If I could adopt a conference, it would be the USGBC Cascadia chapter's Living Future 'Unconference'. As someone who generally prefers to stay behind the scenes talking shop, it was a delight to find myself surrounded primarily by the obsessed of the green building world. Even better, as presenters we were encouraged to bring our own big challenges to the table and get attendees to help us address them — which is exactly what we and many other presenters did. (More about that later, I hope.)
First, this is the only conference I've been to where I left with less stuff than I started with! Yes, you could buy a conference T-shirt (lovely, organic, low-impact dyes, made in the USA), and I did get some green building playing cards, but there was no bag full of conference papers and booth swag. Instead, at registration we were each given a paper nametag and a single tri-fold with the conference schedule. For details, you had to wrest control of one of two computers hooked up to a screen set to scroll through sessions. I, of course, lost my tri-fold, and there didn't appear to be any spares.
Paul Hawken's keynote speech set the tone for the conference with kudos, encouragement, and warning for the audience; kudos for the work going on to transform the world for the better, encouragement that we are not alone (visually demonstrated with an endless scrolling list of nonprofits that can, by the way, all be found on WiserEarth) and a warning of radical changes to come that'll put green practitioners on the front-lines. "I just want to caution you. I think your star may rise faster than you'd want it to... I'm not saying this to flatter you. I'm saying this to warn you."
Jason McLennan's talk after breakfast on Day One got down and dirty with a no-holds-barred discussion on shit. Really. This wasn't the euphemistically delicate "waste-equals-food" conversation, but a tell-it-like-it-is that we need to better handle our own wastes, followed by an equally blunt rallying cry to those of us in the industry to get out our ideas out there "three-quarters baked" because we don't have time to make things perfect. This conference was not for the faint of heart.
The hour set aside for "15 minutes of brilliance" was a delightful twist. With echoes of TED, this was a platform for "innovative ideas both big, and small with big consequences." I was pleased to see district energy covered, and delighted by a tiny comic called LUZ about a little girl awakening to peak oil. Another great one: David Eisenberg's idea of getting insurance agents to include a building's contribution to climate change in pricing premiums. If implemented in concert this could change the game fast. (OK, so that wasn't one of the presentations... but in the session on Big Barriers: Financing and Codes, Eisenberg mentioned that he wished he'd submitted the idea — and in deference to a great idea from a long time master change agent, I had to put it up here.)
Major themes: the interconnectedness of issues, the need to really scale up fast, and as noted in the DJC's much longer real-time blog on Living Future: "It seems everybody, in sessions or personal encounters, is repeating the main message: things are changing quick, we need to help facilitate that and we need to be prepared for a new world."
UPDATE, 5/21/08: Notes from the Living Future session "Be a Product Detective: Sleuthing the Truth About Building Materials"What do experienced practitioners want to know about green products? What questions aren't being answered? Where do you actually get green products? What would the ultimate evaluation tool look like? What product improvements would make the biggest change overall? What is key for real market transformation? Each of these questions formed the core of a lively small-group discussion that took about half of the two hour session. The first part of the session was a rapid-fire overview of issues relating to assessing products — targeted for an advanced audience, which was what we had. Presenters: Tom Lent, HBN; Eden Brukman, CascadiaGBC; and me. We had a delightfully engaged group but now it seems so long ago that it is a little hard to get back into, even though the issues discussed are still the basis of much of my work. The report-back flip-charts don't do justice to the conversations, but they're here for the record — and because I promised to get them on LIVE (finally):
What's my Question/Issue? (these questions were asked in a brainstorm in the beginning of the session)
Cabinet materials: what is in these products — how do I trust manufacturer info?
Assessing competing claims
Shipping impacts? How to evaluate learning about toxics beyond the common culprits and what new hazards are in replacements?
Whether LBC red list is comprehensive?
What is the govt. role via regulation?
Rating system for products?
Finding alternatives — for example PVC: how to find them?
ACTUAL alternatives not hypothetical ones
Weighing performance with other green attributes
Social implications of products (e.g. Chinese granite) and other elements not transparent?
What is not being answered?
EOL
Do you really need it?
Cradle to Gate understanding
What product improvements would make the biggest change?
Fundamental building blocks: concrete, steel, fenestration/windows
Bioproducts; wood, ag-fiber etc.
PV, Clean Energy! — thin films, etc.
Sourcing — how do you find stuff?
What IS the stuff?
BuildingGreen, HBN,...
Contractors: It's their job to find the stuff, help them (and spec it)
Colleagues, coworkers...
Keys to Market Transformation
Big organizations with clout and buying power can TASK manufacturers with creating new products according to green specs!
Create a forum inviting manufacturers and others to discuss how to provide what we're looking for — to set up the competition
Spread the word! The ripple effect works; talk to customers, educate!
Addressing Durability
What's the objective?? Replacability? Durability? (It may be that low-impact replacability is what we're really after)
Performance, more than durability, is the issue
Change the paradigm — not just quick obsolescence
What is the ideal product?
Using nature in lodging...(biomimicry)
Highest and best use for each situation (not generic)
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