Dear BE11 attendees and NESEA community,

Re-entry after BuildingEnergy is always hard, and this year was no exception. The energy level at this gathering is so high! It was especially bittersweet to leave the Seaport last week knowing that I may have to wait an entire year to get my “hit” of the passion, the energy, the community that is BE. BE left me wanting more.

That leads to big questions, and I’d like to ask for your input. How do we bottle this stuff? How do we transform BuildingEnergy from a 3-day event each year into an experience that infuses us with ideas, connection and passion throughout the year? And what are the things we would bottle if we could?

Here just two of the many things on my list:

I’d like to find a way to bottle the feeling I had after the “Women of Green” second plenary session, which ended with a spontaneous standing ovation. In my mind, this pecha kucha session was one of the best at BE, and probably one of the best learning sessions I have ever been a part of — largely because of our 8 panelists’ willingness to share very personal stories in the interest of our collective of our learning. Some of the highest praise for the event came from some of our most technically focused members — mostly men. I think that all who attended appreciated the huge contrast between this session and the other, much more cerebral offerings at the conference. And the buzz continued, after the conference, with commitments via email from the panelists to stay in touch, to serve as resources to one another, and to find another opportunity to rekindle the connections that were born at BE. So how do we do this? What is the best way to maintain this energy throughout the year? How do we continue to involve this incredibly accomplished group of sustainable energy professionals, and widen the circle to include more?

I’d like to bottle the sentiments some of our most active NESEA members used to describe NESEA as they were being filmed by our sponsor, Roger Sorkin, for our soon-to-be released promotional video. Their comments about what NESEA is and why it matters left me with chills. We couldn’t have chosen more appropriate words had we hand-picked them — words like “community,” “family,” “mind-expanding,” “caring,” “interconnectedness.” So these words describe human needs — human needs that can’t possibly be fulfilled through just 3 days each year. What should we be doing to foster this community, this mind expansion, this connectedness?

I wonder if any of the rest of you are feeling similarly? What moments of BE magic did you experience last week? Do you have a desire to replicate them at other times throughout the year? Most importantly, do you have ideas on how to do so?

How can NESEA use the energy of BE to connect us to each other and to ideas throughout the whole year? Comment here, or if you’re more comfortable email me directly at jmarrapese@nesea.org.

Jennifer