My, How You've Grown!

Ten years ago, in

EBN

Vol. 2, No. 6, we devoted precisely two sentences to alerting our readers that the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Green Building Council were planning a Green Building Conference, to take place in Gaithersburg, Maryland in February 1994. “The conference will cover assessment methodologies and performance criteria for rating buildings, case studies, activities of various government and independent agencies, and an assessment of the current status and future needs of green building technologies,” we reported.

That decade-old description captures Greenbuild 2003 in Pittsburgh remarkably aptly, perhaps an indication of how well USGBC has stayed focused on those core topics. The event’s influence and stature, however, have risen by orders of magnitude. After two annual conferences attended by several hundred pioneers, followed by several years of inward-looking “member summits” and “federal summits,” USGBC revisited the public conference concept in 2002. Last year’s USGBC conference brought over 4,000 of us to Austin, Texas. Greenbuild outdid itself this year with a final attendance tally of 5,256—over 25% growth! Greenbuild is now the unchallenged “industry meeting place for green building.” Next year’s Greenbuild is set to take over Portland, Oregon during the week of November 8, 2004.

– JB