2009 LOHAS Forum

Yesterday morning, I really enjoyed hearing Ray Anderson, who taught us how mimicking nature creates sustainable business.  Next was Rob Katz, CEO Vail Resorts (owner of Heavenly on the south shore of Tahoe, among many others) discussed several of the cost saving, environmentally beneficial programs that his company’s resorts implemented.  The morning ended with Spencer Sherman, CEO of Abacus Wealth Management.  Spencer ran us through one of Byron Katie’s exercises designed to help us overcome our main fears about our businesses or our financials lives.  Spencer believes that 2009 is the time of reinvigoration, which sounds exciting to me.

The afternoon session Leveraging the Power of Social Networks was overflowing!  The panel got us excited about the power of social media to quickly and effectively reach our target audience and motivate people to action.  McCarthur from Free Range Studios showed a YouTube teen rebuttal to her company’s well known Story of Stuff.  It was inspirational & astounding to see this public teen’s response.

Today has been spent in deep conversations with friends, after Hunter Lovins powerful presentation this morning.  I also got to see Hunter skiing on a Wii in the Vail Resorts exhibition room, which was something!  While she beat Ted Ning’s score, she’s apparently not the most adept Wii player in the LOHAS community!  Whomever beats Ted the worst wins free tickets to LOHAS next year.  Now I know to train for next year.