Alright, alright, this was not a full scale blockbuster style alien invasion. Even better, it was the USGBC’s Greenbuild Conference 2011. And those little green people? They were 25,000 representatives of the sustainable community from around the world, including over two dozen of our own HOKers. Now, you might be asking yourselves, “But Brett, how can the UNITED STATES Green Building Council hold its national annual conference outside the US?” Well, it’s simple, the USGBC has embraced the notion that the sustainable revolution is not just here in the US, but a global movement. This international event, from October 3-7, was a showcase of avant-guard industry thinking, innovative new sustainable products and, hopefully, captured inspiration to change the way we live and build moving forward.
Of the HOK staff that attended the event, each employee chose their own path through the various lectures, talks, roundtables, booths and halls. Lecture topics ranged in subject matter from technology to design to green leases and everything in between. Prominent and inspirational speakers, from a variety of disciplines, gave panel talks and among those were OUR VERY OWN Bill Valentine, Mary Ann Lazarus, Kenneth Drucker, Thomas Knittel, Mara Baum and Colin Rohlfing. A record 4 presentations were given with HOK at the helm infusing the incredible work our practice is involved in further into the industry. More can be read about the fantastic presentations by HOK in a previous post here.
HOKers debriefing at the end of Greenbuild
An common concept discussed at the close of the event was that of the “language” of Greenbuild. For attendees, buzz words were coming from every which way. We were weaving through them in the main product hall, getting fired up by them at the opening ceremony and jotting them down when sitting in dim lit lecture halls. There were so many hot words that it began to make my head spin. So, I decided to ask the attendees to email me a few simple words or short phrases that they had heard repeatedly throughout the duration of the conference.
A flutter of emails came back instantly, as words were on the tip of people’s tongue, and several more trickled in over the past few days. I took those words and loaded them into an online “wordcloud” generator (just google – wordcloud generator and you will find dozens). This is a technique I’ve used in the past to establish an aesthetically pleasing graphic that represents the buzz words from a meeting, lecture, discussion, or even design crit. Take a look at the graphic above – I won’t interject my personal thoughts on the language that was spoken, but the graphic however urgency and action seem to be overarching themes… and I’m proud that HOK is leading the way.