Well, I'm in—standing at the back of an auditorium that seats 6,000... at an event that does seem to me now like it will exceed 20,000 attendees. The registration lines this morning were astonishing, a mythical beast with multiple tails snaking up and down the expansive corridors of this sprawling structure. I tried to take pictures, but it was one of those scenes that a lens just can't convey. The west end of the third floor of the facility was choked this morning with people waiting for the auditorium to open.

BuildingGreen is a content collaborator with McGraw-Hill for GreenSource magazine, the member publication of the USGBC. Our own Nadav Malin is its Executive Editor; I'm the Products Editor.

This may not count as booth swag either; it's just a paper handout from the EcoLogo people called The Six Sins of Greenwashing. I can't find it online (not this version, anyway), so I'm going to type it in arduously by hand...

Bill Clinton's keynote is this morning, and it's likely to be a madhouse. There are 13,000 pre-registrants for Greenbuild this year. In past years, up to 40% of attendees registered on-site. Yesterday morning at Member Day, USGBC honcho Rick Fedrizzi said that he expects 25,000 people. "My staff cringes every time I say that number," he joked, going on after the briefest pause to explain that "there isn't enough yogurt." I'm not sure that's the reason his staff is cringing; 25,000 is optimistic by any standard. He's a shoot-for-the-moon kinda guy, though—and he just might end up being right.

I attended the USGBC Educator Summit this morning with a great group of green design educators. The opening speaker was Rachel Gutter, manager of the LEED for Schools program I believe.

We may already have a winner for the best, smartest booth swag at Greenbuild '07: the "rethink the dress code—CLO.08" t-shirt from Big Ass Fans. Technically, these shirts may not be booth swag, since they 'cost' the very special Greenbuild price of a one-dollar donation—which funds are met in kind by the Big Assers and used to support ASHRAE Research on Standard 55: Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy. CLO.08? It's the thermal insulation value of a t-shirt as defined by ASHRAE. Still don't get it?

Big news from Member Day at Greenbuild '07—the LEED ratings programs are...

Because not everybody gets the idea of integrated design and delivery yet, I'm glad AIA National and the AIA California Council collaborated on Integrated Project Delivery: A Guide...

Electric resistance heaters, outside, at the hotel. I guess the towel- and sheet-reuse program makes room for this kind of thing. (Nice place, though.)

"Saying that electric heating is 100 percent efficient is like saying that a Cadillac is 100 percent efficient because it burns up all the gasoline pumped into it."  —Lawrence Solomon, quoted in the 1993 book

Greenhome, by Wayne Grady. Read the EBN review.

As a LEED Faculty member, I've been hearing for a while about the conflict-of-interest concerns with USGBC's LEED-Accredited Professional program. USGBC has been putting a lot of effort into improving and standardizing the exams, in an effort to get the accreditation program accredited (geez—how many layers of accreditation can you have?).