Saturday I went to a discussion entitled Sustaining Change as part of the Creators Series hosted by Tomorrow Unlimited. The talk featured Jennifer Leonard, designer/journalist and co-author of Massive Change, and Sarah Rich, journalist and editor at Worldchanging.

In refreshing presentations that conventional power point users should take notes from (using simple slides, single quotes and vibrant images), both Leonard and Rich told of their own personal histories and what influenced them in their work. Leonard began in journalism as a music and arts critic, then moved into design. Rich has a fashion background and moved into the green sphere through exploring the world's relationship with food. Today both are focused on solutions based journalism, and strive to tell success stories and innovations rather than focusing on the problems people face.

On the topic of Sustaining Change - or keeping the enthusiasm for green going after the buzz wears off - a large part of making that possible, Rich explained, is to educate people. Not just in a conventional sense of expanding K-12 education around the globe, but also creating an awareness of the relationships between people and their environments or surroundings.

Additionally, one of the biggest obstacles in sustaining change is scalability of solutions. There isn't one solution that will work well everywhere. For example, what works well for a small community may not be able to be applied on a large scale globally because of climatic, cultural or resource differences and limitations. Instead every local community should discover what works best for their area to sustain small solutions.

In the Q&A discussion that followed one audience member asked if there was hope for the future, if another world is possible. Leonard responded with, "Another world is happening now… the mainstream media just isn't covering it. " She said that we must find new ways for people to present and access information, and focus on the positive happenings in the world, which is what her work and Rich's work is aiming to achieve. (GO is also focused on this goal.)

While just a small crowd turned out for the talk on a balmy, 80 degree New York Saturday (in an overly air conditioned space), it was definitely an event worth checking out and provided a positive, idealistic, yet pragmatic view on these issues.

The Creators Series is billed as a multidisciplinary view of what is going on in the creative world. The Creators Series was in New York last weekend and will be in Los Angeles this weekend (June 14-17). Many of the panel discussions will be available online as a webcast in a few weeks.