[Strawbale] ISBBC photos

[John Swearingen]

Yes, entirely too many pictures, I've spent the morning looking at them!!  I
was sorry to miss this one; so many faces of friends!  

I didn't see how I could make it, and as it turned out, a wildfire was
threatening our house at about this time, and we were facing an evacuation
order.  Probably would have been better to have been a thousand miles away,
but we did dutifully pack up and try to secure our buildings.  This provided
a visceral fire test--it was an easy calculation that the straw-bale
building was the ONLY one of ours that stood any chance of survival. .  We
put some foil in the windows, watered the plants on the roof, and called it
good.  Fortunately the expected high winds didn't appear, and all was well.
We're unpacked now, and in the process, threw out a lot to stuff we realized
we didn't need.

John

John Swearingen
 SKILLFUL MEANS
design and construction
www.skillful-means.com


-----Original Message-----
From: strawbale-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:strawbale-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Mark Piepkorn
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 3:11 AM
To: STRAWBALE at listserv.repp.org
Subject: [Strawbale] ISBBC photos


Way too many pictures from the International Straw Bale Building 
Conference 2006 are at http://www.potkettleblack.com/natbild/isbbc06.html

Participants shown include such names-worth-knowing as (given 
alphabetically) Michel Bergeron, Dan Chiras, Joyce Coppinger, Kris 
Dick, David Eisenberg, Habib John Gonzalez, Barbara Jones, Bruce 
King, Judy Knox, Kelly Lerner, Chris Magwood, Matts Myhrman, Ben 
Obregon, Tom Rijven, Derek Roff, Dan Smith, John Straube, Bob Theis, 
Kim Thompson, Catherine Wanek, and many others.

But the pictures aren't captioned or labeled, so you'll have to guess 
who's who and what's what if you don't already know. Maybe I'll get 
around to doing that sometime - unless somebody else wants to do it (hint).

There are also shots of the hands-on activities, strawbale olympics, 
dancin' and music, as well as houses on one of the SB-homes tours.

The one unfortunate thing about this conference is the lack of a 
compilation of networking info for the participants. Making 
connections is one of the most important aspects of these gatherings; 
I'm not sure what the reasoning is for not providing the participants 
with each others' contact info - not even a list of names. Each of 
the previous ISBBC events I've attended has distributed such a 
contact list, as have most of the natural building colloquiua and 
similar events I've been involved with. It's so valuable. Perhaps the 
organizers will rethink this matter, or explain the thinking behind 
it. I've read the Privacy Statement on the OSBBC website, and while I 
do appreciate the intent, the corporatizationalisticnesslike feeling 
I got kind of made me do equal parts giggle and gag, which sounded 
funnier than it tasted.

This one was right up there with any of the international SB bashes 
I've attended (I couldn't make the ones in Australia and Denmark, 
though, which I understand were fabulous). The evening keynotes from 
Judy and Matts, David, Bruce, and Chris - in particular, Bruce's - 
were extraordinarily powerful in some unexpected ways.


Mark Piepkorn
www.potkettleblack.com

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny
matters compared to what lies within us.
   - Ralph Waldo Emerson


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