Save the date: We will be holding our annual conference this spring April 4-6, 2014, in Charlotte, NC. We plan to include project work discussions, a poster session, an art exhibit, and interactions with socially sustainable manufacturing businesses, in addition to case study presentations. We look forward to seeing you all! (interested in helping? email socialsustainabilitynetwork[at]gmail[dot]com)

Contribute to a project: The INSS projects are moving ahead, and we hope you’re on board at least one of them. Project coordinators met this month to talk about next steps, and you should be contacted soon about those you wanted to work on. See the projects webpage for contact information and updates.

INSS out and about: Cris Surbeck presented about the INSS at the 3rd International Congress on Sustainability Science & Engineering (ICOSSE), and said she had some great responses and interest in the network. Her poster is here, for those who want to see what she presented.

INSS blog this month: The INSS blog posts in August included posts of the keynote video and other videos from the May 2013 meeting. Thanks to all of you who allowed us to post your video! Cris Surbeck also posted about defining social sustainability from an engineering perspective, adding to our collection of posts on this topic. We’re getting closer to being able to discuss a broad definition of social sustainability – and welcome opinions from all our members either through comments or new blog posts. If you have a post to share, please email socialsustainabilitynetwork[at]gmail[dot]com.

Coming soon: Wiki pages for projects, website redesign, and a draft governance plan for the network

Finally, welcome to our new members, and thanks to those who continue to keep the network active and exciting!

Nicole Peterson