by kevin, on April 25th, 2010
Last week I posted a blog where I pondered whether virtual conferences would ever replace live face-to-face ones. It was my way of introducing a preview for the BrightTALK Green Building Summit held on Earth Day. We’ll be posting reviews of individual educational sessions over the next three days. This week, I’ll be flying to Bentonville, AR to attend the second annual NWA Green Expo. I’ve been invited to attend, review, and write about the event. Where last week seemed to be about virtual participation, this week I’ll be engaged physically.
One thing that sets this trip apart from others I’ve taken is the fact that I will not be traveling with a laptop. Instead, the only devices I’ll have with me are an iPhone, a new iPad, and a camera. It will be the lightest business trip I’ve ever taken. I will readily admit that I’m a gadget hound. On April 3rd, the first day the iPad went on sale, friends called and emailed, anxious to hear my first impressions. They were assuming, of course, that I would be an early adopter. Although I was far from being the first person in line, they were, as it turns out, quite correct. I did have an iPad by the end of the first day.
The majority of my work is somewhere else, so I accumulate frequent flyer miles quickly. I deliver thirty presentations throughout the country in a busy year, and ten in a slow year. I haven’t had a slow year in a long time. Even though a laptop is technically portable, lugging it through airports, dealing with it during security scanning, and carting it around with other luggage gets old fast when you’re doing it every other week. The potential to travel with a devise significantly lighter, even if slightly less capable, is worth trying. So my event reporting will be an experiment to see if it’s even possible to conduct business without a laptop.
I’ll be arriving in Bentonville, home of Walmart – one of three primary event sponsors, Thursday afternoon. Conference and expo start early the next morning. Part of my coverage includes limited access to the featured speakers. I’m hoping to conduct short interviews with each of them over the two and one half days I’ll be in town. Since my time will be short, I have to make certain I maximize my time with each. I’ll be preparing over the next three days so that I don’t ask dumb questions or ones that don’t lead to useful insights. I’m envious of people who make interviewing look easy, because I know it is not. When the interviewer is uncomfortable, nervous, or self conscious the interviewee can easily tell, and it totally changes the conversation energy.
The featured speakers will be:
- Tom Szaky, Co-founder and CEO of TerraCycle.
- Catherine Lasser, Vice President and CTO Global Distribution Sector with IBM.
- Stanley Alpert, Environmental and Sustainability Attorney.
- Dr. Alan D. Hecht, Director for Sustainable Development with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development.
- Michelle Mauthe Harvey, Project Manager, Corporate Partnerships co-leads Environmental Defense Fund’s on-site partnership with Walmart.
- Derrick Mains, CEO of GreenNurture.
- Eric Jackson, Chief Sustainability Officer & President with Conservis Advisory Services.
- George Orbelian with Project Kaisei.
- Marty Metro, Founder & CEO of UsedCardboardBoxes.com.
- Andrew Nisker writer and director of the movie Garbage!
I’ve seen Tom Szaky present before, and I’ve visited his office in Trenton, NJ (read my post about the visit here). If you haven’t read his book yet, Revolution in a Bottle, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a new way to look at marketing and business development that comes directly out of a new business model (read my review here). I’ll be asking about his new television series called Garbage Moguls that aired last week on National Geographic. Aleida and I saw Marty Metro recently on a panel discussion at MiaGreen (read our post about it here). And I saw the film Garbage! a few months ago (see my review here), but I have never met its writer and director Andrew Nisker. I’m looking forward to any time I can with each of them.
The schedule on Friday will be:
- 7:30am Breakfast.
- 8:00am Keynote Speaker Tom Szaky.
- 8:45am Panel: The Problem is Environmental Impact with Michelle Harvey, Dr. Alan Hetcht, and Stanley Alpert, moderated by Marty Metro.
- 9:30am Panel: The Solution is to Take Action – What Can We Do? with Eric Jackson, Derrick Maines, George Orbelian, and Andrew Nisker, moderated by Marty Metro.
- 10:15am Smarter Cities with Catherine Lasser.
- 11:00am Exhibit Hall opens.
The schedule on Saturday will be:
- 10:00am Meet Natalie White, winner of Survivor Samoa.
- 11:00am Meet EcoGeeco.
- 12:00pm Clean Water Raingers Watershed Show.
- 1:00pm Mad Science Show.
It will be at least a week before I post full reviews of the speaker sessions, exhibits, and other activities. It will probably be another week, at least, to process and post the speaker interviews. I will, however, be posting a few daily observations with photos. Come back soon for more.
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