Julian M. Belilty

I was interviewed by Orlando LIVE for the GreenWaves Sustainable Music Festival

Sarika Ramdular

Wednesday night UCF’s Campus Activities Board and Environmental Coalition teamed up to bring the first interactive show to the arena, in the form of an electronic dance concert called GreenWaves III.

As UCF’s first large-scale electronic festival, Greenwaves III brought forth some of the hottest musical acts including KillaGraham, Blau, DEV and Alesso, whose performances got the crowd pumped and excited.

“GreenWaves III has the potential to give the University of Central Florida the national, and possibly international, news coverage that it deserves,” said Julian Belilty, sustainability specialist of the Environmental Coalition. “The use of the Piezo flooring technology is almost unheard of in the United States, much less for a concert application at a university.”

This floor technology was the showcase for the event in new technological advancements for IBM’s innovation for the future. The Piezo-Electric energy-generating floor system was implemented for the festival in the use of electricity for the lights and sounds of the musical acts. It converts the mechanical energy from the dancing directly into usable electricity, which powered the concert.

“We’re trying to have the audience be hyped so that they can in turn create more electricity, which in turn creates a better show,” said Christian Damon, director of concerts for CAB. “So essentially the concert is powering the audience, while the audience is powering the concert.”

UCF is one of the first to have a Piezo floor in the United States, owning their own before this new technology is unveiled at the 2012 Summer Olympics. CAB plans to use this feature at other events around campus so that they can benefit from this exclusive technology, as well as make UCF a more eco-friendly place.

“We’re working to educate students as well as to implementing green initiatives into their everyday lives,” Damon said. “We’re anticipating having at least 97 percent of trash being recycled from the event, so really, we’re not only hoping students have a really great time while also experiencing this new green technology, but can take away some green initiatives from the event itself.”

When Belilty received his position as the sustainability specialist for the Student Government Association, the first thing he wanted to apply at UCF was the new technological discovery of the Piezo floor. It was something that he hoped would get student’s attention and keep it, where they would find it interesting and more appealing.

“The Piezo-Electric energy-generating dance floor within our GreenWaves music festival, coupled with the top-tier electronic artists and a production of greater quality than any other student-run show in UCF history, will finally give environmentalism and sustainability a much sexier image,” Belilty said. “We have the opportunity to create an event that is more than music and lighting, we have the opportunity to create an event that symbolizes the future of concert events; where we are going, where we are, and what it will take to get there. This is the first step in making global concert history, right here at UCF.”

The idea for an electronic dance concert of this scale started with planning in October. Special attention was given to even the smallest details, where never before seen special effects were used, as well increased lighting and the most unique set design ever seen on campus.

“This is the first concert that’s been centered on a specific idea,” Damon said. “[The idea] is the audience creating electricity, so the idea of GreenWaves is essentially started from the acquisition of the Piezo floor.”

GreenWaves has always focused primarily on the awareness of “green” initiatives in everyday life, but what made this show so different was the element of sustainability that was added to the actual show. Audience members were not only being educated about green initiatives, but they were also taking an active role in it.

“I think it’s awesome,” Alexis Ondris, a first time attendee to GreenWaves said. “It’s been one of the busiest events that I’ve seen [here at UCF].”

The audience was thrilled with the incredible light show they received through the use of lasers and strobe lights. In the past, GreenWaves was an outdoor festival that was of the rock-genre, with a little bit of reggae or hip-hop added to the mix. This year, the event was changed to an electronic event to include the Piezo flooring technology.

“It’s pretty fantastic,” concertgoer Jason Lyzniak said. “It’s kind of evolved, encompassing house music and dance music, rather than just other genres, so it’s really cool to see that kind of genre being brought to UCF.”

“I hope they keep on doing it,” Orlando Rios said about electronic events. “I mean… there’s a ton of people out here now. I really hope they do it again.” Read More

April events in celebration of Earth Month will encourage University of Central Florida students and the community to promote sustainable living.

Among the highlights is GreenWaves III, an electronic music festival sponsored by E.Co. and the Campus Activities Board. The festival will be held from noon to 11 p.m. Wednesday, April 11, at the UCF Arena.

GreenWaves will take the concept of a concert to the next level by incorporating a piezoelectric dance floor that converts dancing energy into electricity. The audience will contribute to the energy being used by the concert, and the crowd also will control lighting and special effects.

GreenWaves headliners include Alesso, DEV, 3Lau and KillaGraham. Tickets are free for UCF students and $20 for general admission. More information can be found at http://www.ucfgreenwaves.com.

Other Earth Month events include:

-“Range, Furrow and Grove: Images of Florida Agriculture,” an exhibit of photographs, will be on display on the main floor of the UCF Library through Monday, April 30. The exhibit, a reflection on Florida’s agricultural system in the early 1900s, is sponsored by UCF Dining Services and other partners.

-Members of the sustainable student group I.D.E.A.S. will speak to youngsters at UCF’s Creative School for Children about growing fruits and vegetables at 9 a.m. Thursday, April 12.

-UCF Dining Services will sponsor its second “Food 4 Thought Week” April 16-20. Events, which are open to the public, will focus on sustainable food. Activities include a demonstration on how to make a solar oven, and a fair-trade coffee sampling event. Additional details are available at http://www.campusdish.com/en-US/CSS/UnivCentralFlorida.

-The Rosen College of Hospitality Management will host “Glowing Green” on Thursday, April 19. Students can plant herbs and flowers and decorate seed pots near the front gates from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Upcycling activities will be held in the Rosen College Community Center from 4 to 7 p.m.

To learn more about the “green” movement on campus, visit the E.Co website. Read More

Beginning this spring, University of Central Florida students who have a passion for sustainability and the environment can turn their interests into a university recognition.

The Green Graduate Certification Program recognizes undergraduate and graduate students who have committed significant time to UCF’s environmental movement. It was created by E.Co, the Student Government Association’s environmental coalition.

As part of the certification, students will receive a certificate from UCF that acknowledges their commitment to being “green,” as well as a green cord to wear at commencement.

The goal of the certification program is to renew a focus on environmental education and awareness on campus among undergraduate and graduate students. After they graduate from UCF, the hope is that certification holders will continue working toward a more sustainable future.

Getting students to think about going “green” has been a challenge in the past, said SGA Sustainability Specialist Julian Belilty, who proposed the idea to the Registrar’s Office in the fall.

The certification program will address that challenge by directly connecting students with environmental opportunities on campus and rewarding them for their efforts.

“This program is an ideal way to incentivize student academic integration, action and leadership,” Belilty said. “Plus, given the current economy, the certification and the work put into earning it can help students stand out as they enter the workforce and compete for jobs.”

To earn the certification, students must complete tasks in the areas of academics, leadership and involvement.

Tasks vary but include enrolling in one of UCF’s sustainability courses, working a green job or internship, volunteering at one of UCF’s environmental events, and holding a leadership position within an environmental student organization.

A portfolio that details steps taken to earn the certification is required before the recognition can be awarded. E.Co’s board of directors reviews students’ work and approves it for certification.

For more information about the program or to apply for certification, visit http://ecoucf.com/ggcp. Read More

Tim Freed

With sustainability and green living being a hot topic in today’s society, UCF has given its time and resources to get involved, dedicating an entire month to the cause.

Started in mid-March and scheduled to wrap up at the end of this month, the first official UCF Earth Month has featured a broad range of events and activities to promote sustainability and preserving the environment.

With organizations such as UCF Dining Services, UNICEF, Habitat for Humanity and several Greek fraternities and sororities hopping on board, Earth Month is making its presence known through many environmental events and movements.

“Even outside of the school during this month, there are several environmental activities going on within our community, even nationally,” said Julian Belilty, a senior marketing major and the Student Government Association sustainability specialist. “We also have to partake in different environmental events, but it’s also a time to reflect on the environment itself and it’s definitely a good way, implementing all of these different activities, to get students more aware of all the different stuff that’s going on out there.”

Earth Month kicked off with the Shack-A-Thon on March 18, an event put on by Habitat for Humanity’s UCF chapter that asked teams of UCF students to build a shack at Memory Mall with limited time and supplies. With each team accepting donations from spectators, the money went back to Habitat for Humanity, who put it toward their cause of building homes and strengthening neighborhoods.

Other events that took place earlier during Earth Month include World Water Day, an event put on by UNICEF that promoted awareness of global water pollution, and the UCF Community Summit on Environment and Global Climate Change, an event put on by Unifying Theme that gave a presentation on global warming and its effects on the planet.

Perhaps one of the most substantial events to happen so far during Earth Month however was Greenwaves, a house music concert held at the UCF Arena last week that featured a dance floor that generated electricity, allowing concert-goers to power the show with their dance moves.

Ryan Harrigan, a junior computer science major and assistant coordinator at Greenwaves, gave his thoughts on the electric dance floor.

“It was fun; I had a few steps on it myself. We were charging up some iPhones,” said Harrigan, who tested it before it went into the arena for the concert. “Hopefully we can incorporate this into other things like mats around UCF and through the Student Union. Thousands of people go through there, why not just generate electricity about it?”

Beyond the concert itself, environmental clubs and organizations tabled outside of the arena and promoted their causes.

Megan Corsbie, a senior biology major, was advocating and promoting her own organization, Knights for Marine and Wildlife Conservation.

“Our club is pretty awesome. We’re like a two part club: we do hands-on stuff like go to beach and pond cleanups and volunteer activities, and we get you information on what’s going on in the conservational world right now,” said Corsbie, who is the treasurer of the club.

Also outside of the arena was a display of sustainable, interactive sculptures created by UCF graduate students, a car show that featured sustainable vehicles and a live DJ, who prepped the crowd for the concert later that day.

As for this week, the UCF Technology Center has also played its own part in promoting sustainability on campus by putting on e-Waste Week, a five-day period where the computer labs have recycle bins dedicated to electronics such as batteries and phones.

“You can’t throw all of these electronics away in the garbage, because whenever it goes into a landfill and it rains, all of the chemicals and everything go straight into the ground and then that can go into aquifers, which is really unhealthy for us,” Belilty said. “By collecting it all and recycling it, we can actually put them back into the whole manufacturing process and reuse them, saving money and saving our environment all together.”

Another event taking place currently is Food 4 Thought Week, an event put on every semester by UCF Dining Services and the UCF Sustainability Department that introduces students to the many different green organizations on campus.

Earth Month will end on April 31 with an award ceremony for the Kill-A-Watt Competition, where students were given the opportunity to compete on how much energy they can save in the dorm rooms over an eight-month period. In an effort to bring about excitement for green living, SGA will be awarding $10,000 worth of scholarships to the top three winners of the competition.

Belilty said that he hopes that future earth months will occur more often throughout the year and that there will be more green-job workshops and green competitions between organizations.

“I want people to finally know that green can be sexy as well, and that green is not just for the tree huggers and the environmentalists,” Belilty said. “Green is gonna be a lifestyle that everyone is gonna have to support and live, and we’re showing that it’s fun for the first time.”

To learn more about green activities and events at UCF, go to ecoucf.wordpress.com. Read More

Andrea Henriquez

On April 11^th UCF hosted Greenwaves III, an event that promoted going green. The event took place outside the UCF Arena from noon until 6pm, and inside the Arena from 6pm until midnight. Students became very excited after seeing the lineup for the electronic music concert, which included Dev and Alesso. This may have been what hundreds of people were looking forward to, but the outdoors event, although not as popular, was very impressive and well planned.

I have always supported the Green movement, and when one of my classes required me to do some investigative reporting I took the opportunity to focus on Greenwaves III. I spoke to a few people, among them one of the students in charge of the event, who explained to me that the whole idea behind the event was to educate students on the overall conservation of the Earth and the many ways they can help. They tried to give them ideas on how they can contribute to this by having sort of an art showcase that depicted the basic concept of the movement. For instance, one of the displays had a tree made out of recycled material that had several recyclable items hanging on it, like iPod cases and other things that you wouldn’t immediately think can actually be recycled. The whole point was to show that these electronics could also be reused or recycled and also to show how the mercury in these products was infecting water in several countries.

Another booth that caught my attention has a small version of the Piezo floor that surrounded the inside of the Arena. This floor converts human movement (in this case, dance) into energy, and this energy would go into the special effects of the concert, like lighting and sound, which caught many people’s attention. This was a smart way to promote the Green movement, for it definitely showed a fun way to help out the environment, even though it is not something we can use every day. It caught the attention of many students, and it proved to many that being Green can actually be fun.

Overall, I believe the event was very successful. After asking some people at the event if they had learned anything, they all mentioned that they would try to help the environment in new ways, and many of them learned that there were other things other than paper and cans that could be recycled, and that they would try to adopt these behaviors. True, many students were focused on just going to the concert, but Greenwaves managed to get the real message across: it is up to us to save the Earth, and each of us can do something, if even the smallest thing, to help this cause. This is where we live, and we must take care of it if we wish to continue living here… Read More

The University of Central Florida’s Campus Activities Board (CAB) will be taking on its biggest concert project to date, GreenWaves III, on April 11, 2012. New and exclusive “green” technologies will be used to produce the most intense concert experience from a student run show at UCF.

“GreenWaves III is taking concerts to the next level,” said Christian Damon, Director of Concerts for the UCF Campus Activities Board. “Not only are we bringing top tier talent to UCF’s campus for free, but we are also pairing it with the most intense production and special effects ever used in a CAB show.”

With this, CAB has acquired a “Piezo” dance floor that converts dancing from the crowd into electricity that will bring the lighting and special effects to life. The “Piezo” flooring technology has gained attention in Europe, and GreenWaves III will be one of the first applications of this technology in the United States.

“We will be using the electricity created by the audience to fill up a battery, when this battery is full, you can be sure to expect some surprises,” said Damon.

Along with the increase in production quality and the “Piezo” flooring technology, CAB has attained headlining acts that top both the electronic and radio charts. These acts will include:

Alesso, a Swedish DJ and electronic dance music producer, most known for his collaboration “Calling” with Sebastian Ingrosso, will be headlining the show. Other acts include Dev, known mostly for her work with the Cataracs, released her debut album The Night the Sun Came Up on March 27, 2012; 3Lau, a house/bootleg/remix producer from Las Vegas, has gained notable popularity among the electronic dance music (EDM) scene for his remix of Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger”; and KillaGraham, an Orlando native who broke into the local music scene with his dubstep remix of Drake’s “I’m on One.”

GreenWaves III will follow the outdoor GreenWaves festival, which will feature “green” initiatives, activities, vendors and organizations that focus on the implementation, education, and awareness of the “green” movement towards sustainability. This festival is being organized through UCF’s Student Government Association’s Environmental Coalition (E.Co).

“We are excited to continue this collaboration with CAB and have brought this festival to a whole new level with the purchase of the ‘Piezo’ floor,” said Julian Belilty, SGA Sustainability Specialist. “The floor will be unveiled at the GreenWaves III concert and will then be permanently installed in our student union, thus reducing the amount of electricity

used by the Student Union.”

Read More

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Vitality

Win tickets to UCF Greenwaves III featuring music by Alesso and Dev April 11 at UCF Arena! CultureClimax and University of Central Florida’s Campus Activities Board (CAB) are hooking you up with tickets to their biggest concert project to date. New and exclusive “green” technologies will be used to produce the most intense concert experience from a student run show at UCF. (see below for contest entry)

With this, CAB has acquired a “Piezo” dance floor that converts dancing from the crowd into electricity that will bring the lighting and special effects to life. The “Piezo” flooring technology has gained attention in Europe, and GreenWaves III will be one of the first applications of this technology in the United States.

Along with the increase in production quality and the “Piezo” flooring technology, CAB has attained headlining acts that top both the electronic and radio charts. These acts will include:

Alesso, a Swedish DJ and electronic dance music producer, most known for his collaboration “Calling” with Sebastian Ingrosso, will be headlining the show. Other acts include Dev, known mostly for her work with the Cataracs, released her debut album The Night the Sun Came Up on March 27, 2012; 3Lau, a house/bootleg/remix producer from Las Vegas, has gained notable popularity among the electronic dance music scene.

GreenWaves III will follow the outdoor GreenWaves festival, which will feature “green” initiatives, activities, vendors and organizations that focus on the implementation, education, and awareness of the “green” movement towards sustainability. This festival is being organized through UCF’s Student Government Association’s Environmental Coalition (E.Co).

Read More

More Photos