At COP31 in Antalya this week, delegates were told to reach the venue before 7am. A later clarification said that wasn’t necessary. Roads were then closed so around forty world leaders could be driven in from the airport, while everyone else sat in the traffic that created. Reportedly, some delegates gave up on the journey altogether and worked from their hotel rooms.
Having worked on both COP26 and COP28, I’d say the threshold is the hardest thing in the entire build. The pressure always runs in one direction: protocol is fixed, security is fixed, broadcast is fixed. The delegate journey is the only variable with any give in it, so it is the one that gives.
Every event carries a hierarchy of who matters most, yet no organiser would choose to publish it. Access publishes it anyway and very publicly, on the first morning, before a single session has started.
What interests me more is the feedback sitting in plain sight. A delegate who flew thousands of miles, cleared accreditation and then decided to stay in a hotel room has told us something very specific about the experience that was built. It costs nothing to collect, but is anybody actually counting it?
We measure attendance obsessively. We almost never measure the people who were there and chose not to come in.