The Chicago Green Festival 2007 was held this past weekend. I went mainly to explore but I learned about new things.
Bill Becker from Chicago based Aerotectures, gave a really interesting talk that explained his unique urban wind energy solution. There is a Youtube video that explains the basic highlights of his 45 minute talk:
Chris O’Brien’s talk about the history of local economies and craft brewing of beer was simply fascinating! The festival says the audio will be up on this site. I hope to be able to read his book “Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World” (the search engine community will be surprised to learn that David Naylor is not a co-author of how to drink beer and save the world)!!!
It’s clear that there were some really interesting bloggers in the crowd. It would have been great to meet them, the festival should have a blogging page or wiki at future events so that people who are interested in certain issues can meet up. A focus on concentrating the discussions and interaction on certainly distinct pockets of interest. It’s also clear that the Green Building, solar/wind energy sessions were more popular than they were expecting. It would be interesting to learn if that means these concepts are more popular in the Midwest?
Lastly, I was only there on Saturday. But regardless of your political views, the story of how Dennis Kucinich met his wife is really heartwarming and I became aware of it due to the coverage of his speech.