Building on the building green conference

How do you top something that worked so well the first time around?

That’s the question organizers are asking themselves this week as they put the Building Sustainability conference officially to rest—for this year.

“We are excited, and just a little bit scared, about how successful the conference was,” said  Wildsight’s conference co-organizer Erna Jensen-Shill. “With such an overwhelmingly positive response, with so much interest, what do you do for an encore?”

The Building Sustainability: A Green Homes and Renovation Conference took place in Kimberley on January 29 and 30. It attracted hundreds of participants from all over the region who came to share ideas and expertise about green building design and renovation.

The conference started when Kevin D. Brown approached Wildsight back in April, 2009. “He said ‘I’m new here, but what about a green building conference?,’” Jensen-Shill said.

Between his idea and conference time, the whole thing somehow “went viral,” attracting more participants than anyone had anticipated.

Three-part conference

The conference had three parts: a public event, Onstage at McKim; a series of workshops about green building; and a Green Building Showcase.

Approximately 300 people attended Onstage at McKim: Talking About Green Building, which was moderated by Paula Gordon. Gordon, known for her cross-media show Paula Gordon: Conversations with People at the Leading Edge, has interviewed some of the world’s most prominent thinkers.

Gordon talked live to Sarah Susanka, architect and author of The Not So Big House, David Eisenberg, co-founder of the non-profit Development Center for Appropriate Technology, Tang Lee, solar architect and Stuart Cowan, co-author of Ecological Design.

Only Tang Lee shared the stage with Paula Gordon and Kevin Brown — the other three special guests appeared live on screen, connected via the Internet.

“People were very happy with content and quality of presenters,” said  Jensen-Shill. “They appreciated that we didn’t fly the presenters in from all over the continent, yet they still had that calibre of folks speaking to them.”

On Saturday the conference moved to all-day workshops at the College of the Rockies Kimberley campus. The workshops covered everything from green building and renovation design to green certification and site design.

“There were 75 full-conference registrants, with 40 more people signing up for individual workshops,” Jensen-Shill said. “Every single one of the 10 workshops was packed—with people asking to squeeze in!”

To top it all off, the Green Building Showcase took place all day Saturday in the gym of the COTR Kimberley campus. The place was busy as 22 exhibitors from around the region showcased their products, services and information to hundreds of attendees. 

“The showcase gave everyone a chance to meet the people, see the products, and see what is being done to make our homes more energy efficient,” Jensen-Shill said, “and, to make our communities more sustainable.”

It was a lot of work for dozens of volunteers, but Jensen-Shill said everyone thought it was worth it.

“The sum of this event became greater than the parts,” said Jensen-Shill. “The whole partnership between Wildsight, the City of Kimberley, COTR and Kootenay Rockies Innovation Council reached more people and brought more people in. And the funding from Columbia Basin Trust was a giant piece of it.”

She and other conference organizers met last week for a debriefing.

“Well, now people are expecting more—they can’t wait until next year!” Jensen-Shill said. “The fun piece of this is that lots of people are looking at Kimberley in a different light. And the people who came from all around the region, from Calgary, from West Kootenay, are walking away with a perception that there is stuff happening in terms of green builders in this city.”

“This was the right thing, at the right time, in the right place,” Jensen-Shill said. “The energy and the talent just came together. There was too good a response and energy not to carry this forward in some respect.”