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?).

GreenerBuildings put together a nicely thorough intro to Greenbuild '07.

In the BuildingGreen Suite we have a Discussions feature on just about every page that allows members to respond to content with their comments and questions.

Every year before Greenbuild I go through the exhibitor listings to see which ones have products in GreenSpec. At the show, I first visit the booths that don't (we're already familiar with a majority of those, but in this growing industry there are always new contenders), and then make a second sweep to catch up with anything new from the ones that do. At past shows, I've run out of time before getting through the whole thing; quite a frustration.