A quick roundup on the first full day of the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Atlanta:

• There was a lot of emotion among thousands in the audience Sunday as U.S. Green Building Council CEO Mahesh Ramanujam quizzed Obama on wee stage in dark cavernous meeting hall. People obviously miss a president who can think deeply and talk frankly about such wide-ranging topics as climate change, leadership and his love for his daughters. Obama pointed to his own experience as a community organizer as he urged green-building advocates to listen to people and meet them “where they are [and] then to figure out how you shape a sustainable agenda around any of those concerns.” Read more here and here.
• The USGBC unveiled LEED Positive with a press release, as well as discussion in at least one of sessions. While the upcoming iteration of the popular green-building standard remains a work in progress, parts of it sound quite familiar to those involved in the more rigorous Living Building Challenge. The big takeaway: The organization is shooting to require net positive energy in all new LEED buildings by 2025 and in all LEED renovations by 2030. We cover the LEED Positive rollout in more detail here.
• Atlanta became the 100th city or community to obtain certification under the LEED for Cities and Communities rating system. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and USGBC’s Ramanujam announced that honor for the host city on Tuesday. More here.
• In a “shoulder event,” the International Living Future Institute honored two stunning Southeast Asian projects and one in Canada with its annual Stephen Kellert Award for biophilic design. Heart of School: A Bamboo Cathedral at Green School Bali in Bali, Indonesia, won fo Building Scale; the Phenix in Montreal, Quebec, won fo Interior/Renovation, and the Learning Forest and Lakeside Garden in Singapore won fo Community/Urban Scale. A full description with link and knock-you-socks of photos can be found here. The event was held at the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design at Georgia Tech — which happens to be the inspiration fo this website.
• In another bit of news with a Kendeda Building hook (ok, well, sort of), our friends at Building Green unveiled their Top 10 Products for 2019. It’s a fascinating, even inspirational lineup of innovative products, each of which resolve a sustainable construction problem. What the online story couldn’t tell you is that Brent Ehrlich and Nadav Malin held a real-time online poll on the 10 products during their presentation at Greenbuild. The favorite product? EcoSmart Sheetrock. We wrote about it here in one our Product Spotlights on products used in the Kendeda Building.

President Barack Obama speaks Tuesday at Greenbuild 2019 in Atlanta with Mahesh Ramanujam, CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council. Photo courtesy of USGBC.