I have attended Bioneers on two separate occasions, once on behalf of the non-profit that I represented and most recently as a presenter at The Moving Images Film Festival. Both times I took full advantage of the amazing line up of innovative and inspirational speakers. I am truly impressed by the vision and integrity that flows into this wonderful annual event- the "feel good" gathering of the year as I often refer to it. It is great to see science fused with intention and intuition. I am also very grateful for the focus on Native American culture and wisdom that is woven throughout the weekend's seminars, films, and events. All too often I find that this important voice is left out of other such mainstream events. Overall, I think this is a phenomenal organization and annual event and i look forward to attending again in the future and will certainly be promoting Bioneers to both friends and colleagues.
There are so many reasons that I love Bioneers. I have been working as a healthy building consultant for over 20 years, and in the early days of Bioneers, long before "green" became fashionable, attending Bioneers conferences gave me, like so many others, a place to feel connected, within a vast structure of support, connection and information. Staying connected is very difficult for anyone, but particularly for people like me, one person shops who are working without the net of a larger organization, and whose work and business could not, at the time, be modeled on anything that already existed. I felt part of something much larger than my own field, which was, at the time, very fringe, and in some ways, still is. In addition, as I am a born generalist and collaborator in a world of specialists, Bioneers was immediately the perfect fit for me. Working "in the trenches" rather than as a theorist or researcher, has always had me pushing the envelope on trouble shooting and solutions, since all my training is from a field that has always had very little traction in the U.S. (Bau-Biologie, from Germany). But because Bioneers has also always been so cutting edge in terms of large scale solutions that apply on a vast, global level, I found that my own fridge work, within a smaller field, fit within the same framework of collaboration and innovation as Bioneers has brought to their audiences. In other words, like my own field, which has always been, and still is, ahead of the U.S. green building field regarding health, Bioneers has always been the same, but on a much, much larger canvas. This is in part because, unlike other fields that are driven by large corporate interests, which have now co-opted even whatever "green" means, Bioneers has always been completely independent and free to bring together, with complete freedom, the real innovative geniuses of this world, who offer the most interesting and compelling solutions on every level of environmental work. Finally, I love Bioneers because it's foundations are built on nature and humanism, also the foundations of my own field. Innovation and solutions that are presented at Bioneers always put nature and people first, but still include practical realities both economically and politically. Biomimicry, for example, was first presented to a larger audience, by Bioneers.
For these and many other reasons, I have always said that attending Bioneers is like getting a huge Vitamin B12 shot, to be able to feel boosted up each year and return to the work I do, often for extremely ill clients, with inspiration and hope. For several years, when the economy was better, and I had 1 and a half employees, I made it our company retreat to attend Bioneers, which was a huge financial stretch for me. Now, much more down scaled, I have not had the finances to attend for the past 2 years, but I intend, as soon as it's possible, to return to the yearly event. It's not a luxury, it's essential.