We’re going to be doing a little experimenting with our blog…

Member-written blog posts, an open invitation

You may have noticed in some of our communications that members have a somewhat open invitation to be contributors to the blog. We haven’t been very loud in extending this invitation, in part because we have not yet figured out all the rules. What we do know is that we want our blog to be as member-driven as any of our other programs.

We have thought about treating the blog in a similar way to how we treat the magazine – the same caliber of articles, but delivered in a more interactive and informal way. What we lack right now is an editorial committee, and we as staff did not feel as though it would be an adequate expression of the membership if we tried to play that role. But we’d like something to happen here in the interim, beyond the NESEA HQ updates and news (which will continue indefinitely, but we don’t want our logistical/programmatic/promotional content to dominate, by any means). If you look back to the earliest posts on the blog (I think they started around 2009) – the posts were coming from NESEA members, so this isn’t a new idea, but we do have more staff support (me) now to help coordinate it.

So, we decided we would keep the open invitation. Already, some of you have said yes to the invitation, so we already have a few posts in the pipeline, waiting patiently for us to work out some logistics. Other upcoming posts will be articles we couldn’t run in BuildingEnergy magazine (we had a TON of excellent proposals for the spring issue, for example, so we thought why not bring them to the unlimited virtual space on our blog).

Get in there and write (with some guidelines)

If you are a current member of NESEA, you can ask us for posting rights and post as you like (after you review our guidelines for posting, including the logistics and what we’re looking for in terms of content).

A quick summary of the content guidelines: The subject matter should be related to our mission of promoting the adoption of sustainable energy practices in the built environment.

Because we are also an organization that values whole systems thinking, the posts might approach the subject through nuts and bolts building techniques, policy, research and development, economics, design philosophy, or even marketing.

For example, the first post will be coming from a new NESEA member, Doug Hanvey. His focus is not in the typical vein of NESEA conversation – he’ll be discussing how to optimize your website. We thought the blog would be a great place to share his advice, since we have heard from some of you in the past that you were interested in getting marketing advice. And, he offers his services specifically to renewable energy companies – so while much of his advice is broadly applicable – his experience is with businesses that are much like the businesses in the bulk of the NESEA membership.

We realize that there are already a number of really excellent energy and buildings blogs out there – many of you already contribute to them! So, we don’t expect that we’ll be the new GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, Environmental Building News, or Renewable Energy World anytime soon, nor do we want to duplicate efforts. We have always been a bit different from other organizations in this niche, and we don’t doubt that our blog will reflect this. Being a little bit different has always been our strength, so it’s something to look forward to.

Blogging is different from the communities of practice

It occurred to me as I wrote this that writing for the blog and hoping for ‘audience participation’ with comments, etc. is similar to what we’re building for the online communities of practice…

The difference is lecture versus seminar style. The communities of practice will be an open discussion, with no one authority standing at the lectern, while the blog is more of a first-person narrative with questions from the audience.

Anyway, the communities of practice will be awesome once they get underway, and I imagine that by necessity the blog will change, and maybe that’s when we get the expertise of an editorial committee to invite, curate and vet content, while the back and forth conversation lives in the communities of practice.

Help us curate content, even if you don’t want to write it

We are hoping that you, the membership, will collectively create the blog you would most like to read. Members can submit their own posts and anyone can comment directly on posts. We do ask that you be polite, but no holds barred as far as critique of the content is concerned. Do keep in mind that you are not just critiquing some random person on the internet – the author of the post is a fellow member. The NESEA community has never been shy about sharing their opinions and what we hope will happen is that member-writers will learn from their audience (their fellow members and greater NESEA community), and the audience will participate in shaping the conversation.

We’re at a very nebulous stage in developing the guidelines for a member-driven blog – which means your opinions and participation will shape what it becomes.

We’re learning as we go, so we hope you’ll bear with us, and more than that, help us figure out how to make the online NESEA community as exciting and engaging as the one that comes together once a year at the conference. If you are interested helping us develop this new(old) resource and member benefit, let us know! To borrow from a BE13 session’s description, “Doing something new often does not go perfectly the first time. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.”

So, keep an eye out for some new content coming from your fellow members. And be sure to voice your opinion (as if we can stop you) so we can learn as we go.