Cohousing-L Mailing List: Another amazing day at the 2010 Natl Coho Conference

[Craig Ragland (craigragland]

Today, the 2010 National Cohousing Conference opened with a wonderful
featured presentation by Dave Wann. I've heard him speak before, but
he really outdid himself this time. I heard incredible feedback from
so many. When you come to know somebody that's a well known speaker,
you start to take them for granted. Dave's presentation really did a
re-set for me. He shared some of his thinking from the book he's now
finishing up, The New Normal.

After the opening, there was the first actual conference breakout
session (90 min) - until now, the sessions were all Cohousing
University courses. Lunch was followed by two more 90 minute sessions.
Topics varied quite a bit, from Cohousing 101 (an introduction for
those new to Cohousing) to marketing to affordability to fundraising
to solar case studies.

At this moment, most of the attendees are out having dinner. The
keynote address by Bill McKibben will start in about 2 hours. Its a
combination of a video recorded for this event at Hearthwood
Cohousing, in Denver:

http://www.hearthstonecohousing.com/

The video will be followed by an interactive Q&A session which we'll
be doing with Bill over the phone.

Doing this remotely is a symbol - to bring home the importance of
reducing our carbon footprint. Since I was involved in the video edit,
I had the chance to hear what he'll be sharing within the pre-prepared
portion. Its quite compelling stuff and exciting to hear how this
important author/activist relates to cohousing and its role in
creating a better world. We're talking about getting it more broadly
distributed. I expect our National conferences will embrace ways to
share more of the incredible content we assemble more broadly, with
less travel required.

Tomorrow is a full-day of breakout sessions and the annual fundraising
banquet. It is still possible to attend tomorrow. The price for
Saturday-only is $229 and you can register online:

http://www.cohousing.org/conference

or at the door (here at Colorado University in the beautiful city of Denver).

Craig

P.S. I've really enjoyed "commuting" by bicycle - something I've not
done since grad school. It really fits into the Boulder scene to
cruise along Boulder Creek on the way to campus.