A posting in the press room at GreenBuild Friday morning said that as of Thursday, 27,995 people had attended the show. A couple hours after I read that, I thought I heard USGBC president Rick Fedrizzi say from the stage during the closing session that attendance had topped 30,000. Maybe I got that wrong, but either way, the interest in green building certainly appeared to triumph, or at least maintain, despite the sour economic times. I can't imagine that budget tightening didn't prevent some from attending, but the feeling on the floor and in the sessions was fully forward, not one of retrenchment. Later in the final session, EO Wilson said, "Given this direction in America, that it's going to take, it has no choice, a group like this can be thinking of itself as a movement, to belong to it, and ... to regard it not as a profession, but as a calling." Now, I'm a partisan, clearly, but yes, that's how the show seemed to me, that I was part of an important forward movement that I am called to.