BALLE Take Two

I wanted to blog with a vengeance from the BALLE conference. Unfortunately that first night I was way too tired. I couldn't form more than a couple semi-intelligent thoughts.
The second night I went out to a local pub, the Yak and Yeti, with a friend. BTW, Troy served me the K2 Dry Rye Stout and it was delicious.
Now I am back in Tucson and beginning to sift through the abundance of information I took in over the weekend. I'll start writing about it by making a list of words I heard over and over:

opportunity
social justice
beneficiary
sustainability
green industry
collaborate
cooperate
wind energy
compassion
love
community
communicate
include
local

Let's think about that for now and I'll leave you with this from David Soul:

One of my beliefs is that there are certain institutions within a community which stand for the spirit and heart of that community

BALLE

I'm in Denver for the 7th Annual BALLE conference. BALLE stands for Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.
This is the meeting of representatives from BALLE networks from around North America. And, there were some people here from France this year. There was a question of BALLE going global. For now, they say, they are focused on this side of the pond. I got the impression, however, that the impetus behind the local movement will not be contained.
During this year's conference there was lots of talk of the green economy. There was a great talk about wind energy from the founder of Windustry.
More to come after sleep.....

New Scene

A Phoenix area blog on the local scene just launched.
Of Local Concern will be one blog of a few in the works that will address more Tucson and Southern AZ local scene issues and news!
We will also address the local movement as a whole and how it effects the economy and more importantly the people in those communities.
I will be attending the 7th Annual BALLE conference next week. Surely that will be informative and inspiring. There are some BALLE networks across the nation that are doing great things for the areas they cover.
Thanks for keeping Tucson unique by supporting the many awesome locally owned businesses in our community. Keep up the good work!