Congragreening in Manhattan.
I don’t know about you but it’s hard for me to turn down conferences, webinars, and seminars. I think I need convention intervention.
I’m congregational.
When everyone is in a room together it’s like Sunday School as a kid. We’re together. In my case, we’re convening always around the planet, the environment, water, air, energy, agriculture, or tuning up on communication skills: social media, seo, database management, streaming, linking, rich media, gaming…
Why we convene.
When we convene we feel satiated temporarily by not ignoring our miraculous, generous, nurturing, beautiful planet. We are almost spiritual about it. In awe of it. People don’t all worship the same solutions but there’s a good chance everyone is praying for the same thing. Prosperity in Clean Tech for instance. Whether it’s water desalination, hydrogen fuel, solar-chargeable electric cars or software for the smart grid.. even fuel efficient food production, we’re placing our hopes and dreams on feeling okay when we die that we didn’t let down our grand kids. Or, in my case the dolphins and elephants. Have you ever had eye contact with a dolphin? It makes you cringe. I tried to make eye contact with an ant and it wasn’t the same. But back to our grandchildren. We don’t want them to look down at us. We want to have been a role model. This appeals to our inner ego.
It does not, however, I have noticed mean that we convene sustainably. I’ve been photographing the mess left behind at the refreshment stands, for instance. Plastic creamers, plastic twirlers, wooden stirrers, cups, bottled water, juice bottles, napkins, plastic plates, plastic utensils shrink-wrapped in more plastic. All in the name of a sustainability conference. We never ask what’s that tie made of, how do you dry clean it… Can we see the label in your suit? Where did you get those shoes? We don’t want to be rude.