Green Your Home for Dummies

I am thrilled to announce Green Your Home for Dummies.

It is not an entirely new book, but a compilation of 7 green books in the For Dummies series. It contains several chapters of my bestselling book, "Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies", and select chapters from:
* Green Living For Dummies
* Energy Efficiency For Dummies
* Green Cleaning For Dummies
* Sustainable Landscaping For Dummies
* Organic Gardening For Dummies
* Buying and Selling Green Homes For Dummies

It will be available in January 2009, but you can pre-order it now.

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.

Women at the front of green

The San Francisco Examiner did a profile on various women in the heart of the green movement.

One of those profiled was Jackie Barbe, one of my incredible project managers here at organicARCHITECT. The print version had a wonderful photo of her too, but you can read the online version here.

HowYouEco Interview

Luke at HowYouEco recently interviewed me with his patented list of 3 quick questions. Check out the site. It is beautifully done and provides some great information.

My interview with CalFinder

CalFinder is a site where you can find contractors to help you with a building project. They interviewed me to talk about the perceptions of green building and what is waiting for us in the future.

An excerpt:

The act of renovating your building is expensive, whether you’re green or not. Being green doesn’t cost you any more, in fact it’s an opportunity to save money.

via CalFinder

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!)

Color Palettes

There is a commonly held perception that most architects are colorblind. After all, most of them bare, create white boxes of rooms, creating a growing demand for interior designers to come in and make it livable.

I love color, so when I see a great combination of colors I make them into a palette. I also cheat a little with these online tools:

wear palettes

ColorJack

numbr

Finding the carbon footprint of wine...

This story about the carbon footprint of wine contains an interesting map at the bottom.

Essentially it cuts the US into two. West of this line it's more carbon efficient to drink Napa Valley wines. East of the line it's more carbon efficient to drink French wines. Carbon efficiency refers to the energy and pollution creted from shipping this wine from it's source.

This "grape divide" must also have other implications. Think of all of the technology from California, or the films for that matter. Does it take less energy to watch French films on the East Coast than it does to watch Hollywood films?

How I made my "PowerPoint" presentation from West Coast Green

Ever since my talk last week at West Coast Green, I have received dozens and dozens of emails from people asking, "How did you get PowerPoint to do that?!"

Well, in reality, I didn't.

First, use the right tools. Like most Microsoft products, PowerPoint lacks good design sensibilities. After years of trying to push it to do what I wanted to do with colors, fonts and video, I gave up.

The real reason I am able to make these presentations so visually rich is using Apple's Keynote. Keynote handles these elements far better than PowerPoint. C'mon, you should ditch that PC and have a Mac anyway.

Secondly, my speaking style is much more ancedotal. My job is to take this technical information and distill it into stories. As a presenter, my goal is to remove as much text as possible from the slides. You'll notice there are no bullet points on the slides, and the text is made obnoxiously large to reiterate the point.

At several points along the presentation, I have no slides at all, just an image or movie running in the background as I tell a story. For more on this technique, check out Merlin Mann's wonderful blog 43 Folders and especially his story on his own presentations.

Lastly, I am no expert on public speaking. Between teaching and traveling to conferences, I just get to to it a whole lot and the practice helps me. I also get to watch hundreds of other speakers each year and see how boring many talks can be.

To prevent boredom, I am experimenting with several techniques, including the Takahashi Method and the Guy Kawasaki Method for storytelling with visuals. The more I know about these ways to convey information, the more I realize how much great orators, such as Bill Clinton, are able to give a speech with such power using only words.

For more on using Keynote in a positive (double entrendre) way read on here and here.

DOWNLOAD MY FULL WEST COAST GREEN KEYNOTE (not PowerPoint) here (26 MB PDF)

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).

Interview with HousingZone

I just did a short interview with HousingZone on green issues.

Read the interview here...

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.

GreenHomeGuide: my recent articles

GreenHomeGuide, an incredible green building reference for homeowners, is building an archive of information around sustainable design. I recently wrote two short articles for them, found here:

What can I do to reduce my home’s carbon footprint?

Should I worry about the mercury in fluorescent light bulbs?

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

Green Building for Dummies now available for pre-orders

Green Building for Dummies is now available for pre-orders on Amazon.

You'll get it in time for the Holidays. It makes great stocking stuffer!

Greenwashing Article in Natural Home

I recently wrote an article on greenwashing for Natural Home and it is on newsstands this month.

The printed version has a handy cut out card you can carry in your wallet to know what questions to ask when looking at products. A great list of certifications is also included.

Eight Ways to Implement Green Principles into Your Practice

Kitchen & Bath Business Magazine interviewed me for this article on how to add green to your design business.. These are the same tips I suggest to all of the architects, engineers and designers we consult with to help them green their firms.

I welcome your suggestions and additions to this list...

Reusable vs. styrofoam cups?

How many uses does it take for a reusable cup to surpass a disposable paper or styrofoam cup in terms of energy usage?

You would need to use a single ceramic cup more than 1000 times in order for it to be more energy efficient than using the same number of dispoable styrofoam cups.

Of course, this doesn't take into account anything outside of the manufacturing or washing processes...like the cost of shipping all these foam cups and what happens to them after you're done with them.

Part of how sustainability is not really a balck and white issue... ever.

Full Story