23 June 2025

The Company of Biologists works hard to support innovation that can accelerate sustainable development in the academic event industry. One of the latest projects we have supported through our Fund for Innovations in Sustainable Conferencing is The Pavilion for People, an exciting experiment that was part of the 2025 UN Ocean Conference. The Pavilion for People was an online space created by utilising already existing technology in a new creative way, allowing people from all around the world to interact, share their ideas and make commitments for protecting the oceans.

To help support this innovative new event format, Teodora Rinciog, our Sustainable Conferencing and Communications Officer, hosted a webinar on how to make events more sustainable. During the event, she shared her advice on what we can do to minimise our environmental impact and her vision on how events will evolve in a world that fights climate change. She also talked about the new event carbon calculator, The Company of Biologists’ latest resource for sustainable events.

From her experience, the format exceeded the benefits of the classic Zoom meetings. The event took place on a Welo space, one of the many technologies integrated in The Pavilion for People with the intention of enhancing the user experience and creating a more human feeling to online meetings. On Welo, there was a virtual space with rooms and tables where you could sit down with the participants of the event, making the whole experience more interactive. The webinar generated many questions and we were glad to see the enthusiasm for our latest event carbon calculator.

The Pavilion for People is a pioneering experiment. The advantage of this type of platform is that it is open 24 hours, allowing people to interact and share ideas in their own time zone, minimising the need to travel and increasing inclusivity. It created opportunities to interact with like-minded people and raise concerns.

After the event concluded, we continued to collaborate with the organisers by offering feedback and sharing our experience to improve this concept for the upcoming events. In a time when the call for climate actions is so strong, we are glad to support such pioneering projects.