Day 2: Fort Mason Center, May 13 from 9:00 am – 6:00 pm 

8:00 am – Doors Open + First Timer Breakfast

Come early to check in, grab a coffee and some light breakfast bites, and start mingling with the 500 experts and learners we get to share this day with.

Is this your first TOGETHER Conference? Welcome! You’re invited to a special breakfast meetup just for you! Grab your breakfast and meet us at the spot indicated on our venue map, which you’ll receive upon arrival when checking in.

9:00 am – Opening Session, Defining and Aligning our Worldviews on Pace, Scale, and Durability

We’re here because we want to collaborate for healthy lands, waters, and people. And, we work with organizations and communities that have different definitions, values, and approaches—sometimes, different worldviews entirely—on how we get there.

Taylor Pennewell (Berry Creek Rancheria Band of Maidu Indians) from Redbud Resource Group and Annie Burke from TOGETHER Bay Area will talk about the Western mindset and Indigenous worldviews on how we care for our lands and waters, people and communities. Learn about the strategy and heart behind TOGETHER Bay Area’s relationship-centered approach, and how you can bridge worldviews to build meaningful collaborations that lead to tangible change.

10:00 am – Structured Networking

Back by popular demand! You will be invited to meet new people through a lightly structured activity that is grounded in this year’s theme of Pace, Scale, and Durability. Past participants in this portion of the TOGETHER Conference have met new funders and project partners, found new jobs, and hatched new ideas. They’ve reconnected with old friends and been inspired by people at different stages of their career. The possibilities are endless. Bring your business cards.

11:00 am – Morning Session, Shifting Perspectives: The Personal and Generational

While many of us call conservation our profession, our work for climate resilience and equity is also personal. Participants from the Right Relations and Restoring Right Relations programs will share their personal stories about how time, place, and legacy show up in their lives and work. They will expand our understanding pace, scale, and durability, offer pathways to success by shifting our perspectives, and invite us to consider our own roles and responsibilities within our organizations, communities, histories and futures of the lands and waters we call home.

12:00 pm – Lunch!

Lunch will be provided! Pick up your meal upstairs, grab a friend, and enjoy a great meal in great company. You can explore the Exhibitor Village, take a walk by the water, meet new and old colleagues around the building, or whatever else you’d like during this time.

1:30 pm – Breakouts

Concurrent breakout sessions will take place throughout the building twice! That means that (almost) all the sessions will be identically available and repeated in this Round 1, and again during Round 2.

Descriptions of the breakouts are below.

3:30 pm – Closing Session, All Together Now: Unlikely Partnerships for Enduring Progress

Collaborating with unlikely partners has never been more important for the transformational changes we need for healthy lands, waters, people, and communities.

Over the past four years, a group of around 20 leaders from Arcata to Riverside, Bishop to Berkeley, have met monthly to partner with California’s Natural Resource Agency to support the state’s goal of conserving 30% of the state’s lands and coastal waters by 2030. This group, the 30×30 Partnership Coordination Committee (PCC), consists of people from very different backgrounds, working on very different issues, all with the same goal. Since they started meeting, California has counted over 2.5 million acres for 30×30. Together with partners all across the state, we have now conserved 26.1% of lands with less than 4 million acres to go to reach our goal.

Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot will moderate a conversation about the PCC and its role on 30×30 with PCC members Jun Bando from CA Native Plant Society, Cassaundra Pino from Native American Lands Conservancy, Joel Weltzien from Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, and Kirk Wilbur from CA Cattleman’s Association.

You’ll learn ways to work with people with very different perspectives, get specific things you can do to achieve California’s 30×30 goal, and leave energized to work together toward big goals.

4:30 pm – Reception

Meet us upstairs for drinks, bites, and celebrations after a full day of conferencing! Swing by the Exhibitor Village, cheers with colleagues new and old, and wrap up the day in cheery spirits.

6:30 pm – Homeward bound