Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference

Theme

The 2nd Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference, held on January 21st, 2010, featured the following theme:

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?

Sessions

The following sessions were held at the 2nd Beyond 2020 Sustainability Unconference on January 21st, 2010. Each session title links to its own wiki entry with notes, if available (if you were there, please help improve the notes by editing).

Agenda, 1/21/10

• 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

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

Pre-event proposals

The following pitches had been submitted prior to the event. Both sessions took place at the event (see above).

1) Innovative Cities: Building the municipal ecosystem to support creative and sustainable solutions to solve social and environmental problems.
by Anna Raksany

For social innovation to flourish, communities need to recognize and support social innovators through all stages of their development. Cities must examine how they enable or discourage social innovators to thrive.

Innovative Cities, a new initiative of Springboard Innovation, provides a framework of the necessary conditions for nurturing and sustaining social innovation within a city. The Innovative Cities Model is a guide for cities to adopt which provides a place for existing social innovation resources to be listed, and then publishes them in a searchable database for other cities to replicate.

Eight Model Elements:

1. Communication
2. Convenings
3. Educational Programs
4. Engagement Pathways
5. Financial Access
6. Member Organizations and Networks
7. Physical Space
8. Professional Support

Our session will include cover:

1. What is the Innovative Cities initiative?
2. How are sustainability, business, and social innovation linked?
3. What are the next steps for engagement?

Some of the questions we plan to cover:

1. What does PDX need to promote social innovators?
2. How do we engage businesses/those outside of the activist community in social innovation and sustainability?
3. How do you see the intersection between social innovation, sustainability and business?

2) Sharing Portland’s sustainable business practices: A crowdsourced book project
by Peter Korchnak

Portland, Oregon garners high marks in sustainability conversations around the country. Many sustainable businesses operate here. A number of leaders in the sustainability movement reside here. How can we tap into all that expertise and demonstrate leadership in sustainability? How can we showcase our sustainable business practices to create pull for doing business in a triple bottom line way?

Crowdsourced and self-published books are a collaborative, effective, and sustainable way to gather collective knowledge in one place. Imagine 100 (200? 300?) authors – businesspeople, managers, bloggers, sustainability fans – from the Portland sustainable business community contributing a short chapter sharing their experience, expertise, and actionable advice. All authors then help promote and sell the book through their networks. Proceeds will go to an agreed-upon local community organization aligned with the book’s purpose.

Examples (and my inspirations) of crowdsourced book projects include the “Age of Conversation” series, “Connect! Marketing in the Social Media Era” or the upcoming “3six5project”.

In this session we’ll discuss this idea in greater detail and explore how to best go about making it a success.