The University of Colorado at Boulder will be playing virtual host to some of the world’s most prodigious ecological and scientific visionaries. The 20th annual Bioneers Conference will be broadcasted live to various locations around campus, according to the Bioneers Web site.
The conference is taking place Oct. 16 to 18.
The 2009 Colorado Bioneers is an offshoot of Bioneers, a nonprofit organization based in New Mexico, according to the Bioneers Web site. The organization hosts a conference every year in California on the global infiltration of human resourcefulness and creativity.
On its Web site, Bioneers is described as “a nonprofit educational organization that highlights breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet.”
The term “bioneers” was coined in 1990 by original Bioneer founder Kenny Ausubel, according to the Bioneers Web site. Ausubel used it to describe the culture of innovators dedicated to pioneering novel and modern approaches to human sustainability.
The Colorado Bioneers have been collaborating with Bioneers for six years now. As they approach their seventh year, Sarah Haynes, the programs assistant at CU’s Environmental Center and a CU Boulder alumna, said she has high hopes for the year’s series of plenaries. The plenaries will be transmitted to the Boulder campus via live simulcast.
Haynes said she first began attending the conference several years ago as a student at Front Range Community College. She scraped together the $75 fee that was ultimately the price for what she said was a life-changing experience.
“A bioneer is a person who has visionary but practical solutions for restoring our communities, our ecological health and our economies,” Haynes said. “They help tie everything in together and you start to see ways to connect the dots; business leaders start to use ideas or models from engineers and biologists using biomimicry—that’s been a huge shift in how people do business. So it’s not just an environmentalist’s conference, but really a good representation of all three aspects.”
According to the itinerary, this year’s conference features such preeminent speakers as Michael Pollan, author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” Jack Hidary, the chairman for Americans for CleanEnergy.org, and Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui, a tribal chief and environmental activist.
The conference will also focus on an innumerable array of other distinct speakers. The speakers will be covering topics ranging from using Latin American cultures to help create sustainable futures to utilizing women’s voices to support the current transformation of the globe, according to the detailed program guide.
Seeing as the simulcasts are broadcasted live but don’t present an opportunity for discussions and questions, co-producers of the Colorado event sprinkled in field trips, panels and workshops aimed at fostering dialogue within the community. This is intended to achieve the original Bioneer goal of intangible infrastructure based on the cultivation of sustainable solutions, Haynes said.
One such co-producer, Transition Colorado, is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. According to their mission statement, they are focused on tackling the issue of climate change.
Transition Colorado’s mission statement reads, “The Transition model emboldens communities to look peak oil and climate change squarely in the eye and unleash the collective genius of their own people to find the answers to this big question.”
Don Hall, the education and outreach coordinator for Transition Colorado, denoted the role his company currently plays in bringing Bioneers and the subsequent workshops to Colorado.
“To my knowledge, this is the first year that Colorado Bioneers has invited other community organizations to co-produce this event,” Hall said. “Our primary role has been organizing workshops and letting our members know about the conference. We played a major role in bringing the Friday night keynote speaker, Woody Tasch of The Slow Money Alliance.”
Though this is an event co-produced in part by the University of Colorado’s Environmental Center, student input is hard to come by, Haynes said.
Of the 700 to 1000 expected guests, 300 are registered Boulder students, Haynes said. CU Boulder students can get in for free through both the online advanced registration, available through Oct. 14, and onsite registration beginning on Oct. 16.
Haynes said student involvement would be beneficial to the event as well as knowing what students would like to see and what they think would be more relevant programming.
The Oct. 16 to 18 event is also drawing some out-of-town students from other college campuses in the state, including 55 Native American high school youths, five students from the CU campus in Colorado Springs, and various other participants from Kansas, the Western Slope, Mesa State and Fort Collins, Haynes said.
Dustin Kloempken, a 22-year-old senior environmental studies major, said he is offering up his couch to out-of-town students this weekend.
Although Kloempken has not attended the forum before he said he has every intention enriching his notions of sustainability and nature at the upcoming conference.
“From my understanding they’re talking about integrating the intelligence of the environment to use it in our everyday society instead of creating new things,” Kloempken said. “Why not look at nature to use what they have already created to benefit ourselves and nature? I’m going because it’s always interesting to get another viewpoint or idea of how to better help the environment and just to network with other people.”
For the students who are unable to attend this weekend, all simulcasts are being taped and DVDs are available at the Environmental Center after a required deposit, Haynes said. Continuing Education, another co-producer for the event, will also be taping the breakout sessions and workshops.
According to past participants, feedback on plenaries and workshops have been nothing but positive.
Pavlos Stavropoulos, the sustainability coordinator at Woodbine Ecology Center and another co-producer for the event, said he has participated at the previous two central Bioneers conference in California.
“By bringing together indigenous peoples, activists, community organizers, youth, educators, scientists, innovators, and organizations as diverse as Ruckus and the Royal Bank of Canada, the conference offers a good taste of some of the most creative and innovative solutions available today and highlights some of the most promising efforts in a wide variety of fields and places,” Stavropoulos said.
For more information on registration and the 2009 Colorado Bioneers visit the CU Environmental Center Web site.
For more information on Bioneers visit the Bioneers Web site.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sheila V Kumar at Sheila.kumar@colorado.edu.
