1--Field trips

     Describe for your members the best places to go in 2008 to enjoy green socially or as activists -- the upcoming conferences, rallies, trade shows, tours offered (eco tours and facilities tours). People adore field trips.  Here is a solar field trip I went on --
http://www.explain.com/solar/
The woman whose house we toured later attempted a run for Illinois State Rep for the Green Party:
http://www.ilgp.org/groups/media/ilgp-press-coverage/wickerparkbooster 
Before we actually GO on the field trips, we would have numerous people describe their own various jaunts so we could pick among them.

2--Create a Network of Home and Office Viewings of "An Inconvenient Truth"

     Al Gore is urging people to host House Parties

     Here is Al Gore, addressing house parties on December 19. 2006.

     Movies that can be shown and discussed:

    "An Inconvenient Truth " -- June, 2006 http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809257809/trailer

    "Too Hot Not to Handle" -- HBO Special, May, 2006

http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=70052572&trkid=189530&strkid=11600049_0_0

     "Warnings from the Ice" -- NOVA Special

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/warnings/waterworld/

If you want to be a presenter of the Al Gore slide show, sign up here:

3--Smart Computing Solutions 

    The power of computer depiction, modeling and artificial intelligence is immense, and should be applied -- very visibly and publicly -- to sustainability phenomena.  
Such applications might include

-- A “SIM Sustainability” control panel that would depict  the successful handling of the World Habitat Restoration Project,  This would be a dashboard showing sliders that “regulate” all the major processes required for the Great Turnaround.  You would see which of the various simultaneous processes need to be heated up or cooled down, like the steam valves of a railroad engine. 
--The processes shown on the Control Panel would not include only the physical processes, but MAINLY the socio-political attitudes driving the progress.  Socio-behavioral indicators would be at the top of the display.  You would see gross quantifications and a detail screen would also display sociological mapping and forecasting of green psychographics, preferences and action-triggering attitudes
--Financial and economic modeling of planned business initiatives,

--Total Habitat Census and Surveillance (webcams, GoogleEarth, satellite image data basing, etc.),

--Depiction of Green House Gas Replacement Dynamics.

--Possible Guest speaker - - Harvey Tillis of the Simulations SIG of the Association for Multimedia Computing.  

http://www.amcomm.org/contemplate/assembler.php?page=SIG_asg

4--Guest Speaker:  the wonderful Ray Anderson:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Anderson_%28entrepreneur%29

     Ray has transformed his carpet factory business from its being a total polluter to being a sustainable enterprise -- or at least he's on the way!  Ray could bring in his biophysicist friends for factual support -- people who can comment expertly on the physical requirements of sustainable earth systems.
EXCELLENT SPEECH BY RAY:

http://www.explain.com/massextinction.m3u
 

5--Overview of change work tools:

     OD operatives and their best roles in achieving a safe three-point landing for Mother Earth.  Guiding collaborative change versus confrontation.

6--A picture of world mass media

     Its center of gravity vis-à-vis Green.  Fringe media -- zines, blogs, viral videos -- and their observed and quantified impact.    Corporate and partisan disinformation and other attempts to seize and "frame the debate" with misleading catchphrases and sound bites to the detriment of an accurate public picture. 

     Weekly Grist Podcast:

http://grist.org/podcast/weekly/2007/01/29/

7--Places to volunteer and intern in Green

     A showcase fair of tables in which a panel discussion is followed by the chance to dig in more and ask questions of organizations.   The panel discussion would delineate --
--roles you can play
--settings you can work in
--types of access to, influence on the power structure available through your work.

GOOD STARTER LIST:

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/toohot/resources.html

8--Psychographic-Savvy Policy-Making  

     Discussion on making Green "Sexy" -- the potentiality of focus groups, consumer market research, ad and PR firms, and government information agencies to create a culture where sustainable practice is highly-attractive and high-status -- socially rewarded --  and where pollution and species-survival-indifference are strongly stigmatized.  An intentional myth-making effort (in the sense of “culturally-owned story” not in the sense of state propaganda) needs to be underway.  Or: the "product" being sold is survival.  A "buy" by the public would not involve a purchase, but an action, initiative or a reinforcement of some good practice.  There should be some discussion of how to go about this WRONGLY, too, mentioning experiments such as bogus "social marketing" that backfired when people caught on and felt manipulated and bait-and-switched. There is a way to use endemic mass market sensibilities to the benefit of Green.

9--Products: Show and Tell

     People literally do give show and tell talks about various gadgets that they bring in and pass around -- from vendors such as Real Goods, Smart Image, the airline catalogs, Land's End, the Savvy Traveler, etc.  Solar fountains, folding fiber panels that run your laptop in the forest -- ad infinitum.  Have local hybrid car dealers come in to describe consumer experiences in their hybrids.

10--Outlets for Capitalism

     If the world isn't seen as a resource to plunder at will, where can big capital go for markets when its "low-hanging fruit" of so-called "natural resources"  is off-limits?  Provide description of gazillions of such directions where economic activity can grow, yet in a green earth cradle.  Services to third-world publics could take the place of strip-mining and deforestation.  Al Gore himself has a mutual fund out o London that is green-focused.  Here is a discussion of green capitalism:

11--Resource Roundup

     Descriptions of the best interactive web sites, movies, books and other provocative and useful resources -- librarians and booksellers such as Transitions  and the store Healing Earth could speak.

12--How to Do Green the Wrong Way

     For example: AT HIGH LEVEL: focusing only on sustaining people without sustaining habitat and the rest of life.  AT GRASS ROOTS LEVEL:  excess energy placed on TACTICS ONLY behavior -- solutionism -- with absence of STRATEGIC logic and coordination and a deep, shared vision. 

     Another example:  Debate about ethanol's efficiency:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3296127144082914768&q=%22Al+Gore%22+duration%3Amedium

13--Avoiding Mass Panic

      Once the US public reaches a critical mass of awareness, there could be panic -- even manipulated panic by Fox News and other fear mongers who make their living from pressing the panic button no a fear-fascinated public  and who want to profit from a temporary "bump" in survivalist and other fad spending.  Expect the Military-Industrial Complex to deploy a growth strategy of their own.  What will avert pandemonium?

14--Guest Speaker:  Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. 

       He believes in a Green Chicago.  Invite him to address his green base.  He won't come if you don't ask.

15--Guest speaker:  Al Gore. 
      He was on Oprah in December, 2006. 

      He gets to Chicago.  He can get to you, too.  Regardless, you could bring him in on a WebEx-type web page and project him on large screen at a meeting.  

       Here is Gore testifying before Congress in March, 2007.

16--Various "brands" of green
       “If I Were King" ideas by various green journalists, activists and surveyors of the scene on the subject of sustainability.  Ways to mitigate factionalism and sectarianism in achieving a world that works for everyone.  The study and measurement of consensus versus particularization. 

17--Green Celebrities Showcase

      Slide show with commentary about who's hot and who's not:  locally, regionally, nationally and beyond.  Gore has commented on their value.

18--Guest speaker: Jerome McDonald

      Host of WBEZ's "World View" -- a survey of the international green pulse from where he sits - - a very informed individual! 
 http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/programs/worldview/worldview.asp

19--The State of Green Roundup Talk
       From the top down -- overall description, possibly with "progress meters" analogous to Gore's charts in "An Inconvenient Truth -- results against plan.  Something a little more useful than this anti-Gore parody:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPDWDl6_KbY

20--Post and Publicize a Group of the Best Green Websites

      A posting of the smartest information and edu-tainment -- similar to the interactive Chicago Museum exhibits shown here:
http://www.explain.com/museums.htm

21--GREEN MUSIC and MOVIES

       Profiles of acts and shows.  It is well-known that songs boost movements incredibly.  Historically, the Protestant Reformation, the union movement, and revolutions of all kinds have always been borne along on group singing and emotionalized, shared messages.  Just as harvesting and traveling songs, sea chantries and solidarity marches have always made light work of efforts that might have otherwise have been more arduous, we must use music. What is the good stuff?  What is the World Beat like in “the sustainability space”?

        Here is one sample -- "I'm Takin My Country Back," a song that probably got too little play last election because of its reference to "the Red Chinese," which was perhaps thought un-PC by station managers.

22--Annual "Coolest Green Businesses" contest

      This showcases local companies that offer really impactful services and also a high-satisfaction customer experience.

23--Black Tie Affair

      Sponsor a benefit that would get Green organizations on front pages of papers like the Chicago Skyline, along with all those various charities and fund-raisers that bring out the tuxedos and gowns.  Create visibility among the well-heeled.

24--"Chicken Soup for Sustainability" stories

        The Opportunity of Green -- the need for sustainability is bringing out people's best attentiveness and problem-solving skills. 

25--A Coordinated World. 

      The state of world strategy.  Development of policies towards Green rogue states (such as the U.S.?) or companies (such as Exxon Mobil?).  Ways to avoid police state roads to compliance and also puritanical, "righteous" social responses, where group conformity becomes pathological -- as in Nazi Germany, Calvinistic Geneva, and in nations where the Maoist and Stalinist mentality ("the public as revolutionary army") became a straightjacket.