Conferenza

Aspen - Environmental Forum #2

As had many folks delayed by late March whiteout snowstorms, your intrepid correspondent arrived in Aspen Friday morning to glorious sunshine and a few inches of fluffy powder - a fabulous milieu for the second Aspen Environment Forum here at Aspen Meadows.

Initial reports of the first day of activity, including a Wednesday evening keynote by new EPA administrator Lisa Jackson atop Aspen Mountain, were uniformly positive.

At lunch, John Latham, executive professor and director of University of Northern Colorado's Monfort Institute, made a super point to me as we discussed the first 30 hours of the conference - that we could use a form of argumentation table, where participants could check off 'agreed science' and 'agreed better practices' so debates an move forward.

Furthermore, he noted systems theory, very helpful to approaching environmental issues, was not being used sufficiently actively in general discourse about environmental issues and impacts.

More to come...

Streaming from Demo: Adapting to the New World Order of Transparency

After a planes, trains & automobiles itinerary - including a missed connection in LA, and a one-way rental car - I'm in Palm Desert for Demo. For those of you who aren't here in the warmth of southern California (84 degrees today), you can watch Demo live (though I'm assuming this doesn't include a remote wander through the demo pavilion). 

Free remote video from conferences still takes some getting used to. When we first launched Conferenza back during the tech boom, confererence producers often looked askance at our in-depth reports from their events, believing that their content was their crown jewels. Our sharing information from the inner sanctum to people who hadn't paid to attend seemed like theft to some of them. Of course, this didn't include Demo producer Chris Shipley, who has always been a gracious supporter of Conferenza. But there were more than a few producers who did their utmost to hamper the escape of their information.

Today's a different story. From TED to Pop!Tech, a conference's content is now its greatest attractor. And conference producers aren't shy about using it as their best advertisement.

Looking forward to seeing the parade of 39 companies over the next few days; I'll be doing video interviews for IdeasProject, and blogging when possible.

gB