What is blockchain? Is it a key driver for rapid, scaled change? Why? What can we learn from luminaries in the space about how to better structure and engage regenerative community, culture, economy and governance? Where is it going?

Presented By: Samantha Sweetwater

·      A local indigenous perspective on these fires

·      Creating a coalition to galvanize community voice and place equity at the center of recovery

·      Launching a decentralized and community-powered emergency response system

·      Creating a grassroots justice and resilience fund to raise and distribute funds

·      Mobilizing across government, business and community for watershed protection

·      Addressing the mental health challenges that come with crisis

·      Re-landscaping the rebuild with a permaculture lens and community-powered approach

Speakers include:

·      Ana Lugo, co-founder of Soco Rises and Director of Communications for Community Action Partnership

·      Alegria De La Cruz – Chief Deputy Counsel for Sonoma County

·      Edward Willie – Pomo tribe, permaculturist and fire ecologist

·      Chris Grabill – Board of Directors at Sonoma County Conservation Action and Santa Rosa Board of Public Utilities

·      Kerry Fugett – Manager of Leadership Institute and Resilient Hubs Program at Daily Acts and member of the Sonoma county Climate Action Advisory Committee

·      Trathen Heckman – Executive Director at Daily Acts and Board member of Transition U.S. and California Water Efficiency Partnership

Join us for an interactive discussion and demonstration of multiple regenerative technologies. We will see how alcohol distilled from waste or low cost local sources, can burn clean and provide locally produced and consumed affordable clean fuels. We will learn about how to harvest, store and efficiently transform thermal energy into electricity and locomotive power through new high efficiency turbines, motors and generators. The team will share their experience taking Eco-resorts 100% off-grid as well as what can be done to improve your community, country or corporation’s energy, water, waste food and shelter systems.

Presented By: Rolland Gregg

New energy technologies which are pushing the boundaries of physics, chemistry, biology, electrical and mechanical engineering will transform the way that we live so much that the next 20 years will make the industrial revolution pale in comparison. This panel will explore several innovative technologies from thermal energy production, quantum power cells, bio-refineries, off grid eco-resorts power systems, zero waste systems and waste to energy production, closed loop technology-run aquaponics systems, and much more!

This robust panel is facilitated by SymbioNet and Delphi Village’s Chief Technology Officer, Rolland Gregg, who is also the founder of Imagin.com, a clean technology incubator in Seattle, WA.

Presented By: Chris Patton, David Blume, Kevin Fretz, & Rolland Gregg

Intro to permaculture course taught by Bay Area urban gardener and urban ecologist, seedsman and seed librarian, community gardener and community organizer Christopher Shein. He brings 17 years of teaching a PDC at Merritt College, many more years of teaching in community gardens and public schools, and knows he doesn’t know everything about permaculture or teaching or …
Christopher brings the most diverse students together (race, class, gender, etc…) to build the most plant and species diverse public gardens in the commons in urban SF East Bay. www.wildheartgardens.com, www.merrittlandhort.com

Presented By: Christopher Shein

“How I became a contractor to save the world, the lessons I learned from all my mistakes, and how we are still growing and not giving up.”

Marco Barrantes of La Loma Development Company will share stories from the trenches, instructions on ways to start a design-build company as a successful Permaculture contractor, and photos of La Loma’s diverse projects in Los Angeles. Topics will also include his experiences with urbanite, natural pools, public works, and school campus greening.

Learn how to become a contractor (or work with a contractor) to implement Permaculture design, and influence the trillion dollar landscape construction industry.

Presented By: Marco Barrantes

The Internet has radically transformed our world. We are now more connected and exposed to more information than we’ve ever been before. This reality has rendered many of the world’s traditional institutions of power ripe for disruption. The Internet itself, however, is built upon and accessed through centralized infrastructure susceptible to government and institutional oversight and manipulation. In order to maximally leverage the disruptive and regenerative potential that technology affords us, decentralized technologies and infrastructure must be built and properly implemented.

Presented By: Rye N Flint

Trained 1:1 by world renowned soil expert Dr. Elaine Ingham to convey complex ideas to a K-12 audience, Matt Powers is an educator that can make soil understandable. Dive deep with Matt and learn about the world beneath your feet in and out of the garden sourcing Dr. Elaine’s work, Radical Mycologist Peter McCoy’s work, and dozens of experts from around the world as well as his own experience growing in 140F soils in Central Valley California. Join Matt for a fun, inspiring, and informative workshop on how to build soils, how to remediate soils, how to feed soil life, and how it all works micro to macro, and then learn how to apply the information to your own site!

Presented By: Matt Powers

Our human form is experiencing very similar imbalances as the earth itself. If we can learn to listen to the elemental symptoms of our bodies, perhaps we can better support the environment around us.
Why reinvent the elemental health wheel, when so many amazing cultures have already figured it out? Let’s back up and look at how we are all brilliantly designed maps, unique in nature, and be willing to listen to ourselves and act accordingly for the sake of balance and shared space.

Presented By: DeAnna Batdorff

In this session, we’ll collectively explore the possibility of how we can redesign the economy to create regenerative outcomes of security, prosperity and a stable climate rather than outcomes of exploitation and inequity. By gaining an understanding of the design constraints of the business as usual economy we will chart a pathway of transformation, using permaculture design principles, methods and ethics, to an economy that works or the benefit of all life. Through small exercises, group discussion and case studies we will explore how to design enterprises and organizations that provide needed goods and services in ways that enhance and restore environmental and social prosperity.

Presented By: Erin Axelrod

In this workshop, Forrest Hurd and Douglas Reil will explore the history of compassion programs, the impacts of legalization, the work with the Bureau of Cannabis Control and legislators to address the needs of vulnerable communities, and possible future models for approaches to bring effective cannabis therapies to all.

Forrest Hurd and Douglas Reil, founding members of the California Compassion Coalition, have been on the front lines working to restore compassionate use and establish compliant pathways for programs serving the most vulnerable communities in California. In this workshop, they will explore the history of compassion programs, the impacts of legalization, the work with the Bureau of Cannabis Control and legislators to address the needs of vulnerable communities, and possible future models for approaches to bring effective cannabis therapies to all.

Key areas we will cover include:

• The Prop 215 era and the foundations of compassionate use
• Prop 64 and the impact of legalization on compassion programs
• Updates on the fight to establish a compliant pathway to serve vulnerable communities
• Future visions for cannabis healthcare that is holistic, community-oriented, and patient-focused

Presented By: Douglas Reil

We will explore current ecovillages and their ownership models. Look at crafting ownership foundations where vested interested is insured affordability a value. This is a movement away from single ownership models and an exploration into cooperative ownerships, land trusts, and other forms of ownership, stewardship and other definitions.

Presented By: Forest Berg

Join Amy Seidman, founder of BFlow to learn about blockchain, and the potential for this technology to level the playing field.

Discover how peer to peer to scale can be used to disrupt large scale agriculture and other similar models, and empower small producers to decentralize sustainable business and investment.

Combining the power of technology and collective intelligence to help solve the world’s greatest challenges. BFlow is a blockchain solution being developed by Noble Profit to make it easier to report sustainability metrics. Our goal is to establish proof of reputation using data validated by trusted third parties.

BFlow technology is being designed to enable efficiency that drives sustainability.

Corporations are being called to answer to customers, employees, and investors. And metrics are influencing investments, fund choices, and corporate success.

We believe using blockchain technology can enable us to create the transparency and systems necessary to enable validating sustainability claims by trusted third parties. We are inviting organizations and citizens to cast their votes and validation of claims by entities claiming to be sustainable, and hope this workshop will also help align Convergence participants with this vision and invitation.

We are designing our system to make it easy to report UN Sustainable Development Goals, facilitate auditing by third parties, as well as empower NGOs to report environmental issues and human exploitation.

Our vision is to enable small producers, corporations and investment institutions to align around values and be able leverage blockchain smart contract features for tracking, reporting and validating claims.

If we can empower small scale producers of products and services, enable transparency and a democratic voice for all stakeholders, we can create a living breathing ecosystem of change.

Presented By: Amy Seidman

Rusty Roy and Bucky Fuller are the two inventing fathers of Bioceramic Geodesic Architecture. Geoship is fusing Rusty’s sciences of “Whole Person Healing” and “Chemically Bonded Bioceramics” with Bucky’s “Synergetic Math”. Resulting in a new paradigm of affordable sustainable homes that optimize the light, water, and magnetic environment. Thereby optimizing human potential through the restoration of centripetal charge forces (metaphysical gravity).

Presented By: Morgan Bierschenk

Collaboration is happening! Explore new collaborative potential within our regenerative movement. GENNA Alliance is a growing platform of individuals and organizations for a thriving communities network in North America. Five organizations have partnered to reimagined the Commons for practical application – shared agreements, resources, projects, and technology. Learn how you can engage, explore similar initiatives around the world, and network with fellow participants during this interactive session.

GENNA Alliance initial partners: Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC), VillageLab, NuMundo, NextGENNA

Presented By: Cynthia Tina

The Dynamic Farm Organization workshop is a presentation of the Passiflora Model, an organizational framework for creating fair share collaborative enterprise. The model blends Dynamic Self Governance (sociocracy) along with Dynamic Equity (Slicing Pie) into an LLC corporate structure specifically built for regenerative community farms. This is CSA 2.0, a manner by which community investment of all types can be legally appropriated to a collectively stewarded Farm business. The truly dynamic nature of this model allow for a tremendous amount of flexibility as it applies itself to various iterations and contexts.

Presented By: Erik Hjermstad Hjermstad

This could be two workshops even:
1) F.O.G. – how to Finance, Own and Govern ‘The Commons’. Legal research project for creating regenerative land projects.
2) Lawful Permaculture – Coming out of the Closet: from land use zoning to grey/blackwater reclaimation, from legal cob/earthen affordable housing to composting toilets….all OUR ECOVILLAGE’s examples of legalizing permaculture over the past 20 years.

Presented By: Brandy Gallagher

To create a new economy where people care, earth care, and fair share are the norm, we must use the same level of intentionality to design our organizations that we apply to our land. The New Economy is in a totally different paradigm from Capitalism, Socialism, or Communism. This way of thinking is emergent and still largely misunderstood, even in the Permaculture community. Jacki Saorsail has spent 15 years developing a set of design principles for Regenerative Enterprises called Regenerative Dynamics that operate in this new paradigm. This workshop will introduce these principles and begin a conversation on how we can embody the new paradigm in bringing Permaculture to the world.

Presented By: Jacki Saorsail

I perceive two radically different approaches to sustainability developing, one of dense, ‘smart’ cities and another of dispersed eco-villages and market towns. I suspect that most advocates of each approach are at best mildly aware of the other concept, but choosing wisely bids us understand both well. A summary of the 2 approaches, their advantages and constraints, will be presented, followed by discussion.

Presented By: Muriel Strand

Daniel has worked in the fields of solar energy, aquaponics, permaculture, farming, landscaping and construction. One thing has been the same for him the entire time, and that is that the invisible structure of the workplace has been a pyramid, rather than a circle. He aims to deliver, through his talk in the form of a dialogue with the audience, a poignant and past-due discussion on the ethics of permaculture as they pertain to these invisible structures in the workplace. After dissemination of the ‘problem’ of a pyramid capitalist workplace, Daniel will then go on to describe CA Assembly Bill 816, “Consumer Cooperative Corporation Law” in which the state of CA has recognized that, “A worker [owned] cooperative has the purpose of creating and maintaining sustainable jobs and generating wealth in order to improve the quality of life of its worker-members, dignify human work, allow workers’ democratic self-management, and promote community and local development in this state.”

This law was passed in 2015. How many Worker Owned Co-Ops do you know of? How many companies do you know of that use the word ‘permaculture’ and yet may be stuck in the past with an un-democratic invisible dynamic in the workplace? How can we best live out the ethics put forward in the Permaculture Designer’s Manual?

These questions and more will be put forward in this talk.

Presented By: Daniel Brodell-Lake