Greening GANA

Next Monday the Glass Association of North America’s (GANA) Fall Conference kicks off with a meeting with PGC International (that group’s co-located meeting runs through September 1). There seem to be a number of highlights on this year’s conference. Among them is a presentation by Stephen Harty of BNIM Architects on “Master Planning for Greensburg, KS.” If you’re not familiar with this town’s story, after being leveled by an EF5 tornado in May 2007, the community decided to rebuild and make Greensburg a model green town for the future. It’s a really forward-thinking attitude and I, for one, can’t wait to hear more about how glass figures into the town’s “greening.” In addition, Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson will be at the conference to speak on “Emerging Energy Technologies and Government Support/Demand.” Gov. Parkinson’s talk on September 3 will be just one of the many highlights of the Fall Conference’s energy seminars sponsored by Solar Glazing magazine.

Speaking of the magazine, if you haven’t visited our http://www.solarglazingmag.com/ site lately, you’ll want to keep checking back for daily updates to newly released products and stories in the consumer press related to this field. In addition, there are several solar events coming up that we’ll be following closely on our site in the weeks ahead. (And starting next week, just in time for the Fall Conference, you’ll be able to visit the site to sign up early for the standalone Solar Glazing magazine, coming in 2010!)

Among the recent stories posted on the site was one today for the U.S. Department of Energy’s annual Solar Decathlon, coming up again October 9-13 and 15-18 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. According to the event website, the Solar Decathlon is an international collegiate competition in which student teams compete to design, build and operate completely solar-powered houses that incorporate building-integrated photovoltaics. There were some really exciting projects included last year and now that solar energy is such a hot topic for our energy, I have no doubt a lot of unique new products and designs will be on the table for the upcoming event. If you know your company’s products will be a part of one of the houses under construction, let me know so we can be sure to include it in our coverage.