Staff Writer
Ask Eben Metivier what he’s doing with his life these days and he has a stock answer ready to go.
“I would say I’m saving the world – 500 people at a time.”
Metivier is the Operations Director of Kaleidoscope, the agency presenting Kindle, a Northern New England Bioneers Conference. The annual event focuses on environmental awareness, among many other things, and takes place in San Rafael, California. It will also be broadcasted via satellite to eighteen cities around the United States.
These broadcasts, referred to as “Beaming Bioneers”, are shown in conjunction with each city’s local conference. This year, Portland is one of those cities-only the second on the Eastern Seaboard.
USM’s Portland Campus will host Kindle on October 17, 18 and 19. There will be 70 Observatory; Russell Libby, Executive Director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association; Deb Soule, Local herbalist, Author and founder of Avena Botanicals, Maine’s largest established provider of medicinal herbs; Kathy Freund, Executive Director of the Independent Transportation Network; J. Carl Ganter, Director of Circle of Blue, an international network of journalists, scientists and communications designers who focus on the global freshwater crisis; Tom Linzey, Co-founder of the Community, Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit provider of free and affordable legal services to grassroots groups and municipal governments; Gkisedtanamoogk, a Wampanoag elder, teacher, and Indigenous Nation cultural advocate who teaches at the University of Maine; and June LaCombe, an artist who created what is known as environmental art and eco-art, an activist arts movement.
In addition to the speakers and workshops, there will be live music throughout the weekend. An Exhibit Hall, Imaginarium and Book Fair will be open each day from 8:00AM to 5:00PM. A Farmer’s Market will be open on Saturday. Snacks and coffee will be served throughout the weekend. A series of vendor booths with products and services such as yoga, organic skin care products and solar energy will also participate.
To register for the weekend, visit www.kindleinme.com. Several attendance packages are available. Conference registration tiers are at $375 for a three-day pass, $290 for a two-day pass and $165 for a one-day pass. A limited number of scholarships-discounted registration packages-are available for qualified people. For more information on scholarships, a complete event itinerary and complete information about Bioneers and Kindle, visit the website.
To sum up the purpose of Kindle, Metivier said, “We know that we’re in the eleventh hour and we need to do something about it. And this is the best way that we’ve found-making this network of networks to create that change.”
speakers over 30 workshops on the campus, with an additional 17 speakers featured remotely.
When Kindle proposed to USM that they host the Bioneer event, they learned that the same weekend, the Muskie School of Public Service would be hosting the grand opening of the new Wishcamper Center on Bedford Avenue. Instead of declining, Kindle and the Muskie School chose to join forces and host their events in conjunction.
Metivier said the function of a Bioneer event is to inspire, educate and connect people with nature-based solutions for restoring the earth and healing human communities.
“We’re creating this conference to educate people because we realized something had to be done about the state of the world that we’re in right now.”
Kindle was started by Ted Regan, founder and president of Kaleidoscope and co-founder of Rippleffect, Inc, a youth development organization based on Cow Island that created “an ocean oasis for disadvantaged youth”.
The proceeds from this event, after covering its costs, will go toward future Kindle events. So far, 75 people have purchased three-day passes, and plenty more are available.
“We’re trying to get as many students, seniors, activists, farmers and educators to this event as possible,” Metivier said. “Each year we want to perpetuate this and make it bigger and better than the last.”
He hopes Kindle will follow in the footsteps of the Bioneer event in Bedford, Massachusetts, which in its first year yielded 350 people, followed by 700 the next. Organizers are expecting anywhere from 1,200 to 1,500 this time around.
Metivier said the seventeen speakers of the Beaming Bioneers are household names-or are at least soon to be. Among them are:
Ray Anderson, founder of Interface Inc. the world’s largest producer of modular carpet and a leading producer of commercial fabrics, named one of TIME International’s Heroes for the Environment in 2007; Paul Stamets, President of Fungi Perfecti, a business supplying “mycotechnologies” to mushroom cultivators worldwide; Kavita Ramdas, president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women; Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of Jacques Cousteau and a leading activist and advocate for the conservation and restoration of the planet’s oceans and water resources; David Orr, professor and chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College and an award-winning scholar and leader in the sustainability movement; and Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
Of the selection of the local speakers, Metivier said, “There were seven people on what we call a Dream Council, and [they] went out and each asked fifteen people whom they would drop amazing weekend plans to come see. And we came back with 105 names.” From those 105 names, these speakers were selected and agreed to speak locally at the Portland event:
Peter Blaze Corcoran, Professor of Environmental Studies and Environmental Education at Florida Gulf Coast University; Peter Neil, Director of The World Oceans