The First Friday Art Walk has entered a new phase in its life cycle as the flagship of Portland’s creative economy. Since July, designer Jennifer S. Muller has been producing a beautiful broadside map and program distributed the previous Thursday in The Portland Press Herald. The way the heavy, uncoated stock of the piece absorbs the ink makes it look more hand made than commercially printed, which is just the right touch for the Art Walk that aims to stoke local commerce through the propagation of fine art.

And building on the uproarious success of the What Cheer? Brigade at the SPACE Gallery Block Party, tonight’s festivities include New York’s Asphalt Orchestra for more street band fun. (Thank you, Portland Ovations) Programs? Marching Bands? And soon food carts? This is beginning to sound like a sporting event for creatives!

Some of tonights highlights include: a performance at 4:30 in Congress Square by The Milkman’s Union presented by the Portland Music Foundation to highlight this year’s Portland entries in the NYC’s CMJ Music Marathon; the opening reception of Good Design is Good Business: The Elements of Branding, the 2011 AIGA Maine Annual Exhibit at the Lewis Gallery, Portland Public Library, 5 Monument Square; an exhibit of photographs from the Portland Ballet’s “Who’s Your Dancer” project will be  on view at the KeyBank Monument Square branch; and the work of at least one Portland mayoral candidate is on view!

While the national—and global—economic picture is decidedly mixed, there are signs that Portland, Maine, may be exceptional in more ways than it’s number of James Beard nominations per capita. This may be highly anecdotal, but in the last few weeks many postings for high-level creative jobs in Portland have moved across my radar. These are not just-out-of-college quasi-paid internships, but well-paying jobs worth moving from Brooklyn, Boston, Berkeley or Austin for. Putney, a veterinary products startup based in Portland, was the highest ranking Maine company on Inc. magazine’s list of the 5,000 fastest growng small companies with an impressive 291% three year growth rate. Go to the careers page their website and you’ll see they are looking for a director of marketing; If you follow Mediabistro you would have seen a posting for an art director at Kemp Goldberg Partners marketing and advertising agency; and (as I mentioned in a recent post) The Via Agency has 8 positions to be filled.

At a time when all levels of government are talking about how to spur job creation it is great to see that the creative economy (at least here in Portland) is actually doing it. All kinds of non-profits are sharpening their business focus as well in hopes of remaining relevant and positioning themselves as worthy targets for scarce investment dollars. The speakers at the upcoming TEDxDirigo conference receive coaching in how to distill their “ideas worth spreading” into 18 minutes or less and then get a high quality video of their talk to help them spread those ideas further. MaineBiz just did a profile on founder Adam Burk. TEDxDirigo talks are not quite elevator pitches, but they’re a way to give creative social entrepreneurs a leg up on getting attention—and funding.

Art, it must be said, is not business. But there is a lot of business that develops around art. In order for that process to happen there need to be opportunities for artists to find support for their own basic research and let others jump in to find applications. The Maine Arts Commission just released a report on the economic impact of Museum attendance in Maine as a way of demonstrating an aspect of that link. MAC has shown unwavering support for both local arts organizations and individual artists, both crucial components in the growth of the creative economy from which many of the cultural perks of Portland flow.

In a similar vein, Maine AIGA’s annual exhibit this year is entitled, “Good Design is Good Business,” and the focus is on “the elements of branding.” Maine AIGA president, and partner at Portland branding shop Might & Main (formerly Forge), Sean Wilkinson says, ”Well designed presence in the world is what sets one great idea apart from another. It is ‘intelligence made visible.’ Your expertise as a business is only as valuable as people perceive it to be, and hiring a designer is one of the most important steps in shaping that perception. It also keeps good folks like me gainfully employed.”

Good folks, gainfully employed in Portland, Maine—the image of a glass filling…

background photo by Corey Templeton, Portland Daily Photo

When Noah DeFilippis left Maine for San Francisco at the age of 17, he sought a sense of the urbane. In his return to Portland a few years ago, DeFilippis found that cosmopolitanism nestled improbably amongst Maine’s famous Pick-and-Paws and flea markets. DeFilippis and his wife, Amy Teh, started “Pinecone + Chickadee,” a business named for Maine’s state tree and bird in a tip-of-the-cap to Vacationland. Pinecone + Chickadee reflects a modern interpretation of old-school nostalgia, and DeFilippis and Teh have allied themselves with other local artisans to breathe life into events like Portland’s Picnic Music + Arts Festival.

Pinecone + Chickadee started when DeFilippis and Teh lived in Brooklyn and attended juried craft fairs like the Brooklyn Renegade Craft Fair, silkscreening cards and clothes with their unique, colorful prints. Upon moving to Portland after the birth of their first son, they noticed that vendor admission to regional craft fairs was granted on a first-come, first-serve basis. While punctuality may be a virtue, it doesn’t always correlate with creation. So DeFilippis and Teh, along with Ron Harrity of Peapod Recordings, Diane Toepfer of Ferdinand, and Sean Wilkinson, co-founder of Might & Main, set about creating the Picnic Music + Arts Festival.

Now in its fourth year, Picnic Music + Arts Festival brings over 120 local creators (with varying records of punctuality, but proven aesthetic juices) to Lincoln Park on Saturday, August 27^th from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m.. Attendees at the free event can peruse vendors’ jewelry, clothes, vintage materials, fine art, photography and more. Bryan Buchman, curator of music blog Hilly Town, culled music from bands with both local and NYC mettle, including Butcher Boy, Weird Children, Toughcats, Sunset Hearts, Bandana Splits, The Outfits, Mouth Washington, Clouder and the always-wonderful Mango Floss. Picnic will also serve up local foods to nosh on while shopping and listening to music.

DeFilippis says that the success of previous years has culminated in the biggest picnic yet. The small town aspect of the city also helps with the process. “Portland is an easy place to organize events,” he notes. “The councilors are pretty approachable, and you can just walk into City Hall to explain what you want.”

In addition to wrangling together Picnic, DeFilippis and Teh have busied themselves opening up Pinecone + Chickadee’s storefront on 6 Free Street. The store boasts the couple’s silkscreen design line as well as vintage finds and the work of local artists, like employee Kris Johnsen. When the two saw the potential storefront, Teh was nine-months pregnant with the couple’s second child. “It was the best and worst timing,” says DeFilippis. “You know what they always say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.” With a medley of their creations and others’, and a mind towards refurbishing old treasures in new contexts, DeFilippis and Teh of Pinecone + Chickadee upend notions of Maine while gleaning it for inspiration.

Above photo: Noah DeFilippis, co-owner/designer of Pinecone + Chickadee, poses with nesting dolls from the new storefront on 6 Free Street. DeFilippis and wife Amy Teh, his creative partner, have also been collaborating with other local movers and shakers to bring Picnic Music + Art Festival to Portland.

The summer’s other great sequel was not in 3-d multiplexes but right on Congress street in Portland. Ad Age named the VIA Agency, Small Agency of the Year, Gold. Why the Harry Potter motif? “The Via agency is housed in the Baxter building, built in 1888 as the public library of Portland, Maine. The imposing peaks and gables of the stone facade and wooden beam-studded high-ceiling interior led one Via client to dub the building the “Hogwarts of Advertising.” … And if the building is Hogwarts, then CEO and founder John Coleman is its Harry Potter. With similar rounded black-framed glasses, an affable charm and wide-eyed curiosity about everything, Mr. Coleman even seems to have Master Potter’s magic touch — in the advertising industry at least,” reads the lead of the Ad Age piece.

Careful readers of this blog will remember that VIA won silver for the same prive last year, no mean feat for a Portland agency. But the intervening year has been a very good one for VIA and they attribute at least a bit of that good fortune to being located here. ”To live in a smaller town and to go to baseball games and do the grocery shopping and all of that, helps in understanding the broad spectrum of different kinds of people, but I truly believe that what it really does is afford us the opportunity to think,” Mr. Coleman said. “I love New York, but I feel blessed to live in a place like Portland.”

Go to the Portland section of the Via website and the first thing you read is “Portland isn’t just where we are. It’s who we are.” (I wish we had written that!) They then lead you through three iPad swipes of highlights that tell you why it’s great to live in Portland followed by listings for eight (at last count) really great jobs. Talk about brand story! VIA is itself one of the best advertisements for Portland that Portland’s got. And for those of you who like a little wistful bitterness to temper your jubilation, read Chief Creative Officer Greg Smith’s reaction to the award, “So That Didn’t Suck.”

For some reason Portland is possessed of a number of hypertrophied creative communities relative to our population: architecture, culinary arts, literature, music and particularly advertising. I asked Dave Goldberg of Kemp Goldberg how big the agency scene is here. “Between ad agencies, PR firms and digital/interactive marketing firms in greater Portland, there are WAY more companies in this business than an area this size should or deserves to have,” says Dave. “I have 27 bookmarked, but there are more.” I asked him what he thought accounted for the disproportionate numbers and he answered with an anecdote, “I was down in West Hartford recently at my 30th high school reunion. I was talking to a woman I knew from school who does PR. From our discussion my guess is that in greater Hartford, an area larger than greater Portland, they have half as many agencies. Hartford does not have a “creative economy.” It doesn’t attract the creative talent, leadership, investment, etc. We in Portland are different.”

To celebrate that difference, the VIA agency is hosting this year’s Broderson Awards, The Ad Club of Maine‘s “Celebration of Commercial Artists from the State of Maine.” In a recent post on Forbes.com, I talked about Dunbar’s number and the size of cohesive social communities. In the hunter gatherer terms I was considering, our advertising community is one of our few creative enclaves larger than a clan and approaching a tribe. A clan, however, would fit the theme of this year’s competition which (mis)quotes the great (and greatly inebriated) Irish poet Dylan Thomas with the title ”In Our Craft or Sullen Art.” Why a sullen art? For Thomas, the poet’s craft was practiced while others slept so as to earn “the common wages /Of their most secret heart.” Sounds a lot like advertising!

In the words of VIA creative director, Teddy Stoecklein, ”To outsiders Maine, let alone Portland or Bangor, is usually just vacationland. Our Fine Art community is often overshadowed by bigger cities like Boston, New York, Providence, even Montreal. The same is true of our Commercial Art community, yet we have some of the most talented people in the nation, right here. The Broderson Awards is hosted by the Maine Ad Club to reward the very best in Maine. But it’s more than just a pat on the back or a trophy. It’s also an acknowledgment that our craft is indeed a Fine Art. It’s both a showcase and a moment of inspiration.” To make that acknowledgement stick, they have lined up some first rate judges: Nina DiSesa, Former Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of McCann Erickson, New York; Rupal Parekh, Agency Editor of Advertising Age; and Peter Friedman Former Executive Producer at Wieden + Kennedy and McCann Erickson, New York.

The deadline for all entries is next Friday, July 1, 2011 at 5 p.m. Late entries will not be accepted. See the Broderson site to find out more.

Like this month’s Abstract conference that created an intersection between the design communities of New York and Portland, the Broderson’s in October will do the same for advertising. But whereas the designers convened in the very nice but clan sized Hannaford Hall at USM, the ad tribe will take over the 2,500 seat State Theatre. In honor of Dylan Thomas, sullenness will not be banished, drinks will be served!

Lately I’ve noticed innovators across many fields working in the art of circumstance. These are people working with situations as the medium. They write scripts of chance. They orchestrate the action so that one audience member’s potential interaction with another becomes an underlying creative force. Theatergoers become actors. Tourists become attractions. And in the case of an upcoming conference in Portland, Maine, audience members can have the impact of keynote speakers.

TEDxDirigo, inaugurated last year at the Frontier Cafe in Brunswick, is a day devoted to Maine “ideas worth spreading.” This year’s conference, on Saturday, September 10, will take over the more spacious Portland Stage Company. The participants’ exchanges are as central to the day’s success as their attendance at a series of stimulating talks. This is not a conference on a single issue—the goal is to generate interdisciplinary connective tissue. TEDxDirigo gathers over a dozen members of the Maine community with wildly diverse achievements (from beekeepers to musicians, nurses to thinkers on sustainable development). All are asked to give “the talk of their life,” said Jen Boggs, a TEDxDirigo representative. In the words of Executive Director Adam Burk, the speakers give “high impact TED talks that evoke contagious emotion,” following the format of the nationally renowned TED conferences. No two speakers from even remotely similar field will speak back to back. The ordering of talks is designed to generate maximum friction for the audience’s inspired conversations, and Boggs compares structuring the day’s schedule to putting together “a big puzzle.”

The even bigger puzzle, is the audience. The secret ingredient to TEDxDirigo’s art of circumstance begins with the selective application process to attend. Burk relished in this notion of a curated audience, saying “We put a lot of care into building a diverse program for a diverse audience, because you never know who is going to connect with what idea or what person. This is part of the magic, the synchronicity of life. There are other events that focus on single issues or fields. If someone is worried about the depth and breadth of our event, then perhaps it’s not for them.”

Then who, specifically, is this event geared toward? Burk said, “people with a track record of engaging in the power of ideas, such as product developers, social innovators, philanthropists, researchers, entrepreneurs, performance artists, musicians, visual artists, etc.” Selecting a crowd of our community’s most proactive thinkers ensures that the ample breaktime provided in the wake of each talk (as well as top-quality Maine cuisine) will spur attendees to self-organize and move projects forward through collaboration.

Speakers include: singer/songwriter Emilia Dahlin; Executive Director of the Center for Preventing Hate and civil rights activist Steve Wessler; and founder and director of Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI), Roger Doiron. Videos of all of last year’s talks are listed on the speakers page as well. If you are interested in being an audience member (just like the main TED conference, only much, much less expensive) you can apply to attend here. It won’t be the same without you.

The ABSTRACT Maine 2011 conference this Friday is a great opportunity for designers and publishers of all kinds to come to Portland and get a glimpse of the future of the presentation of content from six creative directors on the forefront of what was, until recently, considered the magazine business in New York. Magazines are morphing into multi-channel, multi-screen streams of branded content, but they still are about telling stories. So consider Abstract to be a kind of 21st century Chautauqua: story-tellers telling stories about how to tell stories. Of course, at LiveWork Portland, we try to tell the story about how smart, independently-minded creative people find Portland to be the perfect place to develop their talents and enjoy their lives. We didn’t really think that Fast Company creative director Florian Bachleda was thinking of relocating to Portland, but we thought we would ask anyway…

1) The emphasis of the ABSTRACT conference seems to be about the ways that technology has transformed the presentation of media. Where on the tech spectrum do you fall personally, from card-carrying Luddite to bleeding edge geek?
I’ve sometimes been a card carrying Luddite who finally tasted geekdom and now I can’t get enough of it. The different options we now have as story-tellers is intoxicating.

2) With all of the additional demands and opportunities that multi-channel publishing presents, do you still consider yourself a designer, or have you become something more hybrid and hyphenated?
I still consider myself a designer, it’s just that the job description for being a designer in 2011 and beyond has radically changed. I see this in my colleagues also: Arem Duplessis at the the NY Sunday Times Magazine has been directing his digital and motion graphics team. Dirk Barnett at Newsweek is about to tackle that side of his new gig. Luke Hayman at Pentagram is always out in front with things like this.

3) What are the specific skills that this new world of media requires, have you been able to develop all of those skills yourself, and if not, has your process become more collaborative?
I have not been able to develop as many of those skills as I’d like, but you realize (again) that as long as you have a team of people with those skills, your job as the creative director is to direct. Understanding what everyone does, what’s possible, and being able to give direction is the key, not so much mastering those skill sets yourself. In a perfect world, I would have the time to do that. But even if I did, there’s no way I’m going to be as good as my team that have those specific skill sets. We’ve all heard this before: You’re the conductor and you write the music, but you need a great orchestra to play the individual instruments.

4) Based on your own experiences in the magazine publishing world of New York, what kinds of businesses, design studios, creative communities, etc. will best be able to take advantage of the kinds of cross-platform workflow solutions that you will discuss at the conference?
Any type of company or community that is willing to embrace the future and not always attach a P&L to it. Especially organizations with leaders that are willing to champion new technology. From our crew, you see Scott Dadich at Conde Nast and Gael Towey at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia taking the lead on this within their companies, and the way they’ve been able to move mountains is so impressive. At Fast Company, we’re pushing forward with a tablet app for our annual 100 Most Creative People package because we think it will be a value to our readers, not because it will be some huge money-maker. We’re a magazine about progress and innovation, and there’s never a line item for that.

5) And this is for our local angle: To the extent that technology allows you to move your life and work to another city, which ones would you consider? What are the most important factors for you about the geographic location of where you live and work? And if you didn’t answer Portland, Maine, what factors (other than moving it to Brooklyn!) would make you consider relocating here?
Sorry, it might be impossible for me to leave New York right now. My cat loves it here too much…

Two Fat Cats Bakery sign photo from PeaceLoveandFood blog

Of all the world-class creative directors alighting on Portland, Maine this Friday for the Abstract: The Future of Design in Media Conference, Gael Towey is perhaps in the best position to “get” Portland. Towey has been the Creative Director for Martha Stewart’s magazines and other omnimedias for the past 20 years. Together, Martha and Gael have made the well-crafted and well-curated life knowable and accessible to a generation of Americans that was losing touch with the basic competencies of their own lifestyles. From heirloom apples to the perfect turkey, Martha Stewart Living has shown and told us what to buy—and more importantly—what to do with what we buy.

So it was serendipity last week, as I was considering how to introduce Gael Towey to Portland, that designer Brook Delorme, of Brook There on Wharf Street, posted a piece on her blog entitled “Artisanal Living.” If Martha Stewart turned the artistry of everyday life into an aspirational pastime, many of us in Portland have turned it into a full-time occupation. Brook begins, ”I understand, in theory, the way to really make money … invent something and then remove your personal body, self and time from the process of building and distribution.” But that, of course, is not what Brook is doing in her design business at all, she’s making things, herself, by hand. “The artisanal approach is limited—by working hours in the day,” she continues. “Artisanal manufacturing; whether it’s bread or pottery or handmade clothing— isn’t very scalable.”

And there you have it, Martha Stewart in New York creating content (at scale) about the joys of doing things by hand and recognizing things well done, and Portland artisans filling the hours of their days practicing, in a sense, what Martha is preaching. There is a bit of a fret underlying all of the emphasis on craft in Portland—are we too artisanal for our own good? But in Portland, which was Brooklyn before Brooklyn was Brooklyn, it is not just the art of the hand-made garment or the perfect baguette that consumes us, but also the art of the community. When Brook muses, ”So, were I to desire to grow this business, I’d need to find someone else to at least do some of the stuff I like doing, and I’d have to spend more time doing things I dislike,” we can echo as well that people live in Portland so they can spend more of their time doing the things they like and less time doing things they dislike. Finally, Brook asks, “Can I reframe this somehow? what am I missing?”

This is the question that Portland is asking and to a certain extent, what the Abstract Conference is answering. The conference grows out of the incredibly dense media community in New York that has spent the last few years battling its own extinction from the pressures of what in the ’90s was quaintly called “new media.” But the strength of the community was such that, with the help of technology, they have led the “old media” print publishing companies into the new world of branded apps, social media and mobile content. These creative directors have all “reframed” their skills and talents in the context of multi-platform publishing. So the promise of the conference to participants is a concentrated glimpse of the way forward for designers and publishers, but in a more concrete sense it is about how a critical mass of talent in one place leads to innovation and the growth of new businesses.

Portland aspires to be such a community of creative innovators, and I think many of us have a sense that we are approaching a tipping point beyond which we will spontaneously begin to emit new products and businesses like strange quarks in a particle accelerator. That is the spirit behind LiveWork Portland and our new networking group 2 Degrees Portland. As Brook Delorme wrote in a post we commented on last year, we think more competition from more creatives will be better for everyone’s business. So we’re trying to connect the dots for people interested in relocating here by hooking them up with volunteers here who can help them find their place in Portland.

I asked all of the Abstract panelists “To the extent that technology allows you to move your life and work to another city, which ones would you consider? And if you didn’t answer Portland, Maine, what factors (other than moving it to Brooklyn!) would make you consider relocating here?” Not surprisingly, Gael replied, “I can’t move to Portland because my husband and kids are in NYC, and I love it too much. However, I am excited to visit Portland. I think technology allows us to travel more and live in other cities besides NY.” So we know that she is not coming to Portland on Friday to scout the location, BUT IF she were, this is the kind of thing that 2 Degrees Portland would do for her:

[If the English language had a subjunctive tense with a connotation that means AS IF, we would switch to that at this point in the post!]

2 Degrees Portland coordinator Laura Burden would receive an email from Gael through the 2 Degrees website or Facebook page. Since she would have just read the “Artisanal Living” post, Brook would immediately spring to mind as a good “connector” for Gael. [To become a connector for 2 Degrees Portland, just fill out this short form.] Laura would email Brook and ask her if she would be willing to talk to Gael on the phone or meet with her on her next trip to Portland. Brook would say, ”Sounds like fun! and thank you for thinking of me ” Perhaps Brook would invite Gael to her workshop on Wharf Street and tell her about starting a lifestyle brand in Portland. Then maybe they would walk over to Custom House Wharf for a hands-on stitching demonstration at Sea Bags and then to 2 Note Perfumery on Moulton Street to pick out a gift for Martha. in parting, Brook would wish her luck, ask her to keep in touch and pass on a list of places she thinks Gael would enjoy:

a short list in portland!

my favorites:
fore street <—favorite nice restaurant because it’s relaxed
boda <—-only thai food in portland that’s actually like food in thailand
rosemont market <—they make the best hummous in portland, & competitively price their excellent quality produce
micucci’s <—-luna bread-  the best bread in portland
arabica, bard, hilltop  <—I can’t take sides, I love them all, but almost every day I get a latte from arabica.
quimby colony <—Roxanne Quimby’s exciting and emerging artist colony, with a focus on design
bar lola <—Our artisanal version of “Everyday Food”

granted, most of my list is food-related…but that’s what portland’s about, right?

Switching out of the subjunctive, Gael, even if you’re not going to HQ your own multimedia empire here, we hope you enjoy Portland. If you have the time, Brook would be happy to meet you, Sea Bags really would make a photogenic how-to story for the iPad, 2 Note is great for gifts and the food really is as good as everyone says.

Muchness is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the quality or state of being great in quantity, extent, or degree. — much of a muchness. : very much the same.” And so it is on June 10th in Portland. Not only is AIGA Maine hosting the first Abstract: The Future of Design in Media conference (a much of a muchness itself), but on the same day Kemp Goldberg and GBrittPR are sponsoring the second of their Brand Roundtables, this one on ”The New Definition of Creativity.” Both forums take on what seems to be very abstract topics and render them into examples of constructive actions taken in increasingly complex worlds.

Abstract, in its most concrete terms, is about how designers can thrive in the emerging multiscreen world. It is telling that in this new world of content production, print is just another “screen,” albeit a privileged one with very high-resolution (but low interactivity). The six presenters for the Abstract Conference are all creative directors (or similar) for New York based big media brands, and all got their start (and have lived most of their careers) in print. Florian Bachleda (Fast Company), Dirk Barnett, (Newsweek Daily Beast), Scott Dadich (Condé Nast), Arem DuPlessis (The New York Times Magazine), Luke Hayman (Pentagram) and Gael Towey (Martha Stewart) have all transitioned their charges successfully into the world of websites and apps, and seem to be having a pretty good time juggling them all.

Registration for the conference is still being accepted. The conference will be held at the University of Southern Maine Abromson Center for Continuing Education at 88 Bedford Street in Portland, and will run from 9am-5:30 pm followed by cocktails till whenever.

The “New Definition of Creativity” that Lars Bastholm, chief of creative and digital for Ogilvy & Mather in New York, will talk about also engages with the quantum complexity of  contemporary communications, in this case in the worlds of advertising and marketing. Like the publishers and content creators represented in Abstract, the marketers that Lars will talk about have figured out how to enter the anarchic dialog that their customers engage with daily across multiple communications channels and emerge with their brands intact.

The brand roundtable is free and will include lunch. The event will be held at The Masonic Temple, 415 Congress St. in Portland. Lunch will be served at noon, the presentation will start at 12:30 pm and run until 2pm. RSVP required.

We will be following up with more posts about what the Abstract panelists will bring to Portland. And with local sponsors for the event including VIA, Maine Magazine/Maine Home + Design, Downeast, MaineBiz, USM and Portland Color, there are bound to be more design related events orbiting around the conference that we will report on.

Planning for a volatile future requires either nimbleness or the commitment of resources vast enough to cope with any eventuality. The thing is, though, that developing nimbleness now can save a huge chunk of those vast resources later. Such is the approach of the Portland Society of Architects and the City of Portland to the threat of coastal inundation posed by global warming. Longstanding coastal communities, like Portland, whose boundaries have been defined through generations of tidal fluctuations are in an advantageous position over our southern (and particularly South Asian) counterparts whose unplanned rapid expansion have put them on the front lines of projected rising sea levels in this century. Nonetheless, Portland is confronting the problem head on by bringing together the creative, business and  municipal communities to explore the issue in depth.

The PSA is sponsoring Sustainable Portland By 2030: Rising Tides, a two-day symposium on sea level rise, on Thursday and Friday next week (May 12-13). There will be a Rising Tides panel and reception hosted by the City of Portland at The Ocean Gateway Terminal (14 Ocean Gateway Pier) on Thursday from 4:30-7:30 pm, followed by a continental breakfast and topic driven ‘What’s Next?’ discussions, hosted by DiMillo’s Floating Restaurant (25 Long Wharf) on Friday from 8:30-11am.

Panelists on Friday will include Sam Merrill, Director, New England Environmental Finance Center, Muskie School of Public Policy; Christophe Tulou, Past Director of the Resilient Coasts Initiative; and Kristina Hill, Chair of Landscape Architecture, University of Virginia. They will address potential physical and economic impact of sea level rise in Maine, how governments and industries are responding to sea level rise, and an overview of mitigation strategies around the world. The “What’s Next” event on Friday about will encompass discussions about the challenges and opportunities presented by sea level rise in terms of public policy, infrastructure and design, finance and insurance and (what we’re all about at LiveWork Portland) the cultural implications.

Complete details are on the PSA’s event poster as well.

Photo of The Ocean Gateway Terminal by Kirk Rogers