19 Sep Keynotes at SXSW Eco

Registration for SXSW Eco is still open (as of 9.19.11)! While it can be a bit overwhelming to look at their list of sessions for the event, there all seem amazing and if you are going it is worth taking a look at the schedule to decide where you want to be and when. There will be topics ranging from greening your business to innovation in the green tech fields as well as calls to action on issues such as climate change. Their keynote speakers for each day look wonderful as well and we thought we would highlight two whom we haven't touched on before, (see SXSW Keynote – Phillipe Cousteau, Jr.). 

Tuesday, October 4th, Alex Steffen, one of the world’s leading voices on sustainability, social innovation and planetary futurism, will be the keynote speaker. He is a writer, public speaker and strategy consultant.

Alex was Executive Editor of Worldchanging.com after he co-founded the organization in 2003 until it closed in 2010. In those seven years, Alex made Worldchanging one of the world’s leading sustainability-related publications, with an archive of almost 12,000 articles and a large global audience (Worldchanging reached over 8 million unique readers and was rated the second largest sustainability site on the web by Nielsen Online in 2008).

Alex’s role as a leading voice in planetary futurism has inspired over 600 stories in the media, including a CNN documentary and a New York Times Magazine profile. Steffen also edited of Worldchanging’s wildly successful first book, Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century (Abrams, 2006), a 600-page compendium of leading solutions from around the world, with a foreword by Al Gore, an introduction by Bruce Sterling, and design by Stefan Sagmeister (winner of the 2005 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award). Worldchanging (the book) has been an Amazon bestseller in the U.S. and Canada, won the Green Prize for sustainable literature and has gleaned wide acclaim, including being named as one of the books of the year by BusinessWeek. The book has been translated into French, German and Korean, and other languages.

Wednesday, October 5th, Mark Tercek – President and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, will speak on the opportunities and challenges of conservation in the 21st century, and innovative partnerships and ideas that are driving win-win conservation results that are beneficial for people and nature.

Before joining The Nature Conservancy, Mark was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where he played a key role in developing the firm’s environmental strategy. He headed the firm’s Environmental Strategy Group and Center for Environmental Markets. Mark is a member of several boards and councils, including Resources for the Future, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, the National Petroleum Council and the Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mark earned an M.B.A. from Harvard and a B.A. from Williams College.

Austin EcoNetwork is looking forward to hearing from these keynotes as well as all of the other great presenters during the sessions.