Our wonderful website woman (say that 3 times fast!) came in yesterday and updated the Summit website. You can see it here: http://www.scopexcel.org/data/sea_event.html

It now has a summary of the Summit, press information, and Frequently Asked Questions, in addition to the Findings & Next Steps report.

Whew! I just released the "Findings & Next Steps" report onto the Internet. You can find it here: http://www.scopexcel.org/data/sea_event.html#report

It's basically a summary of the day of the Summit, a rundown of our "Top 5" Ideas, a list of the other 11 ideas, and a list of the 300+ morning brainstorming ideas. It should be helpful to get a handle on the day.

-Kate

I've just finished typing up all of the great ideas from the Summit. (believe me, transcribing from flip charts takes forever!)

At the Summit, each group narrowed down the dozens of ideas that came up in the morning into one idea to present at the end of the day. This meant that there were over 300 ideas, and only 16 of them got to be publicly heard. We don't want to miss any of the great ideas from that day because they were not presented, though, so we've transcribed them all and will release them in a report next week.

I thought it would be fun to give a 'sneak preview' of some of the ideas that didn't make it to the final 16. You will find 10 of them below. All of these ideas are from the "Living Locally" groups.

1. Edible Landscaping
2. Farmers markets - get them publicized
3.Value farmland as much as environmental land
4. Sustainable urbanism as a policy
5. Mass transit
6. Community gardens, teaching how to grow own food in neighborhood
7. Create green economy
8. Set aside arable lands in all new developments
9. Consult with local farmers to develop policies to aid them
10. Encourage restaurants, retailers to stock local resources

Head on over to the "my photos" section, where I've just put up a photo journal describing the day of the Summit.

Well, the Summit was a great success - head on over to the "Photos" section to check out some pictures from that day. (Thanks to Pola, our wonderful volunteer photographer!)

We came up with 5 actions to move forward on - and they are all great! They range from the very specific to the very general, but each of them gives us some great material to work with.

Without further ado, here are the 5 actions:

* Develop rainwater, stormwater, greywater and reuse as alternate water sources.

* Require low impact development techniques for new development and incentives to retrofit existing development.

* Fifty percent of Sarasota County buildings with solar hot water heaters in five years.

* Attract sustainable/green manufacturing to the local area.

* Redesign transit system in conjunction with targeted mixed-use redevelopment zones. "Great Transit connecting Great Communities."

So it seems we've been lax in writing diary posts, but it's not because our team hasn't been working!

We've sent out our first Save The Date announcement to over 200 different people from different cross-sections of our community. This Save The Date email opened up nominations for people to attend the event. So far, we have more than 50 different people nominated to attend!

Things are beginning to move quickly as we get closer to the date of the event. I'll continue to post here, but you should also visit the official Summit for Environmental Action website, located at: http://www.scopexcel.org/data/sea_event.html