The
Velo-city conference is fast approaching in early June so I’ve been busy
arranging meetups and preparing my offerings. I’ll be presenting on One
Street’s Social Bike Business program during the Friday parallel sessions. A
nice surprise is that I am not the only presenter on bicycles and social
issues. That Friday morning, One
Street board member Amanda Ngabirano will speak
during the plenary session on bicycles in sustainable development. During the
Friday session that follows, I’ll be joined by another One Street board member, Michael Linke , as well as other leaders of social
bike programs in our session called Pedaling Towards Social Change.
You can
see the conference
schedule here. At least on Friday, I look forward to connecting with many
like-minded bike program leaders. On other days, I also see several speakers
from developing countries. This gives me hope that this Velo-city will have
more emphasis on serving the bicycling needs of disadvantaged people than I
have seen at previous Velo-city conferences.
One
unexpected and fun encounter at the conference, which I have already enjoyed,
is that my Airbnb host in Nantes
is Mirella at Chronovelo, a local cargo bike delivery service. That’s her in
the photo. She and her company are working at the conference to haul around
conference necessities. Pretty cool, eh?
One month and I’ll be on my way to Nantes
