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HIGHLIGHTS FROM TEDX SACRAMENTO April 16 2010 at Hinde Auditorium, 6000 J Street Sacramento, CA 95819.

2010-04-22T06:06:17Z

April 16 marked the arrival of TEDx in Sacramento, bringing a “TED-like experience” to our area.

What is TED? TED stands for “Technology, Education, Design.” It is a small nonprofit organization devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” Started in 1984, its purpose has spread to include an annual U.S. conference in Long Beach as well as a TEDGlobal conference in the United Kingdom, a TEDTalks online video site, an annual TED Prize, a nationwide local program called TEDx and more.

Per TEDx Sacramento, “The TEDx Conference provided a license and general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.”

Brandon Weber, TEDx Sacramento curator, said the local team wanted to create a special event to “lay the foundation for a strong TEDx presence in Sacramento…to contribute to the dialogue of ideas and encourage creativity, innovation and action in our beloved city.”

The event was held at the Hinde Auditorium at California State University, Sacramento, to a packed house of several hundred registrants, and the program was recorded for subsequent online viewing.

Weber started the program by saying TEDsters are in a class of their own, that TED conferences are a mix of things and that we would be watching live video from other TEDx conferences in addition to live multimedia presentations.

The first presentation was a video called “Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different?” The focus of the video was that sometimes we have to go to the other side of the world to realize assumptions that we didn’t realize we had. Whatever brilliant ideas you have – the opposite may also be true. An example was shown of how addresses are determined in the United States versus in Japan. U.S. blocks don’t have names, streets have names. In Japan, blocks have names and the streets are the unnamed places between the blocks. Street numbers are based on when the homes were built.

Next was a live presentation titled “David Mogavero: An American Frontier.” Mogavero is senior principal at Mogavero Notestine Associates, with special expertise in the areas of ecological building, environmental planning, infill development, urban design and energy-efficient design.

Mogavero said the suburbs are a unique American institution, generating vast amounts of appreciation and scorn. Suburbs are the most inefficient form of human habitation ever done on earth, and an important place for focusing on environmental change in America, he said.
He started his practice by doing passively heated homes for people moving back to the land, mostly hippies. He realized that if he was going to be an ecoarchitect he had to work in the fabric of the community. He has done infill work in Sacramento and throughout Northern California.

The quantity of issues relative to urban sprawl are immense. People are moving back to urban America in large quantities, mostly in central cities. This has both limitations and opportunities for capturing infill growth.

In Sacramento, we build on average about 10,000 homes per year. Sacramento can only handle 19,000 new units – about two years of growth. The opportunity is tens of thousand of acres of underutilized areas such as parking lots, vacant housing and shopping center spaces, which can be eliminated for hundreds of thousands of houses and apartments.

When you have to design in these kinds of situations, you take the perspective of “do no harm.” You’re trying to instill more density but have an industrial complex that causes you to be creative. As an example, there is a commercial district in Yuba City – an opportunity to put people in a place with a services available now.

For Mogavero this is like jazz, which emerged from a convergence of cultures. Architectural development design is fascinating and fun for him for reasons like this: With a 10- or 15-acre site in the suburbs, you can integrate food into the project through agriculture. A community can be involved in the growing of food. There is also an opportunity for technology, which is more challenging in the city. Holistic integrated systems flowing back and forth continuously are possible in such areas. This is one of the most exciting venues in American building culture.

Next shown was a video titled “David Gallo: Underwater Astonishments.” Diving into the deep sea is a dark black world. We’ve only explored about 3 percent of the oceans. We don’t know much about this planet at all.

We are learning lots from the shallow water, which is full of predators that can change color & texture to match surroundings, but the deeper water still leaves much to be explored.

The Gallo Video proved a good precursor to Sacramento guitarist Ross Hammond, who received the Best Area Jazz Musician award for 2008 and 2009 from “Sacramento News and Review.” Hammond gave a spirited performance that integrated sound system issues that would affect the evening’s musical interludes.

The music was followed by another video, this one titled “Kirk Citron: And Now, the Real News.” The top story of this year was the economy. What kind of stories might make a difference for the future?

Some include the invasion of the nanobees, China’s rising, food shortage, the age of discovery, an ant mega-colony taking over the world or self-directed robots making discoveries. With or without us, life will go on.

For Citron, the top story was that water was found on the moon. In the long run, some stories will be more important than others.

Next was a live presentation titled “Ron Vrilakas: The Great Green City.” Vrilakas is an architect who likes buildings. He is working on what he loves, which is trying to build a great green city. He comes from West Sacramento, a place that has failed to solve how housing and commercial roads should come together. He spent eight or nine years avoiding going to Sacramento. He learned some things along the way about what makes cities exciting and green. We have been out of sync building cities over the past number of years, he said.

Once there was a way – we knew how to build the Great Green City. We used to build communities commonly, but technology got us away from earlier ambition and we turned in another direction. Things were cut off from each other by highways. Simple basic community-oriented buildings were changed. Places to gather and take pride in your city became places like retail with parking lots.

In 50 or 60 years, we’ve lost the ability to build things like McClatchy High School. We couldn’t do now what was done then on six sheets. He showed a picture of a bicyclist who will hopefully survive the Freeport Bakery parking lot.

An urban memory – he tries to find ways to reintroduce these things into our environment. Streets need to be for people. Emptyness in a block is a bad thing. Menacing facades are an embarrassment.

Preserving the past is something Vrialas said he believes strongly in. We need to cherish historic landmarks, adapt for activity, create the unexpected (alleys in Sacramento can become a network of interest within our grid) and resist demolition. Underutilized places need to be identified. Single-use is not good – everything must be a mixed-use environment. Empty spaces need to be change to active places.

History forward – Vrialas said he believes we find the identity of our city in the past. Getting to know oneself is how you make something. San Francisco has its identity, as do Seattle, Berkeley, Boston, Portland and Paris – all of the best of an urban life put together. In Sacramento we have a real history to build upon.

He looks to buildings for stories. We’ve been building cities for thousands of years, but we’ve only been building in a suburban manner for past 60 years, and we’ve been getting it wrong. We don’t have to look for a technological fix. We can have the fix in the way we organize ourselves – an urban design ethic that is important for human civilization.

Next came a video titled “Dean Ornish: Your Genes Are Not Your Fate.” The video offered encouragement for a healthy lifestyle. When you eat better, exercise and love more, the benefits can be measured. Topics covered things to do to grow your blood cells and things to make it worse. You age less quickly when you change your lifestyle. Arteries become notably less clogged, you can stop breast cancer, change prostate growth and even change sexual potency.

You can change genes, turn on the good genes and turn off the disease-promoting genes. We all have genetic profiles, but our genes are not our fate. We can also change how our genes are expressed.

It was now time for another musical performance, this one from Autumn Sky, who said, “My name is Autumn Sky. Really.” She and her guitar ,which she has named Samuel Taylor, performed and sang whimsically.

Next, it was back to the green theme, with a video titled “Catherine Mohr: Building Green.” Mohr explores energy usage depending upon what she uses to wipe up a spill. Sometimes the things you least expect have the greatest effect.

Mohr wanted to know how to achieve a green lifestyle. The average house has 300 megawatts of embodied energy. Some ideas she explored were deconstruction of the house, putting in a rainwater catchment, alternative roofing and framing, if putting aluminum windows will double the energy use and others.

Following that, it was time for another live presentation, “Chris Schuring Recycles Carbon.” Schuring's company, Ternion Bio Industries Inc., grows algae in a controlled environment to reduce carbon.

Schuring asked, “Why do you do what you do? Why do we want to build better cities, to go green?” He said he believes it’s because we inherently want to do better in our lives, be smart and leave a better legacy. There is a sense of camaraderie, of community. It’s me and you in the solutions we come up with. He did it because he thought reducing greenhouse gases and carbon footprints would be great.
Lots of people don’t want to do these things. People won’t care about what you do until you care about why. If we come together as humans, we can bring communities together to effect change.

Schuring has a personal goal to help 100 entrepreneurs start businesses to effect change in the next 18 months.

Next came a very cute video titled “Rives: Mixed Emoticons.” Rives – star of the Bravo special, "Ironic Iconic America," told a typographical fairy tale that was short and bittersweet.

After this short bit of comic relief came another live presentation titled “Robyn Waxman: F.A.R.M.” Waxman is an award-winning designer, activist, farmer, educator and founding member of graphic communication program at Sacramento City College.

Waxman looked at design’s role in the last 10 years. Moving more into letting other people design for themselves as the role of the designer seems to be the direction the industry is headed. She produced a 56-page tabloid on how to make your own farm. Millenial farmers have built Farm Davis on eighth and K streets. They have donated more than 100 pounds of food, or half of their production. The other half they ate. The farm runs on a gift economy without a budget. The space is on a privately owned front yard.

A similar Sacramento farm is coming May 2010 at 13th and C streets in Alkali Flats.

Up next was another video, titled, “Julian Treasure: 4 Ways Sound Affects Us.” Treasure said he wants to transform our relationship with sound, which has become largely unconscious. There are four ways sound affects us:

Physiological – an affect on breathing, heart rate and brainwaves.

Psychological – musical has the greatest effect. Music and bird sounds are reassuring.

Cognitive – you have to choose what to listen to. We have limited bandwith to decide which sound to listen to. People are one third as productive in open rooms as private rooms.

Behaviorally – move away from unpleasant sounds and toward pleasant sounds.

Most retail sound is unpleasant, with retailers losing 30 percent of their business because the sound is so dreadful. Treasure's company has developed a SoundFlow to design soundscapes. Music is powerful. Every brand is making sounds right now. Several well-known brand jingles were used as examples. There are four golden rules for commercial sound:

Make it congruent

Make it appropriate

Make it valuable

Test it, and test it again

We can achieve sound living through good use of sound

Another video followed, titled, “Alan Siegl: Simplifying Legal Jargon.” It takes a blizzard of paperwork to get benefits or a business loan. Siegl has been simplifying things for 35 years. He didn’t see why we couldn’t have a simple one-page consumer credit agreement, so he created one.

He seeks to define terms in plain English. Plain English is about changing the content. An agreement for IBM was received very favorably by businesses. IRS letters are pretty unintelligible, and he proposed changes to the IRS.

We must make clarity, transparency and empathy national priorities. We should not do business with those using unintelligible provisions.

It was then time for another musical interlude, this time from Sacramento musician Julie Ann Bee, titled “Sea of Bees.” Bee’s first full-length album is about to be released by Davis-based Crossbill Records. She performed two songs.

The next live presentation was titled “Scott and Julie Brusaw: Solar Roadways”, and was presented by Scott, an electrical engineer with more than 20 years of experience who hails from northern Idaho. They have spent years working on the concept of a solar-powered roadway system.

The Brusaws spent a lot of time together 30 years ago. His favorite toy then was a slotcar. He thought, “What if we made real roads electric?”

They discussed how there is no easy solution to global warning and other issues, including that 65,000 children die each day because they can’t get clean drinking water.

Couldn’t you make electric roads out of solar panels? Could they make solar panels you can drive on?

They said they believe so. There are some problems, but they aren’t insurmountable. We can’t let snow build on it, so he put heating element on the surface. He put LEDs on there to light it up, a microprocessor so all panels can talk to each other even with cars traveling overhead. The system can even warn drivers of animals on the road.

Storm water spills right into a nearby body of water. What if we could route that to a filtration system and send it for reuse? We can put power cables on the shoulder instead of in the air. We can grind up recyclables to use.

Brusaw started a website, and Treehugger.com picked it up. He received an e-mail from Booz Allen Hamilton – one of the biggest consulting firms in the nation. They now have four sample panels in their lab.

Brusaw has received a research grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation and has built a 12-foot-by-12-foot prototype. He said panels could be used in playgrounds and parking lots. See more at solarroadways.com.

Up next was another live presentation, “David Garibaldi: Paints with Passion and Purpose.” Garabaldi throws paint around and sweats profusely. He started about six and a half years ago. It was graffiti, and it was illegal. During his junior year of high school, he was introduced to animation. By senior year he wasn’t able to graduate on time. He was creating art out of the environments he was in.
Garabaldi called his show “Rhythm and Hue.” He created pop icon paintings on blank black canvas. Santana popped up behind him at halftime at a Golden State Warriors game.

In March 2005, he asked if his art could do more than entertain. Can it benefit and inspire others? He has been able to help raise $500,000 for charities and organizations through spending $200 and painting on stage. He changed why he was doing it.

Each of us has passion and purpose. We can be creative, charitable, profitable and grow algae. He said we all need to keep going to put bigger purpose behind our passion.

Finally, a video titled “Derek Sivers: How to start a movement,” was shown. The video made its point showing a group of young adults in action. A leader needs the guts to stand out and show everyone else how to follow. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. Then comes a second follower. New followers emulate the other followers, not the leader. As more people join in, it’s less risky to join in. Eventually, all who don’t join in would be subject to ridicule.

Nurture your first few followers, he advised. Leadership is over-glorified. It was really the first follower who transformed the first nut into a leader. Have the courage to follow, and show others how to follow. TED is the perfect place to do that.

All in all, this was an extremely varied, educational and entertaining multimedia extravaganza. It was also announced that there are plans for another event in November, so stay tuned.

More information about TED can be found at ted.com, and more about TEDx Sacramento can be found at tedxsacramento.com.

Parkour traces Sacramento

2009-08-20T06:44:13Z

I walked onto the quad of Bella Vista High School on a Sunday afternoon to a sight of 20 or so men climbing walls, running like cheetahs on all fours and swinging from trees.

This was the Sacramento regional parkour practice, led by a SFparkour.com representative, Victor Lo Forte. He has been a practitioner of parkour, or traceur, French for tracer, for three and a half years and has led the Sacramento group for about two years.

"From what I understand, it's basically the discipline of training one's mind and body to prepare oneself to overcome obstacles in an environment," Lo Forte said.

Parkour is said to be rooted in early 20th century French military practices. Georges Hébert, a World War I naval officer, developed a notion of physicality that embraced use of the body and its environment for developing strength useful to society.

These principles were the foundation for his "Natural Method," which incorporated the fusion of the mental and physical to overcome obstacles via climbing, running and jumping (to name a few). His method contributed to the development of the French parcours du combattant, or military obstacle course.

As a young teen, David Belle, considered the father of parkour, picked up Natural Method ethics along with his gymnastic and martial arts training in France.

Many of the young men at the Sacramento parkour practice admire Belle and have adopted the Natural Method as part of their training.

"Parkour is training your flight response," said Sacramento State student Jake Anderson.

Lo Forte commented on one of the many purposes of parkour, to "be strong to protect your family and friends."

"We’re not trying to hurt anybody, we’re training to be strong, and that really helps the community," he said.

Though not a spectator sport, it is difficult to explain what exactly traceurs are doing to people who gather round their concrete playground.

"I usually point them to YouTube and Casino Royale," Anderson said. "I tell them parkour is the study of the most efficient way to get from point A to point B."

This efficiency calls for climbing walls, not walking around them.

"If you're in a dead-end alley, you look back and forth and don’t look up," Anderson said. "People don’t look up, they don’t look at their environments anymore."

He described parkour as a way to think of our built environment with a critical lens. "We create our environments to be quick and easy for what we’re raised as," Anderson said. "Parkour shows us that there are actually easier ways than we’re raised, things people don’t think of."

The Sacramento traceurs have tried practicing in the Downtown Sacramento area, but have found security and business owners to be hostile to the activity. "If they tell us to leave then we leave," Lo Forte said.

"I’d say ground-rules for anywhere are be respectful of the environment, don’t wreck things, don’t leave litter behind, clean up after yourselves," he said. "There is a big thing in parkour community called the leave no trace campaign. We don’t want it to look like we’ve been there. We don’t want to get kicked out of places."

Parkour training also focuses on overall health and well-being. "It might save their lives," Lo Forte said. "You never know if they might get addicted to drugs or end up in jail."

"I wanted to get in shape," said Robert King, a telecommunications technician for Sacramento County. "Since I started in January, I lost 40 pounds."

"A lot of people are sitting home and they don’t get any sensory input; they don't smell the dirt on their hands and the sun on their face," Lo Forte said.

This was the case for 15-year-old Jonah Saysourivong. "Before this I was a big-time gamer and would play Call of Duty for 42 hours straight," he said. "I definitely know other kids my age are drinking alcohol and smoking, and that’s one thing I’d never do."

The health benefits and the body's adaptation to unique movements is of great interest to Anderson as a kinesiology student. "They should talk about it in anatomy classes and in physical therapy classes. I think that doctors should know it, gymnasts, athletes," he said. He hopes to introduce parkour in his dance and martial arts classes at Sacramento State.

Lo Forte also aspires to introduce parkour skills to the police force. "These things will be helpful for them and hopefully they will realize that and hire some of us to train them in the future," he said.

In the middle of practice, a group of young men started tumbling and performing a series of flips in the air and over others lying on the ground. The freedom of movement in a creative way like this is called free-running, often associated with parkour.

"Parkour is strictly what's the most efficient way from one point to another; free-running is adding flair and flips," Anderson said.

Though there were not any females present at the practice, they are encouraged to participate as traceuse, French for female tracers.

Robert King encouraged me to try a technique to get over a 7-foot wall during practice, but I settled for swinging and balancing on rails on my own time. I found that I was using my environment rather than living around it. Though we all live in our environments, traceurs live their environments.

For more information, click the following link:

Practice at Bella Vista High School, meeting Sundays and Wednesdays at 4 p.m.

Sacramento Prepares for Urban Ag Day

2009-06-15T06:12:14Z

Backyard chickens. Frontyard gardens. Crop swaps. Fruit gleaning. The Good Food Movement, or movement towards a sustainable food and food production, is growing in Sacramento. And residents are seizing on the City's soils and politics to make Sacramento a living laboratory for a new wave of urban agriculture.

"Urban agriculture is providing the forum for a larger social discussion," said Jennifer Lee of EAT Sacramento in an email. "Sacramentans increasingly understand that how we eat and how we grow has profound implications for our health, our communities and our environment."

On July 11th, these efforts will culminate in Urban Ag Day. Participants will have an opportunity to ride their bike around town and visit examples of Sacramento's urban agriculture through the "What's Growing On?" bike tour, watch films like FRESH, and participate in workshops on composting and gardening. These tour stops and events will take place largely in Midtown and Oak Park, some of the greatest hotspots of Sacramento's Urban Ag movement.

Later that evening, at the Common Table celebration, participants will have an opportunity to eat a multi-course local and organic meal in the Fremont Community Garden, and listen to movement speakers, including Brahm Ahmadi of the People's Grocery. According to event organizers, tickets are limited and selling quickly. Proceeds from the dinner will benefit the Sacramento Hunger Coalition and Sacramento Area Community Garden Coalition.

The event is more than just a fundraiser. According to a Slow Food Sacramento press release, "the goal is to raise awareness about local urban gardening and food programs, as well as to advocate for improved city, county and state food policies that enable more locally grown foods in urban locations." These goals touch on those recently outlined by

Valley Vision

in the paper "Food Access in the Sacramento Region," and speak to the shake-up taking place in the food system.

Urban Ag Day also demonstrates how a diverse coalition of organizations is contributing to the Good Food Movement. Slow Food Sacramento, the Sacramento Hunger Coalition, the Sacramento Area Community Garden Coalition, Pesticide Watch Education Fund, the Health Education Council are all participating in the event.

Tickets to the day's activities can be purchased through Slow Food Sacramento.

George Jackson is an intern with Pesticide-Free Sacramento