Two green tech confabs coming up in early June

For those of you green tech types who have occasion to be on the west coast in mid-June, there are two conferences you might want to drop by.

The earlier meeting, in San Francisco, is focused on the development of universal power supplies for all manner of gadgets that use an external one. It's being hosted by the Alliance for Universal Power on June 13 and is essentially a membership meeting. One of the topics that could have a particular interest for your mobile phone users (ha, who DOESN'T have one) is a talk from someone out of China about how that country has succeeded with a cell phone charging standard. Content from the group's first conference, held last October, can be found at this link. One very popular session was the Green Plug talk I referenced in an earlier blog.

Are universal power supplies impossible? Probably not nearly as impossible as the "carfree city," which is the topic of a conference up in Portland, Oregon, on June 16 to 20. The session, called Towards Carfree Cities, is being held by the The World Carfree Network. This is the first time, actually, that this particular conference has been held in the United States. (Previous stops were Lyon, France; Prague, Czech Republic; Berlin and Budapest.) The theme of the conference is "Rethinking Mobility, Rediscovering Proximity," but I rather prefer the other slogan posted on their Web site: "Live Free or Drive."

I sure love the spirit, but all I want to know is what mode of transportation the conference attendees will use to get there!

Nuff said: But let it be duly noted that when I lived in New York City in my 20s, I NEVER had a car. And it wasn't because I was broke.