On April 14th, 2010, I gave the closing keynote at the Municipal Green Building Conference and Expo, help by the US Green Building Council’s LA Chapter, and SoCal Gas Company. You can watch the full hour-long video here. Continue Reading

This article originally appeared: http://kbbcollective.com/greening-restaurants.html

Greening restaurants
Restaurants will have to do more than change light bulbs; they need to grow their own food on site

Last month I spoke at the CHART Conference. Also known as the Council for Hotel and Restaurant Trainers, their annual gathering includes restaurant operators from around the country. Their impressive list of members include every family chain restaurant you’ve ever heard of, including Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Rubio’s, Chuck E. Cheese, Perkins, et al. The room was packed with a “who’s who” of lifestyle eateries.

Continue Reading

I’ve received dozens and dozens of emails about this, and YES, I have FREE tradeshow floor passes for the upcomingWest Coast Green Conference.

Contact me directly, if interested.

You can get free FULL CONFERENCE passes by simply volunteering your time.

I look forward to the West Coast Green Conference each year. Of all the conferences I attend, it is by far my favorite. Most of the time, I’m giving a lecture to room full of doubters and skeptics, so it’s uncommonly fun to speak to the enthusiastic crowds at West Coast Green. I have been honored to be one of the advisors to the conference since it’s inception, and am thrilled to contribute to the success of the event.

In preparation for the conference, I create an entirely new presentation. I throw out everything and start from scratch. It is akin to a standup comedian trashing his act to write entirely new material. And though this is incredibly time consuming, it forces me to rethink how I talk about design and sustainability.

The process of developing a new keynote speech takes an entire year of thinking and research. It starts at the previous years West Coast Green conference as I learn of new ideas and memes emerging. Topics, stories and information rattle around in my head, while I stuff notes, images and thoughts into a folder throughout the year. By letting the subject marinate, I find the gaps in my research and in the final story I will be telling.

Once the narrative is fairly complete, I can begin putting the actual slideshow together. The process of building the slides is conducted over two months before the conference. I work closely with my interns during this process we find ways to connect boring data with something relevant and memorable. Slides are shuffled, reordered and edited. Images we like are replaced with new, better images we love.

We continually try to find ways to inject humor into the talk. Ironically, this is incredibly serious business and the hardest part. How do you write something that will always come off as funny amid all of that “doom and gloom” talk? How do you balance humor with the need to make a point? I don’t want the humor to allow people to ignore the bigger issue or overshadow the point… the humor is key to the success of the talk and the hardest thing to add. There are always more facts to be found; but humor is impossible to simply “dig up.”

The slides are tweaked up until the start of the conference. I practice the final draft of the talk in front of my students; which might be the only chance I get to perform it in front of a real, live audience before the actual conference. I use this as a chance to test the timing and humor; often recording it for later viewing.

I’ve posted before about the tools I use to I create my presentations, skipping PowerPoint and using Apple’s Keynote instead.

We’re still working on the final version of my talk, “The Myth of Sisyphus: A plan to green our buildings and avoid extinction.” In short, I discuss how our buildings are like Sisyphus, constantly pushing boulder uphill in order to survive. The talk outlines how to change this paradigm and find the hidden opportunities in green building.

I will be speaking at West Coast Green on Thursday, September 25th at 1:30 – 2:30pm. A booksigning will be held immediately following the talk.

Be sure to do what you can to attend the conference. It is well worth the cost and time. Register for the conference here.

The Re:Construct competition has officially launched. Submit your ideas for the city block of the future; entries are due September 15th, 2008. As you can see, I am one of the advisors for the competition (and have been from the beginning).

From the site:

What are you made of? Do you have what it takes to make a difference? Are you willing and able to rebuild a sustainable foundation for the future? It’s time for a change in the way we see things, in the way we do things. It’s time for what we build to reflect who we are and what we’re made of. It’s time to Re:Construct the ideas and realities of sustainable building.

While you’re at their site, check out the winners of the past competitions:
RE:VOLT
RE:ROUTE
RE:STORE
RE:CONNECT

I spoke at the PSFK Conference last month. The theme was on trends, inspiration and creativity and I was enjoying myself so much at the event I was already looking forward to the next conference.

Some incredible speakers and brands were represented: Starbucks, Good Magazine, Current TV, fuseproject, NASA – and that’s just a handful of them…

Ken Fisher conducted interviews during the event, and the first compilation video is now available. I am in the video speaking about the need for innovation.

Watch the video here.

For those of you who haven’t heard of West Coast Green, it is the largest residential green building conference in the country and is held the last week of September. This years conference will be September 26, 27 & 28th in San Jose, California.

I have been on the Advisory Board of the conference since it’s inception, and watched it grow in size and scope each year. Each year brought new things to the conference as well.

For this years conference, one of the new features is the video section of the website, where you can watch recorded talks by this years speakers.

You must watch the talk by Van Jones, who brought the crowd of thousands to their feet with his take on green collar jobs.

Of the 40+ conferences I speak at each year, West Coast Green is by far my favorite. I urge you to attend the conference. Some discount passes are still available, so feel free to contact me directly if you’re going to attend.

Allison Arieff, former visionary editor at Dwell Magazine, is now editor-at-large at Sunset Magazine and writes for the New York Times. Today she posted this review of my book and our recent talk at the Sunset Celebration Weekend.

Her blog is a great resource, as is her NY TImes Column.

I am speaking to the US Green Building Council chapter in Santa Cruz, California on Wednesday March 5th at 5:30pm.

This is a late addition to the ongoing array of speaking events I am giving around the country. If you’re in the area, please come by!

Details here

HousingZone has a wonderful interview with Urban Re:Vision founder Stacey Frost. An excerpt:

When we started Urban Re:Vision, we created a very basic platform from which to pursue our goals. We asked ourselves the question, “What If?” What if we could live in an environment that is toxin-free, works sustainably and provides a direct connection between residents and their community? We are posing that question to both design professionals and concerned citizens through our six-part international competition that deals with a variety of key issues facing our urban communities. We have been rewarded with consistently innovative, intelligent and inspiring proposals.

The design competitions from Urban Re:Vision have already generated some incredible ideas and innovations. Enter your own ideas at Urban Re:Vision.

via HousingZone