Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference

Beyond 2020 is a sustainability unconference.

No Beyond 2020 Unconference is currently scheduled. Subscribe to the RSS feed to get updates.

What is an unconference?

All content (sessions) at an unconference is participant-driven: You decide, at the beginning of the event, what sessions will be held around the theme (“Collaboration for Sustainable Business”).

There is no agenda until you make one!

After settling into the space, all participants 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 and location.

Once the unconference agenda is set, participants disperse to sessions according to their interests. After the sessions, everyone gathers again to debrief and pledge follow up actions.

• Watch this video from the 2nd Beyond 2020 to see how it works in action (agenda-setting starts at 2:07).

Who is Beyond 2020 for?

At Beyond 2020 we welcome any sustainability-minded business people and professionals interested in taking triple bottom line action with long-term effects.

What’s the timeline at Beyond 2020?

The Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference generally follows this timeline.

• 5:00-5:20 – Unnetworking, food/beverages
• 5:20-5:50 – Opening, agenda setting
• 5:50-6:40 – Round 1 of sessions
• 6:40-6:50 – Break and transition
• 6:50-7:40 – Round 2 of sessions
• 7:40-8:00 – Debrief and unnetworking

Why Beyond 2020?

Beyond 2020 is a brainchild of Peter Korchnak and Renee Spears, both sustainable business owners in Portland, Oregon, who wanted something different from the city’s multitude of sustainability-related networking and conference events:

1. to learn from and interact with other business people;
2. to build a stronger sustainability community out of the many sector- or initiative-specific ones;
3. to bridge conversation and action by discussing what sustainable businesses can do and then do it; and
4. to enjoy themselves at the same time.

Beyond 2020 aims to look beyond the year 2020, which, in 2009 when the first Beyond 2020 took place, figured prominently in discussions and targets around sustainability in general and climate change in particular. We believe that as business leaders we must look beyond the short-term horizon, and take triple bottom line actions.

We believe business must play an active role in meeting the human kind’s needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.

Beyond 2020 will, we hope, be a model, which business communities around the nation and the world can adopt to discuss and implement sustainability now. Email Peter if you’d like to start Beyond 2020 in your community; a short manual will be available for download on this website in early 2010.

Past ones

• #3: May 6th, 2010
• #2: January 21st, 2010
• #1: September 19th, 2009