Videos of our local keynote speakers are now available 
SATURDAY OVERVIEW: Great Lakes BIONEERS Program 2011
SATURDAY OCT. 15 • 9:00 am – 10:00 am • Milliken Auditorium
MUSIC AND OPENING REMARKS
KEYNOTE: LAURIE CIRIVELLO
EXPLORE THE MEDIA COMMONS
Laurie Cirivello is a Traverse City native and 20-year veteran of community media. She is currently Executive Director of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center and co-author of the Alliance for Community Media Access Start-up Manual, in which she provides advice and consultation for numerous access organizations. As our Saturday keynote, she will uncover the deep influence that the media commons has in today’s society by exploring the power shift to social media.
SATURDAY MORNING WORKSHOPS • 10:15 am – 11:45 am
PARTICIPATORY MEDIA AND THE COMMUNICATIONS POWER SHIFT
Milliken Auditorium
Through historic lessons, current trends and personal observations, we will examine and discuss how participatory media is helping (and hindering) our ability to effectively connect, share, and problem-solve within our communities. Keynote speaker Laurie Cirivello will lead the exploration of important questions such as: What is working? How are people leveraging virtual communication to join together to make a difference in physical communities? Where is it falling short and why? Join in as we consider ways to leverage the current power shift to strengthen the digital media commons. Cirivello is Executive Director of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center and co-author of the Alliance for Community Media Access Start-up Manual.SEED SAVING FOR THE COMMON GOOD
Scholars Hall, Rm 209
Agricultural specialist Craig Schaaf, owner of Golden Rule Farm and mentor to many local farmers, will present the case for keeping our seed heritage alive, diverse, and under the protection of our resilient local communities. Learn how you can help reclaim our seed commons and join the growing network of seed savers and why it is so important to do so.DIY, OPEN SOURCE, AND THE COMMONS
Scholars Hall, Rm 205
Join Brad and Amanda Kik of the Institute for Sustainable Living, Art & Natural Design (ISLAND) as they talk about how to connect DIY (do it yourself) skills with open-source sharing of ideas to reclaim personal and social space, build community interdependence, and resist becoming merely consumers. DIY-minded folks are at the heart of the commons. When we share our skills, we build incredibly tough, resilient communities. Learn about great ways to share ideas, teach each other essential skills, and reclaim our work. We’ll make ‘zines! Bring a skill to share!EMBRACING STRANGERS
Scholars Hall, Rm 32
In a way, this workshop picks up from the 2010 GLB workshop Reclaiming the Streets. Participants will explore the value of consequential strangers through introduction, discussion, and exercises. Join Gary Howe, photojournalist, educator, and creator of the blog MyWheelsAreTurning.com, in a look at how the loss of the commons has created a poverty of stranger encounters in our communities. Fundamental to this workshop will be developing the mental construct and perspectives to answer and advocate around the question: Why does a community’s mission need to include encouraging serendipitous social exchange through placemaking in our public spaces.HOW AN AWAKENED GLOBAL CITIZENRY CAN “RECLAIM THE COMMONS”
Scholars Hall, Rm 20/22
Northern Michigan facilitators for the Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream symposium, led by Susan Van Duine, will facilitate this inspirational and interactive workshop on ways you can Reclaim the Commons and create an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet. Awaken your minds and hearts to the possibilities of change: change how we’ve always done things, how we treat our earth, how we treat each other and all life on the earth. How do we change our culture from I-me-mine toward a greater connection with each other and a we-you-ours community? It begins with a change toward “what I do to you, I do to me” and “what I do to the earth, I do to all life upon the earth”. Reclaiming the commons begins first with a change in our hearts and our perspective and then leads to a change in the decisions we make about our world.HOW DOES JOURNALISM AGGRAVATE CONFLICT OVER THE COMMONS?
Scholars Hall, Rm 104
Reclaiming the commons requires the best policy options to manage our commons. However, the structure of traditional journalism tends to exacerbate conflicts between interested stakeholders over major policy decisions, resulting in poor planning and fractured communities. John Parker will help participants prepare to request better journalism from our news organizations, encourage them to avoid structural traps that aggravate unnecessary conflict, and abandon superficial coverage for in-depth analysis that promotes better policy options for our region. Parker teaches Journalism Fundamentals at Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) and advises NMC’s collegiate publication the White Pine Press. In addition, he has done public relations work for The Peace Alliance and The Grand Vision.AS LOCAL AS POSSIBLE
Scholars Hall, Rm 202
This workshop will address the common economy. Following last year's Bioneers workshop, presenters Bruce Odom and Zach Liggett formed an active As Local as Possible group. They have been meeting to discuss action steps to encourage people to buy local, to educate people about the impact and importance of buying local, and to support local businesses. This year, they would like to focus on creating a local green business directory and expanding local investing. Odom owns Odom Re-Use Co., a used building material retail, salvage, and deconstruction business. Liggett is co-founder of Goldeneye Asset Management, LLC (gldneye.com), an independent investment advisory based in Elk Rapids, MI, with strategies for families seeking social, environmental, and financial returns.HEALTH: INTERSECTING THE COMMONS
Scholars Hall, Rm 109
Our health intersects many of the commons and is closely tied to the planet’s health. Flora Biancalana and Anne Hughes will explore how we need to take more responsibility for both our own health and for the health of the planet and will discuss why it is important to place health in a broader context. Join this exploration of why we need to reclaim health from privatization and how to bring it back to all of us. Biancalana, MD, is Board Certified in Holistic Medicine and operates Rising Star Wellness Center. Hughes, MSN, is a Family Nurse Practioner and Nurse Master Herbalist.
LUNCH
11:45am – finishes 1:30 pm
Underwritten by the Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance
New location! For the best lunch you’ve ever had, pre-order tickets or buy them at the Registration Desk in Scholars Hall, Rm 106. Lunch will be served at the Grand Traverse County Civic Center (see pg. 7).
BROWN BAG DOCUMENTARY FILM
12 pm – 1:15 pm Scholars Hall, Rm 109
Come eat your lunch while watching a film hand-picked by the Great Lakes Bioneers!MOOMERS ICE CREAM TREAT provided by The Watershed Center of Grand Traverse Bay in Scholars Hall
SATURDAY AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS 2 pm – 3:30 pm
COMMUNITY COMPOSTING
Civic Center
Come one, come all! Learn how to move toward Zero Waste at the Bioneers Composting workshop hosted by Andy Gale of Bay Area Recycling for Charities. Get the latest information and ask those questions to have a successful backyard composting system. Also find out more about the BARC commercial composting operations.NMC GREEN AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES TOUR
Join this NMC guided open-house tour of the best campus has to offer. Pick up information at the registration table.TIBETAN SINGING BOWLS
Scholars Hall, Rm 101
Relax, meditate and soothe your ears with the healing melodies of Tibetan Singing Bowls. Sound vibrations, using Tibetan singing bowls and harmonic chants, are tools for self control and the healing process that is needed when dealing with high stakes issues. Mark Handler, LMSW, is a licensed social worker and an Amrit yoga instructor.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
1:30 pm – 5 pm Milliken AuditoriumAnnouncements and updates.
NATIONAL SPEAKERS • Beamed from California
PAUL STAMETS
SOLUTIONS FROM THE UNDERGROUND: HOW MUSHROOMS CAN HELP SAVE THE WORLD
In this Sixth Age of Extinctions, the life support systems that have allowed humans to thrive are eroding. Stamets, the world’s leading visionary “myco-technologist,” shows how fungi and mushrooms can help restore ecosystems, degraded landscapes, and human health — fast. Like people, habitats have immune systems, and our close evolutionary relationship to fungi provides the basis for novel environmental deployments of key mushroom species that can lead to greater sustainability and better health.ANIM STEEL
THE REAL FOOD CHALLENGE
As director of national programs at Boston’s famed The Food Project, Steel has been building a strong nationwide youth movement for just food systems. Since 2003 he has provided leadership training for over 700 young people and forged a network of 5,000+ young activists and farmers. He highlights the Real Food Challenge, a campaign he co-founded to re-direct $1 billion of college food purchases away from industrial agriculture towards local, fair, sustainable, and humane sources.NATALIA GREENE
THE RIGHTS OF NATURE: AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME
What if Nature had rights? In 2008 Ecuador, inspired by local work in the US, became the first country to recognize Rights of Nature in its national constitution. In 2010, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature formed, calling for the universal acceptance of Nature as a subject with rights to “exist, flourish, and evolve.” As President of Ecuador’s National Coordinating Entity for Environmental NGOs, Greene has been a key figure in the recognition of Rights for Nature. She surveys the transformational global movement for Earth Jurisprudence.JOSHUA FOUTS AND RITA KING
THE EMERGING IMAGINATION AGE
Visionary media innovators Fouts and King call this time “The Imagination Age.” From sudden revolutions in the Middle East to “unimaginable” natural and human-made technological and economic disasters, our world is in a state of radical transformation and readjustment. At the same time, powerful new media are emerging that could presage a hopeful new global culture and economy. They illuminate how extraordinary new tools — virtual worlds, games, and the worldwide web — can leverage global cultural empowerment and educational reform, amplified by creativity, collaboration, art, and music.AMORY LOVINS
REINVENTING FIRE
Living legend Amory Lovins, chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, offers a new roadmap to get the US completely off oil and coal by 2050, led by business for profit, sped by smart policies, and driven by informed customers. As the planet’s most important thinker about energy efficiency and energy’s links to resources, security, development, and the environment, he is a consultant to businesses and governments around the globe, has penned 31 books and won too many prizes to count. Now he and RMI are speeding the transformation, in short, Reinventing Fire™.
