Entry Log 015
THE CONFERENCE THAT DIDN’T FLY
What if we moved the experience instead of moving the world?
Written by Captain Scott Woldian
There’s a rather wonderful irony at the heart of what Stu is trying to do with Terra Nueva. He’s spent much of his working life moving people and things around the planet. Artists. Bands. Crews. Equipment. Freight. Production. And he still champions logistics today through House of Tours Global. So no, Stu hasn’t suddenly become a green warrior. He isn’t suggesting we stop travelling, stop touring or stop doing business internationally. Quite the opposite. He’s asking whether, with everything technology can now do, we still need to move quite so much of the world around simply because that’s how we’ve always done it. Because the technology has changed. The economics have changed. And, rather more importantly, the planet is changing.
We’ve all seen increasingly severe heat, wildfires, floods and other extreme-weather events around the world. Add geopolitical instability, pressure on energy supplies and volatile fuel costs, and reducing unnecessary movement starts making sense environmentally and economically. Stu finds himself in the slightly peculiar position of having spent decades understanding how to move the world... while now developing something that might help parts of it move considerably less. And that brings us to the Triple Live Experience.
The world needs to meet. It doesn’t always need to fly there.
Imagine a global corporate conference with 5,000 delegates. Traditionally, we choose a destination and bring everybody to it. Delegates fly internationally. Senior executives and speakers travel. VIPs may use business or private aviation. Production personnel travel. Equipment and freight travel.
Then come airport transfers, coaches, cars, hotels and all the infrastructure required to bring thousands of people into one location. All because we’ve decided that for 5,000 people to share an experience... they need to share a postcode. Perhaps they don’t.
Imagine instead that there isn’t one enormous physical conference. There are multiple smaller physical conferences around the world. Three hundred delegates in Dundee. Five hundred in Dubai. Four hundred in Singapore. Six hundred in New York. Others in Sydney, Mumbai, Berlin, Los Angeles and wherever else they need to be. These aren’t satellite audiences watching the “real” conference somewhere else. They are the conference. Real delegates. Real venues. Real hospitality. Real networking. People meet, talk, eat together, attend sessions and do the things human beings still do considerably better when they’re actually in the same room. But all those rooms connect into one central virtual conference hall. And that’s where this starts becoming interesting.
One virtual hall. Thousands of delegates.
This is the Triple Live Experience applied on a global scale. Physical. Global. Virtual. Every regional location has a real audience. Every location is connected globally. And every delegate can potentially enter the same central virtual conference environment. Laptop. Phone. Tablet. Headset. Large screens throughout the physical venues. Whatever proves most accessible and effective.
A delegate physically attending in Dundee could meet somebody attending in Singapore inside the virtual conference. They could join a breakout session with colleagues in Dubai, Sydney and New York. Then step away from the technology and have coffee with the 300 real people around them. That distinction matters. We’re not replacing human contact to become greener. We’re asking whether technology can preserve human contact while reducing some of the carbon-intensive movement traditionally required to create it. Local human connection. Global digital connection.
One shared live experience.
Capture locally. Appear globally.
Now give every participating conference location access to a real-time capture zone. That might involve volumetric capture. It might involve motion capture or another real-time technology. Terra Nueva is deliberately technology agnostic. We need to discover what works rather than falling in love with the equipment.
But imagine the principle. A keynote speaker in Dubai enters the capture zone. Their live presence appears within the central virtual conference hall and across participating locations. The next speaker is in Dundee. Then Singapore. Then New York. The speakers no longer automatically travel to the conference. The conference travels to them.
A CEO may not need a private aircraft simply to deliver a keynote on another continent. A specialist may not need two days of international travel for a forty-minute presentation. A senior executive doesn't automatically need a long-haul flight because their name happens to appear on an agenda somewhere else in the world.
Capture locally. Appear globally.
And suddenly volumetric capture becomes more than an impressive piece of technology. It could become part of a much more sustainable way of producing global experiences.
The greenest journey may be the one we don’t make
Let’s keep our feet on the ground here. One conference isn’t going to stop climate change. Terra Nueva isn’t going to solve global warming with volumetric capture and a decent internet connection. But one conference isn’t really the point. The global corporate and conference industries operate at enormous scale. Conferences. Congresses. Trade shows. Product launches. Training. Investor meetings. Academic and medical events. Global company gatherings. They happen constantly. And international events can involve enormous amounts of movement. People. Aircraft. Cars. Coaches. Trucks. Equipment.Freight.
Now imagine reducing even a proportion of that unnecessary movement. Not once. Repeatedly. Across thousands of delegates. Across hundreds of organisations. Across thousands of events. Across years. That's when a different way of doing things could start to matter.
And it isn’t only the people
This is where Stu’s background becomes particularly relevant. He knows logistics. He knows freight. And he knows the extraordinary lengths this industry will go to in order to get equipment from one side of the world to the other on time. Global events don’t only move people. They move stuff. Sound. Lighting. Video. Exhibition materials. Production equipment. Specialist technology. Sometimes by road. Sometimes by sea. And sometimes, when time matters, by air freight. The logistics industry has become incredibly good at answering: How do we get this there? Perhaps sustainability requires us to ask another question first. Does it need to go there at all?
If suitable equipment already exists in Singapore, use it in Singapore. If Scotland has excellent production companies and technicians, employ them in Scotland. Dubai uses local suppliers. Sydney uses local crews. New York uses local infrastructure. Set the standards globally. Deliver them locally. There will always be specialist equipment and expertise that genuinely need to travel. Fine. Move them. But perhaps we stop automatically moving everything else simply because that’s what we’ve always done.
Move the experience, not the infrastructure
That could become one of the environmental principles behind Triple Live. Move the data. Move the content. Move the digital assets. Move the captured presence of the speaker. But wherever practical... leave the hardware where it already is. Potentially fewer international flights. Less air freight. Less long-distance road freight. Fewer travelling production personnel. Less ground transportation. Less fuel consumed simply moving an event around the world. Not zero. Less. And when we're talking about carbon emissions and climate change, less—repeated at scale—is important.
One global event. Many local economies.
Here’s where the environmental argument meets the economic one. We're not necessarily removing the money being spent. We're changing where it gets spent. Every regional event needs a venue. Hotels. Production companies. Technicians. AV. Catering. Hospitality. Transport. Security. Event staff. Local suppliers and Businesses.
So instead of one host city receiving almost all the physical economic benefit of an international conference...one global event could support multiple local economies simultaneously. Dundee benefits. Dubai benefits. Singapore benefits. Sydney benefits. New York benefits. And so do the other participating locations. Some of the money previously spent flying people and freight thousands of miles could instead be spent creating better local experiences. That's something I particularly like about this model. Sustainability doesn't necessarily have to mean less economic activity. It could mean distributing that activity more intelligently.
Green has to make business sense too
Stu isn't approaching this as an environmental campaigner. He's approaching it as somebody who understands what moving people, productions and equipment actually costs. International flights are expensive. Private and business aviation can be extremely expensive. Air freight is expensive. Ground transfers cost money. Moving production teams around the world costs money. And people's time has a value too. So the proposition to a corporation isn't:
"Would you like a scaled-back conference because it's greener?"
It's:
Could we reduce unnecessary movement, reduce environmental impact, potentially reduce parts of the event cost and still create an exceptional global experience? And could some of those savings be reinvested locally? Better production. Better hospitality. Better technology. Better networking. Better experiences. If environmental responsibility and commercial reality start pulling in the same direction, we have a much better chance of creating lasting change.
But we have to prove the green bit
This matters. Digital doesn't automatically mean sustainable. Volumetric capture, real-time rendering, networks and data centres, and regional venues all use energy. People still travel locally. So Terra Nueva doesn't get to declare this green simply because fewer aeroplanes appear in the presentation. We measure it. Take a real international conference. Establish the footprint of the conventional model. Aviation. Business and private aviation, where applicable. Freight. Ground transportation. Accommodation. International production movements. Venue and production energy. Then model the distributed Triple Live version. Regional travel. Regional venues. Local production. Capture. Rendering. Transmission. Computing. Everything. Bring in independent sustainability and carbon-accounting expertise and let them challenge the results. If the improvement is modest, say so. If it's substantial, prove it. And if something we've designed improves matters...change it!
Because Stu doesn't want Terra Nueva to look green. He wants us to find out how green we can genuinely make it.
This isn’t another virtual conference
Three thousand people sitting alone at home watching somebody talk into a webcam isn't the future we're describing. The physical element matters. People still go somewhere. They still meet. They still shake hands. They still eat together. They still have the conversation in the bar nobody scheduled. The virtual world connects those physical communities globally. That's the difference. And because the largest conference hall exists virtually, the physical locations only need to accommodate their regional audiences. Three hundred here. Five hundred there. Perhaps a thousand somewhere else. Thousands upon thousands globally. All participating in the same experience.
And much of the infrastructure already exists
Hotels and conference venues around the world already have meeting rooms, ballrooms, restaurants, hospitality spaces, staff and connectivity. What if selected locations could eventually become Triple Live-ready hubs, with standardised real-time capture capability? The hotel stops being somewhere somebody sleeps after travelling to the conference. It becomes part of the global conference network. And the biggest room isn't in London. Or Dubai. Or Las Vegas. It's virtual.
Then take the idea beyond conferences
This is where the potential becomes much larger. The principle isn't really about conferences at all. It's about global experiences. The same thinking could potentially be applied to: Music. Festivals. Sport. Trade shows. Education. Medical congresses. Product launches. Film. Award ceremonies. Training. Cultural events. International organisations. Corporate gatherings. Anywhere we're currently moving large numbers of people or significant quantities of production around the world to create one shared experience, we can at least ask:
Does all of it still need to travel?
Sometimes the answer will be yes. Sometimes it may increasingly be no.
The Conference That Didn’t Fly
There's an irony in all this that isn't lost on Stu. He's spent decades moving artists, crews, productions and freight around the planet. He's still championing the logistics industry. And now he's asking whether emerging technology can help those industries become more sustainable, more resilient and more economically efficient.
Perhaps those things aren't contradictory. Perhaps understanding how difficult and expensive it is to move the world is precisely what makes you start questioning when the world actually needs moving.
The Triple Live Experience isn't about stopping travel. It's about reducing unnecessary travel. It's not about eliminating freight. It's about reducing unnecessary freight.
It's not about replacing physical human experiences. It's about connecting physical experiences globally without automatically requiring everybody—and everything—to cross the planet to participate.
And if we can prove that this reduces carbon emissions, consumes less fuel, lowers unnecessary transport, supports local economies and still delivers something people genuinely want to attend...then Terra Nueva may have stumbled onto something much bigger than another way of staging a conference. It could contribute to a more sustainable model for global experiences themselves. We're not claiming we've done it. We want to test it. Measure it. Challenge it. Improve it. And work with people who understand sustainability, climate, technology, hospitality, production and global events well enough to help us get it right. Because this isn't about being a green warrior. It's about recognising that the world is changing and asking whether our industries can change with it.
Stu has spent much of his life learning how to move people and things around the planet. Perhaps some of that knowledge can now be used to answer a rather different question: How much of it no longer needs to move at all? That could be good for business. Good for local communities. And, if the evidence proves what we think might be possible...rather good for the planet too.
Captain Scott Woldian
Storyteller and Narrator of the Terra Nueva Entry Logs