The flash mob at the Paleo-Primal-Price Foundation conference, with (from left) Kaayla Daniel, David Gumpert, Cathy Raymond, and Ron Schmid strutting their stuff.
By far the biggest unknown at this past weekend’s Paleo-Primal-Price Foundation inaugural conference in Southbridge, MA, was the half-day governance session scheduled for Sunday morning, to figure out the rules and procedures for getting things officially under way.
It’s hard to imagine many people getting excited about such things as amending by-laws and electing boards of directors, and discussions of topics like how to broaden member involvement.
Would anyone choose to run for the board? Would member really care about such issues? If they did. how would discussion and decisions happen in an orderly way?
Before Sunday morning was over, attendees had broken into ten or so small groups to discuss the key issues, and filled up a few dozen sheets of easel paper with ideas and suggestions. It all happened under the firm professional guidance of a facilitator, Andrew Stachiw of the Toolbox for Education and Social Action.
In between the small-group discussions, some 13 people had declared themselves candidates for the four open positions on the board, and most of them gave brief introductions about themselves and their qualifications to the group at large. Then, the 130-plus members in attendance had the opportunity to vote for their favorite candidates. I personally found the sincerity in those brief introductions the most moving part of the conference. Many people who lead very busy lives clearly wanted to commit to building a broadly based food organization drawing on the Paleo, Primal, and Weston A. Price communities.
It took almost an hour to count the ballots, and when it was over, those elected were Victoria Bloch, a graphic designer and food rights activist; Nora Gedgaudis, author of Primal Body, Primal Mind; Annie Dru, a teacher about traditional food preparation; and Allana Marie Woods, a permaculture designer. Those four were in addition to the three people who founded the organization—Ron Schmid, a naturopathic physician; Kaayla Daniel, a nutritionist and author of the explosive report on fermented cod liver oil; and myself. Schmid and Daniel will serve initially as co-presidents.
Schmid invited those who weren’t elected to the board to work with PPP in other ways, such as on board subcommittees and as volunteers.
Other conference notables:
- The 137 conference attendees came from 27 states, as well as Mexico and Canada. Another 80-plus had signed up for the video feed that will be available later this week.
- A number of special awards were handed out at Saturday evening’s banquet, most notably the “Badass” award to Kaayla Daniel for her release of the report on fermented cod liver oil, “Hook, Line, and Stinker”.
- About 20 flash dancers surprised attendees during the Saturday evening cocktail hour (see photo above).
- I got to meet a number of people I knew only through their comments on the blog, including Steve and Stephanie Tallent of Beeyoutiful and Randy Hartnell of Vital Choice Wild Seafood. Along with Archie Welch, Karen Myers, and Dan Corrigan of Corganic, U.S. distributor of Rosita extra virgin cod liver oil.
- I was also pleased to meet Sarah Smith, of the Nourished and Nurtured blog, whose blog post in January 2013 about why she and her family discontinued taking fermented cod liver oil ignited the whole controversy. Like me, she was astounded at the intensity of the reactions she received on her blog.
- The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund had a table at the conference.
- There was little mention of the Weston A. Price Foundation (or “WAPF -bashing” as one attendee put it) in Saturday’s presentations, and in the informal discussions around the conference. I found the presentations highly informative, especially those about Paleo and primal history and diet approaches.
- The food was stupendous—great salmon, shrimp, steaks, salads, and even a decadent (gluten-free) chocolate birthday cake celebrating PPPF’s founding.
In all, it was a pretty amazing get-together, a breath of fresh air at the first Paleo-Primal-Price Foundation conference. If you were there, feel free to add your observations and recollections in the comments.
Michael Schmidt & a few stalwarts have been charged with obstruction of Justice, after the provincial constabulary embarrassed demselves at Glencoulton Farm. Oh, this will be rich … the Courtroom becomes the classroom … = the tyrant mentality always over-reaches itself
https://blackburnnews.com/midwestern-ontario/midwestern-ontario-news/2015/11/23/raw-milk-crusaders-charged-with-obstructing-justice/
there was a good post on this forum, a few days ago, by GG, which I cannot locate again = to do with commerce, and that people in the US don’t understand how law is administered in the Dominion of Canada. GG had a lot to say with which I agree… but there more than a few cases of “judge-made law” here, too
…. these charges against Mr Schmidt et al have excellent potential to become THE test of property rights the last bastion against communism
I saw on the PPPF Facebook page that Ron Schmid’s dinner talk will not be included in the on-demand videos. That is the one where he was to talk about how he recovered from his advanced heart failure. Because I experienced the start of PACs and atrial fibrillation in the 8 years that I took FCLO, I have a keen interest in knowing what he did to recover. Do you know of any way to get that information? Does he talk about it in his new Primal Nutrition book?
The entire dinner program, including the talks, but excluding the chocolate cake, was recorded and will be on the recordings. Same goes for the business meeting.
Great news Cathy, that at least I will be getting the low-calorie version of the dinner program.
I wasn’t able to attend all of the sessions, but I was at the dinner, and he didn’t go into specifics about that at the dinner, but did reference the protocol as something he had detailed in his session talk. So, if you haven’t listened to that, start there.
Lynn, the principles of the dietary plan I have followed for many years are indeed in my new book, but many of the details involving the natural medicines I continue to use are not. If you email me about your own case I’d be happy to provide you with advice on this.
Also, was there any discussion about where next year’s conference will be held?
West Coast…San Francisco.
I was told that the west coast is the target and right now looking at a venue in the San Francisco area. This is very preliminary though and until a venue is booked, we won’t know for sure. I’m sure we will be told just as soon as the venue and dates are set.
There seems to be consensus among the board that the idea we wrote into the bylaws about alternating between the east and west coast is popular. We are now working on forming committees of board members and other members to explore possibilities as to locations, topics, speakers for next year’s conference, as well as other subjects such as ongoing membership, publicity and fund raising. All members are invited to participate.
Maybe instead of always having the conference on a coast location, you could have one mid-USA every once in a while. Like every 5th or 10th year. I can understand alternating locations, but it seems unfortunate to me that the bylaws restrict the location to the east or west coast.
I signed up for the video talks as well, and was especially keen on viewing Dr. Ron’s presentation. I was under the impression that it would be included in the video purchase package as his talk was listed in the agenda. Let me know if his talk can be included. I’d really appreciate it!!
Vicki, I spoke for 40 minutes in the afternoon about dietary principles and for 20 after dinner about my experience with heart failure and subsequent recovery. Both talks are included in the videos.
Wish I could have attended but finances prohibited it. Unfortunately, can’t even afford the video feed at the moment. I’ve been hoping for years that WAPF would have a conference in Denver, where I live, since I’ve never been able to afford to travel to a conference. Now I’m hoping PPPF will have a conference one of these years in Denver. Both the east and west coasts are far away. Not sure now that I would want to go to a WAPF conference with all that’s come to light.
Thank you for the recap! I’m so excited for you all and the process you are following. A breath of fresh air.
It was a fun conference, and I too was pleased at how little WAPF-bashing went on. I will say that during Kaayla’s talk there were a pair of women sitting right behind me who, based on what I gather from their whisperings, were either texting or otherwise messaging details of every mention of WAPF and Sally Fallon Morell to either Sally or someone else closely tied to her. It gave me the sense that something’s brewing. I didn’t see either of them at dinner though, or on Sunday.
It was also nice to meet you David and Cathy. I’ve had email correspondence with both of you over the past few years, and it was nice to shake the hand of the real person behind those emails. It was also nice to see Nora and her partner Lisa again. We’ve hosted them both at our Nourish Vermont Traditional Food and Health Gathering, and they’re great people. I wish I’d arrived early enough on Saturday morning to see Nora’s talk. I look forward to the video recording, hopefully sound quality will be good.
Cheers!
Just for clarification Eric, whomever was texting it was not to Sally or anyone else closely connected to WAPF. None of us have any knowledge of this and we certainly did not “plant” people at this conference.
Thanks for the results! Puzzled they aren’t on the FB page or conference page yet. I’ll add to the FB page.
Congratulations on the first Paleo-Primal-Price Foundation Conference and the beginning success of this organization!
Ditto! Much success going forward.
I thought the conference was excellent. Specifically the size made it easy to meet all of the people face to face that have been writing in. I was so happy to meet you, David! Kaayla did an awesome job and being up close and personal helped to feel her energy and intent. It made me appreciate her actions much more. I truly hope all the stress can be put behind her and that bigger and better things are to come. All of the talks were great, Nora and Randy being my favorites. We had to leave early on Sunday but I really enjoyed that part as well, the group discussions and mutual respect that each voice was given was very refreshing!
It was great to meet you, David. The conference was fantastic, and I very much enjoyed our conversations. It was amazing to be in the midst of such a group of passionate, sincere, and dedicated people.
It was great to meet you as well, Sarah, learn about your homeopathic practice. It was an amazing group of people who assembled, the beginning of bigger things, I am sure.
Thanks for your great recap of the event, on your blog.
http://nourishedandnurtured.blogspot.com/2015/11/my-first-nutrition-and-health.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NourishedAndNurtured+%28Nourished+and+Nurtured%29
@ David: This is OT but just FYI – did you know you can shorten those urls / links by eliminating everything after the html – starting with the question mark? What follows after the “html” part is not necessary in order to open the actual link. It is good information to know because sometimes a long link has to be shortened with tiny url and a lot of people (myself included) do not like to open something from tiny url or snip url because we can’t read what site it’s from or what it concerns.
I didn’t write up a recap, but did offer some thoughts about the conference in a post on my blog. David and others on the board of directors might consider some of my comments about the bylaws, missions statement and general scope of the new foundation.
http://ericgarza.info/index.php/2015/11/26/reflections-on-p3-conference/
Congratulations to all of the organizers who pulled this off on what I would consider extraordinarily short notice!
Thanks, Eric, for an interesting analysis, especially of the challenges facing the new P3 Foundation. I think you make excellent points about the need for the new organization to transcend WAPF, and also to deal with what some might perceive to be its Price-centric orientation. My sense is that a diverse board will help a lot in confronting those issues.
And great to meet you at the conference as well.
Thanks. Any sense when videos of the presentations will be up? I didn’t arrive until noon so missed Nora’s talk, and would like to watch it.
It was delightful to attend this conference and meet so many wonderful, passionate and caring people. =) As a vendor and parent attending with 3 small children in tow the kindness and graciousness of the attendee’s, coordinators and vendors was much appreciated! Having worked behind the scenes of big events in the past I am in awe at how high quality everything was with how rapidly it was put together.
My experience was different from yours David in the sense that there was a strong undercurrent of anti WAPF and FCLO in comments and conversations. Perhaps it was because most of my time was spent out in the vendor area with our kids where casual conversations and discussions were ongoing vs. being able to be in the conference room with the speakers. Much of it is only natural and to be expected considering how this organization came to be but somewhat disappointing all at the same time. It is my deeply held hope that as this organization grows there can be an excitement and focus on the good and the unique scope of what PPPF can do that is good and productive in it’s own right. One of my biggest concerns about the future of PPPF is that it will not be able to successfully disentangle itself from the influence and limited vision of the organization it’s grown out of.
High hopes for where this can go and love and support to those in positions of leadership as they make crucial decisions and navigate over the next few months! =)
Stephanie, it was great to meet you, Steve, and your neat children. You certainly did have a different view of the conference, being in the vendor area. Like you, I’m not surprised there was considerable lingering anti-WAPF and FCLO reaction–only natural considering how little time has elapsed since our new group launched. I agree it will be up to the PPPF leadership and membership to set its own direction. Based on reactions and suggestions I’ve heard since the conference ended, I am increasingly optimistic PPPF will be able to disentangle itself from those old influences. There are too many people with too much positive energy for it not to happen, in my judgment. Thanks for sharing.
That is great to hear David. Excited to follow what happens in the coming days! Appreciate you and everybody else who is working hard to ensure this goes in a great direction.