Too Much Red Wine Results in Living Building Registration

Was I ever inspired at the  Living Building unConferenceon day two!  Jason McClennan blew our minds with a presentation filled with four-letter words … “life, love and, yes, f***”.  His morning keynote presentation was like a roller-coaster of emotions in which he went through current LBC-certified projects and then right into candid and heart-warming stories from his childhood that shaped his future.  Jason urged all of the participants to fall in love with life again.  The message: we will fight for humanity if we can learn to love it, and ourselves, again.  We will fight to the death for our children, our business, or even our portfolio … but not for our existence?!   There were tears and fist pumps … both came from our table on multiple occasions.

Josh Fisher from the Living Future Institute sat beside me during breakfast.  What an awesome cat.  We chatted about how the program works and he debunked some of the things I had misconceived about the LB certification.  While doing so he planted a big “why not your project?” in my head and was successful in subliminally forcing me to consider the program.

The inspiration from the morning must have had some serious staying power.  After a tour of the Rock and Roll Museum with Christy and Shafraaz, (complete with a lengthy stop in the lobby lounge) we decided to complete the downtown tour and took the 90-second monorail trip back to our hotel.  In that 90 seconds Christy and I decided that the Mosaic Centre needed to have Living Building Petal certification.  Not sure how it happened, but before I knew it I was interviewing Shafraaz in the lobby of the monorail station while Christy videotaped.