It was a wonderful little bubble while it lasted. Getting up before dawn. Dressing in easy-to-peel layers for whatever the day might bring. Walking over to Boynton-McKay, a diner of rare perfection, where the wi-fi was as reliably good as the pancakes (a boon in connectivity-challenged Camden…) Ascending the stairs and more stairs of the town’s famous 19th century Opera House. A few minutes to mingle-navigate among tables of nibble-food before settling down for a morning of things worth thinking about.

But first, a little music. Logan Richardson’s soulful, playful, questioning sax riffs on “America the Beautiful” one day. Zoe Keating’s clear, deeply layered, architecturally precise, transcending cello pieces another. How lovely to start each day by not thinking. Just being. In the moment. Together. Brilliant.

And then it was off and running, from economics to education, urban decay to urban agriculture, environmental catastrophe to conservation hope, design theory to food design, cardboard robots to paper diagnostics, communications to comics, art to dance to music. To, to, to…

But as the last note of the Mark O’Connor-anchored jam session finale faded into festive applause and we trundled off in buses through the rainy dark to a cavernous transportation museum for one last party, the bubble had begun to weaken and thin. Faces, now familiar, circled by against an improbable backdrop of vintage automobiles, sci-fi bicycles and disconcertingly disembodied airplane parts.  A few final conversations and business cards. Some hugs and toasts. Promises to keep in touch, follow up, finish that thought. We stayed up until we couldn’t. By morning, the bubble was lost in the dazzling clarity of a New England fall day. One by one we left the the small town – Maine’s answer to Brigadoon – journeying back to the chaotic urgency of our daily lives. With each mile down the highway to Boston, and each minute in the sky back to Chicago, I could feel experiences recasting into memories, ready for sorting and analysis.

TAKE-AWAYS

Throughout the conference, Michelle Riggen-Ransom, Rachel Barenblat, and Ethan Zuckerman were absolutely brilliant live-blogging the talks and I recommend reading their posts, along with Kristen Taylor’s, on the PopTech blog to get a more detailed view of goings on.

Among the overarching themes: the serendipity of the amateur and the common sense of a cross-disciplinary approach. In short, the easiest way to see outside the box is to be outside the box.

Take, for example, the tale of the $12 computer (can be haggled down to $10). PopTech 2009 fellow Derek Lomas, who was working in India on”ethnographic design research on uses of mobile phones in urban and rural contexts,” found just such a miracle browsing a crowded electronics marketplace. It’s bare bones – hooks up to a television for a screen and runs on the 8-bit chip that powered 1980s-era Apple II computers and Nintendo game systems. So “vintage” is the tech, patents have run out, making it, for all intents and purpose, open source. Funded by a $180,000 MacArthur grant, Lomas and his collaborators the Playpower Foundation are developing software that combines educational aims with game-playing appeal. “It occurred to me that if this platform had just a few decent games, and one good typing game, it could be economically transformative,” notes Lomas, “because touch-typing can make a difference between earning a dollar a day or a dollar an hour.” Why invent an answer from scratch when you can assemble one cheaper? Innovation through shopping…

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Another theme: The most effective way to to trigger change is to provide a better alternative to the status quo.

For preventive medicine pioneer Dean Ornish, the shift from the “fear of dying to the joy of living is the key to the healthier future. For materials scientist Neri Oxman, it is moving from a Miesian reality where each building material has a specific function (steel for support, glass for light) to one inspired by Nature, where a single material yields a range of benefits (e.g., the structure of an egg shell evolved to provide strength as well as gas permeability). For clinical psychologist, Naif  Al-Mutawa, it is tackling Muslim stereotypes through the compelling comic book stories of Muslim superhero kids (“The 99″). Better is better.

MIT architect Sheila Kennedy, who has helped spearhead PopTech’s portable lighting project, points out the importance of opening up a space to new ways of thinking.  FLAP – Flexible Light & Power – is a Timbuk2 messenger bag outfitted with small solar array, battery and LED. A removable panel lined with reflective material amplifies the light from a tiny bulb cleverly tucked into a strap. AfriGadget’s Erik Hersman recently took some prototypes to Africa for field testing. But no matter whether a bag design turns out to be a viable answer or not, the thinking has shifted: Solar is not just for roofs and calculators any more. Now you can literally wear power on your sleeve.

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photo: Growing Power

Which segues into a third theme: Just add sunshine. Three ideas presented at the conference that are either dependent upon or inspired by photosynthesis have the potential to help significantly move the dial on climate change.

• Will Allen is a teacher and an inspiration for the potential of urban agriculture. His suite of Growing Power farms in Milwaukee and Chicago are designed as a series of nested ecosystems. Vermicomposting – turning garbage into wildly fertile worm castings – is the lynchpin. You start by creating soil so rich, it doesn’t require petro-based chemical additives.  From aquaponics set ups to raise fish by the thousands to a biodigester for converting food waste into energy, everything that can be harvested or recycled is. It is cleaner, healthier, oil-independent food system, with local “farm to fork” distribution networks designed to turn urban “food deserts” green.

• Willie Smits has plans for a similar polyculture fix, only rainforest-size. Trained in forestry, Smits career took a turn when he came across a sick orangutan in a Borneo market. Saving orangutans meant saving habitat, an increasingly difficult task when easy profits for palm oil led to wholesale conversion of ancient forests into modern superficially-efficient monocultures. Beyond the staggering loss of biodiversity, forest clearing fires, especially in peat-land forests, have led to “CO2 volcanoes,” spewing vast amounts of sequestered greenhouse gases skyward. Smits’ fix centers around the sugar palm, a short tree common in second-growth forest, which thrives only when grown as part of a polyculture and has a talent both for sequestering carbon (deep roots) and gushing a liquid that can be turned into sugar or ethanol. Smits has come up with a way to process the quick-to-ferment “juice” efficiently off-site. With the “juice” as the economic anchor, a suite of other forest products can also be sustainably harvested. Recently Smits set up a company, Tapergy, to implement his ideas. Notably, both Smits and Allen focus on jobs. Commodity monocultures destroy jobs and communities. Urban agriculture and tropical agroforestry create them.

• Chemist Daniel Nocera, by contrast, doesn’t want to raise plants but mimic them to generate vast amounts of energy. His epiphany: Plants routinely rebuild the mechanisms for splitting water in their leafy “fuel cells.” Scientists’ decades-long quest to find stable catalysts was not only futile but utterly misguided. Instead, his lab developed a resilient catalyst that could rebuild itself, making it possible to create both a better, cheaper fuel cell and process dirty water into drinkable water.

NEXT…

Perhaps the most exciting announcement at the conference was about a new fellows program for scientists, which takes us back to cross-disciplinary common sense. As the speaker list already demonstrates, science is an essential part of creating change for the greater good.

The further promote and support collaborations, some suggestions:

1) Develop a session or a workshop focused on tech transfer, focusing on both the legal and marketing angles.

2) Add data visualizations to the program and on the website showing connections between speakers. With such a multi-disciplinary list, connections transcend program groupings.  For example, Smits could just as logically been grouped with Michael Pollan and Will Allen.

3) Open the PopTech Creative Reuse Workshop at 8 a.m., one hour before the conference. Put out coffee as bait for early risers. I completely missed the workshop. The daily speaker sessions tended to go long, so there wasn’t much time to scoot over afterward. During breaks, the tendency was to mingle, network and nosh on site. Restaurants chosen for lunches were all located in the opposite direction.

4) Develop an online book store search-able by title, author and subject.

Now to wait for the videos to post, just in time for the long winter cozy season…

Blame it on the birds. And the elephants, lions, biochar, Indonesian agroforestry, dirt batteries, mechanical caterpillar waves, global maps, messenger bag-cum-lighting systems, a cyber-dance experience and one very lovely essay about migration. But not too far into the first day of PopTech, the conference’s “Reimagining America” theme disappeared. Which was fine. It seemed too limited for a confab about Big Thoughts, even here in a small, charming  American town (that could use a little reimagining itself – connectivity way, way too spotty). In any case, you can’t really reimagine, or even imagine, America without including the rest the world in the equation.

And nobody brought that point home with more heart-wrenching eloquence than Chris Jordan with his slide show of photographs of dead albatross on Midway Island, killed by a diet of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Photograph after photographs of birds, heads twisted by pain, guts split by a bounty of all too familiar bottle caps – perky shades of reds and blues favored by marketers – had the audience in shock and *this* audience in tears. This wasn’t an isolated occasional bird tragedy, but the picture of a extinction-in-progress. And because it took so darn long for anyone to discover the Garbage Patch, a ghostly-insidious man-made chemically-enhanced primordial soup the size of at least a couple of Texas’s (Texi?), it is far too late to do much about it – at least for the albatross (“Midway Journey” project blog – notes & videos).

Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Save the microbes! Save the plankton! Save the food chain!  Who knows? We might just save ourselves, too.

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The day was filled with jolts of Overwhelming Problems paired with Glimmers of Hope.

John Fetterman, the myth-come-to-life mayor of Braddock, PA, a bankrupt rust-belt town that had been all but written off. A strikingly tall bald figure, with dates tattooed on his massive arms to remember the victims of violent crimes (thankfully, no new tattoos in over a year), Fetterman’s unvarnished recitation of all that had gone wrong coupled with some very basic ideas of what can be done had the crowd on a can-do upswing. Renovate those $5,000 homes (average price – since the recession, they’ve lost value). Add artists. LOTS of artists. Plant urban gardens. Hold lots of family-friendly it-takes-a-village-to-make-a-village. Clear debris and make a park. Then came news of a major hospital closing, which will not only take jobs from the area, but leave the population – mostly poor and minority – in a health-care desert. It is hard to make money taking care of poor people. So much for the greater public good or, for that matter, public health.

I began to wonder whether some of the health solutions being tested in the developing world -  many driven by cell phone tech – wouldn’t be appropriate here, too? (e.g., PopTech Fellow Josh Nesbit’s FrontlineSMS: Medic & Hope Phones).

Indeed, one of the conference’s most intriguing themes to emerge so far is this concept of two-way innovation: developed to developing world and vice-versa. (Note to makers of One Laptop Per Child: I really really REALLY want one of those computer screens designed for use in full sun…)

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On the Glimmers of Hope front, the PopTech Fellows were batting it out of the park. From Jason Aramburu‘s efforts to commercialize biochar, a carbon negative solution that also improves soil fertility, to Eben Bayer’s nifty mushroom-mediated compostable alternative to landfill-choaking styrofoam, Aviva Presser Aiden and Hugo van Vurveen’s “dirt batteries” and Emily Pilloton’s no-nonsense determination to enlist an army of young designers to come up with Better Answers, there was a sense that it’s still not too late. We can, just maybe, turn this thing around and not go down the climate change tubes.

FLAP – Flexible Light and Power – a prototype of a portable lighting system stitched into a Timbuktu messenger bag – also caught the crowd’s imagination. Designed by MIT’s Sheila Kennedy, it’s a simple idea that could radically change the way we think about solar deployment, opening up the space to all kinds of new ideas. No longer would solar be consigned to rooftop panels or a strip on a pocket calculator. It can almost literally be woven into the fabric of our lives, turning us into portable “plants,” photosynthesizing as we go about our daily business. (More from Erik Hersman on field-testing the design in Africa.)

Indonesia-based Willie Smits also has big plans for photosynthesis, with a scheme that would not only reforest the world’s rain forests, but generate jobs and an array of crops, supply power to poor villages, restore biodiversity and wildlife habitat and dramatically reduce demand for foreign oil. Smits “Tapergy” plans is an integrated system that works with Nature to increase the productivity of land while capping CO2 “volcanos” that result when millions of acres of land, particularly peat-lands, are cleared from monoculture oil palm plantations. (read more about Smits work in “Trees for Trees” post – page down to section on “You Had Me at Organgutan” – includes videos)

There was much more to Day 1. But Day 2 is about to begin. So, connectivity willing, follow on twitter: #poptech / @trackernews.

The Central Park Conservancy faces months of clean-up and hundreds of thousands of dollars in clean-up costs to repair the damage caused by an unusually fierce storm on August 18. Donations welcome. (photo: Tony Yang)

Making a right from two wrongs; For the love of a park; Inspiration from Aldo Leopold, MLB-branded grass & Neopets; Cyber-seedlings & fundraising; “You had me at orangutan”

By all accounts the storm that hit New York’s Central Park last week didn’t last very long, but the devastation was breathtaking. In a matter of minutes, winds approaching hurricane-strength flattened hundreds of old beloved trees and damaged hundreds more. With roots in the air and limbs askew, and the dead and wounded strewn everywhere, the soft green heart of this hard gray city had taken a direct hit. The days that followed were filled with the cracking of ripped timber, the whine of power saws and the relentless buzz of wood-chippers. Grass will grow where giants once stood. Sunlight will filter down to the urban forest floor for the first time in years. New trees will be planted. And in a few decades, incredibly, no one will be the wiser.

Central Park, after all, was never the forest primeval. Still, there is something sacred about old trees – even if their age is measured in decades rather than centuries, and their arrangement determined by a landscape architect. They grew up with us, or we with them. In a place of constant change they are, simply, constant. If trees can be so easily uprooted, what chance have we? It is unnerving to see how shallow and vulnerable a tall tree’s roots really are.

Although I live in Chicago, I visit New York several times a year and have come to know the Park well enough to have my favorite places. I know Spring has finally arrived when flocks of birders at the Ramble start comparing notes on who’s returned and set up nests, while flocks of Japanese brides/grooms/photographers start flitting to scenic spots to set up Wedding Pictures. In  summer, it’s bicycles, drumming circles, reading on a shady rock, serenaded by an old man playing un-hummable but delicious melodies on a one-stringed Chinese instrument. Fall is filled with the smell and crunch of leaves, walking down the promenade near the statue of Christopher Columbus. And Winter – if I am lucky enough to be marooned by a LaGuardia-closing blizzard – is a trip to the Museum of Natural History for some fossils and stars, followed by a few quick snow angels in the Park.

Always, there are the trees. Budding, shady, raining seeds, etched with a white filigree sparkle.

According to the Central Park Conservancy, the tab for clean up and replanting will easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars (donations welcome). The true cost –  lost views, lost homes (nests & burrows) and lost familiarity — is incalculable.

THE TREES WE KNOW & THE TREES WE ONLY KNOW OF

We will do whatever it takes to save the trees we know and love. But in the time it took the storm to turn the Park into a leafy war zone, several thousand trees were intentionally shredded in rain forests around the world.

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  "Borneo's Moment of Truth" / National Geographic

  In Brazil,  nearly 3 million acres destroyed by illegal logging, soy farming, cattle ranching, road-building and mining between 2007 and 2008, according to Greenpeace. Although the rate of destruction appears to be slowing, it is a tenuous triumph at best.

• In Congo, plans are in the works to turn a  staggering one million hectares (2.47 million acres)  into a palm oil plantation, which environmentalists term nothing short of a “biodiversity disaster.”

• In Borneo and Sumatra, the destruction of rain forest, mostly for palm oil plantations, has not only been devastating to wildlife (most famously, orangutans), but has made the land more vulnerable to fire.

The loss of even 1,000 trees in the middle of Manhattan is unlikely to have much of an impact on the city’s “urban heat island,” but the loss of massive swaths of CO2-absorbing, biodiversity-critical, moisture-recycling rain forest will help heat up the whole planet. It can even be argued that without the rain forests, the outlook for New York’s urban forest is fraught. A warmed world could mean more intense storms, droughts and the faster spread of tree disease-carrying insects (warmer winters mean fewer bugs die off).

As I read about the clean-up in New York, I began to wonder whether there might be a way to weave these two tales of arboreal tragedy into an opportunity.

WHAT WOULD ALDO DO? / FINDING “LEGACY” IN RECYCLING

If your path has not crossed Aldo Leopold’s yet, the time has come. Leopold is best known as the author a “A Sand County Almanac an Sketches Here and There,” in which he argues for a “land ethic” that acknowledges and values what Nature provides. Along with Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” Leopold’s book, published in 1949, shortly after his death, helped lay the philosophical foundations for ecology.

The “Sand County” in title refers to a piece of worn out Dust Bowl-era farmland he bought an hour’s drive north of Madison, Wisconsin, where he was a professor of forestry at the university. With in the help of his wife, five children and a nearly endless supply of pine seedlings (Leopold also founded one of the country’s first arboretums at UW), he set about testing his ideas for healing and restoring land. Year after year, the Family Leopold planted thousands of trees. Many were lost to drought, but they kept trying.

Today, hiking through the 200+ acres of what is now The Aldo Leopold Foundation, giant pines tower overhead. Ironically, too many trees survived, weakening the forest in the competition for limited resources.  In 2003, a selective harvest was organized to help the forest become more resilient to drought, disease and insects.

Logs were dried, stripped, cut into lumber and used to build a LEED Platinum “Legacy Center,” for educational programs, retreats and small conferences (the building was awarded 61 out of a possible 69 points, for those who keep score).

TREES FOR TREES

Unfortunately, Central Park trees cannot be turned to into lumber for fear of spreading insect pests (Asian long-horned beetles & emerald ash borers). Even cords of firewood are out the question. The only option: chipping logs for in situ mulch.

But there is still a way to create a legacy of hope a la the Leopold Foundation. 

If Major League Baseball can license and sell ballpark grass seed and turf, surely Central Park can sell branded tree seedlings at a premium. Now take the legacy global: For every dollar that goes to Central Park, ring up two dollars for rain forest projects. Call it “Trees for Trees.”  The Central Park Zoo could mount a biodiversity exhibit, connecting the dots between animals on display and the dire straits their wild kin face from habitat loss. Perhaps a “Tree Story” show at the Museum of Natural History. Or a website with virtual seedlings that can be “watered” and tended to,  just like Neopets. Buy a cyber-seedling and be part of a Facebook Forest or Twitter Trees…

No doubt there are many other, better ideas out there, but you get the drift. Sometimes two wrongs actually can make a right. Actually a lot of rights: Mend the Park. Repair the rain forest. Help the planet. And while we’re at it: Clean the watershed. Stabilize hillside erosion. Scrub the air. Reduce farm fertilizer run-off. Provide wildlife habitat. Give migrating birds a home to go home to…

So, consider this a call to arms for green-minded marketers: How can we actually make this happen?

YOU HAD ME AT “ORANGUTAN”

There is, of course, no shortage of worthy reforestation projects around the world in desperate need of support. But as long as I have the floor, I nominate Willie Smits’ work in Borneo to start. The projects are comprehensive and practical, a deft mix of tech, cutting edge biology, social entrepreneurship and environmental stewardship (TED talk):

In July, Smits gave another, longer talk at the ESRI Users’ Conference, detailing the use of GIS mapping to monitor deforestation to track down illegal logging operations and for selecting the best sites for reforestation:

Willie Smits' keynote address at the 2009 ESRI User's Conference

Smits’ ideas have been proven in the field and offer genuine hope that there may yet be a way to turn things around.

Imagine that.

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MORE READING

How to Plant & Mulch a Tree – from City Trees: The City of Chicago’s Guide to Urban Tree Care

Orangutan Outreach: website for the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, the largest primate rescue project in the world – also information on deforestation, palm oil plantations, habitat loss and what you can do to help.