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Convene Interview: Collective Intelligence, Net Zero Cities, and the Future of Business Events with Peter Baeck · PCMA Convene Podcast

• Convene Podcast Transcript Convene Interview, ep. 16 *Note: the transcript is AI generated, excuse typos and inaccuracies Magdalina Atanassova: This is the Convene Podcast. Today we're exploring how collective intelligence, AI and climate action can change the way business events show up in our cities and communities. My guest is Peter Baeck, a social innovation expert and former co founder and director of the center for Collective Intelligence Design at NESTA in the UK. Peter's work focuses on how people, institutions and technology can work together to solve big challenges from climate change to digital democracy. Most recently, he has led democratic innovation projects in European cities, explored hybrid human AI collaboration, and supported the European Commission's 100 Net Zero Cities mission. In this conversation, we talk about what collective intelligence really means for event professionals, how events can accelerate progress toward net zero, and how we can design gatherings that rebuild trust instead of just filling agendas. We start now. Hi Peter and welcome to the Convene Podcast. Peter Baeck: Thank you. Magdalina Atanassova: You've spent much of your career exploring collective intelligence. So how would you define it for event professionals? And why does it matter now more than ever? Peter Baeck: It's a great question. I guess it's worth saying that There are entire PhDs written about what is collective intelligence. But I guess I like to kind of keep it quite simple and say ultimately it's about us as kind of groups of people, humans becoming more than the sum of our parts. Right. So at events, for example, you often gather biggers of people and I guess the question back to events professionals is like, how do you make sure that those people actually interact and engage with each other to learn, collaborate, share ideas and come up with solutions? Ideas as a collaborative. I guess often when I go to events there are kind of two types of engagement. There is the one way, listen to a great speaker, be inspired. And there's lots of networking, but actually not that much work happening in groups. And actually I think if you spend all the time and money on getting people together in a place, why not get them to really do the hard work when they're there, Share, learn, work and collaborate with each other beyond the kind of networking. And I think if I to kind of like simplify collective intelligence in the events context, that would be it again. We can then talk about kind of the methods by which you can kind of structure that. And when I talk about collective intelligence design, it's really about kind of what are all the different practices we can put in place to make people collaborate better, more structured and more kind of solution focused. But yeah, sorry, that was a very long answer to a short question. But hopefully you kind of, you get the sense of what I, what I mean by collect intelligence. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah. And that reminds me that you were recently at Convening Leaders and you had a workshop. So how did you put that in practice? Peter Baeck: Yeah, so I guess the entire focus of this workshop really was around how we could look at business events, at a catalyst for growth and sustainability. And again, rather than us talking at people, telling them what to do, it's really about getting the professionals in the room to sit down, share ideas about both around kind of what they've already done that works and how others could learn from them, but also, of course, what are some of the kind of shared problems that they all work on. And it's interesting, again, like as I said to people on the day, look, in an hour we can get so far both in identifying kind of shared challenges, share ideas across the room with each other, and also starting kind of identifying some of the pathways forward in terms of the industry as a whole and what it can do. And I guess I wish there was way more of that collaboration to think about, kind of collective problem solving and developing solutions together. What's also interesting is that we have done something similar with another PCMA group in Europe in Rotterdam in late 2025, and some of the same themes come up. So also kind of shows that, like, you know, intelligence and groups kind of tend to kind of veer towards the same ideas once they discuss them, deliberate them, and kind of sift them through their kind of collective filter. So a lot of big ideas around, well, what is an industry standard? How do we kind of balance profit, sustainability, what have other people done, how to make sure that we all kind of course competitive, but also aligned on our values around sustainability and growth at the same time. So there were some of the themes that emerged, but I think the bigger lesson for me was like, all the ideas are there, all the knowledge is there. We just need to kind of create the right forum and the right format for people to exchange and collaborate on doing it together. Magdalina Atanassova: And that's Convene 4 Climate that you mentioned. And do you think Convene 4 Climate can be that place where, you know, ideas can grow into something more practical and move the whole industry forward? Peter Baeck: The short answer, of course, yes, it can, I guess, with any kind of. So a lot of my work on innovation is around kind of scale and mainstreaming. And ultimately, of course, you almost want something like community, for climate to be redundant. Right, because it's not coming for climate. It's just part of how the industry thinks. But you always need to seed ideas and movements in a place, in a space. Right? And they have to grow, build connections, build ideas, build a real movement. And then hopefully what it will do will become part of how the industry as a whole thinks about just everyday business and doing events. Magdalina Atanassova: And what's the biggest misconception that you've heard at these events when it comes to sustainability? Peter Baeck: I think it's hard. I don't want to label it a misconception. I guess it's just maybe it's more around like where we are in terms of the steps of sustainability and where we need to get to. Because of course, there's all the easy stuff which we haven't done right yet, which is mental sustainability. Paper cups, how we travel, the food we eat, what we consume, all of those things. And I guess they are, of course, very important. And that's probably like, I would say that the basics we need to have in place to do sustainability well. But I think it's more perhaps around what's the next step? Like, how do these events actually become the kind of the catalyst for sustainability and kind of the more the suit leaders in terms of how we do sustainability well, and that's less about what we. The utensils we have, but more about kind of the messaging, the focus of these events, and how, for example, sustainability, no matter what the business event is, will just always have a kind of focus on the theme of sustainability, because that's what we do as an industry. And alongside that comes all the hardware and the kit that we use during the day. Magdalina Atanassova: Can you share an example where sustainability didn't just reduce impact, but actually unlock new business opportunities? And it can be in a different context, not necessarily events. Peter Baeck: One of my favorite examples of this is not an event, but a product that I've been following for, I guess, 10 years now called the Fairphone. I don't know if you've heard of it, but the Fairphone is basically an idea grew out of the Netherlands with a team that were kind of frustrated with not understanding that within their smartphones there were of course, lots of metals, precious metals, used to make the smartphone. And they wanted to make sure that no child labor or slave labor was used in the development of this phone. So they set out to basically understand where do all these metals in my phone come from that could be any brand? And they realized they couldn't find out, right, because probably at some point some illegal mining and some bad mental impact and human impact had been kind of created in the creation of this phone. So almost like as an art project, they created the Fairphone. And the most important thing about the Fairphone was, let's create a phone where we can, with 100% confidence, say that everything that gone into creating this phone is fair. We know where the minerals come from. You know, the people who mined the minerals, people who build it, were treated fairly. And that became not just an art project where a couple of people crowdfunded it on Kickstarter and bought an early idea of the phone, which didn't really work that well into now being a thriving company that's selling a Fair Phone to users all over the world. And I think what's interesting about them is that they really kind of hit the nerve. You know, we all need a smartphone, we all depend on it to work really well. But I think a lot of people also really conscious of, like, how these things are made and probably would like a good alternative. Interestingly, for the Fairphone originally, their intention was more to, like, shame and name the big companies, hoping that they would change their practices. And I guess that is also gradually happening now that the Fairphone is kind of in the market. But I think it's a nice example of like, growing like a sustainable niche somewhere else in a market that's crowded by more like traditional players who don't have environmental or kind of climate impact as a core focus. Magdalina Atanassova: And now I have to ask, do you have one? Peter Baeck: I do have one, yeah. And it works well. Magdalina Atanassova: That's so cool. I had heard about it years ago, but I had no idea it had become actually a thriving company. So. Peter Baeck: Good. So I think what's nice about it is that they have Fairphone. I want to say, like, the balance view here is also, of course, that it's gone from being not that great a phone. It would break. Camera didn't work that well, but now all the time it's matured and now it actually works really well. It's good pictures, it works. And also if it breaks, you can buy parts and fix them yourself. You know, if the screen breaks, if the camera falls, you can fix it, rather than buying a new one. Which I think, of course, is a really key component of a good Fairphone as well. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah. And of sustainable practices, especially lately. So trust between institutions and people is a recurring theme in your work. How can events help rebuild that trust in an era of polarization and digital fatigue? Peter Baeck: It's like that's the Holy grail, isn't it? I think for me, for me, events that really focus on fostering deliberation and discussion and also recognizing that there are opposing views, I think often at events and I participate many of Them we tend to have a panel debate, but we all kind of agree before we go into the discussion. And we all roughly from the same background and we talk the same issue in the same theme. And of course sometimes that's because that's what the world looks like. And you know, we do all agree about particular topics. But also I think sometimes we shouldn't shy away from actually having good disagreement and having a respectful debate and also showing people that you can have opposing views and you can discuss them without it turning into antagonism or something that is not particularly kind of healthy. Right. And I think our current political environment could also learn something from this. Right. And I think sometimes maybe events should also really not shy away from having those kind of. Yeah, the tough discussions and the hard arguments around sustainability, for example. I guess the other question you had was around digital fatigue. Am I? And I guess for me it's interesting to see, you know, and we saw this at the event in Philadelphia. And in general I think people just really like meeting in person. I think there are, you know, there are many benefits to meeting online, but there are also of course like some value and benefit in being with people face to face. And I certainly think particularly when making tough choices and big decisions, you still need to be in a relationship with people where you've seen them face to face. You build that trust and those connections, you understand people, where they work, their constraints, their ambitions, their lives, and use that to kind of forge pathways forward for collaboration. And, and I guess my point earlier was I think events need to invest more in that and less in kind of passive consumption of information through talks and speakers. Magdalina Atanassova: When you mention now those panels with opposing views. So sustainability is quite the topic because we all agree we need more of it. But how we get there is the big question that people don't really agree on. Have you seen that? Have you seen a good panel discussion of that topic? Peter Baeck: The short answer is no, at least. So I like, but this is not particularly around peace management, but more generally I've seen some really good discussions around other sustainability topics. So like around how we get to net zero, but then climate change, for example, around some of the trade offs, around shifting from boilers to heat pumps, shifting from cars that use diesel and gas to EVs and what some of the trade offs are in the short term and then within that, of course, understanding, well, what are the real concerns here for the industry? And then how do we as either funders, policymakers, the people who kind of influence this space, how do we help that Transition like what is it that we can put in place to make it less hard? So that might be short term tax benefits if you are in government, a grant, for example. You know, for example, in my industry we have a whole kind of travel policy around. If you want to take the train to an event, you are allowed like a working day on the train to give you that extra travel time required. And I think that's a nice positive on employer to kind of encourage sustainability. But that needs to be in place across an organization. Right. Otherwise people can't do it. So I think, I guess my point is I think we need to surface attentions to get to the solutions. Right. And then I think most things there are really clear solutions and route to get there. But I haven't seen many good discussions on it, particularly in the events context. But that's also probably because I don't go to that many business events. Magdalina Atanassova: That's fair. So The European Commission's 100 net zero cities mission is quite ambitious and I know you've been involved with it. So what role do you think business events can play in accelerating progress towards that Net zero go? Peter Baeck: I think it's clear across not just about the 1000 cities, but in general net zero that you can get to net zero without businesses. Right. Like businesses play a key, like probably the most important role in how we get to net zero, both, you know, from their consumption to the employees to the product they create and so on. So business leaders being involved in the discussion around places, cities, regions, how they get to this area is crucial. And of course business events can be the form in which those conversations happen. I guess my challenge sometimes is how do you make those less exclusive? Right. So how do you make business events? Not just business events, but business events, but also with communities, with local partners, regions, citizens, and how do you open them up to a community of people to take part in the discussion around what they want to see happen locally and the role business can play with them in get Internet zero and vice versa. Magdalina Atanassova: I love that. I think we definitely need a bit more engagement, not have the event siloed in a way as a separate thing that happens. So I totally agree with you. And can you tell us a bit more about the co digit project which focused on democratic innovations in cities? Peter Baeck: Yeah, I think that is very much linked to the work on Net zero cities as well. I think the main thing we looked at in call digital was more around. Well, we have all these amazing innovations around how to engage the public in decision making around anything from Public transportation to net zero to healthy eating and food. But they're all like one off examples. And often after a year as a pilot, they die. And what would make them mainstream? So we spent a lot of time looking at, and I guess we go back to PCMA. It's like, you know, what would make for climate like mainstream support, like, and sustain itself over time. Right. And it is, and what we looked at it within that was well, what are the kind of key factors that make things become mainstream, right? And like ultimately it comes down to on the one hand within organizations that of course there is the leadership buy in that support and like agenda, but also the people have the skills and capacity to work in an entirely new way. So within deliberation and popular engagement, we would often say that most people who train to become a civil servant working in a city were never trained in property engagement. Right. This was not part of what they did in university, but it is an entirely a new skill set that's required for them. So how do you build that in within the organization? So it's a skill set that's paired with the culture, paired with a demand from leadership to do things differently. And you can kind of put parallels to like using AI now for example, in public services, right? It's the same. We didn't know how to use it in university, but now we all need to apply it to our work. And I guess with sustainability, the same question, right? Like so how do people who spend a career doing amazing events, right, created great speakers, fantastic venues, great food, all of a sudden kind of put this layer of sustainability on top of that to make sure they deliver that within kind of existing practices. And how do you pair that with kind of demand both from leaders, but also from buyers, consumers who are buying takes of these events, right. And I think you can just have all these things kind of pulling in the same direction at the same time to get to that kind of mainstreaming. Magdalina Atanassova: And now that you mentioned AI, there is hybrid intelligence where humans and AI work together, which is a fascinating concept and quite starting to become our reality. So how do you see this shaping our tomorrow? Peter Baeck: So my critique of AI is that I think we spend 99% of all the work on AI on the low hanging fruits which might come back to bite us in the future, which is we either, and I'm simplifying here a little bit, right, but it's either about automating humans, so what a human could do in the past, it can now be automated and done by some sort of AI agent. Maybe I'll be interviewed by an AI agent in five years time rather than a journalist. Right. Or we optimize for kind of human computer interaction. So one individual supported by AI. So I might give my answers to you today, but also having AI running in the background, helping me create my answers. I'm not doing that by the way. But no, a lot of people do already and lots of those kind of individual optimizations. But going back to my previous answer, the best from intelligence emerges from groups and actually invest very little in how you use AI to enable groups to collaborate better. So for example, how to create new connections in large networks of people. So I mentioned the workshop within the PCMA. For example, imagine within PCMA, within the community climate, you have loads of different people distributed across the world who all work at business events and they all have shared ambitions and ideas around sustainability. But like, how are those ideas connected? Kind of classic AI solution here, right around talking through all those data, all those ideas and saying, well, there might be someone in Lisbon, might be someone in Philadelphia, might be someone in Montreal, and they all work on the same problem. How do you connect them and enable a conversation between those people in a new way to kind of drive forward those inability tender. And all the work I've done on AI has been around kind of how can you use AI better to enable collaboration connections between people rather than optimizing for better performance of an individual. And I think that's probably, hopefully the direction will go in. And also I think that's where the biggest benefits will come. Also for the events industry. Imagine like an event with 10,000 people and AI as a kind of agent to create connections between those people to enable new forms of conversations, collaborations and discussions. Magdalina Atanassova: Yeah, that would be fantastic. I think so far we've seen AI trying to facilitate networking. You know, we share interests ahead of time and then AI connects us. My experience has not been great, but I think it's also improving. So give it time. So maybe, maybe that's our future. If you were advising an event planner who wants to integrate sustainability beyond the basics, what's the first step they should take? Peter Baeck: I'll step back here and say I do a lot of work around kind of futures and kind of early stage concept design and maybe I'll try and rethink my event and saying, what is the most extreme version of event? Like imagine if everyone traveled here, not on a plane, if everyone had the closest to no impact on environment diet, if everything was recycled, like if, if there was no giveaways that were Sustainable there would also been. And so on. Like, not to say this is going to be the final event, but like, what is the most extreme case of our event in terms of it's kind of just like the implementation, the delivery of the event itself. And what would be the most extreme agenda that we could have? Like how, like, what would be the one that would upset the most people? Almost. And almost use that as kind of this future scenario that you use, kind of challenge your kind of current concepts and your kind of current approach to delivery. And then of course then you come up with like, and what's the motivated version? Right? What is the consensus and compromise. But I think you need to get yourself into the headspace of like, what does kind of extreme look like to completely challenge your thinking. And a lot of the work we do on design and design futures is like, well, let's try and reimagine everything and then use that almost like as like this goalpost we put out there in the future and then figure out where do we start now, right? And it might be that you do one thing or maybe have like one really crazy panel on where everyone talks about like super disruption and like really just like something that kind of ingests a little bit now. But start with like clean slate, extreme events of the future and then work towards that. Magdalina Atanassova: So looking ahead, what emerging technologies or social innovations excite you the most for their potential to transform society? Peter Baeck: This. But right now it's quite dystopian time, right? So there's lots of technologies that really scare me. But I also think, I still think, you know, if, if you look at AI, as mentioned earlier, I think it has like a huge opportunity, if deployed in the right way to enable like better connections and collaboration, good dialogues, strength, democracy, and maybe taking some of the heat out of current kind of debates around, well, everything. So I think AI and it's obvious answer, but I still think that is where there's a huge amount of opportunity. But I also think just like in technology and particularly thinking about events, right? Like the amount of things we can now create in sustainable way using sustainable materials is there. And I think it's like sometimes for me the frustration is that these are not almost innovations anymore. They are in the market, they work. We have like in Denmark, I go to a music festival called Roskilde Festival. And Roskilde Festival, if you might know of it, has for decades really taken a pride in being one of the most sustainable festivals in the world. Which means there is a charge on all cups, plates and cutlery Right? Which means that nothing gets thrown on the floor because there's money in returning it. Right. There's a whole system in Denmark for this in general, but also means that there's no plastic cutlery. Everything is made out of sustainable or biodegradable materials. And it's interesting that's been going like this for like 15, 20 years now. I was 16 years old when I first went, and I think they pretty much introduced it back then. And you still see events all over the world that do not do this. Right. If you go to Fuji Rock, I used to live in Japan and there's an amazing festival called Fuji Rock. In Fuji Rock, every participant walks around with a portable ashtray, so there was no cigarette butts left on the floor. People will line up in queues three times. One to recycle the lid on their plastic bottle, one to recycle the wrapper around the bottle, and three to recycle the bottle itself. And it's just a cultural thing paired with, like, products that are recyclable. And these things all explore the world. And they're not innovations anymore, they're just things that exist, market. And I think sometimes, like, I can be really excited about all the future stuff, but I was just most excited about all the stuff that I can see out there already that I just wish was more commonplace. Like, I live in the uk, our trains aren't that great. I go to France, I go to Japan, and I can take a train everywhere. It's on time, it's really fast, there's great food in the train. Why can't we do that everywhere? Right? And I think for me that's almost like the. The immediate step that I get most excited about rather than any of these big future generations. Magdalina Atanassova: I agree with you 100%. Was there anything we didn't mention? We definitely should. Before we wrap up, I think we. Peter Baeck: Spoke a bit about kind of click intelligence and events themselves. And I think this point I was making earlier around making events more open to people. So of course events need to kind of find a balance between exclusion and like the access you get from paying often a lot of money for a ticket and what that buys you. But equally, you also have to be conscious of the. Almost like the bubble you enter the moment you do that right collectively answer is about diversity, thinking and ideas. And there's a certain amount of people who can afford to enter those rooms. And that gives you some high quality discussions, but also excludes lots of ideas from the outside. And I think when you organize an event. Think about kind of what is on the inside and how of course do you make the most of that, but also what are you missing from the outside? And for example, are there events you can create or event experiences that integrate the open bit in the community? And that can both be of course, walks, tools, but also like making some of these conversations in communities and some of them in kind of closed, expensive in spaces. Many years ago I took part in something called We Share and it's like it was like a big French movement around the sharing of collapsed economy and a lot of their events, I think the biggest one in took part in Paris. You know, here we Share had like loads of salons and open events throughout the city with talks. But anyone office, we can just walk in and hear me give a talk about like how to regular Uber or how to kind of make the most of sharing of food and so on. But there was also closed events, policymakers and funders where people paid money to participate. But it also showed people in those places that this is, this is a discussion we think is relevant for you. I want to hear from you as well in this discussion. And I think again coming back to this point earlier around polarization, I also think that's where events can do much more to try and be part of the communities that they exist within rather than be a bubble by themselves. Sorry, that's my, my speech. Magdalina Atanassova: No, I love it and 100% on point. So thank you so much. I think our community needed to hear that. Well, Peter, thank you so much for the wonderful wrap up of the conversation and all the little gems. It was a pleasure. Peter Baeck: No, my pleasure. Thank you. Magdalina Atanassova: Remember to subscribe to the Convene Podcast on your favorite listening platform to stay updated with our latest episodes. For further industry insights from the Convene team, head over to PCMA.org/convene. My name is Maggie. Stay inspired. Keep inspiring. And until next time.