Principled Profit

I spent this past weekend at an amazing and energizing conference: Bioneers By the Bay, in Dartmouth, MA. This was one of 17 Bioneers conferences held on the same weekend around the US, plus the “main event” in San Rafael, California.

At the Massachusetts gathering, some of the most creative thinkers of our time gathered with 550 activists to discuss climate change and peak oil, personal lifestyle choices and organized social action, and nonpolluting/sustainable alternatives.

Among the speakers:

• Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived for two years and eight days in a 1000-year-old California redwood tree–until an agreement was reached to safeguard that tree’s life–and who has been continually on the road as an activist since returning to the ground
• Gunter Pauli, former CEO of Ecover who realized that his ecological detergents required destruction of rainforest–and embarked on a remarkable reclamation project
• Anna Lappe (daughter of and co-author with Frances Moore Lappe), who travels around the world collecting and sharing wisdom from social change movements in developing countries
• Dennis Whittle, who left the World Bank to start Global Giving, and shares the story of how a $5000 public bathroom changed the whole culture of a village

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be synthesizing the abundant notes I took at this conference and posting them to my various webzines. Probably most of that will happen in late November. In any case, I’ll posannouncementsts and links here when I start putting up the content. Meanwhile, you can see what you missed (including blogs and podcasts from the event) at the conference website, http://connectingforchange.org/