LOHAS—a business conference dedicated to doing well and doing good, both—just ended yesterday. The final 15 minutes, with a few New Belgiums in me, I salsaed with Buddhist/ yoga/ social media mistress/ friend Gwen Bell, shook dozens of hands (including the organizer’s, Ted Ning) in thanks, then left the picturesque St. Julien Hotel with a year’s worth of inspiration filling my tired head.

Photo from the last moments of LOHAS Forum 2010 via Joey Shepp, via Gwen Bell’s site:

LOHAS is amazing. It may not perfect, yet—nothing is—it’s still got plastic bottles (which presenter Christopher, associate product of The Cove, reminded us is something worth boycotting in the face of the BP Oil Spill) and greenwashing (my friend Josh of Pangea told me how he asked tough questions of a favorite company in a panel, and received evasive answers)…and, like everywhere in Boulder, there’s AC blasting and windows open (the equivalent of having a refrigerator the size of a hotel with it’s door open) but it is, as Rand of Neighbor told me, a national “favorite.” Why?

1. Ted Ning. I don’t know someone who’s more supportive and hard working, straightforward and cheerful…and seemingly relaxed. Every conference needs a king, and LOHAS has it in Ted.

2. Boulder. It’s a green-minded and business-friendly town—despite the aforementioned AC and windows open habit—and it’s beautiful. Most conferences, you’re stuck in a generic hotel and hardly get out. LOHAS is out—the two courtyards where our receptions happen, where we drink and eat every meal and dance and check out booths—look out directly over our majestic Flatiron mountains. Within two minutes are dozens of great restaurants, hiking in the mountains, the Boulder Creek, and seven other sites worth seeing and things worth doing.

3. LOHAS brings together big companies like Coke, Petco, Starbucks, Ebay, Whitewave…with fun troublemakers like Pangea Organics, W1SD0M, SocialK, Soap Group, CSR Newswire. Most conferences highlight one or the other—but true change will only come from combining the best of corporate, pragmatic, mainstream…with grassroots, idealistic mindsets.

4. LOHAS is hard to pin down. What is it? What’s it about? Well, it’s about spirituality, yoga, green, big business, the cutting edge of social and new media…it’s about conscious consumerism corporate do-gooderism. Given that I have a full-time, 7 day a week job…I went to only three panels—one with Petco, Starbucks and Ebay, one on SEO with Everett Sizemore of Gaiam, and one on the Oil Spill an expert from the EPA, the Cove, and Philippe Cousteau skyping in…but I found myself re-inspired, re-fueled.

5. Half the fun at LOHAS isn’t inside a hotel conference room. There’s the live-streamed yoga, pre-parties, VIP parties, the benefits, afterparties, the countless booths featuring great business, there was a Hamsa Lila show (we sponsored) at the Boulder Theater…LOHAS is an experience, not a location.

6. The People. LOHAS, as I said at a LOHAS preparty we sponsored with Ted, Gaiam, White Wave and Gwen, is the one event of the year when those “working (and playing) to create enlightened society,” as our mission puts it, are magnetized to Boulder from all over the country. There are more quality connections—I got to spend time with colleagues and friends Mallika Chopra, Jurriaan Kamp, Randy Paynter, the folks at Neighbor, Mark Retzloff, many others—in two days at LOHAS than in a year’s worth of twitter or facebook interactions. Social media may have saved elephant, but good old 3D is still king.

Photo by Magda Rod, of Waylon Lewis with Jurriaan Kamp of Ode at SocialK, Soap Group & CSR Wire’s Speakeasy party for elephant at Bitter Bar:

7. The shwag. Most conferences have un-eco shwag. LOHAS’s gift room is full of eco-minded products that are actually useful, along with a reusable Chico bag. This may seem like a minor thing, but the devil (or mindfulness) is best found in the details—like organic, fair-trade coffee, and organic, delicious, elegant meals. LOHAS may not be perfect (eco banana leaf plates, shipped thousands of miles and composted after one use, are elegant and cool but less eco thank good ol’fashioned porcelain that can be dishwashed and reused)…but in any case, LOHAS cares, and improves year after year in reducing its carbon footprint.

8. LOHAS gives “small people,” as BP infamously put it, a chance. The last few years, as I decided to reduce a profitable magazine business into a temporarily unprofitable news site that, in our first year online, Ted has tried his damnedest to support elephant. Few conferences look beyond ROI and reward mindfulness or right action. LOHAS is there for the grassroots—it’s truly about doing well, and doing good—not just one or the other.

Via LOHAS’s site:

Look who is attending this year: