The City of Reno 2008 Green Summit is scheduled for September 20. I’m stoked that Rocky Anderson is speaking. As many of you know, Twelve Horses has a significant and growing presence in Salt Lake City and because of that I’ve spent a lot of time in the SLC vicinity over the last two years. With every day I spend in Salt Lake City, I become more and more impressed with the accomplishments of that city and the business community. Reno can definitely learn from their success. Rocky Anderson had a lot to do with that success.
I’ve spent about two weeks there over this summer. Between the Utah Transit Authority’s rail system, my bike and some creative carpooling I didn’t have to drive to one meeting, or even to our offices in Draper. It was like living in San Francisco yet surrounded by mountains and ski resorts. Every time I hang out in downtown catching great music shows (like Lucero and Langhorne Slim) I can’t help but think that Reno is but 20 years behind in size yet poised with the opportunity to focus our town’s growth curve with more emphasis on land resource planning, mass transit and all the green-in-between. Where Salt Lake will suffer is that their hockey-stick growth phase occurred during cheap gas and real estate. Consequently their town is a very car-dependent culture where people live dozens and dozens of miles from their place of work.
So back to Reno:
Jason Geddes kicks ass. Not only does he share in my penchant for cowboy boots, shirts with mother-of-pearl buttons and chasing Chukar, but he’s local visionary leader that’s dragging Reno (sometimes kicking and screaming) into a future that I want to live in. A Winnemucca/Gabbs native, petroleum chemist and former State Assemblyman, Jason assisted Chuck Alvey take the patchouli-edge off of “green” in the EDAWN business development and economic diversification dialog and made huge progress in his time there. Currently he’s a Regent with the University of Nevada and serves the City of Reno as our town’s Environmental services Administrator. He’s also married to Cindy Geddes who’s one of the best writers here locally.
Jason got the Green Summit off of the ground last year. The first Green Summit was held in April of 2007 and served as a dialogue between Council, staff, and citizens on what the City could do to make Reno more “green”. There were almost 400 people in attendance. The 2008 Green Summit is intended to be a report back to the community on action taken since the last summit, and a continued dialogue on what the City should have as priorities in the 2008-2009 Green Action plan.
[Side note: Jason works with another great organization in this community, Nevada EcoNET. Every Wednesday night this summer the City of Reno's West Street Market features “Eco-Nights” produced by Nevada EcoNet. Click here to read about it. Props to Lauren Siegel and the City of Reno for putting this on!]
Here’s the deets on the 2008 City of Reno Green Summit:
Location: Joe Crowley Student Union-Ballroom, University of Nevada, Reno
Time: 1-5pm, Date: September 20
Program:
- 1:00-1:45 Welcome by Mayor and Council and Report to Community
- 1:45-2:30 Keynote Speaker- Rocky Anderson, Former Mayor of Salt Lake City
- 2:30-3:00 Break
- 3:00-5:00 Concurrent Break-Out Sessions –Moderated
- A- Single Stream Recycling and Plastic Bag Bans
- B- Education/Youth Programs-EnAct/Youth City Council
- C- Green Building and Sierra Green Guidelines
- D- Transportation
Keynote Speaker - The Honorable Rocky Anderson, founder of High Road for Human Rights, practiced law for 21 years; representing plaintiffs in antitrust, securities fraud, professional negligence, and civil rights cases. He then served as mayor of Salt Lake City from 2000 to 2008.
His comprehensive environmental programs, including an aggressive climate protection campaign, achieved a 31% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Salt Lake City’s municipal operations.
For his leadership on climate change, Anderson received the Climate Protection Award from the EPA, the Distinguished Service Award from the Sierra Club, and the World Leadership Award from the World Leadership Forum.
Anderson is now working to achieve municipal and regional support for climate protection initiatives and to provide grassroots education and advocacy opportunities in the areas of human rights and climate change.
Incidentally, here’s some photos I snapped on the ‘ol trusty Nokia N95 while I was roaming downtown Salt Lake City with @leilanis during National Ride Your Bike to Work Week campaign. Obviously I thought it was brilliant!
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Think you know all there is to know about translating your “off-line brand” to an “online audience?” There’s a lot more to it than you might think. Come out and hear from the experts this Thursday, July 17. “Online Branding: A Panel Discussion at the Lake” will be held at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village. Moderated by 
yours truly, panelists will include Rob Bynder, principal and creative director of Robert Bynder Design, Inc., a business and design studio out of Westlake Village, CA that specializes in strategy, concept, design and development for interactive media; Stanley Hainsworth, who served time as creative director for corporate giants Nike, Lego, and Starbucks before starting his own creative company, Tether; and Gene Keenan, who leads the cutting edge of marketing innovation as Isobar’s VP of Mobile Services. This whole evening is devoted to picking some great minds about how to create effective and powerful online brands. Cocktails and finger foods at 6 p.m., discussion starts at 7.
Online Registration:
Members: Free
Students, AMA, A2N2 Members $20
Other Non-Members: $30
At the door:
Members: Free
Students, AMA, A2N2 Members $30
Other Non-Members: $40
More Information
View Map
Register Now
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Pull the hall pass for Thursday night because there’s two great events:
“Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West” Booksigning
Deanne had an article in the LA Times last week. Here’s an excerpt:
Wild horses aren’t free
Failure to enforce a 1971 law endangers the mustangs it was supposed to protect.
By Deanne Stillman
June 2, 2008
It’s not news that America is a cowboy nation, but it may surprise many that we are destroying the horse we rode in on.
Since the early 1970s, mustangs — wild horses — have been protected under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burro Act, spearheaded by Velma Johnston, a.k.a. Wild Horse Annie. In 1950, she saw blood spilling out of a truck on a Nevada highway, followed it, and then witnessed injured and dying mustangs being offloaded at a slaughterhouse. She led a battle to stop the cruel roundups, resulting in the passage of federal protection signed into law by President Nixon in 1971.
Under that law, horses are to be “considered in areas where presently found as an integral part of the system of public lands.” Their management falls to agencies inside the Department of the Interior, primarily the Bureau of Land Management, which culls the herds based on the land’s grazing capacity and what’s required to sustain the wild horse population. But the government also balances the needs of horses against other uses of the range — and that means corporate cattle ranching. Today, instead of being protected, mustangs are in danger of being “managed” out of existence.
At Twelve Horses (where I’m employed) we kinda stirred up the dust on the wild horse issue and did a video podcast and created a social community to foster more dialog on the subject. Here’s the video, and if you will, please join www.nvwildhorses.com and let’s find some resolution to this issue. Our aim to get folks leveraging social media to draw the attention, air out the facts and protect our State’s brand.
Helvetica: Rooftop Film Screening Party at NMA
Thursday June 12, 7pm: Nevada Museum of Art
Join us for a rooftop screening of the acclaimed documentary Helvetica on the 51st birthday of the typeface. We will be serving birthday cake and beverages and the museum galleries will be open prior to showtime.
7pm - Food, drink and museum galleries, 8pm - Showtime
Members | Free
Student non-members | $10
Non-members | $20
Everyone is encouraged to bring a guest, free of charge.
Register [here].
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Las year, my family and many of our friends spent the Memorial Weekend participating in the filming of the Modest Mouse “Little Motel” video. Cody (then 5 yrs old) had a starring role in it. Pretty cool, huh!?
It was a long weekend of shooting and we all had an excellent time staying up all night watching Reno native writer/director Justin Francis work his magic. A Flickr slideshow is here.
A year later, Modest Mouse is playing at the Grand Sierra Resort on Tuesday 5/27 the whole Twelve Horses crew is going to support and draw attention to GabrielsLife.org. Modest Mouse is an amazing band in the first place, but this whole experience has made them even more amazing with the attention it has brought to Reno and to GabrielsLife.org.
The Backstory:
Many of you know my best friend / local attorney Matt Francis. We met on the UNR ski team back in 1988. His younger brother Justin Francis is an amazing music video producer/videographer having done music videos for artists like Gwen Stefani, Alicia Keyes, Mariah Carey, the Hives and on and on and on….they guy never stops shooting videos and commercials.
Anyway, he pitched Modest Mouse on shooting a video of their song “Little Motel” in the town he grew up in, Reno Nevada with a script he had written. He asked Cody to play a role in it. If you’ve not seen the video, now would be a good time to watch it so the rest of this blog post makes sense!
For obvious reasons, the subject of the video was difficult at best. My wife and I had our reservations about having our son play a role in such a tragic story. I mean, would you? Every time I watch this video I tear up and cry. If you made it through this video and are still dry-eyed, you’re definitely not a parent!
Leilani, Twelve Horses’ Social Marketing Manager, talked my wife and I in to letting Cody doing the video. I work closely with Leilani every day and she’s been a tremendous role model in my life. If you have had the wonderful opportunity to get to know her, then you are undoubtedly aware of the tragedy in Leilani’s life due to Hydrocephalus and the amazing leadership and courage that has led her to launch GabrielsLife.org. If you’ve never read this story or met Leilani, please take a moment to do so and sup[port this organization. Also, there’s a great story that the local newspaper did here: http://www.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080129/LIV/801290331.
Now it’s almost a year later and I’m reading the hundreds and hundreds of comments of how deeply moved people are by this video Justin wrote.
Our family is absolutely proud of being part of a project that has reminded so many people how precious life is and how powerful connections are. Through family, friends and the online social media, tragedy, writing, creativity and friendly helping people have all had an opportunity to inspire each other. That’s cool.
If you’re in Reno Tuesday, I hope to see you at the Modest Mouse concert! We’ll all be there!
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Thursday February 21 at 6 p.m., Nevada Museum of Art
An incredible opportunity to hear from a leader in the global graphic design community… AIGA Medalist and Pentagram Partner Kit Hinrichs will discuss how to tap into what inspires and motivates you with regard to your design, your work and your life.
Hinrichs is an AIGA fellow, a former AIGA board member and a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. A trustee of Art Center College of Design, Hinrichs also serves on the Accessions Design and Architecture committee at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Registration
Register and pay securely online here.
In advance:
Members free
Students/AMA members $20
Non-members $30
At the door :
Members free
Students/AMA members $30
Non-members $40
Schedule
Hors d’oeuvres/Beverages: 6 p.m.
Kit Hinrichs: 7.p.m.
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Between the free WiFi at the Las Vegas airport and now the Convention Center…Vegas is perhaps the most tech-friendly places to meet and conduct business. Great branding, too! The more the convenience of always-on recedes hassle-free to the background, the bliss we feel only translates to a great brand experience. The Las Vegas Convention Center is the latest to offer customers free wireless hotspots locally.
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“Here I sit my cheeks a flexin’ giving birth to another Texan.”
The men’s bathroom stalls of pretty much every ski resort in Colorado during the 1980s were adorned with that poem. Standard issue. And when AIDS became mainstream, we hung boxes of “Texas T-Shirts” in those same men’s stalls. Despite being the economic life-blood of the Colorado Mountain Ski-Town, by-and-large the Texan’s typically arrogant, loud, flashy and better-than-you we-got-helluva-lotta-oil-money attitude created a fueled our bathroom poet laureates. More often than not…with PLENTY of good cause! They could be horribly demeaning: “Do y’all even have schools here?” Action-reaction. JR Ewing was not an aberration.
I spent most of my youth working in my Dad’s shops at the ski resort waiting on those Texans that bought the “Knee-Deep Sky-High” T-shirts, I-Ski Sunglasses, Scott goggles, Smith no-fog-cloths and Playboys/Penthouses from us at a rate so frequent and high enough margin that our family could eat and afford ski. This was the 80’s. Big oil money. Texans in 10 gallon hats and dinner-plate sized gold belt buckles. JR Ewings in sheepskin coats doused in too much men’s cologne smelling like Scotch.
By and large I was treated like dirt working in the ski shop. And not because I was a punk ski-town kid looking to meet their daughters either! It was my age. I noticed they treated their own kids the same way, and their kids had tremendous contempt for them. ”Junior” was an idiot for not being old enough to drink or drive. Their interactions with my father, however, were quite the opposite. Dad was usually trying to grade P-CHEM 401 tests while ringing up customers in the shop. Professor-by-day-entrepreneur-by-night. After they learned he was a nuclear scientist-turned-college professor turned Dad-in-Crested Butte-outdoors-bum who hunted elk and flyfished the local waters since he was age 10 and was raising a 3rd generation of skiers, they couldn’t spend enough time talking to him. Apparently, age, intelligence and ‘intrestingness’ had a lot to do with how you were treated by adults.
“What kind of sunglasses would YOU wear?”
Every so often a Long Tall Texan would make a connection with me…the punk kid at the ski resort. They’d hang out in the store for 30 minutes longer and ask me lots of questions. “What’s the best locals hang-out? Who’s got the best steak? If I really want to get a good instructor, who should I ask for? What’s the scariest run? Where can I buy some cocaine? <got that a lot in the 80s>”
To my surprise, they’d often remember my name year-after-year as they showed up for their annual two-week family ski vacation. Sometimes they would give me a crisp $20.00, $50.00 or even a $100.00 bill for helping carry luggage, lug some firewood up to their condo, or sherpa their skis over to the shop for tuning. A crisp Ben to a 14-year-old was unforgettable. Most, it seemed, carried money clips with inlaid turquoise fat with what appeared to be $10,000 folded up. These rare-breed Texans asked me lots of questions and listened intently to my answers. They, in turn, often gave me some really great advice. They were simple. One in a thousand, and they stood out, and not because of the Willy Bogner fur-lined one-piece they were wearing.
As I rambled in to college I took many internships and jobs with the “local elite” and “national elite”. Mostly I worked for the National Judicial College where I met and mingled with thousands of the nation’s best and most respected judges. Again, like the JR Ewings, most could not be bothered to acknowledge someone many years younger than them. Maybe a “thanks” for holding a door open.
And yet this time, when the I observed the odd judge interact among their peers and later on with me I realized what natural leaders they were and how comfortable they were in any social setting. Mills Lane was one of those judges. (Maybe he spotted that can of Copenhagen in my pocket and we became friends over that.) Or maybe all that time he spent refereeing boxing matches with Mike Tyson gave him an affinity to hang out with people much younger than him. But he was genuinely interested in my perspectives when we talked and he would remember our conversations year-after-year. There were several others like that and over time I realized they were similar to Mills Lane in their communities. Very prominent, very self-confident and very passionate about their vision. They always transcended the age-barrier. It was as if they were ageless. They were simply comfortable hanging out with any age-demographic. I first met Chuck Alvey then. He was the GM for Channel 8 and not the EDAWN CEO he is now. He probably doesn’t remember, but he and I hung out many times chatting on the lunch patio at the Judicial College.
I interned at the Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency when Elisa Maser (then Erquiaga and the assistant director) was defining and implementing the Regional Quality-of-Life Factors. (Whole post on that someday!) I spent a year forming and holding these focus groups with every mucky-muck in town and once again experienced largely the same repeated pattern. I met the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce over 20 times for the “first time”. The then-Mayor verbally berrated me for not having ice for the sodas in front of 10 other local leaders when I had nothing to do with F&B. And then Max Page — a man I would later work for at Fitzgeralds — hung out with me and asked me a bunch of questions about what I thought about downtown Reno and what should be done.
The battle between the young, inexperienced and often idealistic versus the older, experienced, scared and more realistic generations seems to be forever-generations old. That sucks.
I intend to be the older dude in the suit that holds the door open for the college kid instead of vice versa. I’ll think I’ll enjoy being a bridge between generations as I slide out of my 30s and in to my 40s. My parties and companies will be filled with both the young-in-age and mature in mind and the older in age and ageless in attitude folks. The self-important age discriminating can stay home uninvited and bitch about how the world is out to get them and why the age-demographic on the other end is holding them back.
It shouldn’t be about the age of a person. It’s about the connections and the conversation between people. Age discrimination is a concern and practice of the self-conscious, the ignorant and the unethical individuals unwilling to remake themselves in to the human being necessary to gain access, acceptance and rapport with others.
…stay Tuned for Part II
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This is AWESOME. From Esquire: “You cannot deconstruct Reno. It’s ruddy and rock hard, self-evident and openhearted. Reno is of a whole. It is a city, not an event.” Bingo. From Esquire’s second annual register of emerging ideas,
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The author — Tom Chiarella — blows the secret on what we already know: “Don’t leave Reno without stopping at Peg’s Glorified Ham & Eggs for breakfast. They’re glorified for a reason.” Great to see Reno get some *real* treatment from a non-RV driving writer. Thanks Tom for the great ‘investigatory’!
- Checkout my previous story on The Biggest Little City in the World 2.0
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