Speakers

	Randy Udall has directed the Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE), a nonprofit organization that promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy since 1994. Udall also serves on the Board of Directors of Solar Energy International and Colorado Renewable Energy Society. CORE promotes renewable energy and energy efficiency in partnership with Holy Cross Energy, a rural electric utility serving 40,000 customers. Holy Cross leads the U.S. in the percentage of its customers who buy wind power. In 1998, CORE started the first “solar production incentive” program in the United States; the program pays customers who install PV systems 25¢/kilowatt-hour for their energy. Holy Cross has more grid-connected photovoltaic systems than any of the 930 rural electric utilities in the nation. Holy Cross’ wind, solar, and hydropower programs will keep 500 million pounds of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere over the next 20 years. In 2000, CORE started the nation’s first Renewable Energy Mitigation Fund, which has collected $1,000,000 in building permit fees to install renewable energy systems. From 1982 until joining CORE, Randy Udall was a free-lance writer specializing in the environment and related scientific topics, including energy efficiency, green buildings, acid rain, groundwater depletion, energy, clean air, global warming, and biodiversity. He also edited the quarterly newsletter of the Rocky Mountain Institute, the world's foremost energy think tank. As a freelancer, Randy contributed articles to more than a dozen newspapers and magazines, including: National Wildlife, Audubon, Outside, Sierra, the Denver Post, and the Los Angeles Times.
	Born and raised in Colorado, Brian Fuentes says he never really realized how much he loved it here until he was swept away to the rainy University of Oregon in Eugene for architecture school. There, he discovered straw bale construction, volunteering as a plasterer on the first bale house permitted in Eugene in 1997. He also discovered he couldn't take the rain, and wanted to move back to the 300+ days of sunshine, wide open front-range views, with some breathtaking expanses of native short prairie grasses still left, despite the ever-growing sprawl of vinyl-sided boxes into the landscape. Brian has lectured at the Univerity of Oregon, Colorado USGBC conference, the Colorado IIDA Conference, as well as the Colorado Straw Bale Assocation conference. Brian teaches architectural design at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Having founded fuentesdesign in 1999, Brian is a third generation native, professional mountain bike racer and a registered architect in the State of Colorado. Visit fuentesdesign.com to learn more.
David Eisenberg is co-founder and Director of the non-profit Development Center for Appropriate Technology (DCAT) based in Tucson, Arizona. His three decades of building experience range from troubleshooting construction of the cover of Biosphere 2 to building a $2 million structural concrete house, a hypoallergenic structural steel house, and masonry, wood, adobe, rammed earth, and straw bale structures. For more than a decade David has led the effort to create a sustainable context for building codes. A two-term member of the Board of the U.S. Green Building Council, he founded and chairs the USGBC Code Committee. He has presented workshops, seminars, keynote addresses and lectures at dozens of international, national and regional conferences. He is co-author of The Straw Bale House book and has written dozens of published articles, forewords, book chapters and papers. David and DCAT were named 2007 International Code Council Affiliate of the Year and received a 2007 USGBC Leadership Award.
	Mark Schueneman, Executive Director of COSBA, was raised in the suburbs of Chicago, schooled in Dayton, Ohio and moved to Boulder in 1973 where he practiced the art of concrete construction. He ran a successful concrete construction business from 1982 - 2004 when he retired from the concrete industry to work in the field of Natural Building. As Director of the Colorado Straw Bale Association, Mark has taught Straw Bale and Natural Building around the state, at CU and on multiple Native American reservations in the western US. Mark and several COSBA members are actively pursuing coordinating and hosting the 2010 International Straw Bale Builders Conference in Estes Park.
Frostbusters was launched by Fritz Diether and Richard Ely in April of 1985 in Crested Butte, Colorado. Crested Butte, with its severe winter climate, served as a perfect location for learning the importance of energy efficiency in both new and older homes. Armed with a brand new Blower Door and Energy Analysis Software, the Frostbusters team conducted energy audits and provided the recommended products and services to the customer. In 1987, Frostbusters hosted an Energy Symposium, attracting speakers and guests from around the country. Mr. Diether purchased Mr. Ely’s interest in Frostbusters in 1988. In 2003 Mr. Diether moved to Grand Junction and has spent the past two years remodeling homes in the area.
	A building contractor for over 25 years, Steven Schechter has designed and built numerous straw bale homes and additions over the years, including the first permitted straw bale home in Gunnison County, Colorado in 1995. Slated to achieve another first, Schechter will build two straw bale homes within Gunnison city limits this year, one of them being a load bearing structure. Schechter is a board member of the High Country Citizen's Alliance and serves on the Gunnison River Water Conservancy District board. "I believe that it is very important for all citizens to give back to their communities," he says. "This is what keeps a democracy vibrant and makes for a progressive and caring community."
Kelly Mathews started building straw bale houses in 1996 to fill in between seasons guiding for Outward Bound and just hasn’t found his way back to the mountains yet. Kelly’s mantra is simplicity. ”Simple is beautiful, economical and environmental”. Part of that simple philosophy is to use more local materials like horse-logged lumber for frames, roofing, and finishes, clay for floors, plasters, walls fireplaces and everything. The bookend to local and natural materials is local artisanship. Kelly and a consortium of Friends make up the building firm “Straw House Builders.” Together they carry out every task in the building process from design to the crafting of light fixtures, furniture, and landscaping. Kelly’s is at heart a teacher and he is looking forward to sharing his knowledge and experience with home finishes.
	Gordon Heinrich, founder and president of Braxis Energy, Inc., is trained as a Mechanical Engineer with a primary focus on heat transfer and thermodynamics. Mr. Heinrich has spent the last 20 years solving real world problems utilizing technology. With rising energy prices, he has become and acknowledged expert in proven technologies not just in the U.S. but worldwide that effectively harness geothermal energy. Mr. Heinrich has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan where he graduated magna cum laude. He is also accredited by the International Ground Source Heat Pump Association (IGSHPA) and a member of ASHRE.
	Steve Kawell built his first passive solar home in 1981 with many more to follow. The early designs had large areas of roof glazing with a tendency to overheat in the summer, lose heat during long winter nights, and incur greater maintenance costs. The evolution to using a direct gain design utilizing only vertical south glazing with proper roof over-hangs created a passive solar structure that is more self regulating. With the dramatic day/night temperature fluctuations of the early designs, the need for an adequate amount of thermal mass became apparent. The next evolution of his building career has come in the form of green building. Green building is a more all-encompassing approach to sustainable construction. In 2004, Steve worked with Dan Baker of The Four Corners Group, designing and building Copperhead Camp, a Built Green development at Edgemont Highlands, Durango, Colorado. In 2005 his team won the Colorado Built Green Builder of the year award, as well as the Colorado Energy Star Development of the Year award. In the fall of 2006 Steve opened the doors to his own passive solar and green building consulting company, Durango Fine Homes, LLC. The company’s main focus is to create working plans for the simple and cost effective construction of a solar home. Having built many passive solar homes over the years, he has observed their performance first hand over many heating and cooling seasons, seeing what really works and what doesn’t. Simple, durable, and cost effective construction details are incorporated into his solar home designs. Please visit DurangoSolarHomes.com
Andrew Phillips' father was raised in a wattle & daub farmhouse in rural Greece and his mother was raised in an adobe in the old part of Los Angeles. He cites this as one of the reasons natural building came so easily. “Natural building always has seemed sensible, viable, and right, especially the mud sand straw part. I believe that once earth is in your veins, it’s there to stay.” Integrating modern building techniques and systems with old world technology has been the direction his work and business have taken since 1999. Refining plasters and paints has become one of his favorite pieces of the trade despite the blood, sweat, and tears. His most memorable situation to date was being the earth plaster/paint consultant for the Butterfly Social Club in the heart of downtown Chicago, where “the clay plasters and cob sculptures were quite out of place amid the massive skyscrapers, heavy traffic, and the homeless. By it being so incongruous, the situation was surreal at best.”
	Ken Rybkiewicz grew up on the east coast in a house that made him sick. After graduating high school, he left that house to pursue a degree from Colorado State University in Landscape Architecture and Natural Resources Management. He found a job that payed him to hike the mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park, which introduced him to natural building in the backcountry. After 10 years maintaining, constructing and teaching backcountry trail, drystone masonry, and bridge construction for the National Park Service, it was time for a change and new challenges. With his love for nature, and remembering the house he grew up in, the transition into natural home construction seemed the next logical step. Why do we build structures that make us ill in the first place? There had to be a better way. Ken studied timber frame, strawbale, and straw/clay construction with several builders and was immediately drawn to straw for its complimentary characteristics and benefits in construction. He now has set some roots in Durango, CO and is cofounder of Shelter LLC, a natural building company in the area.
As co-founder of Shelter LLC, John Ford’s goal is to provide healthy, natural, low embodied energy structures to Southwest Colorado. John moved to Durango to pursue this dream. He enjoys Durango’s community of like minded people who are also interested in making this area a unique and wonderful place.
	Anikke Storm has worked in construction for 18 years, since she moved to Colorado. In 1997 she met Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley from the Cob Cottage Company and the rest is history. “Once I discovered what we can do with the Earth, I was hooked!” Anikke worked on cob houses and got into Natural Plaster’s and Earthen Floors. When she moved to Crestone C.O., there was an abundant amount of strawbale homes that needed plasters, thus she and her husband Steve started Stormworks, a small company offering Natural Interior and Exterior finishes, Earthen floors, Masonry, Timberframing, Cabinets and Natural Building. Over the years she has worked all over the state, bringing beautiful finishes to strawbale homes and consulting and teaching home owner/builders in this process. “Mud is my passion. I believe in its simplicity and versatility.”