusive event planning to welcome LGBTQ+ attendees (4:00)
• Considering discriminatory laws and practices as an important factor in destination selection (6:00)
• What planners can do to create more inclusive events (7:00)
• How the travel industry at large needs to be more accommodating (12:00)
• LGBT MPA's long-term goals (13:45)

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