the AMAZING assistants

the venue - Unit 3 at UC Berkeley

old school YPN love (3 years!)

night 1

retelling about mobile workshops...in skit form :)

saturday lunch at wurster hall...my old stomping grounds

freestyle workshop saturday, was the bomb!

PLANet Films!

our community agreements

marvin at the annual meeting

the founders...

it's all love

feobook!

and away we go...

if the YPN was conceived in chicago at the Planners Network conference in 2006,
then it was born in NOLA in 2007,
experienced infancy in NYC 2008,
and took it's first step this year in the Bay Area, 2009.

the past 4 days were more work than i have ever experienced. i answered at least 3000 questions (no joke) and slept 5 hours per night. totally frazzled for days 1 & 2, the conference picked up speed and had a life of its own by day 3.

i left the conference feeling more than ever like the YPN has legs, and it's starting to fumble around walking on its own...surrounded by it's family and community.

highlights from the conference -

• there were 80 people this year (our 1/3 expansion continues!)
• 5 geographic regions represented throughout (Seattle, NYC, Bay Area, Sacramento, Chi-town, NOLA)
• 2 young peeps want to make a college internship program
• communications will be taken over by reynold - an awesome brooklynite
• youth want to create an 'emergency YPN fund', which i think means they want $ for each chapter (participatory budgeting!)
• newsletter in the works
• sacramento wants to start a chapter
• we will have a kick-a$$ video by early next week. i'll surely post.
• we had a full-on Napolean Dynamite karate display at the open mic night, which I am still chuckling about at least twice daily. homegirl tripped over the back of the stage, flying stage left, and then continued with the karate routine. ok, i'm laughing right now ;)
  

looking at my pictures from the conference, i think this was the most diverse environment i've ever experienced. people of different age, ethnicity, religion (jesus freaks!), geography, interest, and culture spent 4 days together, working hard and chilling hard. it was challenging, beautiful, and completely a learning experience.

i'm feeling so happy and proud of as a convener of this network. i also feel ready to let go a bit, and allow others to step up and take control of the work. the community that is coming out of this, will hopefully step up this year and keep it moving. of course i'm here to nudge...

one more exciting thing - our keynote, dr. antwi akom (aaa), was incredible. we met for 3 hours a few weeks ago, and i have been feeling more inspired than ever before to keep learning about education, to study and express how racial and social equity are the key factors here, and urban planning is the vehicle towards this end. i'm starting to learn how to express this now, and i'm hoping to continue learning and doing under his mentorship. this is great news for me as an inspired individual.

so that's my diary for ya. please enjoy the pics, there are so many more that i could include in this post. viva YPN!

xoxo
alis