Holger Jan Schmidt (DE)

Holger Jan Schmidt is the promoter of Europe's leading conference for sustainability in the live music industry, GreenEvents Europe, which is to be held for the fourth time on Nov 3 and 4 in Bonn, Germany. He is board member of the German Sounds for Nature Foundation e.V., that focuses on environmental issues at events and sustainability related communication projects towards a young target group. Sounds for Nature released one of the first and most important guidelines to greening events in 2004 which were rereleased fully updated in June 2013. Schmidt was co-initiator of GO Group (Green Operations Europe) and is the anchor man for green issues of Yourope (the European Festival Association). He also coordinates jury, nominations and presentation of the "Green Operations Award", the sustainability related category of the Festival Awards Europe which forms something like the green Oscar of the European festival scene. Schmidt looks back at more than twenty years with Germany's biggest admission-free festival RhEINKULTUR being in leading position from 1998 till the festival's final edition in 2011. Together with his colleagues he invented the 'Green Rocks'-program that covered all sustainability and environmental issues of the festival, which was one of the greenest in Europe. Schmidt holds a diploma in media economics from Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln.