What a whirlwind life and business can be. Here’s a quick snapshot of our last month or so…
Coachella was a great time, working with The Do LaB there…though the event still is far from the sustainable festival it could (and should) be. Lightning In A Bottle on the other hand, is the pinnacle of what green festivals are meant to be, and we were proud to have so many of our team members be so intimately involved with its production, again.
This year’s event highlights for me, were mostly the guest speakers that I booked to speak in the Temple of Consciousness/Healing dome space. Some of the highlights included talks from the Algalita Crew, a dot-com panel with some other great, green gurus Creative Citizen CEO Scott Badenoch, Jenn Breckenridge (web marketing consultant for the Greenloop, managing editor for eConsciousMarket.com, and more), Ben Clayton (Gliving, WattsUp America, etc.), and moderated by our very own Ryan Wartena.
Speaking of whom, Ryan recently joined one of the most exciting clean and green tech companies, iCel® Systems, Inc. as their Chief Technology Officer! Congratulations to him on his continued personal and professional path.
In regards to our company’s development, we’ve been exploring a number of different paths: from a deeper look into green data center development, services, etc. to getting our company LEED’s certified, to finding some new, key members to help actualize some of these options. We’re also looking into opening an east coast office, due to a continued request for our services on the greater eastern seaboard. Should you or someone you know be interested in joining either of coastal-based teams, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
As for our solar powered web hosting intentions, they’ve fallen much farther behind schedule then we’d hoped to be with this service offering and have now put any sort of public launch of this on hold, due to manpower restraints. And in that time, other companies have manifested similar services as we too had sought to make available.
Lastly, in area’s more personally related, my fiance and I recently found out we’re expecting…which has obviously triggered a whole new perspective on what it means to be living green and such. So much so that you’ll probably be seeing a whole new range of services here in the not so distant future. 
Shena and I recently attended Co-op America’s annual Green Festiva, in San Francisco.
We drove up with The Do LaB twins (Josh and Jesse) in a Honda Civic Hybrid from LAX to downtown SF on one tank (…nice!) and then met up with some old friends for a long night of wide-ranging talks.
The next day we hit the Green Fest at about 12-pm, where we met up with an even older friend Brent Hurley, a fellow Twin Valley graduate of mine. I also ran into an old friend from LA, Onyay, who had performed the day before with the Shakti Tribe, which I was sorry to have missed. Most of the day was then spent nearly fighting through the ample crowd for numerous free samples of holistic goodness in all shapes, sizes and colors; examined nearly each and every vendor for the latest, innovative Green…stuff.
And boy was there stuff, so much productization in fact, that we were literally stumbling over it all to get from booth to booth. Not only had the event not evolved from last year’s nicely balanced collection of (yes) products (they’re still a hook-line-and-sink for many), new technologies, services, and speakers to this year’s onslaught of nearly pure products. It was really quite disappoint, at least to me.
From an event that claims to be the world’s leading expo in sustainability, I really expected some measure of progression, anything to keep things fresh and innovative, not inundated with the same ol’ recipe for products waste known the world over.
That all being said, it’s still a great time for those curious about all the fuss and in need of alternative resources.
Just like Burning Man, the Green Festival has seemingly reached a pinnacle or threshold for that genuine raw creative inspiration I admire in innovative, truly ground-breaking events such as The Do LaB’s own Lightning In A Bottle, an alternative event growing in mass appeal that combines both the latter two events prized distinctions: radical self-expression and sustainability, respectively.
Anyway, the event was worth attending at least to see first-hand, just how much the Green wave has spread in the last year alone. In terms of sheer publicity for this movement, Co-op America is doing a fine job at getting the word out.
