The Path Toward the Progressive Olympics

I have given a lot of thought about how to bring about the Progressive Olympic Movement that I wrote about yesterday. It seems to me that for it to be truly progressive it needs to encourage its organizers and sponsors to reflect. Thus it is necessarily spiritual. It seeks to bring out the best of the human and thus the Olympic Spirit.

I have developed a loose outline of a series of Innovation Conferences which will bring people together to facilitate the development of these Progressive Olympic Games. The conferences could take place anywhere, but it might make sense for some of them to take place in the locations of the suggested Progressive Olympic Games (Rio, Sarajevo, one of the Lake Erie cities). It might also make sense for the conferences to take place in a city which has hosted large, culturally significant conferences before (such as Washington, New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago). That is not important at this moment.

As I understand it, it seems to me that the following topics would facilitate reflection on economic development, cooperation among businesses, and formation of Olympic committees for each of the games. Obviously, Rio already has an Olympic Committee. The point is to turn the Olympics into a mechanism for promoting economic growth and liberation of the poor.

Here is a loose structure for these Innovation Conferences:

2010: Spiritual Innovation: Pink, Lowney and Teilhard
2011: Humanism and Innovation
2012: Evaluating Past Olympics
a. Economic Contribution to host region
b. Respect for preferential option and fair trade
c. Utility of Olympic park and housing after games
d. How can future Olympics build upon past experience?
2013: The Freedom of Green Energy and Green Economics.
a. Conclusion: How to host a Green Olympics.
2014: Women’s Innovation
a. Women’s innovation in science, art, business, religion, culture and politics.
b. The spirituality of women’s innovation
c. Feminist humanism
d. How feminist humanism has liberated women
e. Feminist humanism and international athletics
f. Have the Olympics served women well?
g. How can the Olympic movement contribute to the freedom and well-being of women around the globe?

At this point, I would want to be open to the suggestions of others about developing future innovation conferences.