By Charley Stevenson

With the theme of “Sustaining Hope within Crisis,” and expanding on the original climate change focus to encompass the COVID-19 crisis as well, the virtual Living Future 2020 conference fulfilled its mission admirably. Swiftly—and commendably—organized online, LF20 not only sustained hope, it generated hope and a promise of better times ahead.

Keynote addresses by Jason McLennan, ILFI founder, and Katharine Wilkinson, vice president of community and engagement for Project Drawdown, set the stage. They helped attendees focus on optimism and envision a future that, while radically changed, promises at least some better outcomes than we might otherwise have anticipated.

On Thursday, I had the pleasure of participating in the conference session “Building Your Materials Palette from Lessons in Materials Petal Vetting” with Gabriel Wilcox, associate principal, Farr Associates; Abby O’Brien, MEP engineer, Mortenson; and Lauren M. Wallace, principal, director of certifications and consulting, Epsten Group, and moderated by ILFI’s Olivia Yu and Andrea Cooper. It was a challenge to speak into the camera without any feedback, but I’m confident that anyone listening will conclude that IES has mastered the process of including healthier materials in projects, and that we are willing and able to help them meet any goals.  Hearing tips and pitfalls from my co-presenters that are either included in or avoided by (whichever is a good thing) the use of our materials research platform Red2Green, was particularly gratifying.

No virtual conference is complete without a virtual trade show—producing a brief IES introductory video for the LF20 Exhibitor Landing page provided a bit of working-from-home diversion for my daughter and me in the Vermont countryside. If you missed the presentation, here’s a link to some useful info on incorporating healthier materials, big-impact products and reducing embodied carbon for any building project. 

Virtual conferences will never replace the real thing, but it did provide our big crowd of like-minded folks the chance to catch up, exchange information and hear the latest news on LBC 4.0. There were lots of familiar names in the chat column, and a few new ones that I look forward to following up with. The largest downside was a temporary one, in that it provided only a time-limited opportunity to reach out personally to everyone I would normally have hugged, bought a drink, and generally caught up with. Next time!