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A one-day seminar to educate event management practitioners on a newly developed International Organization for Standardization ISO 20121: �Event Sustainability Management System Requirement with Guidance for Use� has been held in Accra. The seminar, held under the theme; �Defining Ghana�s Event Industry Standards as the key to realizing sustainable events�, was organised by the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) is the beginning of the process of adopting the International Standard on Events Sustainability Management as a national standard to facilitate and allow the industry in Ghana to join the global trend in events management. The programme, which had key event management consultants, media personnel and other stakeholders attending, was to take participants through the history and rationale for the global establishment of management system certification ISO 20121 and the compulsive need for local adoption to help institutions in the industry improve on their operations to meet international standards. In his presentation on the topic, �The Benefits of Standardization to the Event Management Industry in Ghana�, Mr. Magnus Rex Danquah, Executive Chairman of RICS Consult Limited, a leading event management consultancy firm said the ISO 20121 is a practical tool for managing events as it tackles the event industry�s challenges in all the three dimensions of sustainability at all stages of its supply chain; economic, environmental and social. Mr. Danquah was emphatic that taking an organization process-based approach to managing economic, environmental and social impacts in event management, in addition to monitoring and measuring required by the standards, provides opportunities to reduce the use of resources and cut costs. Direct users of the standard, he said, can benefit other stakeholders including regulators who have health, safety, environmental and other responsibilities related to events, saying, �what we have not done as a country is how to structure events management into an emerging industry and re-position it as one of the innovative ways of addressing our current looming youth unemployment crisis�. He said, considering the capacity the events industry has in the engagement of people both casual and permanent, adequately positions players of the industry into offering our platform to the National Youth Employment Programme [NYEP] as one of their modules to offer employment as partners and also as our own contribution to national development. Mr. Edward Boateng, the CEO of Global Media Alliance (GMA), owners of e.TV Ghana in his contribution on the topic, �Evolution of the Events Industry in Ghana,� advised event managers to keep to high standards to attract more jobs. He cautioned the players not to undercut prices in order to out-compete their competitors, saying that would make them lose respect of their clients. He commended the GSA for organizing the seminar to educate the players in the event management industry on the best international practices and said the local industry needs to improve their capacity to attract both local and international events. Mrs. Elizabeth Adetola, the Deputy Executive Director of GSA in her remarks said the seminar was to educate event management practitioners on international standards, saying, the ISO 20121 was developed in June this year, following the successful organization of the Olympic Games and was subsequently adopted by the International Standards Organization as the recommended international standard. Mrs. Adetola noted that globalization had dramatically changed the local and international business environment and companies had to reposition themselves to meet the challenges in the global world, adding that, �standardization had become an important tool for companies to gain the desired advantage�.