-
-
Green Light Distrikt
Green Light Distrikt is about entrepreneurship focused on the cleantech sector. Edited by Chris Williams with frequent guest posts from friends, experts and industry insiders from clusters across the globe. Our goal is to provide a place where cleantech entrepreneurs in various clusters across the globe can learn from one another. Green Light Distrikt is creating the "Hitchikers Guide to Clentech" to provide a resource for cleantech entrepreneurs. Read more
Subscribe
Business Insights
March 29th, 2011
You Never Know Who’s Sitting Next to You (at the MIT Energy Conference)
TOPICS: BOSTON, Business Insights
Especially if it’s Lady Gaga or Banksy, they’re always incognito.
But seriously. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been at a conference or event and bumped into an incredibly valuable contact just by chance. You know the drill. You walk into a room with 25 tables, each half full of people. You chose one at random, and awkwardly avoid making eye contact for 2 or 3 minutes. MMmmmm this coffee is good… Wow, I bet I have three emails. Oh, and a text! They’re probably all really important… “Hi. I’m Angel,” comes the introduction out of the chair to your left. “Oh, hi! I’m Jesse. Tell me, Angel, what do you do?”
Ten minutes later, everyone who sent you an email is anxiously sitting at their keyboard, “Jesse NEVER takes this long to respond to my emails! It’s been TEN MINUTES!”
And you’ve found an angel, The Angel, actually, who you were looking for. They may have advice, they might have contacts, or even a little cash. Depends on what you’re looking for.
The important thing is, you put yourself out there, and you were rewarded.
Leave a comment or question
February 28th, 2011
Low Tech Rally: What I’m Most Looking Forward to in 2011
TOPICS: BOSTON, Business Insights, Renewable Energy
My wife has a female friend who wore a turtleneck to a party at the Playboy mansion. It was a work event and she was not psyched about going – “I decided to zig where they zag”, she said. The genius of that quote has always stuck with me.
I’m currently working on publishing a print magazine for my business. In the age of social media and digital publishing it’s a curious project to embark on, but I think the death of traditional publishing has been oversold. Rather than dying, I think it’s just changing. It’s not about actually delivering news, it’s more like a big, huge Christmas card / love letter we’re writing to anyone who cares enough to pay attention to us. It’s been a great excuse to connect with the people who are important to me and think about what the company values. Most of all, it has been fun.
January 6th, 2011
Clean Energy is Filthy, Dirty, Hot, Itchy, Sticky, yet Awesome Work
TOPICS: BOSTON, Business Insights
This is a picture of my hand after a typical day at work. What this picture doesn’t show you it the tiny fibers of insulation that have found there way up my sleeves, and the gobs of duct seal that may or may not have found stuck onto my pants, sweat-shirt, or hair. Installing duct work for geothermal systems may be the cheapest and cleanest way to heat and cool your home, but it is dirty and hard work.
You can hear in peoples’ voices how excited they are about solar power, ‘its the way of the future’ everyone says. I always think about lugging a 50 pound solar panel wearing a 10 pound t-shirt (because its drenched in sweat) across a steeply pitched room. Which is, in 95 degree summer weather actually around 120 because you’re standing on a black, asphalt roof that has been baking in the sun all day.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. In fact, I love this stuff. There is a huge satisfaction in using your hands to build something, and being outside is a huge bonus too. That’s the really the cool part of renewable energy. The base of the jobs being created are fundamentally construction jobs with a little tweaking. All distributed generation technologies (solar PV, solar thermal, small wind, and geothermal) are all installed by electricians, carpenters, roofers, drillers, tin workers, and drillers.
The growth of renewable energy will develop our economy from the bottom up, as opposed to lets say, the finance industry. One sales person and an engineer can create enough work for a lot of installers. The fact that our housing infrastructure is so inefficient – we use about double the energy per square foot of a European household – actually means we have a lot of upgrading to do, and that means jobs. That’s not to say finance, management, and investors aren’t needed and won’t be rewarded, but simply that it looks like the middle class is finally going to get some of the action as a new industry grows.
September 27th, 2010
The Ups And Downs of Renewable Energy in Connecticut
BOSTON -
“What’s the latest cleantech news from Connecticut?”
This past week I asked that question to a lot of smart people on my trip to Connecticut. I attended three events in three days: 1) a Solar Connecticut member meeting, 2) a Solar PV certification training, and 3) a Geothermal heat pump certification course. Here’s what I heard:
- Last year a comprehensive energy bill passed the state house and senate, only to be vetoed by Governor Jody Rell because her advisers told her it would cost too much. The bill would have been a huge win for the solar industry, so the group is watching to see who the new Governor is. The group resolved to pass something in the coming year.
July 20th, 2010
Book Report: ‘The Company We Keep’ by John Abrams
TOPICS: BOSTON, Business Insights, Entrepreneurship
South Mountain Company is a thirty-year-old, employee-owned design and building company on Martha’s Vineyard. One of the company founders, John Abrams, published a book in 2005 that changed the way I define success – and he represents an important demographic for GLD readers.
‘The Company We Keep’ is part business book, part manifesto, part love story. John sent me the book a couple weeks before I was to drive out to Martha’s Vineyard for an interview with South Mountain Company. I was graduating from the MBA program at Babson College, knew I wanted to be part of the sustainability movement, and sensed there was some magic in this small building company. I didn’t put the book down for the next week. John is a talented writer, and in the book he challenges the ‘gospel of growth’, outlines the benefits of employee ownership, celebrates craftsmanship, and articulates the importance of place. He made me want to be a better person and a more thoughtful professional.
Ultimately I decided to start a business rather than take a job so I didn’t go to work for South Mountain Company, but that brief interaction with the company changed the course of my professional life. Have you ever had a brief experience like that, or an influential teacher, or an internship during a formative time that you’ll never forget? I’d love to hear comments with those stories.
I’m also writing this post because John is part of a group of established professionals that have 30 years of experience from which to teach the younger, Green Light Distrikt crowd. These are active guys in the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) with an unbelievable wealth of knowledge and perspective that might be helpful to some of us starting out. Here’s John’s blog, which might be another useful source of information as we all triangulate toward the truth.
