Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference

Please mark your calendar for the next Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference:

• Thursday, May 6th, 5 to 8 pm
• KEEN headquarters, 926 NW 13th Ave., Suite 210, Portland, Oregon

We thank KEEN for their generosity as hosts and sponsors of the 3rd Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference. Semiosis Communications and Rose City Mortgage Specialists remain the principal sponsors of Beyond 2020.

Principal sponsors

As at previous editions of Beyond 2020, we’ll create the agenda at the beginning of the event. We do need help setting the theme for this 3rd Beyond 2020. What specific problem should we discuss solving? Share your thoughts in Comments.

Of course, in addition to lots of great company and conversation, we’ll have nibbles, beer, and wine for you.

We look forward to keeping you up to date in the run-up to the event. Subscribe to updates from this site, follow Beyond 2020 on Twitter, or join the Beyond 2020 mailing list.

In the meantime, let your friends and colleagues know about the Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference.

See you on May 6th!

Sincerely,

Peter Korchnak and Renee Spears

Video from the agenda-setting part of Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference, held on January 21st, 2010. Recorded by Ericka Heidrick and her Flip.

Reprinted with permission from the Sustainable Marketing Blog.

***

The second Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference took place last Thursday, January 21st. Though as one of the co-organizers I’m hardly an objective observer, I must say Beyond 2020 it turned out pretty awesome. To paraphrase the head of the Olympic Committee, it was the best Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference of all time.

Consider: smooth proceedings, inspiring and empowering conversations, action pledges, good food/beer/wine, 30% higher attendance and 150% more sessions… As an organizer, what more can you wish for in an event like this one? We look forward to bringing Beyond 2020 to Portland and elsewhere every calendar quarter. We’ll also be working on bringing the Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference to other communities around the U.S. and elsewhere (email me if you’d like more information or hold the event in your city).

Unconferences are a you-had-to-be-there experience. Indeed, this was the first open space experience for many participants. Judging by the feedback, a very enjoyable one and definitely not the last. As one first-time unconference participant said: “The best unconference I’ve ever been to!”

Feedback

Sample testimonials about the event:

• “I enjoyed the un-conference. It was a positive and smart group of people with thoughtful ideas.”
• “Thank you for an amazing thought-provoking event last night.”
• “Thanks for putting on the conference last night. I thought it was an excellent way to get people together and share ideas and then to see what can be implemented. I made several new and wonderful contacts there. I will look forward to the next conference!”

Feel free to reach out to any of the participants to hear about their experience first-hand.

Sessions

The following sessions were held at the Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference. Each session title links to its own wiki entry with notes, if available (if you were there, please help improve the notes by editing):

• Challenges large companies face when shifting toward sustainability, by Suzy Mattay
• Eco-value versus profit, by Kristin Cleveland
• Framing sustainability as an adaptive change, by Beatrice Benne
• How to engage in change in industries of independent contractors, by David Todd
• How to stimulate business to business activity in a sustainable local economy, by Robyn Shanti
• Incentives for choosing active forms of transportation, by Evan Ross
• Innovative cities: Building the municipal eco-system to support sustainable solutions, by Anna Raksany
• Making the business case to “straight” businesses, by Brian Setzler
• “Preaching to the choir” is the problem, engagement is the solution, by Douglas Tsoi
• Sharing Portland’s sustainable business practices: Crowdsourced book project, by Peter Korchnak

Sponsors

The following organizations made the event possible:

• Rose City Mortgage Specialists (Renee Spears and others) – co-organizer
• Semiosis Communications (yours truly) – co-organizer
• Beam Development – graciously hosted Beyond 2020 at the beautiful Olympic Mills Commerce Center
• CreateTheGoodLife.org (Beth Meredith and Eric Storm) – “held the space” and guided the proceedings

The following organizations helped promote the event:

• Green Posting
• ReDirect Guide
• Sustainable Business Network of Portland
• VOIS – Voice for Oregon Innovation and Sustainability

Thank you!

Thank you so much for coming to last night’s Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference and making it such an amazing event. Your contributions of expertise and experience helped generate productive conversations – you made the event what it turned out to be!

A few summary items:

• Participants
• Sessions
• Notes
• Photos
• Sponsors

We hope to see you at the next one! Stay tuned for updates.

Sincerely,

Peter Korchnak and Renee Spears

Reprinted with permission from the Sustainable Marketing Blog.

***

The next Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference is almost here. This Thursday, sustainable business people will gather here in Portland, Oregon to discuss actionable ways of engaging other business leaders in sustainability.

As at all unconferences, the only things given ahead of time at Beyond 2020 are the structure and theme:

• Structure. At Beyond 2020, we will gather at the opening agenda-setting session. Those who wish to facilitate an unconference session come forward and post their session on a blank grid, in their preferred time slot. Once the unconference agenda is set, participants disperse to sessions according to their interests. After the sessions, everyone gathers again to debrief. Read more about the format.

• Theme. At Beyond 2020, we’ll discuss “Growing the choir: Engaging business leaders in sustainability”. The theme grew out of recognition that in order for sustainability to prevail as a business paradigm, the sustainable business community must grow. Read more about the theme. Other than that, all content (sessions) is participant-driven: you decide what the event is going to be about and you decide what sessions will be held. There is no agenda until you make one – because you should drive your event’s content!

Compared to the inaugural edition of Beyond 2020,we’ve set a stronger theme and expect more follow up action; we’ll more closely follow the rules of open space; and we’ll have more sessions. I’ll be proposing a session exploring a crowdsourced book project to share Portland’s sustainable practices with the rest of the world.

Join us! It’s not too late to register. We look forward to your participation!

Beyond 2020 details

• Thursday, January 21st, 5-8 PM
• Olympic Mills Commerce Center, 107 SE Washington St., Portland, Oregon
• Sponsors: Semiosis Communications (yours truly), Rose City Mortgage Specialists, Beam Development, CreateTheGoodLife.org, and a number of promotion sponsors

The theme for the next Beyond 2020 sustainability unconference, to take place on January 21st, 2010 is

Growing the choir: Engaging business leaders in sustainability

The sustainability conversations at Beyond 2020 and elsewhere in Portland tend to be productive and reinforce the community spirit. Often, though, they feel like “preaching to the choir”, as one Beyond 2020 participant said. In order for sustainability to become the default way of doing business, the community of business leaders who value the planet and people as well as profit needs to grow.

Who could we be talking to besides ourselves? What is the best way to engage business leaders who hold different values (for example, profit over planet)? How do people shift from a focus on narrowly defined self-interest to valuing community and environmental goals?

What are the obstacles for adopting sustainability in business and how do we overcome them? How can we make sustainability more comprehensible, appealing, and inclusive? What immediate and long-term actions can we agree to take to grow the choir?

Come to the next Beyond 2020 to offer and seek answers to these questions.

Submit your session proposals in Sessions page Comments, and join us on January 21st to lead your session.

The second Beyond2020 sustainability unconference will take place on January 21st, 2010! Mark your calendar:

Thursday, January 21st, 2010
5:00 to 8:00 PM PST

Thanks to Beam Development, the location for Beyond2020 remains the same:

Olympic Mills Commerce Center
107 SE Washington Street
Portland, Oregon

Please help make the next Beyond2020 even better than the first one:

1. Save the date in your calendar
2. Tell (and bring) your friends
3. Plan to be there to make a difference

We’re already looking forward to a bigger and better Beyond2020 sustainability unconference – we invite you to join us!

This post originally appeared on Peter Korchnak’s Sustainable Marketing Blog.

***

The inaugural Beyond2020, Portland’s first sustainability unconference, took place last Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at the Olympic Mills Commerce Center here in Portland, Oregon. As co-coordinators, Renee Spears of Rose City Mortgage and I aimed to engage sustainable business owners and other sustainability leaders in fostering a stronger sustainability community. We’re happy to report the event turned out awesome!

Participants

Thirty-one people attended the 1st (test run) Beyond2020 (the participant list is on the event wiki). We proposed sessions, we voted on sessions, we participated in sessions. We ate food, we drank beer and wine. We chatted, established new connections, reaffirmed old ones – I hear participants are still holding follow up meetings around town! We also agreed we’d come back to participate in the next Beyond2020!

Here’s what some of the participants wrote after the event:

“[W]hat a great event, and how validating to know that there are like-minded individuals and business owners interested in collaborating in this fashion. I very much look forward to the next event.”

“That was a fantastic conference….whoops, I mean
unconference you coordinated. Really had a great time,
and met some fantastic people. Thank you again for your efforts.”

“Thank you for all of your good work on the event! That was a good start. The wiki should be a good place for people to
share information.”

“I REALLY enjoyed myself and the format. Looking forward to next time.”

“I had a great evening meeting and talking with different people from the sessions and renewing some old aquaintances too. [T]here was definitely good material for consideration–I like discussions that ask as many questions as they answer.”

Sessions

We adapted the open space meeting format for the event, which worked really well in engaging participants in fruitful conversations and establishing lasting connections. All content at Beyond2020 is participant-driven: you decide what the event is going to be about. You decide what sessions will be held. There is no agenda until you make one, because you should drive your event’s content!

These four sessions were held at the 1st Beyond2020 sustainability unconference

• The Good Life: Living Well, Doing Good and Using Less (Considerably Less!), by Beth Meredith
• Zen and the Art of Sustainability for Small Businesses, by Ami Martin
• Cooperative Marketing for Small Sustainable Businesses, by Elizabeth Johnston
• Working toward Zero Waste Events, by Lindsey Newkirk

The event website PortlandBeyond2020.com has all the latest event updates, information about the event format and sessions, gallery, and wiki for notes. The Twitter hashtag for Beyond2020 was and will continue to be #pdxb2020.

Save the date!

The 2nd Beyond2020 sustainability unconference will take place on Thursday, January 21st, from 5 to 8 PM.

The good people at Beam Development have invited us back to the Olympic Mills Commerce Center – Beyond2020 will take place there again, at 107 SE Washington Street, Portland, Oregon.

We will be fine tuning the event process based on lessons learned and we’ll also expand (double?) the number of sessions. Stay tuned for updates on this blog, or subscribe to the event mailing list (in subscription options select “Beyond2020 unconference”).

We’re thrilled to report that folks at Beam Development, owner of the Olympic Mills Commerce Center where the inaugural Beyond2020 sustainability unconference took place, have invited us to host the 2nd Beyond2020 at the same location.

SAVE THE DATE

The second Beyond2020 sustainability unconference will take place on

Thursday, January 21st, 2010 from 5 to 8 pm

at the

Olympic Mills Commerce Center, 107 SE Washington, Portland, Oregon.

View the photos of the building and the first Beyond2020 on the Gallery page.