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Why I Hated The NESEA Building Energy Conference

By Chris Williams
March 25, 2010 | 9 Comments

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Two weeks ago, I went to the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) yearly conference called Building Energy Conference 2010.

Honestly, in terms of the trade show, I’ve seen it all. I walked through the show floor in about 30 minutes stopping occasionally to talk to people I know.

My highlight was talking with Peter Troast of Energy Circle who is working on some really cool projects with home energy efficiency. In my perspective, his site is hands down the best store focusing on home energy efficiency, and no he didn’t pay me to say this. The blend of content, education, reviewed products, and strong branding make it second to none. I can’t wait to see how it develops.

Other then Peter, I didn’t really see any innovation, a lot of solar thermal, solar PV, industry associations, yadda yadda yadda. I don’t want to sound like a negative Nancy, but I think I’m just sad that a conference that has so much history and has traditionally been on the forefront of the renewable energy movement is slipping behind. But, we all know that if I thought it was a real problem, I’d do something about it.

Brian Hayden, one of our industry insiders, spent more going to the event and workshops, and he’s going to get you a better overview of what he learned at the workshops.

Here are my two main issues with NESEA Building Energy Conference 2010:

1) Too Old: I don’t have a problem with old people in the general sense, or in business, gray hairs are needed. However, there is SO MUCH INTEREST in these subject from young professionals and college students, especially in Boston, it blows my mind that more of them weren’t there.

2) No New Media: Here’s the real kicker, everyone at NESEA claims to be very forward thinking, but they use the most basic, most expensive and lease effective means of marketing and communication. Instead of leveraging social media to make it easy for friends to share information with their friends and communities they know will be interested in attending the event, NESEA reverts to mailing people PHYSICAL information to their homes.

If you went to NESEA, I’m really curious: what did you think about the event? If you didn’t like it, how do you think it can be improved?

I'm going to be gathering idea and presenting them to NESEA leadership for next years conference.

Chris Williams is founder of The Green Light Distrikt, a community of Boston clean tech professionals that covers all things Bostons + Clean Tech + Innovation.

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The information and views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of RenewableEnergyWorld.com or the companies that advertise on this Web site and other publications. This blog was posted directly by the author and was not reviewed for accuracy, spelling or grammar.

9 Reader Comments

Comment
1 of 9

PamelaCargill

March 25, 2010

Chris, sounds like your beef is with NESEA the organization and their marketing, not really BuildingEnergy the conference, to which you only attend the trade floor (and it was nice to see you, by the way). There is a lot more to the conference than the trade floor; the networking opportunities were excellent across every day of the conference during and afterhours. I made a lot of great connections and strengthened existing relationships with industry contacts I have known for years.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, though I think your negativity is a little overboard; the board of NESEA has received my constructive criticism on how to better promote and position the conference and NESEA as an organization. What NESEA needs is young renewable energy professionals like you and me to get involved in a big way; in conference planning, in contributing writing to the Northeast Sun, to NESEA's blogs, and much more. It's not going to magically happen, but with an organized effort, young driven folks like you and I can make big impact.

Comment
2 of 9

JenniferRunyon

March 25, 2010

Hi Chris,

I was at the conference, too. And while I did feel that the trade show aspect of it was on the smaller side, I spent a lot of my time at the renewable energy sessions. I thought they were presented well and attracted a good audience of interested renewable energy professionals, including many young people.

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3 of 9

jmarrapese

March 25, 2010

Chris,

Thanks for your post. Your feedback will help us plan a better BE11. Let me respond to your two main issues.

With respect to the "gray hair factor," I don't disagree. NESEA is a 35-yr-old organization, started by a group of revolutionary thinkers and doers in the 70s. We have not made a consistent effort to remain young and vital. That's changing. For the first time, at BE10 we had 2 track chairs for each learning track – an older, more seasoned member, and a younger, emerging professional. We provided many career fair and mentoring opportunities designed to attract a younger set to BE10, and heavily subsidized admission for students wishing to attend. At NESEA Night, we featured three of the 2009 Solar Decathlon teams in a Pecha Kucha, where, in the words of long-time NESEA member Jamie Wolf, we met "the young upstarts who are going to kick our asses!" In the most recent edition of our Northeast Sun magazine, I interviewed 13 NESEA-ites under the age of 40 to help us learn what the next gen needs from NESEA. Brian Hayden, the industry insider you mention above, was one of our interviewees, and has jumped on board several NESEA committees as a result! We've been posting the full text of these interviews on our blog at www.nesea.org. Could we do better? Absolutely!

With respect to the "no new media" issue, again, you're right on. We're learning. This is the first year we've even dabbled in social media. We know it's one of the best means of promoting the good work our members are doing, and of sharing information in a sustainable way. We're open to your feedback on how to do it better. In particular, we're hoping to help foster community discussions using social media rather than using a top-down approach.

Bottom line: We welcome your help in creating a younger, more social media-savvy NESEA. Please join NESEA and help plan BE 11. Help create the change you want to see.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Marrapese
Interim Executive Director
NESEA

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4 of 9

Chris_Williams

March 25, 2010

First, I love all the comments! Thank you everyone for responding :)

Second, I felt the need to use strong language to get people's attention. I used the word 'HATE' to get people to look as it is not politically correct not because I hated the event, what it stands for, or the huge impact it has had on sustainability and clean tech, the workshops are second to none and I haven't found anything better, they beat the heck out of the Green Build workshops.

I agree with Pam that there are two different elements in here, the actual event and the marketing and that they work together. However, to the outside world they are almost one in the same, perception is reality. I was talking with a women at NESEA about marketing/branding, and its importance. After I finally got her to admit it was important she said "okay, its a necessary evil" WHAT!?!?!? A necessary evil? Are you crazy? It's not evil at all. This was the statement that really got me thinking.

I'm glad that there has been positive responses supporting NESEA. This shows that there are a strong core group that really care about the event.

I say, we keep the conversation going.

Here are a couple simple suggestions for improving it next year.

1) Have an eventbrite page that does all of the registration. This is by far the best service I've ever used to organize events, its very easy to share.

2) Stream video from the event. Everyone in the world cares about these issues, but not everyone can get here. You can stream video with a $100 camera and start a tv station with ustream.

3) Partner with existing groups in the area. The logic here is all of the communities of people already exist. The only organization I heard about NESEA from was the NEXUS Green Building Resource Center.

Here are other potential resources in Boston:
Green Drinks
Young Professionals in Energy
Boston Area Sustainability Group
Environmental Entrepreneurs
MIT Energy Club
Net Impact

Comment
5 of 9

PeterTroast

March 26, 2010

Chris--

I very much appreciate the kind words about us, and it is always great seeing you, but I assure you there were lots more very worthy highlights at NESEA. A couple thoughts:

1. Big difference between the trade show floor and the workshops. I spent much of my conference time in various deep energy retrofit sessions. The content was rich, smart and provocative. The participants were the true leaders nationally in the category. Clearly, there's a fair point about about price and accessibility of this part of the event, particularly for the communities you speak so well for.

2. I agree fully on needing to seize the new media opportunity. A few of us worked hard to produce a relevant twitter stream at #BE10 and @EnergyCircle solo'ed the Deep Energy Retrofit Experts meeting #DEREM. @bomee @wolfworks @brightbuilt @energymetrics @greenlandlady @tomharrisonjr @mitchanthony @GreenMachinePR and others were all engaged. Clearly, too few of us, but a solid core from which to build.

3. On the age gap, I say embrace the grey. The founders of NESEA are an extraordinary bunch, born in a different era than us, but true pioneers that have slogged through difficult times in this field for 30 years. There is much wisdom there, and a deep commitment to open source and truth in data.

Your ideas for amping it next year are great and I, for one, would love to work on it with you. Jennifer's response makes it clear that the organizational will is there.

Comment
6 of 9

Chris_Williams

March 26, 2010

Peter,

Thanks a bunch for the comment. I agree, there were tons of highlights of the event! I too loved the workshops and learnd about some important information on the VoC in caulking, I met some awesome people and made some good connections for projects I'm working on.

Thank you for including the post in your week in review, without a doubt it was made to be provocative and start a conversation.

I too agree with your point about the founders of NESEA. To me, they are very inspirational and I look for them for guidance.

On the same token, NOW is the time to switch gears from preaching to the converted, to tweaking the message for the masses. This was the central reason that I wrote my post.

Here's what I'm going to do to start a constructive conversation.

1) I'm going to write a post asking for feedback on how to improve the conference this weekend. It will be posted early next week. It will have a 3 part structure; one, the idea category, two, a description of the idea, three the logic for why it will make the conference better

2) I will add up all the ideas, put them in a form and then write another post asking people to vote on which ones will be effective. I'll present the top 10 to Jennifer Marrapese.

Pam, Jennifer, Jennifer and Peter others. Will you help me spread the word when I write the post next week? What do you think will be the best way?

Comment
7 of 9

PamelaCargill

March 29, 2010

Chris- I'm behind you 100% and I'll get some folks behind me to RT it so we can make some big noise.

Comment
8 of 9

Chris_Williams

March 29, 2010

Pam,

You're awesome! I'll be posting the follow up post later this week that I'll be using to collect idea.

Chris

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9 of 9

fred_unger

March 30, 2010

Chris,

I find it hard to believe anyone who aspires to be considered serious in the renewable energy industry would be so lazy and ill informed that they would write something like you did after cruising the trade show for just half an hour and not even bothering to actually attend any of the actual conference.

For a useful perspective on the conference, readers here should check out the blog of the only company you apparently even bothered to check out, Energy Circle, which has numerous very positive postings praising the conference. see: energycircle.com/blog/category/thinkers

Your LinkedIn profile makes clear you have flitted from internship to internship, which I am sure has been very entertaining. But please be clear that the reason that some of the people at the NESEA conference are a little older than you is that it is a professional conference for serious practitioners. Believe it or not, having professional perspective of any real value requires actually investing a little time and effort.

Thankfully, contrary to your comments, the conference was actually full of serious young people willing to invest the time, money and effort to learn what it takes to be a valuable and knowledgeable professional in these fields.

If you are at all serious about working in the field, next year you might consider being serious enough to take the time to actually attend the best professional conference in the country for the industries you apparently aspire to participate in.

Fred Unger

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