I’d like to see a permaculture designer speak. Bill Mollison, David Holmgren or Geoff Lawton maybe. They deal with some of the same issues of sustainable design we face. However, they don’t have to deal with the same restrictions we do, since they tend to focus on farming. Therefore, they are able to prove or disprove whether something works more easily and can experiment in ways we aren’t always able to. They also have a slightly different way of looking at sustainability. Whereas we LA’s focus on how our landscapes can be less damaging to natural landscapes, permaculturists focus on how to make human landscapes function more like natural landscapes. So they offer an interesting outsider’s perspective.
I’d also like to see Janine Beynus at a ASLA conference ( http://www.asknature.org/ ). She’s a proponent of biomimicry. Essentially, biomimicry is looking to nature to solve a human problem. An example would be looking at the substances mussels use to attach themselves to rocks in order to make glues that are water resistant. Architects are already picking up on biomimicry ( http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/hok-biomimicry-guild-forge-alliance-bio-inspired-design.php ).
So, who else?
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