FREE tradeshow floor passes for West Coast Green

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.

How I prepare for the West Coast Green Conference

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.

Re:Construct Competition Launched

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

PSFK Conference Video Recap

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.

West Coast Green launches video section

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.

Sunset Magazine's new editor

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.

First LEED Certified MedSpa

Our most recent project, the EpiCenter opened last week to a packed grand opening party.

You can read a review here. We worked with architect Justin Martinkovic, green consultant Zem Joaquin, and a great team of other brilliant people to build the first LEED Certified Med Spa in the country.

One odd thing that seems to get a great deal of attention is the ceiling. The initial ceiling was to be made of these gorgeous bamboo panels. When the price came in at $48,000, a cheaper product was needed. I came up with the solution, Homesote panels, cut into 2' x 4' panels and stained with AFM Safecoat Zero-VOC stains. The result is something that looks like leather, but the final cost: $1800. I painted the panels myself with help from the clients.

via Green Building Elements

Lecture in Santa Cruz

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 interview with Urban Re:Vision

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

Interview on the John Adam Show

I was interviewed for the John Adam Show, the topic was "Green Business is the Place to Be..."

I talked about the book and a plan for completely getting us off of Saudi Arabian oil imports.

Listen to the broadcast here
Episode Synopsis
Episode Information Page

Grist: Eban Goodstein's article on Choose Your Future

Eban Goodstein, professor of economics at Lewis & Clark College and director of Focus the Nation, has a wonderful piece today in Grist on global warming and what YOU can do about it.

It is clear that we are standing at a critical moment in human history. Unless we begin to cut global-warming pollution within a few short years, a window for our children and the creatures of this earth will close. Forever...

Choose Your Future is a program from his group that allows people to take part in saving our planet.

Full story via Grist

Tomorrowland: A design competition for eco-smart city-living aims to turn “what if” into “what is”

The innovative and forward thinking Urban Re:Vision is featured in a cover story in via Common Ground Magazine this month. As one of the advisors on this wonderful project, I have been amazed at the caliber of the entries.

An excerpt:
Imagine a city where energy is renewably generated from helium-filled “solar balloons” floating hundreds of feet above the rooftops. Imagine a city where public transportation doesn’t follow regular routes, but is instead efficiently directed on the fly, on demand — via cell phone and GPS technology. A city where residential structures designed to keep people apart — like walls and fences — are replaced with facilities that bring neighbors together, like shared kitchen gardens or childcare centers. A city where commercial systems are designed to generate social capital, as well as cold hard cash.

Those are a small sampling of the ideas already received by the design competitions, with the promise of much more to come.

I encourage you to submit your own ideas, but in the in the meantime, read the story:
via Common Ground Magazine

Inhabitat Holiday Party Photos

The lovely ladies of Inhabitat: Piper Kujac, Sarah Rich, Jill Fehrenbacher, Emily Pilloton

One of my favorite blogs, Inhabitat, shares office space with my favorite community organization, Architecture For Humanity, and my favorite design competition, Urban Re:Vision. Friday night was their collective holiday party.

This is why I love San Francisco: here you can find a room filled with the greatest people doing the most interesting things on the planet. In attendance: Michelle Kaufman, Allison Arrief, Cameron Sinclair, Sarah Rich, Jill Fehrenbacher, Emily Pilloton, Stacey Frost, Willem Maas, Bill Cahan, the gang from Ecolect, the gang from Branch and the gang from Worldchanging... plus so many friends and interesting people. (Google any names you don't recognize!)

Perhaps the most interesting thing is how connected these various groups have become. They're all friends, all working to change the world and all full of hope for our future. Hard to believe that the truly most influential people in design today are a handful of young, hip bloggers (like those pictured). Women seem to be leading the charge. There are noticably more women than men in this group. I don't know what this indicates, but it's something to consider.

Full story via Inhabitat

Flickr gallery of photos from the event

Book Launch Party

Last night nearly 550 people packed into the Temple Nightclub in San Francisco for the book launch party for my new book, "Green Building for Dummies".

Temple touts itself as a green nightclub and generously donated the venue for the event. As usual, the hardline green people kept coming up to me with their nitpicky "helpful" suggestions:
"Why are the cups plastic and not corn based PLA? You should tell them to change that."
"Why aren't these bulbs compact fluorescents? You should tell them to change that."
"Why didn't they serve organic chocolate? You should tell them to change that."
(Very helpful indeed. For the record, I don't run the nightclub!)

We sold out all of the books, though my hand still hurts from all of the signing (I'm typing this with my left). It was a great evening and thank you to all those in attendance. There was even a special surprise announcement. (If you weren't there, ask someone who attended!)

Photo and a review of the evening courtesey of: Greenerati (Thanks, Keith!)

SCU wins Third Place in Solar Decathalon!

For those of you that might not have heard of it, the Solar Decathalon is a competition for college students to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered home. It is so competitive and such hard work that it's only offered every two years.

In the last Solar Decathlon in 2005, I was one of the advisors to the Architecture Department at Cal Poly. The students placed an impressive third.


This year, I was one of the advisors to Santa Clara University. Countless hours, debates, discussions and meetings later, and I am proud to announce the results. After two years of preparation and a week of competition, the final scores and standings are in for the 2007 competition.


Third Place: Santa Clara University
This team wanted to build a sustainable solar house that is functional, elegant, and innovative—and they did just that. The Communications Jury lauded their friendly, enthusiastic house tour, which was informative, entertaining, and very much "on target" for public audiences. They were one of five teams to score a perfect 100 points in the Hot Water contest and one of seven teams to score a perfect 100 points in the Energy Balance contest. Their house almost didn't make it to the Solar Decathlon, because their transport truck broke an axle and delayed them by three days.

Congratulations to the students! They were a fun group and they deserve it!

The next one will be in 2009.

A NOTE TO OTHER ARCHITECTURE PROGRAMS: If you're looking to enter the 2009 competition, contact me and invite me to be an advisor. I seem to have a track record of helping you place at least third! ;)

MORE INFO ON: Santa Clara University's Entry
MORE INFO ON: 2007 Solar Decathalon
MORE INFO ON: SCU Solar Decathalon Site

Western Interiors Home Show

The Western Interiors Home Show is coming on October 26th in San Francisco. I will giving the keynote presentation, and am very excited to see the interior design world finally taking green so seriously.

There are some amazing speakers, so join me at the conference.

Our friends at West Coast Green are also helping to host the event, and some of the features:

-giving away 2000 cfl's at the green home pavilion - where you can chat with me on Friday and other green experts throughout the conference.

- All of the exhibitors had to meet the same strict green product criteria as that of West Coast Green, so they are thoughtful products and companies

Conference site

Freed gets fiesty (a review of my talk at West Coast Green)

Green real estate blogger Keith from Greenerati wrote a review of my keynote presentation at West Coast Green. Now, I am friends with Keith, so he knows me well enough to call me "fiesty" in a good way.

Read the full story here.

You can download a PDF of my full keynote presentation here (though you miss my talk and the cool animations on the slides).

More West Coast Green buzz in the paper today

I was interviewed for the San Francisco Chronicle to talk about West Coast Green.

My favorite part? Being described as "cheeky."

An excerpt:
Back for its sophomore edition, the nation's largest green building conference really puts its money where its mouth is by erecting a green modular home in front of the auditorium on a patch of grass below Mayor Gavin Newsom's balcony in City Hall.
Dubbed the Lotus, the 725-square-foot home is the brainchild of green architect Michelle Kaufmann and boasts solar panels, LED lights, a gray-water system that collects water from sinks and the shower and recirculates it to toilets, an energy-saving "on-demand" water heater and native landscaping. For those who'll need to take a load off just to contemplate the home's ramifications, there's also a backyard complete with chaise longues.

full story

Green Building Exchange Radio Programs

The Green Building Exchange opened last month in Redwood City, California (just 30 minutes south of San Francisco). The idea is simple: a permanent, year-round green building expo. Green product manufacturers install permanent displays, and you can visit and browse anytime you like.

The GBX also offers a radio broadcast with some of the leaders in green business. To date, Green Seed Radio has an impressive line up of people, including some of our good friends:
Michael McCutcheon with McCutcheon Construction
Matt Golden with Sustainable Spaces
Jay Tompt with Plan-It Hardware
Kevin Danaher with Global Citizen Center
Anne Bollen with Green Zebra
Chris Avant with Canyon Construction
Toby Long with Clever Homes
David Gottfried founder of the US Green Building Council
Ryan Hamilton with Valencia Green
Richard Chein with SF Department of the Environment
Dan Sider, SF director of City Greening
Jennifer Gadiel with Kwan Henmi Architecture
Gary Gerber with Sun Light and Power
Moira Bartel with Greenopia
Scott Fossel with Green Century Institute
Peter Liu with New Resource Bank
Jeff Slye with Business Evolution Consulting
Paul Hawken, Environmentalist, Author, Entrepreneur
John Shurtz from Green Builders of Marin
Michelle Kaufmann from Michelle Kaufmann Designs

Archive of all Radio Programs.

I was interviewed last month as well, you can find the MP3 download here.

West Coast Green is coming!

As you should know, West Coast Green is coming! On September 20th - 22nd, the largest residential green building conference comes to San Francisco!

There is a great story in Builder Architect Magazine on how the conference came about and what you can expect.

For those of you who attended last year, you will be delighted by this years conference. An impressive lineup of 200+ speakers, 300+ exhibitors, plus the addition of the Lotus House by green pre-fab visionary Michelle Kaufmann.

Green builders have new place to browse

This past Saturday was the opening of the Green Building Exchange in Redwood City. It's a place for people interested in green products to come and see a virtual showroom of green products.

Read the press here

Video of Steve Glenn's talk at The Commonwealth Club

We hosted green pre-fab visionary Steve Glenn of Living Homes at the The Commonwealth Club last month.

The video is now available at Fora.tv by clicking here or watch it below.

Steve and Living Homes demonstrate a wonderful combination of passion and business saavy, as you will see in this talk.

I Need to Wake Up

From Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth: "I Need to Wake Up"



or Watch here on YouTube

Winner of the Oscar for Best Original Song (and the movie won Best Documentary)

RENT An Inconvenient Truth on Netflix
BUY An Inconvenient Truth on Amazon

organicAWARDS for 2007

The beginning of the year is always a busy time. Project deadlines and new clients always seem to come at this time of year. With all of this going on, I forgot to mention we have annouced our organicAWARDS winners for 2007.

The organicAWARDS are presented each January to recognize other leaders in the design industry who have adopted an innovative and green approach to their work. Since these are things we discover over the course of the year through our own research, none of the winners know they were even in the running. I like surprising people with good news!

Our award selections this year demonstrate the tremendous innovation and interest in being green coming out of the design industry.

Another mention of the awards is here.

organicAWARDS Official Site

Laser Graffiti

Laser Tag is a new project from Graffiti Research Lab.


The idea is that you use a high-powered laser pointer to trace a pattern on the side of a building, a camera captures that pattern, some software processes the capture, and a projector displays the graffiti-ized pattern back onto the side of the building, more or less in real-time. The effect suggests a way to virtually paint our surroundings with light.

American Dream: The Movie

organicARCHITECT is proud to be one of the sponsors of American Dream: The Movie.

We live surrounded by material wealth, technology and comfort. However, why is personal and collective happiness so elusive? What part of our aspirations corresponds to conditioning and advertisement and what part is genuinely our own?

These are the questions explored in this film.



Including a variety of engaging interviews with celebrities, luminaries and industry leaders such as Danny Glover, Howard Zinn, Vicki Robin, Ed Begley Jr. and others, American Dream helps shed light on our consumer culture, its causes and effects. With a combination of humor and insight, we discover an America we never knew we were a part of.

No word on a San Francisco screening yet, but I encourage you to donate some support.

Urban Revision on TreeHugger

I am on the Advisory Board of a wonderfully innovative design competition, called Urban Revision that I mentioned here.

Today they were mentioned on TreeHugger, which in the nerdy green world is like being on CNN.

Long Beach Welcomes Eric Corey Freed?!

It is always strange when people write things about you using information they copy from our website. A friend found this press release and you can imagine the sarcastic comments he added...

The more important story is the HOMEX 2007 Conference in Long Beach in March. It looks like it will be a great event... with sessions on land planning, PR, sales and my session on green building with Brian Gitt of Build It Green.

Visionary Design Competitions Announced

I have been working with the amazing team at Archiventure to produce Re:Vision. A series of design competitions, Re:Vision seeks to encourage innovative, visionary and, most importantly, deployable solutions to the problems in our cities.

The first four competitions, found here, are themed based on energy, economy, transportation, and community. These are prelude to the large, final competition.

Entries for the first competition, Re:Volt, seeking visionary energy solutions are due April 1st.

Their wonderful tagline, "To ask big WHAT IFS..." says it all.

As a member of their Advisory Board, I am hoping this will foster in a wave of brilliant solutions.

Worldchanging Panel at The Commonwealth Club

In December, I hosted this panel for Worldchanging and their new, wonderful book.

The audio receording of the Panel is now up and available.

A review of my talk at GreenFest

Victoria wrote a wonderful review of my talk at the GreenFest last month. As one of the editors for the San Francisco local edition of WorldChanging, her words are important and I am honored to even be mentioned.

The GreenFest has always been a difficult place to give a talk. Screaming crowds, cramped quarters and poor AV equipment make it difficult to see and hear the speaker. At this years GreenFest, I had to place the microphone almost directly into my mouth to be heard. Rather than give a presentation, I felt it best to take advantage of the passionate crowd and just answer questions. It was fun, despite the noise issues.

The questions people ask are a type of gauge to determine how far we are progressing.

FULL STORY

Global Green Party

Leonardo DiCaprio & Orlando Bloom with Global Green CEO Matt Petersen

Last night was the star-studded gala event for Global Green. Although the event was a fundraiser, the stars present overshadowed much of the opportunity for people to learn about the issues surrounding our environment. Most of the talk seemed to be about who was there, and not why we were all there. In truth, most gala fundraisers suffer from this to some degree.

Part of this is my own personal reaction to all of the recent attention given to green issues. Part of me is wondering, "Where were all of these people 15 years ago?!" while another part is just happy the environment is finally being taken seriously.

The event demonstrated the power of celebrity and the impact 1000 releatively wealthy people can make. In my mind, it was a success. Today, Leonardo DiCaprio posted some questions about Global Warming as announced at the event.

More West Coast Green feedback

'Green' building ideas sprouting up all over
San Francisco Chronicle

"The workshop that drew the largest attendance was "The Inevitable Architect: A Phase-by-Phase Guide to Green Building," presented by Eric Corey Freed, a principal with organicARCHITECT (www.organicarchitect.com) in San Francisco.

He had so many people in his room that we had to pull people out for the fire hazard. They gave him a second session the next day, and that one also filled to standing room only."


Wow, I am blushing! All of the talks at West Coast Green were packed, actually. This indicates to me how important it is to get this information out there to the people who need it.

I loved this line in the article:
"A big draw for the public in San Francisco was the opening speech, "A Contract With Our Future," by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"People were crying and changing careers after hearing that guy for one hour...'

Interview on EcoTalk

Here is my interview with Betsy Rosenberg of EcoTalk.

Eric Corey Freed tells us why he's an Organic Architect and says that with buildings among the worst environmental offenders, we can no longer ignore the obvious: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, there is no business case for building with toxic materials, and we shouldn't be green because it's hip or because we feel guilty: we should do it because it's logical.

Listen Here (MP3 Stream)

Eric on EcoTalk Radio on AirAmerica

On Wednesday, 04 October at 9pm PST, Eric will be on the Air America Radio show EcoTalk with Betsy Rosenberg.

We had a lively talk on green building trends at last week's West Coast Green Conference, along with Kevin Danaher and other conference attendees.

Listen locally at:
KQKE-AM 960

And for a full list of all national stations, click here

Subscribe to this podcast
Subscribe to this iTunes podcast


EcoTalk is also seeking a new sponsor, so if you have any leads or suggestions, please contact Betsy here.

West Coast Green Review

Shades of green: Conference highlights San Francisco for its leadership — and shortcomings — in environmentally sensitive building

Read Andrew Tolve's wonderful review of the West Coast Green Conference this past weekend.

An excerpt:
"Green architecture is still very much emerging," Eric Corey Freed, one of San Francisco's top green architects and a host at West Coast Green, told the Guardian. "And although San Francisco is the capital, even here it hasn't reached the point of ubiquity that we expect it to. We're still very much in our adolescence. We're like teenagers with pimples and crackly voices."

In 100 years, Freed added, history will likely look back on our time as the era of the green revolution.

If he is right, perhaps San Francisco will have done enough to be deemed a nucleus of the movement — and important conferences like West Coast Green will take priority over the opening of new shopping malls.

Full Story

West Coast Green Report

I just spent three exhausting and exhilirating days at the West Coast Green Conference.

My final report: we made history.

This show will be a catalyst for great change in the coming months. In a wonderful demonstration of how galvanized and focused the green building movement has become, the show attracted more than double the anticipated number of visitors! (4000 expected, more than 8000 attended as of Saturday morning).

For me the show is:
* a chance to see old friends and hear how they current explain sustainability;
* meet new young people excited by these ideas and get infected with their enthusiasm;
* see traditional businesses change their methods and help them chart a new course

Some highlights of the event:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Tom Paladino, Paladino Consultants
Cameron Sinclair: Co-founder, Architecture For Humanity
Hunter Lovins: Founder & President, Natural Capitalism, Inc.
who all gave soul wrenching lectures urging us to take action. Some were brought to tears.

My own talk on Thursday morning was so crowded that the displaced people complained and I was asked to provide an encore the following day. I don't think people realized that morning how every lecture would be packed to the gills. The toughest part of the conference was choosing between the eight consecutive seminars.

The charming Wanda Urbanska, Producer & Host of Simple Living on HGTV, interviewed me at the show. As did the passionate Betsy Rosenberg of EcoTalk Radio and the energetic Sarah Rich of Inhabitat. Look for links to these as they are posted.

DVD's of the lectures and the presentations will be available here shortly.

For those of you who attended the show, I would love to hear your feedback (comments, compliments or criticisms). Plans for West Coast Green 2007 are already underway, so your voice is needed.

Feature story in SF Magazine

San Francisco Magazine did small story on one of our projects. While it is always nice to get media attention, the article was focused on the green aspects of the design, and not on the design itself. This maybe a minor distinction, but so long as we continue to segregate green from everything else, it will continue to be a fringe thing.

Check out the October issue (just out this week) and see page 163.
SF Magazine

My interview on Lime

The iconic Josh Dorfman recently interviewed me for his wonderfully named radio show, "The Lazy Environmentalist." We discussed the latest surge in interest in green building.

Details

SIRIUS AND LIME RADIO SHOWTIMES:

Premieres Wednesday, September 27th at 9 am EST on the Lime Channel on Sirius Satellite Radio 114 and streaming live at Lime.com.

Encores - Wednesdays 9PM; Thursdays 3AM, 2PM, 8PM; Fridays 2AM; Sundays 1PM.

Building Green TV Series

Building Green is a television series on PBS. The series chronicles Kevin Contrears and his wife, Mary Anne, as they build their green dream home.

Kevin goes out to interview experts and reports back to Mary Anne on what he finds. They interviewed me several times, and you can see some of that in the clips. It is a great show and you will soon be able to see it on PBS in October.

San Francisco Broadcast Times

Find your local broadcast

Bush: Desparate Soundbites

Not to get too political, but this Daily Show clip is self-explanatory.

Bush has a revelation, "Killing innocent people is bad."

But then:
BUSH: "...the terrorists attacked us and killed 3000 of our citizens..."
REPORTER: "What does Iraq have to do with 9/11?"
BUSH: "Nothing!!"

Watch:

Why is it so dead around here? The Burning Man Lull.

My calendar is typically chock full of events, meetings, lectures, art openings and the like. But I noticed a rather obvious hole in the calendar around the dates of August 27th through to around September 5th or so.

Was I not in the loop?! Did I miss some event announcements?

It only took a minute to realize what happened. Burning Man, the cultural art/music/love fest taking place in Black Rock, Nevada is about to begin. Started in 1986, BM now has an economic effect here in San Francisco: everyone seemingly vanishes for a couple of weeks.

This lull effect becomes more and more noticeable each year. For those of you who have never heard of it, well, you really must be under a rock! Even my parents have heard of it (the barometer for measuring the ubiquity of anything).

Be sure to take a look at their Environmental Statement and look at some great images here.

I even went back in 1997, but I do not like the heat (or the burning playa dust that gets everywhere.)
But I am not complaining: I love San Francisco when it is empty!

BURNING MAN GOES GREEN

West Coast Green Conference

I am speaking at a wonderful conference in September.

West Coast Green is a three-day conference and exposition with 250 exhibitors, 125 presenters and they expect 6,000 attendees.

DETAILS
September 28-30, 2006
West Coast Green
The Largest Green Materials Conference in the Country
KEYNOTES: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Sarah Susanka (author of "The Not So Big House"), and industry leaders Ed Mazria, Peter Yost, Ron Jones, Ann Edminster, Ray Cole and Tom Paladino, and other luminaries will speak.

INFO: http://www.westcoastgreen.com
LOCATION: Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove Street at Larkin
COST: $395 for full conference (worth every penny)
Early Registration Deadline: August 15, 2006
RSVP: http://www.westcoastgreen.com

Register Now

16 Ways to Celebrate Earth Day in Your Home Today
On Earth Day 2006, thanks to GreenHomeGuide.com, getting from green question to green action will get a lot easier. For the first time, a homeowner planning a more energy-efficient and healthy home will have a one-stop resource for best practices and experiences, as well as 14 regional directories of locally available green home products, services, and retailers.
FULL STORY