It’s a strange feeling being completely floored before 10 a.m. on a Saturday. While many people were rising to the start of a relaxing weekend, DTE had the pleasure of participating in the annual Bioneers conference at Spokane Falls Community College – a carnival of knowledge and open minded thought processes centered around, “visionary innovators working to restore planet and people.” Arriving regrettably behind schedule we walked into the Music and Performing Arts building on the SFCC campus about 10 minutes into biologist Janine Benyus’s satellite beamed speech on biomimicry titled, “Nature’s 100 Best”. At the conclusion of her speech on biomimicry it was evident that we had just had our socks blown off by the fact that a 5 minute break outside was necessary just to try and wrap our minds around what we’d just heard. Bioneers is a national conference held annually in San Rafael, California that promotes practical environmental solutions and innovative social strategies for restoring the Earth and communities. In its 19th year, Bioneers reaches not only those participating in California but those at 18 Beaming Bioneers satellite communities across the nation. Spokane being one of them for the second consecutive year – a full 3 days of conferences and workshops for environmental solutions. Bioneers isn’t an event. It’s not a movement, and the ideals of conferences and workshops don’t accurately portray the energy and emotions that percolate the air at Bioneers. Bioneers is a heartbeat, a consciousness – a lifeline of an understanding for something more dynamic and more fragile than ever could be imagined. It’s an awareness of where we want to be of how we want to get there and of what it takes to make it happen. It’s also borderline too real, too scary and too depressing to enjoy – but you do despite the fear. Bioneers is a glimpse of a utopia – a place and a time that we hold out hope for in our lifetimes. But in case that reality develops slowly, Bioneers helps put to rest the voices of our yet to be born children and grandchildren who haunt our thoughts with disbelief of what we have done to the planet they will inhabit, with overwhelming confidence that there is a chance. Propelled by solution-driven ideologies and fostered by caring individuals – the energy of Bioneers is many things not easily defined. But simply stated, Bioneers is a force – and even on a Saturday morning that might have come too early – Bioneers is capable of stripping you of all you think you know and leaving you naked and vulnerable to a heightened reality – and that is powerful, too powerful to ignore. For your Tuesday Video pleasure, please enjoy a presentation by Janine Benyus from 2005’s TED conference:

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