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Just add water and stir . . .

November 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

And voila — instant one-day NESEA conference in the Big Apple.

Those of you who are NESEA members have probably already seen the announcement for BuildingEnergy NYC, a multifamily conference we’re hosting at CUNY – Hunter College on December 1, 2012. The conference will focus on the regulatory arena – the things that building owners and operators need to know to comply with increasingly stringent energy efficiency requirements, on technical know-how, with examples and case studies from hundreds of multifamily buildings that illustrate best practices and lessons learned, and on financing multifamily projects.

The line-up of speakers and topics for this event is really impressive — you can check it out at http://www.nesea.org/buildingenergy/benyc/.

The conference came together at warp speed. Less than five months from concept to implementation, and less than a week to plan the content. Here’s the back story . . . .

In May 2012, the board directed me to focus on launching an event in NYC to help expand NESEA’s reach into underserved parts of our territory, and to help fulfill the promise of our purported service territory – the 10 Northeastern states. NESEA board treasurer and well-known curmudgeon Andy Padian took up the charge and found us a location that we could use, free of charge, thanks to our friends at CUNY-Hunter’s Institute for Sustainable Cities.

On October 19th, Andy confirmed that CUNY-Hunter had space available on Saturday, December 1st, just six weeks away. Warp speed conference planning began!

On October 26th, Andy invited a group of multifamily building superstars from organizations like The Community Preservation Corporation, Steven Winter Associates, GreenHomeNYC, Jonathan Rose, NYSERDA, NYSAFAH, Enterprise Community Partners, Related Companies and elsewhere to a three-hour meeting to plan the conference. They left the meeting with a grid of nine almost fully-fleshed-out sessions. Within the next two weeks, speakers were confirmed, we set up a registration page, and . . . voila . . . instant conference.

Of course we all know that this isn’t really the way it happened. This seemingly “instant conference” didn’t happen instantly. What made it happen “instantly” was Andy Padian’s passion for NESEA, his expansive network of devoted GreenHomeNYC volunteers, and high-powered energy geeks in New York, and his strong powers of persuasion. Now only if we could find a way to clone Andy. . . .

Seriously, BE NYC is going to rock. If it’s as great as we think it will be, we’ll sell out all 300 seats, and NESEA members from other parts of our territory will be lining up to host the next one-day conference. I hope you’ll join us.

Filed Under: NESEA Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Profound Gratitude: Remarks by Jennifer Marrapese, Executive Director at Annual Meeting, 9/15/12

September 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Welcome everybody to the 2012 annual meeting of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association.

I am really excited that we’re here in Portland. There’s a vibrant green building and sustainable energy community here – a community that has built what they need in the form of the monthly Building Science Discussion Group, Maine Association of Building Energy Professionals, Passive House Maine, USGBC’s Maine Chapter, the Pretty Good House movement and many other formal and less formal organizations and collaborations.

The Portland area has traditionally not been as well served by NESEA as many other areas in our territory. And for as long as I’ve been at NESEA, we’ve been hoping to change that. So I was delighted when NESEA board member Phil Kaplan invited me to Portland and asked us to consider hosting our annual meeting here.

Since our first meeting with Phil and the Building Science Discussion Group in June, many of you Mainers have drunk the NESEA Kool Aid. Architect Rick Renner, a longtime NESEA member, is running for the NESEA board of directors. Sam Strickland is serving on a committee to help us create and launch online communities of practice so that geography ceases to be such a challenging barrier for NESEA members who want to learn and share year round. Steve Konstantino of Maine Green Building Supply has become a business member and opened his facility up last night for an annual meeting pre-game – a Building Science Discussion Group to welcome the whole NESEA community to town.

Profound gratitude. As I prepared my remarks for tonight, that was the mindset I started from. I feel profoundly grateful to this community and appreciative of all that we are accomplishing together.

Let me explain to whom I am grateful and why.

I am grateful to the more than 200 members who are really actively engaged with NESEA far above and beyond simply writing a check and receiving their monthly newsletter and their BuildingEnergy Magazine twice a year. It is surely unprecedented within NESEA that almost a third of our members are actively engaged in planning the conference, hosting sites in our Green Buildings Open House tour, submitting content for BuildingEnergy magazine, and serving on NESEA program and board committees.

I am grateful to Jamie Wolf for recently helping us to articulate something that we’ve known intuitively for a very long time:  that the BuildingEnergy Conference is NESEA’s crown jewel, or the center of NESEA’s universe, but that it occurs only for 3 days/year in Boston. Jamie shared with me his vision for BE365, which makes the BuildingEnergy experience available to NESEA members every day of the year through various events, gatherings, online learning and other forums throughout the year.

I am grateful to lifetime NESEA member Bernice Radle, who at the ripe old age of 26 is rallying a group of NESEA member preservationists to plan a kick-ass Green Buildings Open House tour in Buffalo on October 13th, and who is trying to bring the rest of the NESEA community into the digital age with her incredible promotional savvy using twitter, facebook, blogging and Pinterest.

I am grateful to Marc Rosenbaum, one of our NESEA rock stars, who has partnered with us, and who has spent more than 100 hours to develop and help us launch a 10-week online course for the BuildingEnergy Masters Series, and who recently shared with me, “I could develop and market a course like this on my own. Yet what appeals to me about this arrangement is that I get to advance my personal mission of expanding our collective capabilities, while creating an income stream, and also give back to this organization that has been such a key factor in my success. However, it’s a business partnership, not a charity -  NESEA has skin in the game just as I do.”

I am grateful to NESEA board member Kate Goldstein, who, although she is still a starving student, is digging deep for NESEA this year. Not only did she become a lifetime member – a great investment for somebody who’s still in her 20s – but she has also pledged a leadership gift in our annual fundraising appeal, because, in her words, “The diversity of NESEA’s membership is a gift for us who have not yet found our own path. NESEA is the shelter of our community.”

I am grateful to my staff – at least three of whom, despite being handed a salary freeze this year, have decided to invest some of their discretionary income into NESEA membership because they believe deeply in what we’re about here, and they consider themselves a part of this community.

I am grateful to Paul Eldrenkamp, who confided in me that one of the happiest days of his life was the day that he left his last NESEA board meeting in the mid-1990s. He went and sat in his car for a few minutes and let out a freedom cry that others may have heard even from inside the building. Paul shared that the board as a group (not its individual members) was so dysfunctional, and mired in the day to day operation of the organization, that he couldn’t wait to get out. Well, Paul is a testament to how things have changed for the better. This year, not only is he chairing the BuildingEnergy Conference, and bringing a ton of new talent into the organization through his vast network, but he’s also teaching a BuildingEnergy Masters Series class on Passive House online, and running for the NESEA board!

I am grateful to the 20 or so NESEA members – some long timers, some newbies – who are helping us experiment with and launch active online communities so that they can learn together how best to apply systems thinking in their practices and what are the elements of a generative economy. These communities will serve as a forum in which NESEA members can share with each other what’s working (and what’s not) in service of a more sustainable built environment. Based on what we learn from these communities of practice, we’ll launch others in the new year – including one on Deep Energy Retrofits, one on Zero Net Energy Buildings, and possibly even one on our topic tonight, the Pretty Good House.

These examples barely scratch the surface of all we’ve accomplished together over the past year. And all of this is happening in the worst building environment in 20 years.

In many ways, last year represented the “perfect storm.” Almost everything that could have gone wrong financially, did. NESEA’s membership numbers and Sustainable Green Pages listings continued their steady decline since the housing market crash in 2009. BuildingEnergy registration and exhibitor numbers declined, despite a whopping 97% of our attendees saying that they would recommend the conference to a colleague. We lost substantial donations from two longtime donors whose funding focus shifted and whose portfolios suffered at the hands of a lackluster economy.

We knew before the year even started that we were going to run a deficit in Fiscal Year 2012. We even budgeted for it. We invested heavily in staff, hiring a membership coordinator and a communications coordinator. We also invested in our infrastructure, launching a new website, supported by a new, more nimble database. We knew it would take time for these investments to pay off. Unfortunately, the deficit we ran was larger than anticipated.

NESEA’s reason for being is to advance the adoption of sustainable energy practices in the built environment. The rest of the industry is finally catching on as well.

Last year’s bottom line fails to tell the whole story. It doesn’t tell the story of the momentum we’re building, one practitioner at a time. It doesn’t tell the story of the quality of engagement within our membership, within the BuildingEnergy planning process, and at BE itself.

I truly believe that we’re planting the right seeds, and that if we continue to provide quality engagement experiences, the numbers will follow. I also know that we’ll continue to learn and adjust the plan as we go!

So I’m grateful. I’m invested in this organization and in this community, not just professionally, but also personally, as I complete my own deep energy retrofit and prepare to showcase my home on NESEA’s Green Building Open House tour, which will be held on October 13th throughout NESEA’s 10 states, from Maine all the way down to Delaware.

Now’s the time for you to invest as well. Invest in NESEA and in our future in a way that makes sense for you. If you’re not a member, join. If you are a member, consider donating or sponsoring above and beyond your membership contribution. Or give the gift of NESEA membership to a colleague to help grow our community.

If you’re a newcomer to our community, invest in your own professional development as you get to know us better. Enroll in one of our BuildingEnergy Masters Series courses and partake in  high quality interactive educational content from the comfort of your home or office. Learn about zero net energy homes from Marc Rosenbaum, the man who’s probably engineered more of them than anybody else in the Northeast. Learn about Passive House from Mike Duclos and Paul Eldrenkamp, a member of the inaugural group of Passive House certified consultants in the U.S. Then connect with others in your class to share what you’re learning and create a community of practice that can meet in person at next year’s BuildingEnergy Conference.

Attend the Building Energy Conference, exhibit there, sponsor. Even better, help shape our content by joining the planning committee for the BuildingEnergy Conference. Register your most recent project for our Green Buildings Open House tour in October. Enter your best work in NESEA’s Zero Net Energy Building Award to compete for our annual $10,000 prize. Submit an article for publication in BuildingEnergy Magazine, our peer-reviewed journal by and for sustainable energy professionals in the Northeast.

Invest in the community that is building your knowledge base, your practice, your career, and a more sustainable built environment.

Before I close, I’d like to thank a few people without whom this meeting would not have happened. First, thank you to our committee of locals who advised us on all of the nuts and bolts decisions we needed to make – from the beautiful location we are in to the buildings we should include on the tours earlier today to the Pretty Good House speaking program tonight. Those committee members include Matt Holden, Steve Konstantino, Dan Kolbert, and Rick Renner, among many others.

Next, I’d like to thank our sponsors for tonight – Sparhawk Group, Maine Association of Building Energy Professionals, and Thorton Tomasetti Fore Solutions. And a special thanks to sponsors Kaplan Thompson Architects and Pinnacle Windows, who are hosting a party after tonight’s meeting at Grace, a beautifully restored church and restaurant with an awesome looking menu!

Huge thanks also to Phil Kaplan of Kaplan Thompson Architects for advocating in favor of holding the meeting here in Portland and for connecting us with all the folks here who could help make it happen.

And finally, thank you to Kelsey Hobson, our summer intern from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. Kelsey came in at the beginning of the summer and flat out handled all the logistics for this meeting, with almost no guidance. She herded a group of benevolent but busy cats to score us this great location, and planned all of the building tours. She did such a great job that we decided to hire her permanently – or at least as permanently as she’ll have us. This is one NESEA emerging professional with a very bright future.

And now, I’d like to welcome to the stage NESEA board chair, James Petersen. James has been a huge champion of our work to “expand the choir,” and has supported these efforts personally by being a NESEA evangelist within his own professional network. James will share with you an update on where the board would like to see NESEA head, and on what your role might be in helping to create our future success.

Filed Under: BuildingEnergy Conference & Trade Show, Communications, deep energy retrofit, Events, Green Building, Industry, NESEA, NESEA Members, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Building, Whole Systems Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Building an Infrastructure for Collaboration – How are we doing?

June 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

How do NESEA members propose new programs they’d like to be involved in launching?
How does NESEA engage members in projects that align both with their passions and their skill sets?
How do we build the capacity of our members to be effective leaders and collaborators for the projects we take on?
Who decides which NESEA programs get launched and which ones don’t?
How do we reinvent legacy programs so that they align with NESEA’s mission and its brand?
What’s the mechanism for welcoming new members into our community?

These are just a few of the questions we’re attempting to answer in our “Infrastructure for Collaboration” (IFC) working group. The IFC group launched in May 2012, after NESEA held two charrettes during which the members present requested that we develop better processes for engaging current and new members and for deciding which programs and initiatives to undertake.

The underlying premise of these two charrettes was that NESEA is at its best when its programs are primarily member-driven and staff supported. (The BuildingEnergy Planning Committee’s process, although by no means perfect, is the best current example of this.) Thus, the IFC group has been attempting to take what’s good about the BE planning process and adapt it for re-use in other areas.

We’ve made some progress, and IFC group chair Jamie Wolf and I thought it would be a great time to bring you all up to date.

What we’ve done so far

So far, the IFC group has developed a workgroup template. This template is intended to walk a NESEA member, step-by-step, through the process of proposing a new program/initiative. In the template, the member is asked to:

  • Give a brief description of the project/program/initiative
  • Articulate the purpose of the program (and how it fits in with NESEA’s mission)
  • Specify the objectives of the program
  • Articulate the process by which the group/program will accomplish these objectives
  • Propose a timeline for the program
  • Specify what type of support is needed to launch the program (including staffing resources, equipment, money, etc.) and what plans are in place to secure that support
  • Address how the group will communicate, both internally and externally
  • Specify who will lead the group and who will be members (or how members will be selected, what their roles will be and how they will be held accountable
  • Articulate what the end product will be, if any, from the project/program (how will success be measured)

Once this template is completed, the appropriate NESEA staff representative (typically me in my role as executive director) completes a companion template to provide feedback/a reality check on the proposal. In this template, staff answers questions about:

  • Whether we support the proposed initiative
  • Whether we believe the project can be accomplished with the resources projected, and what other resources might be available
  • Whether/how the project will likely fit in with other, potentially competing priorities, and the conditions that must be met in order for staff to support the project optimally
  • Who on staff will be the primary staff person on the project
  • What authority the group will have to act on its own

We’ve also developed a member survey that will help us start to catalog our members’ skill sets and their interests, so we can do a better job of filling the gaps in various NESEA projects and committees.

What we’re learning

Developing these templates felt a bit abstract to many of us in the IFC group. So we decided to try them out – first to apply the process to the Communities of Practice that Robert Leaver is heading up, and then to our own work within the IFC group.

What we’re learning is that it takes discipline to remember to follow the process. As a staff person who focuses primarily on member support, my inclination is often to jump into projects when they are proposed – and especially when they are proposed by members I have worked with, and those I know have the horsepower and the follow through to get the projects done. But I’m recognizing that this process may have value in encouraging those who are new to the community or inclined to be less vocal to propose ideas that otherwise might never reach the surface.

We’re also learning that it’s hard to foresee every possible variable that we should ask for in a proposal. We want the bar to be set sufficiently high so that we’re not getting new requests for new, big, resource-intensive programs every day. But we don’t want to set the bar so high that somebody with a fantastic idea can’t figure out how to get it to us, or gives up trying.

What’s next?

We’ll continue to experiment with these templates just a bit longer, and try to vet them sufficiently so they’re ready for you to use. We’ll keep you updated on our progress!

– Jennifer Marrapese, Executive Director, NESEA, and Jamie Wolf, IFC group chair

Filed Under: Communications, NESEA, NESEA Members Tagged With: , , , , ,

Invitation to join NESEA’s Communities of Practice

June 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

NESEA is piloting communities of practice (COP) for its members in which people can learn and problem solve together about a topic or practice they are passionate about. COPs are encouraged to meet online as well as in person.

A COP “is a group of people who share a craft and/or a profession. It can unfold naturally because of the members’ common interest in a particular domain or area, or it can be created with a specific goal of gaining defined knowledge. It is through the process of sharing information and experience with the group that members learn from each other, and have the opportunity to develop themselves personally and professionally.[1]”

COPs create an experience of mutual learning and collaboration where every participant is both teacher and learner. In an effective COP representatives of a whole system are present to get the work done.   

At the close of BE12, 5 COPs formed.  Of the 5, we will conduct pilots with the topics of whole systems and next economy. We will begin online the week of July 18, 2012 in BaseCamp. John Abrams is developing the first next economy post to get the conversation going in BaseCamp. I am asking Jamie to do something similar for whole systems.

Save the date #1: To really accelerate COP participation, there will be an in-person workshop for NESEA members only. We will convene both the whole systems and next economy groups in the Pawtucket studio of New Commons on July 19th, 11 am to 2:30 pm. The agenda will feature both topical conversations on our two topics as well as collaborative conversation across the two topics. You can either bring a lunch or we will figure out how to make sandwiches available for people to buy — lunch and registration details will follow.

Save the date #2: The NESEA Annual Meeting will be held in September 15, 2012 in Portland Maine. On either 9/14 or 9/15 we will hold a second COP workshop.  Stay tune for the final date.

Before July 19th, Robert Leaver will develop and post a draft “COP Guide” based on the contributions posted so far, online, by the COP work group. It will define what a COP is; describe the facilitator’s role and so on. I will also revise “the compact” of purposes and roles between members and staff for the COP work group.

We have to begin working together online in BaseCamp as it will take some time to get BuddyPress designed and ready for our use. The collaborative infrastructure group will be organizing with staff and members a work group to work on the design and use of BuddyPress.

I look forward to seeing you on the 19th of July –11 am to 2:30 pm in the New Commons studio in Pawtucket.

Robert Leaver
New Commons

(Robert Leaver served as the BE12 Conference Chair and the BE11 Vice Chair)

[1] Communities of Practice as defined in Wikipedia based on the concept of Etienne Wegner.

Filed Under: Communications, Emerging Professionals, NESEA, NESEA Members, Whole Systems Tagged With: , , , , , ,

2/16/12 – Pregame for BE12

January 30, 2012 By 1 Comment

Can’t wait for BuildingEnergy12? Neither could we.

Thankfully, one of our BE12 Gold Sponsors and NESEA Members, Renewable Sales, has volunteered to host a BE-caliber session at their showroom in Holliston, MA, February 16, 2012, starting at 5:30pm. RSVP here.

An evening of networking and expert information …
and it’s free! (And there will be food!)

The evening will feature a discussion “Understanding Risks and Rewards: A Conversation on Community Solar,” facilitated by The Cadmus Group, featuring a case study from the Town of Natick and from the City of Medford.  MA Department of Energy Resources will speak to its solar programs (e.g., SolarizeMass with MassCEC, SunShot Program grant), as well as support that it can and has provided to Massachusetts municipalities.

[hide-this-part morelink="Click here to read more about the speakers..."]

Erin Sweet, The Cadmus Group
Erin SweetErin Sweet leads The Cadmus Group’s efforts to support local communities with their renewable energy projects. Since 2010, Ms. Sweet has provided owner’s agent technical assistance services to eight Massachusetts cities and towns on behalf of the state Department of Energy Resources. She has assembled lessons learned from Cadmus’ owner’s agent work into a blog for communities interested in renewable energy. Ms. Sweet has evaluated the costs and benefits of water utility renewable energy projects for the U.S. EPA, and created a roadmap to drive renewables development in South Carolina’s Central Midlands region. Ms. Sweet holds an M.A. in urban and environmental policy and planning from Tufts University, and degrees in microbiology and English from the University of Florida.

Meg Lusardi, MA Department of Energy Resources,
Green Communities Division
Meg is the Director for the Green Communities Division, the organization within the MA Department of Energy Resources that serves as the hub for all municipalities on all matters related to energy.  Meg was tasked in August 2008 to launch the development and implementation of the Green Communities Designation and Grant Program, the landmark program for the Division, that has led to 86 municipalities in MA being designated Green Communities. Meg joined DOER in July 2005 and previously worked with the Renewable Energy team on all matters related to renewables development in MA. She previously served as the Chief of Operations for Project Hope, a non-profit in Dorchester, and as a Project Manager at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Bob Bois, Environmental Compliance Officer, Town of NatickBob Bois
Bob has worked in the environmental field on the public side for over 35 years. Presently, Bob is the Environmental Compliance Officer (ECO) for the Town of Natick – a position he’s held for the past 10 years. As the ECO for Natick, Bob is responsible for coordinating Town-wide compliance with all applicable federal and state environmental laws applicable to Town operations and plays a key role in implementing environmental stewardship and pollution prevention projects Town-wide. As Natick’s ECO, Bob has helped the Town achieve ISO 14001 certification for the environmental management system at its water treatment plant in 2007, secured designation from the state DOER as Green Community in May 2010, and helped negotiate two Power Purchase Agreements to install a 1.08 MW solar array system on the roof of six town buildings by the spring of 2012. Prior to working for Natick, Bob worked 25 years with the state DEP in various positions including the Acting Director for the Office of Enforcement. Bob has a BS in biology form Merrimack College and a MS in Engineering from Tufts University.

A representative from the City of Medford (to be confirmed)

With introductions from:

Kevin Price, CEO, Renewable Sales
Kevin Price is CEO of Renewable Sales of Holliston Massachusetts. Mr. Price bring 30 years of construction sector experience to his position, predominantly in the role of wholesale distributor of mechanical  equipment. In 2008, he opened a small warehouse to service the fledgling solar market in the MetroWest region of Massachusetts.  Since then, he has grown the company to keep pace with the fast expanding market. Renewable Sales now has 3 divisions; the original distribution company that recently expanded operations to a 20,000SF facility in Holliston, as well as two manufacturing divisions.  In Dallas, Texas the company manufactures its American Choice PV modules. The third division, Constellation Solar Mounts, manufactures solar racking for commercial and utility scale projects.

Mr. Price is a native of Massachusetts and enjoys New England’s diverse cultural and seasonal offerings. Mr. Price supports a number of charitable organizations on a local and regional basis.

…and our own Jennifer Marrapese, Executive Director, Northeast Sustainable Energy Association[/hide-this-part]

Here is the essential information:

What: NESEA invites you to “Understanding Risks and Rewards: A Conversation on Community Solar” presented by The Cadmus Group, and hosted by Renewable Sales
Where: Renewable Sales, 35 Jeffrey Avenue, Holliston, MA 01746
When: Thursday, February 16th, 2012; 5:30 – 8:30pm
RSVP: http://goo.gl/iKWtB – maximum 60 attendees – so do not delay! (and please let us know if you need to cancel)

We hope to see you there!

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me: rheldt@nesea.org or 413-774-6051 ext. 20

Filed Under: Events, Industry, NESEA, NESEA Members, Renewable Energy, Solar Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dietz & Co. Architects Project Achieves LEED Gold Certification

January 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Great news from the NESEA membership! Congratulations to Dietz & Company Architects on receiving the LEED Gold Certification for their work on a project with the YWCA! This is especially exiting news because Marc Sternick, VP of Dietz & Co, is on our Board of Directors and the firm is a local, NESEA business member.

The full press release is included here:

Springfield, Mass. – Dietz & Company Architects, Inc. has received LEED for Homes Gold certification from USGBC (the U.S. Green Building Council) for the recently completed units at the YWCA’s Campus of Hope. These new units provide housing that serves to transition women from domestic violence shelters to longer-term living facilities. The 32,000 square foot project is made up of 20 apartments and eight congregate housing units within its walls. This project was part of the larger Campus of Hope initiative
that was started more than 10 years ago for which Dietz & Company Architects was the master planner. Dietz & Company Architects also
designed the first phase of this campus: a 60,000 square foot building that includes administrative offices, meeting and classrooms as well as an on-site shelter.

In the finest tradition of the YWCA, this project features cutting edge technology in Green construction, women-owned partnerships and the
overwhelming support of the community it seeks to serve. The project, originally designed to achieve LEED for Homes Silver certification level, exceeded that level by achieving Gold certification.

Several factors that supported the LEED for Homes Gold Certification include: super-insulated walls and airtight construction, efficient mechanical systems that include roof-mounted photovoltaic panels for electricity, sustainable site design and the use of green construction materials. A healthy indoor environment, pollution reduction and lower utility/maintenance costs are also key elements of this certification. This highly efficient building is expected to reduce water and energy consumption by 20 to 30 percent over typical code compliant construction.

NL Construction was the general contractor for this project and the project was supported by the LEED for Homes Provider, CET. The LEED
(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System™ is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for
developing high-performance, sustainable buildings.

 

Filed Under: Communications, Green Building, NESEA, NESEA Members, Sustainable Building Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

How do we/should we promote members' businesses?

November 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I wanted to share with you all an email exchange that took place earlier this week that I believe goes to the heart of NESEA’s role as a membership organization.

Earlier this week we sent the following invitation out to all of our Green Buildings Open House hosts and prior years’ entrants to the NESEA Zero Net Energy Building Award:

“Greetings Green Buildings Open House hosts!

I wanted to take a moment to pass the information below to you all, as I know that many of you have indicated that you would like other opportunities to share your knowledge. If you would like to participate in this program offered by Energy Sage, feel free to contact them using the information below. Thank you for your time, and have a wonderful day!

Would you like to help others make the move to renewable energy?

EnergySage.com is an online resource that helps people to navigate the clean energy system research and purchase process. They are interested in showcasing case studies on their website of home and business owners who have already purchased clean energy systems. They would include information about your specific system, why you decided to make the investment, your decision process, your costs / benefits and any advice you might have for potential consumers.

EnergySage’s research suggests that while most consumers are interested in clean energy systems, they don’t actually make the move because they feel they have incomplete or inaccurate information.

By participating, you will be helping others make the move to renewables. If you are interested, Please contact Energysage at: info@energysage.com or at 617.398.0045. They will follow up with a questionnaire and by phone or email.”

We received feedback from several recipients asking why we were promoting the services of a for-profit company, and whether it was appropriate for us to endorse the services of one provider over another. In the interest of transparency, I’d like to share my response — because I feel like this type of member promotion is exactly what we should be doing:

Dear _____,

Thanks for your email. I wanted to respond directly to the concerns you addressed about the request we sent out on behalf of Energy Sage.

Energy Sage is a for profit business that is a NESEA member. As a membership organization, part of our mission is to connect our member – who are primarily practitioners in sustainable energy – to each other, to the ideas and information that they need to improve their practice, and to consumers. And we routinely share member news and/or help them make the types of connections you see here.

I’m sorry if the email below came across as an endorsement of Energy Sage’s products and services. It was not intended to be that. But Energy Sage is looking to develop case studies of consumers who have successfully adopted renewable energy features. They will, of course, use these case studies as part of their marketing. But NESEA may benefit as well, because as they build the online platform for these case studies, we may be able to use the platform for our Green Buildings Open House program. In other words, this is a first step in potentially co-developing a new online platform for GBOH.

I’m sorry you found the original email upsetting. Hopefully this helps shed some light. I acknowledge we could have been clearer and more transparent. Thanks!

Jennifer


As always, I welcome feedback from the NESEA community – what do you think?

Filed Under: NESEA, NESEA Members, Renewable Energy, Solar, Sustainable Building, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Welcome to Travis and Rayna

July 15, 2011 By 2 Comments

Things have been quiet on the NESEA blog lately. That’s not an indication that we haven’t been busy (yes, mom, I know that’s a double negative!) To the contrary, I have felt so swamped that it’s been hard to catch my breath and update the community. I’m going to try my best to do so with a series of short blog posts over the next few weeks about what the staff and I have been up to.

At the top of my list is to introduce you to two new members of our staff, Rayna Heldt, our membership services coordinator, and Travis Niles, our communications and development coordinator. We have brought them both on board as part of our 2011 strategic plan to help us increase NESEA’s reach into new communities and to help us serve our current membership better.

Rayna has (officially) joined NESEA staff after working for us on an informal basis for about a year. After volunteering at BE10, she arrived at NESEA central to assist planning the 2010 Junior Solar Sprint. Since then, she helped edit last years’ Sustainable Green Pages, and was also BE11′s Registration Coordinator. She has an MSc in Anthropology and Development, a Certificate in Baking Arts, and a BA in Liberal Arts with a concentration in anthropology, poetry and philosophy. She currently lives in Charlemont, MA where she keeps a tremendously over-ambitious vegetable garden and spends most of her free time cooking and listening to public lecture podcasts. She is interested in the connection between people, culture and the environment, and at NESEA, sees the relationship between people and their built environment as a key to securing environmental and economic sustainability. She is thrilled to be the point of contact for membership and will be reaching out to the membership soon for any and all feedback you are willing to share! You can reach Rayna at rheldt@nesea.org or at 413.774.6051, ext. 20.

Travis comes to us from the ACT Volunteer Center. A native of upstate New York, he received his BA in History from Wells College in 2009 and came to Massachusetts to serve as an AmeriCorps VISTA member. He discovered a passion for outreach and networking while directing the volunteer center’s operations and promotional campaigns. Always desiring to be on the cutting edge, he worked to bring ACT and its non-profit partners up to speed by using web tools, social networking platforms and the booming mobile market to supplement under-performing traditional marketing efforts. He firmly believes in applying these same principles for us to “build energy” for all of NESEA’s programs. When he’s not singing with the Pioneer Valley Symphony Choir or searching for the next great local wine, you can find him on our Facebook page or on Twitter @NESEA_org. You can also reach him using more conventional media, at tniles@nesea.org or at 413.774.6051, ext. 21!

You can expect to hear a lot from Travis and Rayna within the next few week, as they start to survey NESEA members and potential members about how we can help you advance the adoption of sustainable energy practices in the built environment. Please join the conversation and provide them with your candid feedback so that we can build an organization that serves your networking and professional development needs.

Filed Under: Communications, NESEA, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Thoughts about the two new NESEA "coordinators"

June 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It was heartening to see NESEA seeking candidates for two positions that I have always considered central to the success of our community and the organization that supports us. Having thought (and fought) hard about both membership and communication for over two decades I’d like to catch up with this favorable moment and offer my perspective on the prospect of establishing and growing these positions.

Let me say first that I consider NESEA at its heart a community of committed professionals. Membership in this community has two essential characters. There are those, that I call “the tribe”, who consider their association and alignment with NESEA’s purpose essential to their professional identity – we are “NESEA people” and we share a common understanding of ideas and practices that we have learned and developed together over many years. These are the folks who plan and present at our conferences and events or who gather over lunch or meet in the halls at a conference to discuss and debate what we are learning together. These are the folks who form our chapters and spend countless hours planning for and convening their local NESEA community. We know these folks because they have found a way in. What we need are more diverse, line of sight points of entry to “the tribe”, especially for those in the second category.

This other set of NESEA members are those who “choose” their membership because the conference fee discount is structured to assure that “choice.” While this strategy assures a high membership rate for the organization it offers a fairly poor toehold for those members to value their membership in or commitment to NESEA, and certainly offers no invitation to become involved or more fully engaged. Some of these members will drink the Kool-Aid, make connections, and discover a route to join the tribe, and most of these “members” probably value the NESEA experience, but this (otherwise shallow) membership strategy needs to provide a more deliberate and conscious opportunity for potential members to actively choose to be part of our community and recognize how they might participate with their peers. It looks like now we will have somebody in a dedicated staff position to pay attention to this need. Hooray!

A robust membership strategy is really a community strategy. It includes that initial point of entry, which we might call recruitment, and follows that immediately with a process of orientation (what I am suggesting is absent in my comment above). When defined as a membership strategy, the next phase is retention, which to my mind runs the risk of focusing on a the narrow metric of number of members. If instead the Membership Coordinator were to understand their role as “Community Coordinator” membership alone is no longer the measure of success. Instead the Community Coordinator recognizes that membership is a starting point for an arc of participation over many years in potentially many roles, both active and passive, all thoughtfully structured and organizationally supported to assure that the experience is always vital, fulfilling, and meaningfully contributes to professional growth and contribution. I would call this ongoing phase of member coordination “development.” I have previously recommended Amy Jo Kim’s useful description of this as the “social scaffolding” that can be recognized in any robust and active community. I see hints at this in the job description and am hoping to infer that this role aspires toward this larger purpose.

Communication. Now there is a word! I am confident that, with Mitch Anthony as our partner, there is a discipline about messages and audiences and ambitions that recognizes the determination and persistence, the resources and strategic alignment, and the relentless focus that the scale of campaigns (and I expect there will be many) require. I have been admiring the judicious pace that our new generation of leadership has employed; consistent and patient progress is leading us step by step in what sure feels like a common direction. What a relief!

Effective communication requires skill and too often assumes that messages sent are messages received, messages conceived are messages desired, relationships established are relationships sustained, who we think we are is who others say we are, and that what we do is what actually matters to an intended audience. In other words, as emblazoned over the door of design legend Milton Glaser’s office: “Art is Work”.

My hope is that NESEA’s new Communication Coordinator is wise to all of this. I especially hope that they recognize that internal audiences are as important as external ones. In this case both our member community and its organizational staff are as essential audiences as those in the circles radiating out from this internal constituency. We are the ones with the most immediate fascination and interest in who NESEA is, what it does, and why that matters. The song we sing to the world about that needs a good beat and solid harmony.

“If you practice sustainability, this is where you belong.” I consider this the fundamental value proposition of the organization. It’s result (exemplified by the character and output of our membership) is our point of differentiation and exceptional credibility: “Our members consistently set the highest standards for advancing scrupulous practice.” We are, and have been for nearly four decades, devoted to developing a robust and responsible energy economy and proving it can be done by doing it. I’m looking forward to that message reverberating within and without the organization.

Finally, I am pleased to see these positions characterized as “coordinating” rather than “managing” these two activities. For me it is more than a semantic distinction. A manager takes control. A coordinator assures that a system is engaged to succeed, not always by achieving the ends themselves, but by making certain that everyone who can contribute to that success is involved and organized with others to achieve shared goals. I hope the new hires will act accordingly.

Its been a long journey to reach this new edge. There was a lot of bushwhacking, wandering down rabbit trails, steep climbs and hard weather to endure to get here. I feel like we have reached the shore and are launching a solid vessel across new waters. Its good to see our new captains assemble the needed crew. Here’s to the next stage of this remarkably important journey.

Thanks!

Jamie Wolf / Wolfworks Inc.

Filed Under: Communications, NESEA Tagged With: , , , ,

Raising community while raising funds: Emerging professionals show us how it's done

February 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Things have that crazy, breathless feeling as we close in on BuildingEnergy, with only 4 weeks to go until showtime. But I wanted to share with you a spontaneous outpouring of generosity that occurred within the NESEA community within the past week.

A group of NESEA emerging professionals, led by Ryan Lacey, LEED AP, of Petersen Engineering, and Bernice Radle, of Buffalo Energy, were working hard to make the NESEA student design competition, which culminates at BE11, a success. Part of their work entailed securing sponsorships and/or donations for prizes for the winners – something they had hoped to be able to offer, but that wasn’t in the budget. The put out a call for help on Basecamp, NESEA’s project planning forum.

What followed was a stunning online fund drive that would make even National Public Radio affiliates green with envy. During the course of the next 3-4 hours, individual NESEA members pledged anywhere from $50 to $250.01, and in no time, they had raised the $2000 they sought. But more importantly, they established their credibility within the NESEA community such that these donors really felt it a privilege to help them.

Kudos to these young leaders. They’re already doing great things, and with their engagement, our future looks bright indeed!

Filed Under: Emerging Professionals, NESEA Tagged With: , , , ,