Climate Project & more

I've been working on setting up speaking opportunities in Iowa for a week in early March... so I'll be back in the central Iowa area roughly March 5th - 12th and present the climate change slideshow to as many people as I can during that time... right now audiences are ranging from the college/university setting to a coffee shop to a group called 'Drinking Liberally' that has a local group that meets weekly in the DM area -- as well as many, many other areas around the country, if not the world. The opportunity to share with people is exciting -- I've spent so much of the last six months living and learning sustainability... it will be rewarding to be able to begin sharing what I've learned with a range of audiences. The challenge, of course, is to limit myself to a consumable amount of information... with so many things that I would like to share, I'll have to be careful and not overwhelm people!

On another note, it's looking like there will be plenty of opportunities to share the presentation with Swedish audiences also. I was in Stockholm this weekend for a Friday night reception with The Natural Step staff from around the world... what a neat group of people! Over the course of the weekend, I - and several of my classmates - talked with lots of people who are doing a lot of neat things... in Japan, Brazil, Canada, the US (primarily the state of Oregon and the city of Madison, WI), Sweden, France, Italy, New Zealand, and a handful of other places. Also talked to a few people who work directly with networks of Swedish universities -- so I think that will be my inroad to presenting in Sweden. All in all it should give me the chance to meet a lot of people doing and studying a lot of neat things while strengthening my own speaking skills.

Oh - and for those of who around home... keep an eye in the Tri-County Times this week... there should be a nice little blurb in there this week or next!

It may be worth providing a weather update... while we were in Stockholm in snowed 10 cm -- about 6" -- it was fun to see some snow. There's even a dusting here in Karlskrona... so it's very pretty!

Ok - I'm off... need to do a little thinking about the thesis project that Katie, Monique and I will be working on -- something along the lines of community food security (security here more as in assurance of access to food than in a prevention of food contamination sense)... it will be interesting to see how the project continues to evolve this week as we formalize and finalize our research question(s).