I returned to Germany from South Africa, got married, migrated to Australia and ended up in Melbourne where my wife studied for a Master in Physiotherapy.

My past was event production, my future was going to be sustainability, so I started looking around Melbourne what there was for me to do.

I think it was on the second day after I had the Internet set up at our home that I stumbled upon the Sustainable Living Festival.

It was about 3 weeks away and sounded just like everything I had wanted. The perfect combination of my past skills and future interest. So I offered my help.

I remember walking through the park up to their office, thinking: “I am going to be really strict about wanting to earn money, not just volunteering. They should understand that. After all sustainability is about profit and not just feel-good.”

Naturally, they convinced me to volunteer, pretty much everyone did (except for a few hired professionals who had all been appointed already). We had 50,000 visitors over the 3 days of the event.

I also attended the debriefing session after the festival and decided to offer my services as an event producer for the next festival a year later.

Luke Taylor, the director was ecstatic. The board of the not-for-profit organisation who was putting on the event had to be convinced first that it would be financially viable. There was no money left over, so we had to put in the time to find the money for the next event. If we did not succeed, there would have been no pay.

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Alexander

This is the culmination of my career as an event producer.

It is also its end….

In the past 10 years I have produced more than 160 events, ranging from small conferences where I only had to manage a laptop for the presenter, up to huge corporate events (once I shipped 12,500 from all over Europe to Cologne for a one-day event).

Adidas, Citibank and Proctor & Gamble. Donatella Versace, Franz Beckenbauer and Brian Ferry. I was part of the Winterolympics in Japan, the soccer Worldcup in France and an event at Universal Studios in the US.

I had met many amazing people and been to great places.

And now I was here at the meeting of our worlds’ leaders, trying to figure out how to manage our future. BMW was my client. They were showcasing their leadership in sustainable development.

It was the last even in a series of 10 events in different locations world-wide. I had gotten to know not only the people that were responsible for the event, but also the people that lived and breathed sustainability each day. The ones that really wanted to make a difference in the world.

And they had the backing of this large and successful company that encouraged them to spend time and money on research how BMW could be more environmentally friendly, more socially productive within the company and in their workers’ communities.

At the same time, the company was highly profitable and plans to stay that way in the future. That was a complete shift in mindset for me. My father had always told me that you have to be bad to profit. Reckless, careless, just watching the Dollars.

And yet here I was with a company that was the complete opposite. On top of that, there was a whole exhibition of companies that were on that same path.

My mind was clear: From now on, I would use my skills to support sustainable businesses.