Bioneers Update: Looking for a frame
Posted: 10:43AM October 16th, 2011 | Comments
Im the first person to admit that I'm something of a sheep. I need somebody to draw the boundaries so i can make sense of the terrain.
I suppose that one of the Bioneers Conference's virtues is its expansiveness -- in less than 14 hours of conference-time we've talked about spaceships, student farming, electric cars, Second Life virtual gaming, alternative fuel, privacy rights on Facebook, the media coverage impacts of RTs (that would be "ReTweets," noob), mushrooms, Google Earth, and riffed on various aspects of racism, classism, sexism, and the like.
It's a lot to take in, and while it is invigorating, it can also be disorienting. The conference itself is clearly not the place to connect the dots, even though the tagline is "It's all connected."
It's good to be taken out of yourself, and certainly we're all well aware that pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone leads to growth.
But I find myself in need of a boundary, so i can make sense of the terrain.
I'm excited about Badger Bioneers because the boundaries are those of Wisconsin. (I would say the boundary is "mitten-shaped," except as a native of Michigan I take exception to the Wisconsinite notion that this state looks anything like a mitten. The country can't have two left hands.)
Our Mpower ChaMpions have gone green within the gridlines of the Wisconsin economy and its attendant challenges. The Madison Metropolitan School District isn't an apples-to-apples comparison with schools in Maine or Manhattan.
Ultimately, the goal is a sustainable nation. I think the other attendees of this conference would agree. But the solutions are myriad, and local. And they're as unique as....uh, snowflakes. At least in Wisconsin they're like snowflakes. In California, the better comparison is billions of grains of warm sand.
We're busy gathering ideas and inspiration, like snapping pictures on hundreds of rolls of film. I look forward to bringing the picture into focus -- really finding out what we've got that's worth holding on to -- and snapping everything into the frame. (dan)
