Hi to new friends

Most recently I had the opportunity to be the Commissioner General for the UN World Urban Forum III, hosted by Canada, in Vancouver last June.The theme was Sustainable Cities and the response of global civil society to the event was amazing. Over 10,000 participated in this event representing over 156 nations.

Apart from the succcess of event ,one of my real lessons learned was the potential for massive collaboration to build communities of trust to solve problems.We experimemnted with an IBM tool kit called Jamming and hosted a 3 day global on-line event called HabitatJam. The web site is still up if you want to search it(www.habitatjam.com). Over 39,000 people from 134 countries participated in this event.

My current interest is energy conservation and in particular the billions of kWh the world is wasting on streetlights ,to light our streets while we sleep !

Over 70% of US electricity is generated from GHG emmiting fossil fuels.Streetlights represent over 30% of a city's electrical budget. What an obvious target for massive change.