The greatest sustainability "meeting of the minds" for government staff and officials in the Cascadia Bioregion gets under way May 15th with the 2013 GreenTools Government Confluence.

The Confluence will gather sustainability leaders in the public sector from across the bioregion for an intensive day of inspiration and peer-to-peer learning. Government staff and elected officials will share success stories and address persistent challenges faced by local governments in advancing a sustainability agenda. The Confluence is co-hosted by Cascadia Green Building Council and is produced in conjunction with the 2013 Living Future unConference and will share a theme of "Resilience & Regeneration." Education sessions will focus on a new generation of policy, partnerships and infrastructure.

Registration for this day-long event is $50 per person. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Confluence Highlights:

Morning keynote – David Brewster, founder of Town Hall David Brewster has a long record of starting and managing important civic and journalistic enterprises in Seattle. Before acting as founder and longtime editor/publisher of Seattle Weekly, he also was a regular columnist for The Seattle Times from 1997 to 2000.

After leaving Seattle Weekly in 1997, Brewster spearheaded the civic effort to save and purchase the Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist, on First Hill, converting it into Town Hall Seattle, where he served as executive director from 1998 to 2006. Town Hall Seattle has become one of the most successful multidisciplinary civic and performing arts venues in the country.

In 2007, Brewster and a group of investors conceived and launched Crosscut.com, a pioneering effort in high-quality, web-only, nonpartisan local journalism, designed to fill some of the void left by declining mainstream local media. Brewster served as publisher and editor of Crosscut, leading the transition to a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization in 2009, and overseeing the hiring of a new publisher in 2012. During all this time, he has written in-depth articles particularly on local politics, education issues, and the arts. He continues as a writer for Crosscut.com and member of the board of Crosscut Public Media.

Lunch time keynote - The Dutch Dialogues From New Orleans, we welcome the "Dutch Dialogues"; an extension of interactions that followed Hurricane Katrina where Dutch engineers, urban designers, landscape architects, city planners and soils/hydrology experts and, primarily, their Louisiana counterparts. David Waggonner, a local New Orleans architect, initiated this dialogue with Dale Morris, of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Washington, DC, and the American Planning Association. Waggonner's and Morris' efforts on behalf of "Dutch Dialogues" derive from their unwavering belief that New Orleans can survive and prosper and grow only when it gets certain fundamentals in order. David will also be joined by Prisca Weems and Joe Evans Principles at FutureProof: New Orleans leading experts in sustainability master planning and community partners in the Dutch Dialogues.

Town Hall Charrette Seattle's Town Hall is about to embark on a major capital project, to bring a 20th century building into the 21st century and support over 400 events per year. The Confluence embarks on a historic Town Hall charrette (led by Site Story) that will address the cultural and economic value of this arts and community events venue and help prepare key decision makers to consider the building's future. Participants will explore options for revitalizing landmark portions of the building while modernizing other elements to meet the ever changing programmatic needs, technological changes, sustainability mind-set, and the emerging First Hill neighborhood center.

We Build Green Cities Portland is a living laboratory where public and private sectors partner to build a green city and develop expertise in sustainable development. We Build Green Cities (WBGC) is a partnership which seeks to cultivate local experience and expertise of Portland's green development community and export that knowledge as demand for resource efficient development grows. WBGC Founding Members will discuss the intersection of public-private partnerships and district scale development using Portland's Pearl District as a case study. They will detail how their approach coincides with neighborhood resiliency and how those ideas are being regenerated throughout the nation and around the globe.

Additional session topics include:

·                     Regional code collaboration and the role of building officials

·                     Community wide renewable energy retrofit programs

·                     Large scale countywide agricultural composting projects

·                     EcoDistricts and new approaches to urban redevelopment; the Brewery Blocks case study

·                     Resilience & green infrastructure planning for community health

·                     Productive green roofs for commercial agriculture

·                     Data mining for sustainability and the physical building components

·                     Urban parks engineered for innovative stormwater solutions

·                     Emerging trends in data gathering and the impact of green building developments on population

Who Should Attend: Elected officials, planners, engineers, city managers and civil servants who support government in a transformation toward a built environment that is socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative.

To Register for the Government Confluence:

Registration for this day-long event is $50 per person. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Special Government Packages for Living Future and Opening reception: Package 1 -2013 Government Confluence attendees are eligible to register to attend the Living Future unConference at a discounted rate of $650.

Package 2 - Confluence attendees are also eligible to attend the Living Future Opening Reception + Keynote at a discounted rate of $50.

Don't miss your chance to be a part of the best government event in the Pacific Northwest-Register Today!