Permaculture Voices 2014 Conference - March 13-16, 2014 - Temecula, CA

Hi - I'm a new member of Permies here, been listening to Paul's podcasts daily and planning on creating a permie homestead as soon as I get my job back online. I would love to attend the conference but since not currently employed - money is beyond tight. Is there any need for a volunteer or some other way I could work my way in? It sounds like an amazing gathering. Or if someone ha an extra ticket - maybe we could work something out?
Thanks!

I have a ticket that I will not be able to use. I'm open to win/win solution, obtaining a yield for both of us. PM me with your skills that might be tradable, long distance, I'm in Seattle... web or logo design by chance? I'm open to your ideas if you have a long distance trade.

This is for anyone... I'd rather see a deserving person go than waste the ticket, BUT you'll feel better too if you have something other than money to trade for part of it.

Win/win folks or ideas out there?

Diego Footer wrote:There was originally going to be a farm dinner on Thursday night but it fell through in the later stages of planning on the farm end. They ran into some issues that were beyond their control. So we added a talk during that time instead.

For meals there are restaurants on site or bring your own.

Ah! I'm glad I read this Diego! In looking at the scrolling calendar at the top of the permaculturevoices.com schedule page, it looked like there was nothing Thursday night after Salatin's keynote. Then I recalled your comment here and paged down to see there is a permaculture business discussion from 7-9 Thursday night.

Where is the post-PV-praise-page? I think one was mentioned.
Well until I find it, "hats off to you Diego!"
The conference was very good. I'm so glad I bought an early bird ticket!!!

For as good as the speakers were, the other participants were just as awesome!!!
And some of the participants were speakers too- thank you!! Keep growing, some of you will be the keynotes one day!

I'm pleasantly EXHAUSTED! Can't wait to be home.
Peace

Here is one CE.

https://permies.com/t/33941/artisans/permaculture-voices-summaries-amp-thoughts

Or you could start your own.

Amazing event, amazing people, very much worth the money and time. You put on a great event Diego!

Wow, Adam,
I had read this after I bought my ticket, but after the conference I read it again and can only say:
You nailed it brother!

Adam Klaus wrote:I wanted to jump in and speak to those questioning the 'value' of a conference like this-

Five years ago, two years into my personal farm adventure, I decided on a whim to travel from Colorado to St Louis for the Acres USA Conference. I had just purchased my first pair of dairy cows, had two small kids and a very pregnant wife, and really spent about the last of my farm savings to attend the conference. It wasnt cheap. I took the train with my two year old, paid for the expensive hotel, and the conference entry. Over $1000 in total, plus food and incidentals. Let me tell you, that investment has been repaid many, many times over in the last five years.

The opportunity to consult, often times one-on-one, with leaders in the fields of pasture management (Joel Salatin), soil fertility (Neal Kinsey), holistic cattle care (Paul Dettloff), biodynamics (Hugh Courtney), and more, was priceless. If permaculture is a passing curiousity to you, then sure, listen to some podcasts and stoke your fire. But if this is something you are serious about, something that you maybe intend to make a life from, the amount of knowledge available at these types of conferences is unmeasurable. Getting to talk directly with the master of the art allows you to go much deeper than listening to a prerecorded discussion. My experience was that these long time experts were honored to be able to help me make my farm dreams a reality. They truly enjoyed the opportunity to draw upon their decades of wisdom to give good advice to a rookie. Every day that passes on my farm, the value of their teachings increases in my mind. You just cant put a pricetag on this stuff.

Personally, I have not been to a big conference again since that formative experience five years ago. But this is special, way above the norm in term of the panel of experts Diego has assembled. I am really excited about participating a Permaculture Voices, and cant wait to learn many many things I never knew existed. For your future in permaculture, make it a reality to go. Money comes and goes, and seems like a lot at the time, but knowledge is forever.

I got so much out of this conference.

Tons of information. The speakers and topics were extraordinary. When I arrived I already had the passion, now I feel as if I have direction.

Plus -- I got a chance to meet this guy... He looks familiar.



A.J.

What a smile on Paul's face

Here are some pictures I took.

Here is me and Mark Shepard. We visited briefly twice. Adrien still pesters me to do a podcast with him and I really want to. I just feel like I need to read his book first! He mentioned me in one of his talks - although I didn't fully understand what he was saying.

Here I am with Allan Savory. He seemed so tiny and old and frail and quiet .... and then it was his turn on the stage and this guy became a powerful giant. His words were not just clear and eloquent, but his points were extremely profound! What a magnificent speaker!

Geoff Lawton gave at least two keynote presentations - including the wrap up at the end of the event. He and Nadia came over to our permies house for dinner one night. He also came out to our earthworks site and said a few words. In person this guy is a real peach. He's in that awkward position of being Bill's "chosen one" and trying to be the ultimate diplomat between a big bunch of nutty people. And he's pulling it off extremely well.

Michael Pollan had no idea who I was. I was just some giant doofus that wanted a picture. I tried to visit with him a little, but it was clear that he had already been a bit taxed for the day. He was a good sport. I wish we had more time so I could infect his brain with my stuff more.

I think Willie Smits stole the show. I've always had Sepp Holzer at the top of my eco scale, but now I kinda wonder if maybe it should be Willie Smits instead. Willie Smits is doing permaculture on a seriously large scale. Setting up permaculture systems so that thousands of people have jobs. Note that these people in no way work for Willie, they all work for themselves. He has carefully measured so many aspects of his projects. Wow.

I spent lots of time visiting with Willie. I first spotted him at my rmh presentation. He said he already knew about my stuff! And he REALLY liked my keynote! Willie is now talking about coming to visit me in Montana this summer. I am so glad to have met Willie. Definitely the highest point of the whole trip.

Chad Sentman sent me this pic of Toby Hemenway, me, Willie Smits and Diego Footer

This picture was taken when I was getting my standing ovation for my keynote.

Here is another picture that Diego sent me - this time this is me while I am giving my keynote

Diego sent me these pictures that the event photographer took while I was sitting in the comfy chairs in the foyer.

paul wheaton wrote:I think Willie Smits stole the show. I've always had Sepp Holzer at the top of my eco scale, but now I kinda wonder if maybe it should be Willie Smits instead. Willie Smits is doing permaculture on a seriously large scale. Setting up permaculture systems so that thousands of people have jobs. Note that these people in no way work for Willie, they all work for themselves. He has carefully measured so many aspects of his projects. Wow.

I think Willie Smits is doing permaculture on a larger scale than anybody else. He is not making his site more sustainable, but rather making an entire region of villages more sustainable. He has basically restored the environment in an area where past greed/ignorance had done much harm. His example has set the stage for what is possible on a large scale - capable of restoring large regions of a fragile earth.

I love that Willie Smits *arrived at* permaculture INDEPENDENTLY because he was trying to get something else accomplished- saving the orangutan. He saw that there was this huge thing to be done, and instead of going the traditional route, he figured out a way to re-engineer an entire bioregion, an ENTIRE SOCIETY, to remove the issues that led to orangutans being killed.

So bold.

The videos of all the presentations are starting to come out. When it is all done, there will be 80 hours of talks, plus five hours of behind-the-scenes-stuff, plus five hours of Geoff Lawton teaching at a PDC immediately after the conference.

It looks like most of the keynotes are up now.

I get the impression that how this is set up is that rather than having everybody wait until ALL of the videos are ready, people can watch a bunch now and they will get the rest as the become available.


To get all the videos in full,



CLICK HERE




Here is a clip from the keynote I gave:




Here's Toby Hemenway:




Allan Savory:




Geoff Lawton:




Joel Salatin:




Jack Spirko:




To get all the videos in full,



CLICK HERE

Many of you know that I led the film team at the conference and that I'm also doing the editing for the videos, either from other posts on the forums or from Diego's podcast.

For those of you who've bought the videos, how are they so far? Worth the investment? I'd appreciate some honest feedback, and I suppose Diego could use some testimonials.

I have watched Allan Savory's and Mark Shepard's presentations and sampled some of the other presentations so far and the quality is excellent. The sound is good and the image is good too. The only really minor point is that it was sometimes hard to read Mark's slides because of the contrast. Totally worth the price, really information dense.

Chad Sentman wrote:Many of you know that I led the film team at the conference and that I'm also doing the editing for the videos, either from other posts on the forums or from Diego's podcast.

For those of you who've bought the videos, how are they so far? Worth the investment? I'd appreciate some honest feedback, and I suppose Diego could use some testimonials.

I've only watched Smits' presentation so far. I wish you had gotten a hand on the powerpoint slideshow and interspersed some of the slides in there.

Sam Boisseau wrote: I've only watched Smits' presentation so far. I wish you had gotten a hand on the powerpoint slideshow and interspersed some of the slides in there.

I hear you.
Tried (trying).
Many are reluctant to give slides for various reasons including the use of copyrighted images.

Chad Sentman wrote:Many of you know that I led the film team at the conference and that I'm also doing the editing for the videos, either from other posts on the forums or from Diego's podcast.

For those of you who've bought the videos, how are they so far? Worth the investment? I'd appreciate some honest feedback, and I suppose Diego could use some testimonials.

I've only watched the introductory videos & plan on buying the whole package .. as soon as my wife lets me .. so 1st thank you all for doing this .. it's a dream come true !! as far as suggestions ... for the future maybe ? Jack Spirko wearing a hat - can't see his eyes ... was their only one camera facing center ? were 2 cameras not available ? .. I only say this so that in the future more people will feel more like watching what these geniuses have to say .. I'm all on board .. this is not a complaint .. i have friends who do this documentary /video stuff so am familiar with the options ... & yes, how much work it is !! you all are my heroes !!

Enrique Garcia wrote:
I've only watched the introductory videos & plan on buying the whole package .. as soon as my wife lets me .. so 1st thank you all for doing this .. it's a dream come true !! as far as suggestions ... for the future maybe ? Jack Spirko wearing a hat - can't see his eyes ... was their only one camera facing center ? were 2 cameras not available ? .. I only say this so that in the future more people will feel more like watching what these geniuses have to say .. I'm all on board .. this is not a complaint .. i have friends who do this documentary /video stuff so am familiar with the options ... & yes, how much work it is !! you all are my heroes !!

Just skimmed through the Spirko video and there was another angle but that main camera is probably the best one.


Watched the Peter Ash video and it was a beautiful story. He seems like a great guy.

Once again I had to use my imagination when he showed before/after pictures... but if some of those videos ever get released more broadly it might be worth hounding some of the presenters to get their photos. Would increase the wow factor for the more general permies.

Otherwise I'm really happy to have access to all that content! Also very happy to support Diego and his team as I'm sure this support will contribute to the spread of permaculture ideas.

Thats me in the background abusing my responsibilities as volunteer A/V guy, sticking out my tongue and photobombing Geoff and Paul!! I was trying to give Paul Rabbit ears but im not tall enough I guess.

Is it just me or is Paul Wheaton a giant ? Like not just intellectually but literally ? Or is he just taking pix next to lil people ? Cuz he's almost twice the size of some of these guys .. I'm not bagging .. I'm 6'0" 360 lbs... but i don't usually dwarf people so much !!

Paul Wheaton ... a Giant among men

Diego Footer wrote:

Sam Boisseau wrote: I've only watched Smits' presentation so far. I wish you had gotten a hand on the powerpoint slideshow and interspersed some of the slides in there.

I hear you.
Tried (trying).
Many are reluctant to give slides for various reasons including the use of copyrighted images.

Ingham's presentations do have the slides. Thumbs up for that!

Enrique,
Paul often says in his podcasts how he is a giant. I think he describes himself as 6/6" and big even at that height. I may be a few statistics off, but he is big. You are not having a visual hallucination.
John S
PDX OR

Oh yeah, he's a big guy. 6'6" seems right. My husband is 6'4" and Paul is notably taller (but not as freakishly tall as my skinny 6'8" ex-roomate).

Looked up Willie Smits, the only guy i had no clue about. Hugely impressed how he manages to get it right for people planet and profit, as he puts it himself. The latter not corrupting but used as it should be to keep a good thing going. Know videos tend to oversimplify the kind of difficulty and complexity, which are obvious in creating a closed system, but still seems incredible.

paul wheaton wrote:Here are some pictures I took.

Here is me and Mark Shepard. We visited briefly twice. Adrien still pesters me to do a podcast with him and I really want to. I just feel like I need to read his book first! He mentioned me in one of his talks - although I didn't fully understand what he was saying.

You are right, Paul, you should read his book. It is the only polite thing to do!!! You could do it as a homebase group effort and podcast the discussion?

Then PLEASE! (I'm begging here) do that podcast interview. Might take up 4 podcasts.

Richard

I just wanted to respond to the idea that we all need to work harder to afford these kind of admission fees. For harmony's sake I will simply offer an alternative vision. If we posit that permaculture , or at least the information presented at these conferences, is to some degree a set of tangible understandings then the availability of this information should become more readily available as more individuals become involved. In other words if only a few series of expert 'know' or are the only folks 'capable' of delivering the information then the price remains high since it is scarce. Yet when information is being presented widely, and when those being taught the information are practicing the principles being taught, then the pool of experts and potential teachers should be going up, and therefore the cost of seminars should be going down because more people are becoming capable of teaching it

I am not here to say something is broken with the prices seemingly getting higher for permaculture related seminars and PCD's. all I am saying that in theory prices should go down as the level of successful dissemination of information over an increasingly growing population of students, the price should go down.

Also several posts here said we need to operate within the capitalist system in order to perpetuate permaculture and the like. Obviously this is true to a limited degree. But many of us who see working outside of the monied system with alternative currencies, time banks , share and gift economies, and the open source movement suggest that information gathering and the work involved in these issues can be accomplished outside the conventional economic system to a very large degree.

Hope this is not seen as argumentative, I did my best to simply explain another vision as opposed to criticizing some of those presented by others

I'm certainly hopeful that the basics of permaculture will become common knowledge. It's certainly true that thousands of hours of self education are available for free on the internet.

Still, the Permaculture Voices conference was an awesome experience, introduced me to true experts and artisans I might not otherwise have encountered (being a person with a high input full time job) and was worth every penny and the time away from work. Just the physical experience of being together with so many like minded individuals was gratifying. I could see the speakers being spiritually nourished by some time "preaching to the choir." It's good to gather together.

Can permies gather together for less money? Yes, and they do. However, for me it was worth it to travel down to California and attend this excellent, excellent dense and data filled conference. You can read my notes in the "Permaculture Artisans" section of the forums and elsewhere.

The big name speakers don't show up unless they are paid money. Airlines won't fly speakers in unless people pay money for tickets. The conference facility won't allow the conference to happen there unless they are paid money.

So if you want to have an event with "the bigs" in a conference center, it is gonna cost.

And, as Julia pointed out, there are hundreds of regional events with great info that are free or damn cheap.

But if you want to do an event with the bigs that is free or damn cheap, then it sounds like it is up to you to create that event.

I do want to be clear on my point. My point is about my perception for the necessity for groups of individuals, taking PDC's or otherwise involving them selves in permaculture and local resilience, to organize themselves in a manner which purposefully promotes the passing down of what they have learned nto the practice of teaching others. In other words we need a grassroots, probably community based, pdissemination of the information into the broader community. It does eventually bring up the questions of certification by the permacultural certifying agencies, but this is not really the point. Instead, the attitude of the non expert class and how they approach the dissemination of the information to the public is much more my focus. Part of what I am suggesting is we need some purposeful cooperation with groups of well educated and motivated permies willing to work together in trying to bring the information to the permies, and most likely done so in their own communities. I don't see a lot happening in that arena. I don't even see regional or international discussion forums or collaborative on line discussions approaching these issues. I know it sounds like complaining, but I have been working on projects which lend themselves to such a collaboration and I see more as a positive desire for something as opposed to simply complaining that it does not now exist

And again to rehash, I believe this frame is a very different from the market frame which basically states the dissemination of information will be dictated by how many consumers can pay to learn the information

I do think some of the podcasters have done a terrific job, and they are probably the best examples of what i am talking about. Offering information to the community, and then hopefully inviting them to be part of a broader effort of it's dissemination

So I just saw your post Paul, and hopefully my last post makes it clear that I am not complaining about with big events with big names and big prices. I instead do have concerns about kind of second tier experts ability to coordinate and work within their communities,

Paul be preachin' !!

We did the same with Occupy movement .. people would always come out of the woodwork to tell us what we should be doing ... & we'd tell them "well, get to work on that & let us know how it turns out " .. if they were successful then we'd join them .. no one ever did of course

Part of what I am suggesting is we need some purposeful cooperation with groups of well educated and motivated permies willing to work together in trying to bring the information to the permies, and most likely done so in their own communities. I don't see a lot happening in that arena. I don't even see regional or international discussion forums or collaborative on line discussions approaching these issues.

So, the last time I checked, permies.com reaches over a million people each month. With something like 8 million pageviews. So when you say "I don't see a lot happening" I think you must be looking in a place that is different from where I am looking. And frankly I find your words offensive. You make it sound like after years and years of working long hours that I've done nothing.

If permies.com is not the exact flavor of whatever it is that you seek, then I think you need to be the builder of whatever it is that you seek.

I think Diego made an excellent thing with the voices conference. I think my work and Jack Spirko's work are doing a lot also.

I would like to ask that rather than throwing us all under the bus as "I don't see a lot happening" or trying to shame the readers of this thread into doing your bidding, I would like to ask that you respect the work that has been done and then go out and do the thing that will ADD to what has been done.