Latest / Event Industry News Podcast / GEI18: How Live Events Are Powering a Greener Future

Transcript

GEI18: How Live Events Are Powering a Greener Future · Event Industry News Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello everybody, welcome along to the Event Industry News podcast with me, James Dixon,
• 0:10
  wishing you all a very good morning, afternoon or evening, whenever or wherever you tune
• 0:14
  into today's podcast from. I'm recording this podcast on Monday the 16th of February and
• 0:21
  today's episode is going to go out pretty much straight away because it references something
• 0:26
  that is happening next week in London. It is an event that has a significant place within
• 0:34
  the modern day events industry and to tell us more about it is my guest today. My guest
• 0:39
  is Clare O'Neill. Clare is a name that I'm sure a lot of our podcast followers will be
• 0:43
  familiar with within the events industry. Clare is the CEO and co-founder of AGF, a
• 0:48
  greener future and joins the podcast today to chat a little bit about the Green Events
• 0:54
  and Innovations Conference 2026. Clare, well, warm welcome to the podcast.
• 0:59
  Thank you. Thanks for that lovely intro as well, James.
• 1:01
  Not a problem at all. And yeah, we're here today to talk about GEI 2026, what's coming
• 1:10
  on the agenda, what sort of things are going to be discussed for those podcast listeners
• 1:14
  and followers who might not be familiar with AGF. Would it be sensible maybe to give a
• 1:19
  little bit of context first of all about who you are and what you do and what its place
• 1:23
  is within the events industry? Yeah, sure. So AGF used to be called a greener
• 1:28
  festival back in the day and then we developed into a greener future over the years. It's
• 1:34
  been going for 20 years and we began by looking at the festival culture essentially and how
• 1:41
  that had a great opportunity to influence the way that people lived, but also to reconnect
• 1:47
  people with nature and then also to build temporary cities or towns. And at the time,
• 1:54
  I'd also learned that we had climate change was upon us, that we had things like plastic
• 2:01
  pollution, that there were problems with all of our systems, polluting the water, polluting
• 2:05
  the air, and there were things that we needed to do differently. So I thought, how can we
• 2:10
  take essentially something that's so inspiring and make it into a tool for change? Over the
• 2:17
  years, that then developed to start to work alongside artists, to work alongside venues,
• 2:23
  tours, and all different parts of the events industry. So we began with a certification
• 2:29
  for festivals, then that became training for sustainability managers for events, and then
• 2:36
  this went on to become a green artist rider, venue guidance, greener arena certification,
• 2:43
  and we do consultancy for all types of event industry organizations for sustainability
• 2:49
  at this point. So that's everything from training, CO2 analysis, sustainability strategies,
• 2:56
  sustainability managers, and so on. And alongside that, we've always been hosting GEI. So this
• 3:01
  is the 18th year of the Green Events and Innovations Conference now, which is where that whole
• 3:06
  community comes together. And I should add, we've been doing that internationally since
• 3:12
  we began, because when AGF first started, I think it was in 2007, that the website launched,
• 3:19
  and festivals all around the world got in touch with us from the start. And so we began
• 3:24
  as international, and it's always unfolded that way.
• 3:27
  And it's great that that has evolved from being a greener festival into a greener future,
• 3:33
  because the word festival, whilst it's a vast part of the events industry, and financially
• 3:38
  represents a huge, a huge portion, the subject matter and the items that were being addressed
• 3:46
  by AGF were for all events, weren't they? They weren't just for festivals, which is
• 3:51
  something, no doubt, that you realize and led to the evolution of the organization.
• 3:54
  Yeah, absolutely. And not only for all events, but it's spread so much into our lives and
• 4:00
  societies as a whole. The topic is so much bigger than events. But what we're finding
• 4:06
  now, as the years have gone on, in the beginning, really, we were looking at how to, I suppose,
• 4:13
  how to switch the industry on to something that was kind of a counterculture or an alternative
• 4:18
  way of living. And then as time has gone on, those topics that were previously niche, have
• 4:24
  become mainstream, because the problems associated with them are much more prevalent. So by that,
• 4:30
  I mean things like extreme weather, pollution, movement of people, migration and disasters
• 4:38
  that have been happening around the world as a result of the things that were being
• 4:41
  championed 20 years ago. These are getting much more important, much more entwined in
• 4:47
  people's daily lives, no matter what sector you're in. And then as time has gone on, we've
• 4:52
  found actually events really punch above their weight, as far as the difference that they
• 4:59
  can make. And especially in the cultural sectors, I suppose, or entertainment sectors, we work
• 5:04
  a lot in music, also in sports, and cultural events. And whilst they don't necessarily
• 5:10
  have a huge impact, as far as global impacts are concerned, you know, compared to the energy
• 5:14
  sector, or the agricultural sector, and so on, the transport sector, they have a phenomenal
• 5:20
  impact as far as reach. And now that we have what we call it, culture wars, essentially,
• 5:27
  and populism, then that ability to reach people with messages, with ways of doing things,
• 5:34
  with ways of living is so much more significant, even than it was before. So I think that there's
• 5:39
  going to be almost a coming of age of stepping into what are all of these platforms for.
• 5:45
  To add one more thing on that with the way that our, shall we say, our communication
• 5:54
  has changed in the last 20 years, since we began. The iPhone came out, I think, in 2007.
• 6:01
  We have so much more isolation now through our phones, that coming together in community
• 6:06
  face to face, which is very countering to polarisation, unlike being on your phone.
• 6:13
  And so again, event spaces are a place where we can really build the future that we want
• 6:18
  to see. And that's something that we have to keep on pressing relentlessly.
• 6:23
  Before we get into sort of have a dive into what's going to be taking place at this year's
• 6:29
  GEI, what you just mentioned there about phones, about the iPhone, it strikes me that a lot
• 6:35
  of the social consciousness and social change and awareness that's prevalent nowadays is
• 6:40
  driven by young people and having a far better social conscience than generations previous.
• 6:48
  And yet they're also the generation that have grown up and been fully embedded in the world
• 6:55
  of smartphones, smart devices, the internet. So on the one hand, people complain about
• 7:01
  young people being tied and linked to their phones, but also they're the people who are
• 7:06
  driving social change because of the shift in consciousness. And in the almost 20 years
• 7:11
  that you've been around as AGF, that's almost a generation. That's almost a generational
• 7:17
  jump from when you started to where you are now. And I guess there's all sorts of analysis
• 7:22
  you could go into about the people who are now in the industry and working in the industry
• 7:26
  now and maybe some of the change that those people coming into the industry have driven
• 7:33
  over the last 20 years or so because of that change in social consciousness.
• 7:37
  Yes, it's so, there's so many different avenues you could take there. On the one hand, kind
• 7:43
  of taking a step out of that. I wonder whether there will be a backlash from the next generation
• 7:50
  that being on your phone is so old, so old school. And they're like, we know this thing
• 7:56
  called IRL that we have invented. And we're so much cooler than you guys. We're not going to
• 8:01
  be on our devices. Thank you very much. Because it's what the old people do. Because I feel like
• 8:07
  I feel like what there's, you know, I'm 42 now. And a lot of people who are like, who are my
• 8:14
  friends, my networks, my age group, we spend so much time on our phones, like ridiculously,
• 8:19
  and we're up so late, wasting time, being on our phones and talking to each other about,
• 8:24
  oh, my God, I can't get off my phone. But I feel like you know, there was the pandemic
• 8:30
  obviously forced a lot, a lot more people and especially young people who were then in their
• 8:34
  bedrooms just on their devices. And that's the only way they communicated. They are obviously
• 8:38
  intertwined with it in that respect. But I feel like coming through people who've grown up with
• 8:43
  their parents constantly on their phones, I think there'll be a resistance to it. I at least hope so.
• 8:50
  And leading that resistance, this is my segue into into GEI, leading that resistance will be
• 8:55
  the continued sort of, you know, the live events industry, you know, it's always been about
• 9:01
  bringing people together, you know, in a space, be that indoors, outdoors, call it what you will,
• 9:07
  festival conference, even a wedding, bringing groups of people into a space to talk and interact
• 9:13
  with each other is the fundamental basis on which the events industry is built. And
• 9:19
  GEI, Green Events and Innovations is there to do, I guess, a number of things, which hopefully you
• 9:25
  can dive into. But let's talk about first of all, when and where and why we're recording this today,
• 9:29
  and it's going to be released this week. The event is next week, 24th of February, is that right?
• 9:35
  Yep, that's right. So it's 24th of February at the Royal Lancaster London. I mentioned already,
• 9:42
  it's been going for 18 years now since the 18th edition. And I think it's been maybe the last
• 9:47
  10 years or so that we've been in partnership with the ILMC, the International Live Music
• 9:53
  Conference. So we take place on the Tuesday, and then ILMC is from the Wednesday through to
• 10:00
  the Friday. So we start on the Tuesday morning, we have the GEI conference, and then that closes
• 10:09
  with the International AGF Awards, which is where we celebrate all of the different events who've
• 10:14
  been certified and nominated and assessed for the AGF certification. I can talk about that later,
• 10:22
  all the different categories. And then the close of it is with our closing drinks during ILMC's
• 10:27
  opening drinks. And this year, for the first time, all of the delegates get to go to Soho Calling
• 10:33
  as well, which is the showcase festival that's happening on Wednesday, the 25th.
• 10:38
  I think that there's a, yeah, people tend to like to stick around and party after GEI, I've come to
• 10:44
  notice. So we've been trying to find more places for them to go. So the hotel eventually gets
• 10:50
  emptied. People don't need much convincing when it comes to social activities, I find.
• 10:54
  No, exactly, exactly. And just on that from, you know, it's about people coming together,
• 11:01
  I feel like it's more and more and more and more critical now to actually get into a space. And we
• 11:06
  always feel so enriched after GEI, because so many amazing people doing incredible things,
• 11:13
  but it can feel quite isolating sometimes when you're just against the grindstone,
• 11:17
  whether it's organizing your event or fighting some kind of social justice cause or trying to
• 11:22
  get some kind of policy across the line for environmentalism. And so this is a place where
• 11:28
  people really feel kind of held and uplifted. I took a look at the agenda on the website,
• 11:35
  and we'll give the website out at the end of the podcast, everybody. So if you want to find out
• 11:39
  more, we'll make sure that all those details are there and in links, etc, when this gets published.
• 11:44
  But I took a look at the agenda. And one thing I that struck me fairly swiftly looking through
• 11:49
  the agenda, I thought, hold on, this is all this is all happening on one day, there's an awful lot
• 11:54
  of there's an awful lot of content sessions. But when I looked at the specific timings of them,
• 12:00
  one thing I noticed is a lot of them are quite short sessions. Yeah, people when people go to
• 12:05
  conferences, and they're they used to sort of 45 minute, one hour long sessions, a lot of them
• 12:09
  might only be 15 minutes long. And that struck me straight away. I've always said that shorter
• 12:13
  sessions are good for provoking and promoting conversation afterwards, rather than not boring
• 12:20
  people, but you know, cramming as much as you can into an hour and answering all the questions.
• 12:24
  A short session is almost in some respects designed to, to create more questions than
• 12:30
  it started with. Is that the case when it comes to programming? Yeah, also to help people get to
• 12:34
  the point as well, because we don't want people sitting there doing their emails while someone's
• 12:38
  just waffling on. That doesn't happen at GE either, we always have fantastic speakers.
• 12:45
  But what we've done this year, we've actually changed, there's something new this year that
• 12:49
  in the beginning, we had one room, and there was, I think there was like 35 people or something in
• 12:55
  one room. And they were the only people that were interested in sustainable festivals at the time.
• 13:00
  And then it's grown over the years. It's been two rooms now, I think for maybe the last eight years
• 13:05
  or something like that. And this year, we've added a third room. And people listening to this
• 13:10
  are event organizers. Actually, I thought, Oh, yeah, if I add a third room, and it'll be a lot
• 13:14
  easier on fitting things in that we always want to deep dive into in the program, but don't have
• 13:18
  the space. And obviously, it's made it just a third more complicated than it was before to organize.
• 13:25
  But, but what we've done is in the third room, that's essentially where we want to do case
• 13:30
  studies or deep dives into really quite niche topics. So for instance, we've got the deep dive
• 13:37
  into toilets, the loo's you choose, you know, we can really look at if you want to know about toilets
• 13:42
  and what is sustainable about toilets, this is the place that you go. But that's not necessarily
• 13:46
  going to be a main room session that everybody is interested in. More's the pity because it's a very
• 13:50
  important topic. And so room three, there's a lot of shorter sessions. And then we've got room one
• 13:57
  is I suppose the kind of there's a lot of quite artistic, philosophical, difficult subjects that
• 14:05
  are in that room where you do need a bit more space for conversation and to give people
• 14:10
  like room to breathe almost in in what could be quite either potentially even esoteric
• 14:18
  or very difficult conversations. And so there, we don't want it to be too tight.
• 14:25
  And then in room two, it's kind of a mixture between the two. So it's that there's a lot of
• 14:30
  operational, very practical discussions to be had presenting information that people need to know,
• 14:35
  but also giving the opportunity for conversation between the people in the room as well.
• 14:41
  But what we always do also is for the people who are attending, we record the sessions, so that
• 14:48
  I really struggle with it. I'm like, I want to see everything, but some things run concurrently.
• 14:53
  So we record them so people can watch back the sessions that they missed and decide which ones
• 14:58
  they want to be at in person to engage with as well. Yeah. And one thing I wanted to ask you
• 15:03
  today is how the conference has helped event organisers to have what they may feel were
• 15:11
  difficult discussions about certain topics, because I think there's been an undeniable
• 15:17
  approach, broadly speaking, the events industry to embrace subjects of sustainability and DEI
• 15:24
  and inclusivity, and, you know, carbon emissions and all of these things that kind of form,
• 15:29
  you know, a bigger picture around, you know, more sustainable events. But from speaking to
• 15:36
  event organisers, some of them have, I know for a fact, some of them said that they find some of
• 15:40
  those conversations actually quite awkward, because they might not have the experience,
• 15:44
  the understanding, the knowledge around it, and they're worried about, you know,
• 15:47
  putting their foot in it, for want of a better phrase, is as part of the objective of DEI over
• 15:55
  the years to help break down some of those sort of reservations that people had and actually say,
• 16:00
  look, come in, let's have these discussions, let's give you that education.
• 16:04
  Yeah, absolutely. And I think the key there is not necessarily being about giving education,
• 16:09
  there's definitely things to be learned by having a variety of voices and perspectives in the room
• 16:14
  that really helps, but also by setting a very welcoming and kind space where no one is the
• 16:21
  absolute expert that understands everything in the world. And there's a lot of complexities
• 16:26
  around so many subjects. And ultimately, the message that we give out as DEI is that we want
• 16:31
  to make things better. We want to look after people, want to be kind to everyone, want to be
• 16:35
  inclusive. We won't tolerate abuse of nature or of people. And therefore, we're not going to be
• 16:45
  picking on people if they get things wrong, you know, everybody is learning. And there's definitely
• 16:51
  conversations and discussions that we've had in DEI that touch on nerves with people. But there's
• 16:57
  always a held space where people can have those conversations as an opportunity to speak to people
• 17:02
  afterwards. And it's quite a nurturing community in that respect. I think that by setting the
• 17:07
  intention of what is the purpose of the event beforehand, helps people to know that what we
• 17:12
  want to do is make things better. And we're all always learning. So, so long as you're down with
• 17:17
  that, then there's nothing to fear. Absolutely. And I mean, in terms of the content itself is
• 17:24
  undeniably attractive to anybody who's working in the events industry, you just have to look at the
• 17:29
  agenda to see that. But we ran a story on event industry news a few weeks ago with a couple of
• 17:35
  just an announcement of a couple of, I suppose, what you call sort of celebrity names that have
• 17:39
  been added to the content for the agenda. Chris Packham and David Gray, both taking part in
• 17:47
  sessions for two, I suppose, very much linked things, but two separate sessions there. Tell
• 17:52
  us a little bit more about those. Yeah, so I'll start with David Gray
• 17:56
  and Earth Percent have been our charity partner for a number of years now. If listeners don't
• 18:02
  know, Earth Percent is set up perhaps five, six, maybe even seven years ago. The first discussions
• 18:08
  were just before the pandemic. And it's been set up in order to essentially be, it does fund
• 18:16
  organizations both within and outside of the events sector, the music sector specifically,
• 18:23
  in order to care for the planet. So they talk about unleashing the power of music
• 18:28
  in service of the planet. And Brian Eno was one of the founders of that charity.
• 18:34
  They have a fantastic network of musicians who care about their mission in order to use their
• 18:42
  platform, their profile to protect nature, to care for indigenous communities who ultimately
• 18:48
  protect nature, and to find ways to make the world a better place. And so through our fantastic
• 18:54
  partnership with the people at Earth Percent, each year they've been hosting, I think this is the
• 18:59
  fifth year that they'll be hosting the last session, which is the keynote Earth Percent Hour.
• 19:06
  They previously had Brian Eno, Jarvis Cocker, Jacob Collier, Aurora, incredible, wonderful people
• 19:14
  who've come to speak. And David Gray has recently put his shoulder to the wheel. Is that the
• 19:19
  expression? I'm never quite sure about that. I'm not sure actually. Sounds dangerous. It sounds
• 19:25
  great to me. Yeah. Yeah. But he's been helping, he's very supportive of trying to use that platform
• 19:32
  of music in order to make change for the better. So we're super happy to have him. And Anna Calvey
• 19:38
  is also joining that session as well, speaking with Kathy Runciman from the charity. So they
• 19:45
  will close the day. And that's a really nice moment when we get everybody to come together
• 19:48
  as well into room one, just before the International AGF Awards. And then with Chris
• 19:54
  Packham, such a dude. I was wondering, is Chris Packham known in Europe as well as the UK? He
• 20:01
  should be. I'm not entirely sure, but I feel like I've known him since I can remember television.
• 20:08
  The really wild show back in the eighties. There's one for the teenagers there, but I
• 20:12
  remembered that that's my, what was my first encounter. But so I don't know if he's known
• 20:16
  internationally, but I know that certainly in the UK, for people of this, I'm in my mid forties,
• 20:22
  he will absolutely be somebody that people have known as long as they can remember watching TV.
• 20:26
  Yeah. I mean, he's such a legend and he's so very similarly to Dale Vince, who he'll be in
• 20:32
  conversation with during GEI. So Dale Vince runs Ecotricity, the green energy company,
• 20:38
  Forest Green Rovers, the vegan football club. And they're both, they both use their platforms again
• 20:46
  in order to make change. And they're both very direct and very like particular about how they
• 20:51
  do things. And Chris has come out very much in support of obviously wildlife and nature.
• 20:57
  He was very supportive of just stop oil, anti-fossil fuels. And so he's completely
• 21:03
  aligned basically with GEI and the way that we do things. And they started something fantastic
• 21:11
  called Ecotalk, which I just loved. As soon as I heard about it, I changed my phone provider to it
• 21:18
  because Ecotalk is essentially a SIM card or a phone where all of the profits go to nature.
• 21:25
  So everybody has to pay for their phone bill. And yet most of the time, it's all just going
• 21:30
  to profits for somebody to buy a yacht or whatever. And this way it goes to rewilding
• 21:36
  and nature projects and reintroducing beavers into places and looking after the trees and the
• 21:43
  water and all of that lovely stuff. So they are going to give insights into, I guess,
• 21:50
  on the activist side of things, but also how we as an event sector can use our energy,
• 21:57
  essentially, in whatever forms that take in order to protect nature and using real life examples of
• 22:03
  how that's done in business and practically. And I'm sure that there'll be some very interesting
• 22:08
  stories to come from those guys as well. So I'm very much looking forward to that session.
• 22:13
  And it's called Saturday Night Beaver is the name of that session. You'll have to be there
• 22:20
  to find out why. It's a brilliant name. I saw that one on the agenda and I did scroll
• 22:24
  by and I had to read it twice. Right, okay, I get it. Okay, I get the pun initially. Yeah.
• 22:33
  And have a look because there's some, I mean, there was one that caught my eyes with Riders
• 22:36
  on the Storm and then straight away I'm singing The Doors. Yeah, I've been singing it for like a
• 22:41
  month now. My partner's getting really annoyed. I hope that that's what they're going to come on
• 22:46
  stage to. I hope that people get walk on music. Yes, yeah. They can walk on to Riders on the
• 22:52
  Storm. One thing that I just wanted to maybe, I know we were talking today fundamentally about
• 22:58
  GEI and the event that takes place, but you mentioned the AGF certification and the awards.
• 23:04
  I'm just wondering what we've got you on today to maybe give people who are tuning in an idea of
• 23:09
  what AGF certification is, what the awards acknowledge, et cetera, et cetera. So that if
• 23:14
  they're not aware, they can find out a bit more about it. Yeah, absolutely. So we started with,
• 23:20
  like I said, we were doing the festival certifications and then that developed to
• 23:23
  all types of events. I think around about 2015, we branched out to all types of events.
• 23:28
  Since 2019, we've been doing the arena and venue certifications as well. And we're just
• 23:35
  putting the finishing touches to the theater certification too. So it's something where we
• 23:41
  look at 11 key themes from governance and CO2 through to, we look at waste, power, transport,
• 23:50
  water, procurements, all the things you'd expect. And then also social impact. So we'd look at what
• 23:57
  you're doing with accessibility, EDI, behavior change and communication as well. Like I was
• 24:02
  talking about previously, how do you use your platform in order to communicate to people and to
• 24:07
  give certain messages? So that's, it involves having an assessor come to your event or your
• 24:14
  venue to see what's happening on the ground. You complete the self-assessment and then have to
• 24:19
  submit supporting evidence as well. So for instance, that might be things like fuel bills or
• 24:25
  electricity bills, waste transfer notes, audience surveys, that kind of thing. And then at the end
• 24:31
  of that, you get given a score across the various different sections that you're assessed to. And
• 24:36
  you'll have an overall grade, which is improvers, commended, highly commended or outstanding.
• 24:43
  So any number of events in the world can apply anywhere in the world. And this is something where
• 24:50
  the certification is given then every February, we do this ceremony, a certification ceremony.
• 24:56
  And what we do separately to that or linked to it is the awards. So that's where we might go,
• 25:02
  okay, in waste and procurements, who were the ones that were scoring the highest or doing the
• 25:08
  most impressive things in that area of all of those events that we certified? And then they
• 25:13
  become the nominees for the circularity award, for instance. And then the winner will be the
• 25:20
  one who got scored the highest out of all of those certifications. So some of the categories are
• 25:26
  power, water, waste, whilst we have community, so which ones have been best at engaging with
• 25:34
  community, the communications, which we call the Pied Piper Award, which my team have said,
• 25:39
  our Spanish delegates don't know what you're talking about with the Pied Piper Award.
• 25:44
  Well, they'll know eventually, so we decided to keep it. And it's really good fun. It's quite like,
• 25:52
  yeah, there's kind of no airs and graces about our award ceremony. Although we do have champagne,
• 25:57
  which is provided by Planet of the Grapes, which I just think is such a fantastic name.
• 26:02
  Brilliant, that's another great name.
• 26:04
  Yeah, check them out. It's all about people with good names. That's how you get to come to GEI,
• 26:09
  essentially.
• 26:09
  This is some of the best named stuff that you could possibly find at a business event.
• 26:13
  We also have Vegan Balls from Devil's Kitchen.
• 26:18
  I saw that. The post drinks event is Booze and Balls.
• 26:23
  Booze and Balls, yeah, exactly.
• 26:25
  So, you know, that alone is worth the registration. Which, again, a nice segue into telling people,
• 26:33
  having said all of this on today's podcast, we should really point people in the right direction
• 26:38
  if they're listening to this this week and they think, right, next week I need to get along to
• 26:42
  that. How do they do that? Just onto the Greener Future website?
• 26:45
  Yeah, exactly. So, if you go onto greenerfuture.com forward slash GEI, then you can find all the
• 26:51
  information there, like the full schedule, things about accommodation, how to get there and all that
• 26:56
  jazz. And then it can take you through to the ticket page if you want to book. Yeah, and that's
• 27:02
  it.
• 27:02
  It's great to see the schedule on there in full for anybody, even if you've not registered,
• 27:07
  because a lot of conferences and events of this nature give you a flavour of what to expect,
• 27:13
  but they don't give you it all until you register. But ultimately, to provoke people to actually
• 27:18
  register and say that I want to go to that, you've got to give them that information. So,
• 27:22
  can I just say, it's great to see on the website that all of the agenda, the sessions,
• 27:27
  all the synopsis, who's going to be speaking on them, the timings, it's all there. So,
• 27:31
  if you go over to the website, you'll see within a matter of minutes that it's going to be relevant
• 27:35
  to you and what sort of schedule you might want to, you know, create for your particular day and
• 27:41
  your experience there. So, head over to, yeah, agreenerfuture.com where you can register for
• 27:47
  the event on the 24th of February at the Royal Lancaster in London. And telling us all about
• 27:53
  that event today has been Claire O'Neill, CEO and founder of Agreener Future. Claire,
• 27:57
  thanks so much for joining the podcast today.
• 28:00
  Thank you. Such a pleasure and see you next week, hopefully.
• 28:03
  Absolutely. And before we wrap up, just a very quick couple of mentions for some stuff that's
• 28:07
  happening in the world of event industry news. First of all, the recent announcement that was
• 28:12
  made on event industry news relating to the new wedding section of the website. Weddings are a
• 28:18
  huge part of the events industry and haven't been represented on the website until now. So,
• 28:25
  if you work in the business of weddings, if you're a venue, a planner, a supplier, anything of that
• 28:30
  nature and weddings represents part of your business, there is now a dedicated home for all
• 28:35
  of that news information and suppliers on event industry news. Just go to the website, event
• 28:40
  industry news.com, click on news, and then you'll be able to go to the dedicated wedding section of
• 28:46
  the website. That was announced just a couple of weeks ago. And also, just a reminder to subscribe
• 28:52
  to the podcast. If you're listening to this today via your audio podcast provider, please make sure
• 28:57
  that you go over to event industry news.com, where you can see video versions of all the podcasts.
• 29:02
  And indeed, if you've started your journey there today, and you're watching this podcast on the
• 29:06
  website, make sure you go in the opposite direction to wherever you get your audio podcast from and
• 29:10
  make sure that you like and subscribe so that you get all of the episodes as they drop each week.
• 29:16
  My thanks again to Claire O'Neill from the AGF for joining us today and telling us all about
• 29:20
  GEI 2026. Good luck with it next week, Claire. Hope it goes well. Thanks for taking the time today.
• 29:26
  Thank you. And thanks everybody for watching. We'll see you on the next edition of the Event
• 29:30
  Industry News podcast. Goodbye.