With all the natural disasters and especially earthquakes that have occurred around the world in the past couple of years, many believe that California is due for the next massive earthquake. The fear is heightened for those of us living in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere along the San Andreas fault line, where we saw our last major earthquake in 1989.

For this past Wednesday's Design Open Mic luncheon, we had a very special visit from Former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, who reflected on and spoke to us about his experience navigating our city through one of the greatest disasters that it's seen in recent history. The former mayor went over the steps he took immediately following the Loma Prieta earthquake, and some of the lessons we can learn from that experience in order to prepare ourselves for the next "Big One." Check out highlights from Mr. Agnos' presentation in the video, below.

Following Mr. Agnos' talk, we heard from Jim Koenigsaecker, CEO and co-founder of the nonprofit Innovations Housing, and its subsidiary, Building Innovations Group. Jim is a LEED accredited general building contractor who recently returned from Nairobi, Kenya, where he was working on phase II of the SIDAREC Technology and Media Lab. Despite the many challenges he faced while working on the center, Jim maintains that this project was "the best thing" that he's ever been involved with. Many thanks to Jim and the team at Innovations Housing and Building Innovations Group, who helped bring the SIDAREC center up to operability! Download Jim's PDF presentation below to see photos and project details.

• Attachment: SIDAREC_Presentation.pdf (3.48 MB)