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  • Articles
    • Clean Transportation
    • Energy Efficiency
    • Green Building
    • Renewable Energy
    • Recycling & Waste
    • Water & Conservation
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Author

Lisa Ann Pinkerton

Lisa Ann Pinkerton

Lisa Ann Pinkerton is founder of San Francisco’s Women In Cleantech & Sustainability, as well as Founder and President of Technica Communications. Lisa Ann is a former award-winning broadcast journalist who reported for National Public Radio, PBS Television, American Public Media, Free Speech TV and a variety local stations.

Top Ten Twitter Tips for an Optimized Solar Power International 2014

Top Ten Twitter Tips for an Optimized Solar Power International 2014

written by Lisa Ann Pinkerton

In a few weeks, the solar industry will converge on Las Vegas for three jam-packed days of sun worship. Not at the pool, but in the halls and among the exhibits at Solar Power International (SPI) 2014.

Brands big and small routinely lose out on a vast array of opportunities and lucrative connections at large conferences, because they have not yet implemented a strategy that puts them in multiple places at once. You can’t possibly see it all or meet everyone at North America’s largest solar trade show, but with a little help from a scout called Twitter, and a few simple tweeting skills, you can maximize your exposure.

While B2B activities on Twitter might seems like its just 100’s of people talking at each other, it’s conferences where Twitter really becomes invaluable. It’s your best source for latest news, must see sessions and which parties are worth showing up for. Twitter can bring the industry into your hands, put your voice on par with the biggest brands in the business, and dramatically improve your team’s ROI.

As you gear up for SPI 2014, here’s a list of our top 10 Twitter skills you can try out to make the show your most significant trip of your year. I’ve offered up some top examples for each, either from current SPI activity (#SPI2014) or from South By Southwest Eco (#SXSWEco), which I recently attended in Austin.

1. Start with a pre-party

The weeks leading up to SPI are often a whirlwind of preparation and deadlines. Regardless, get yourself into the habit of watching two SPI hashtags, #SPICon and #SPI2014 starting around October 16. Around this time, you’ll notice companies starting to announce their news for the show. A quick scan every other day will give you a good sense of what the show’s themes may be.

When you see news from a colleague or prospect, it’s a perfect excuse to reach out to them. Inquire if they’ll be attending the show, and see if you can set up a meeting. Even if you don’t know them!

@[handle]: Hi Rich I am at #SPI2014 Booth XXXX. We’ve talked on Twitter but never met – will be under the same roof tomorrow.

Additionally, use this time to retweet (RT) people you want to notice you and start brushing up on your posting power.

@GlennaWiseman: RT @RainaRusso: 4 football fields worth of walking at #SPICon that’s 10,000 steps a day easy! Win a Fitbit via @ibts_solar booth 5309 #SolarChat

2. Live tweet everyday

Once SPI starts, make a commitment to tweet from the show in real time. In social media marketing, we call this “Live Tweeting.” This activity can take many forms, but should start with your announcement on your feed that you’re traveling to SPI and why you’re excited. This heads-up post, gives your followers and others following the hashtag a chance to know that you’ll be there and connect with you.

@RainaRusso: See you there! RT @ibts_solar: We’re headed to Vegas, baby! Stop by booth 5309 at @SPIConvention Oct. 21-23 #SPIcon pic.twitter.com/hrQakNmklX

@lisapinkerton: There’s something magical about being at a conference the day before it starts. #SXSWEco

In Sessions:

The conventional live tweet from a session usually includes sounds bites from speakers and questions posed by the audience. I often use my session posts as a way of taking notes on the panel. Be careful not to just post the sound bites from speakers, as it’s so common that you’ll notice everyone doing it. You want to be unique and stand out, so that other people with retweet and follow you. So instead, try to build on the commentd given, either by posing a question, a challenge or furthering the idea with your own insights.

@lisapinkerton: PicaSolar could save solar OEMs $140M in reduced silver use alone, + 15% increase in cell efficiency. #sxsweco http://ow.ly/i/78K3W

@AutoblogGreen: Brett Hauser from @greenlots: There have been some “colossal failures” because EV charging companies used proprietary systems. #sxsweco

On the exhibit floor:

As you wander the booths, take photos of things you think are cool, friends you run into or fun happenings. Post them on Twitter with your comment and where it happened, such as the booth number. If you see something you don’t like, there’s also an opportunity to tell the company via a post.

@austinECOdetail: Met Gabriel and his team #earth911 at #sxsweco last week. They had this super cool stool made of cork on display. pic.twitter.com/pi8coPEIbY

Corporate social media feeds are often managed by the marketing and public relations teams. So, done diplomatically, your comment will reach the people in the company who will care most about the company’s brand and reputation.

Regardless of how your posts shape up, always credit the speakers and companies either by adding their name in or their handle. And always remember to add the hashtag #SPI2014.

3. Party with your Tweeps

Networking on social media is a great way to build your brand and reach new people. But in person networking is where the real magic is. At the quarterly networking workshops I teach in San Francisco, I outline how one can seamlessly go from online networking to in person networking, and back to online as a way of extending networking time and opportunities.

Tweetups are sponsored happy hours where people who are active on Twitter meet each other face-to-face. Instead of meeting a group of strangers, Tweetups provide us with the opportunity to get to know better, people we already feel connected to. At SPI this year, there are two important Tweetups to hit:

  • SPI Tweetup – October 22, 12-2pm
  • #SolarChat’s Unplugged Solar Teams Rock – Oct 22, 8pm-10pm

4. Get your scan on

You can’t be everywhere are once. But Twitter can! Every morning, instead of looking at your usual news feeds, or playing that game you use to wake up in bed, scan the twitter hashtag. Within five minutes it would take you to review the replays of how your base got raided on Clash of Clans overnight, you’ll quickly get up to speed on the coming day at SPI. Also, at this time take a moment to post something about what you’re looking forward to, as another way of giving the SPI community a chance to meet you and connect with you.

5. Smart follow

Using Twitter at conferences, when the majority of your industry is paying attention, whether or not they are at the show, is a great way to build your audience. As a rule, you should follow everyone that follows you, as long and as much as you want to. When you do get a new follower, thank them for following you.

If people are using the hashtag, there’s a high likelihood they have some influence in solar and following them could add to your overall clout. So, at shows it’s advisable to follow people using the hashtag. They in turn may choose to follow you, and before you know it, you’ll have grown your following by at least 10-20 percent by the end of the conference.

6. Interact

Following those that follow you is just one part of interaction. The next step is to add to the conversation, either by retweeting what they have posted (indicated by RT in the post) or by modifying a person’s tweet and adding MT. You can also reply to a post and add your own insights, questions or comments.

This is where the interaction can take on a life of its own and lead to incredible networking opportunities you might not have had otherwise, both at the event and long after it’s over. You can even invite other people you know would have interest in a topic into the conversation by adding their handles in your posts. Twitter will notify them, depending on their account settings. Do this in compelling way and voilà, you have yourself a bonafide social media networking moment that can be taken off line for more in-depth interaction.

SPI twitter post interaction

7. Review sessions and parties in the moment

Let’s face it, no matter how hard organizers try, some sessions are just boring, and some parties are just a flop. Wouldn’t you like to know that before you get to the location, or warn other before they meet your fate? Well, Twitter is an excellent vehicle for that.

When you’re in a session that’s dragging on without much substance, use Twitter to see what sessions other people are posting about. You can save yourself valuable session time by leaving ones that aren’t working for ones that are. The same thing goes for parties and happy hours.

You can also use Twitter to bring more people to something good. Don’t be afraid to post that a session is impressive, making sure to share the room number. Additionally, if you find yourself at a bouncing party, spread the love on Twitter. Make sure you credit the sponsors of the event, so that if others can’t get there before it’s over the organizers get your kudos, which is a goodwill gesture that helps to elevate their brand.

AndreaLearned: Fun @triplepundit party last night @CliveBarATX – thanks @nickaster and gang. #sxsweco

spi twitter blog image - party

8. Make it visual

Thoughtful insights are critical to building your Twitter brand. However, well-selected photos and videos will often spread the message of your brand further than words can. People love images and videos. We love to look at them and share them.

When people retweet your multi-media, your handle (@yournamehere) gets added to the post and you get the credit. You may find a comment retweeted once or twice, while an image or video gets many more shares. A note of caution, before you share a photo or video, be sure to ask others in the moment if it’s okay. If they say yes, be sure to add their handles as well.

SPI post visual

9. Give credit where credit is due

In the other steps, we touched on how selecting the retweet symbol in your Twitter app will automatically add the handle of the person you are retweeting into your post. Twitter also offers an “edit retweet” function in case you want to modify the tweet. Often we do this to add additional insights or if the original tweet was too long.

However, some people will use the “edit retweet” function to remove the handle of the person who originated the tweet as a way of claiming it as their own. This is not how you build a supportive community and people will notice if you try this too much. They might even call you out on it, publicly; I have. Keep your ego at bay and give credit where credit is due. Sometimes, when a post becomes too long, because of the RT handle(s) at the beginning, it’s advisable to add them to the end with the word “via” indicating where you got the information. This step can save you precious characters.

This also goes to crediting speakers and companies. You can use the search function in Twitter to learn if companies or people have twitter handles already and add them to your post. While you’re at it, you should follow them too. They will get your notification that you mentioned them and it helps you build a positive relationship with them over time.

10. Stay in the moment

One trick about live tweeting is that we pay too much attention to creating our posts, watching the hashtag feed or responding to alerts we get on our phone, because it’s right in front of us. Speakers certainly like to see their names and opinions trending on social media, but they also like an attentive audience. You can miss critical information when you are too busy multi-tasking. Therefore, try to keep your live posts to an average of one per ten minutes. This will help you keep your attention on the session and retaining the most amount of information possible. Additionally, it will keep your feed from dominating the hashtag as people are following it.



October 15, 2014 0 comment
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Charging Scarcity Holding Back EV Growth

written by Lisa Ann Pinkerton

At the turn of the 20th Century, it took only 13 years to replace the the horse and carriage with automobiles. A system that had dominated for centuries as a preferred means of transport was displaced seemingly over night.. Today, transportation is witnessing another technological shift to electric plug-in and extended range vehicles. However, four years in to the shift, it’s still to early to say how the transition to an electrically dominated automobile industry will compare to the switch from horse to “horsepower.”

At the 4th annual Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Driving Charged and Connected event last week, experts debated the challenges and speculated on the speed of the move to electric vehicles. The answer promoted by many was that the issue is not one of technology development, but a question of the public’s desire to deploy it, i.e. a willingness to finance the infrastructure needed.

In 2011, Google announced it would install 450 charging stations with free “fill ups” to employees. Today, the Mountain View campus is conducting over 900 charging sessions a day. That’s a charging load of approximately 7.5 MW of energy each day. “We built it, and the EVs arrived, and they keep on coming,”said Rolf Schreiber, technical program manager for electric transportation at Google. “That amount of power is like displacing over 500 gallons of fuel.”

Schreiber says Google’s current charging stations are over-subscribed and the campus’s electrical infrastructure has exceeded the ability to put in more charging stations. “Our expanded charging system has helped several Googlers decide to buy new EVs of their own,”said Schreiber. “Now we must develop strategies to balance the needs of drivers who need to charge, verses those that want to charge.”

For Google EV drivers commuting from the East Bay, the opportunity to charge at work is critical to their ability to get home. Additionally, many Googlers depend on charging up at workplace because the apartments they rent do not accommodate their charging needs. Meanwhile, others who simply want to charge but don’t really need to, also feel entitled to a charging option at work, whether or not it’s a necessity.

“It’s not really in our culture to institute top down mandates,”said Schreiber. So in response, he says the Google community is starting to regulate itself. Systems like email lists help people ask others to move their cars if they are finished charging. Charging buddies take turns swapping out each other’s cars to share the same plug. Some Googlers were even asking for fee based charging, as a way to regulate behavior.

From a company perspective, all of this ad-hoc charging organization and plug-swapping cuts into employee productivity and causes range anxiety for workers when they should be focused on other things. That got Arcady Sosinov thinking about the potential of mobile and autonomous charging. During the Silicon Valley Driving Charged & Connected event, his startup FreeWire demonstrated an innovative prototype called the Mobi, which stores energy using second-life EV batteries and then moves around the workplace parking lot to charge vehicles. Combined with a business model he calls “Charging as a Service,” Sosinov aims to solve the challenges facing workplace charging.

“Employers are frustrated that their costly infrastructure upgrades are charging only two cars per workday. Not to mention the time workers take out of their day to shuffle cars in and out of spots,”said Sosinov. “Instead of bringing the car to the station, it’s much more efficient to bring the station to the car.”

With FreeWire’s solution, companies can forgo costly infrastructure upgrades and charging station installation. Instead, needy EV drivers request a charge by leaving their charge port open and the Mobi moves from car to car throughout the day. At the end of the day, the charging station takes itself to its own base station for an overnight fill up, at a fraction of the electricity rates charged during the day. When companies move offices, their charging infrastructure moves with them.

While Freewire envisions fully automated charging, its first generation system is not robotic. Instead, the first gen model employs an attendant to transport the charger from car to car. Sosinov says a conventional charge station usually averages about two cars per day, but this first FreeWire unit can charge an average of 8 cars per day, a 300 percent increase in utilization.

“Scalability of existing infrastructure is a huge challenge and it’s not about the charging hardware itself,”said FreeWire co-founder Sanat Kamal Bahl. “Instead, it’s the cost of laying down conduit, digging up the parking lot and costly electricity infrastructure upgrades. The expense increases exponentially as you move the chargers further into the parking lot.”

Tech firms in Silicon Valley, where EV adoption can range as high as 25% of the workforce, clearly see huge benefits in FreeWire’s solution. Not surprisingly, the startup’s recent announcement of a limited availability pilot program has stirred up strong demand among potential corporate customers.

Regardless of how EVs are charged at the workplace, the larger impediment to electric vehicle adoption experts saw was the significant lack of charging options for those living in multi-unit dwellings, another market where FreeWire might thrive. In California alone, 41 percent of residents live in apartments. To date, forward thinking companies have been footing the bill to provide apartment dwellers with workplace charging as an employee perk and recruitment tool.

However, from the landlord prospective it’s a chicken and egg problem. They don’t see the need to add infrastructure if people are not going to use it. However, EV dealers say, many people don’t purchase EVs if their apartments don’t offer charging beforehand. In fact, only 8 percent of all EV owners live in apartments (this writer being one of the few). With apartment vacancies at an all time low in the Bay Area, property owners feel little pressure add amenities that would eat into their profits.

That’s something Mario Landau-Holdsworth of the startup EverCharge says is going to quickly be changing. The company specifically targets multiunit dwellings, home owners associations and large corporations to maximize a property’s charging capacity, while spreading the installation costs across the membership of users.

EverCharge’s charging technology communicates wirelessly with its charge ports to share load capacity across the system, allowing power to be stepped down as more cars request charging. This adds capacity to the system, without overloading the electrical infrastructure.

“With traditional systems a vehicle is assumed to be using full power all the time. EverCharge monitors needs the individual vehicles to allocate the power according to their needs. The excess power can be allocated to other vehicles allowing up to ten times as many vehicles to charge using the existing capacity of a site,” remarked Landau-Holdsworth. “Complexes can get up to 10 times the capacity, without the costly upgrade to their infrastructure.”

Whether it’s smarter practices or more clever charging approaches, the infrastructure for EV charging is steadily growing. Yet, the tipping point may depend more on the success of enrolling new infrastructure providers, and less on convincing consumers that electric vehicles are a better buy than their fossil fuel counterparts.



May 19, 2014 3 comments
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Top 20 Women Cleantech Investors

written by Lisa Ann Pinkerton

In 2011, the National Venture Capital Association and Dow Jones VentureSource released their study of the diversity makeup of the venture capital industry. Not surprisingly, the majority of people working in the VC industry were white and. . . wait for it. . . male.

While women represented 21 percent of employment

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June 20, 2013 0 comment
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The Next Apple Will be Found in LED Lighting

written by Lisa Ann Pinkerton

Who doesn’t wish they had invested in Apple when it was $16 a share? Quite often, timing the market is more intuition than science. Those who know analog to digital inflection points are watching LEDs. Get it right, and enormous wealth can be created. Time it wrong and you’re left in the dust, like Polaroid.

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May 16, 2013 0 comment
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Solar Says ‘Good-Bye Solyndra’

written by Lisa Ann Pinkerton

No company has done greater damage to the image of the American solar industry than Solyndra. It was therefore a source of great delight to me last week as I drove along Interstate 880 through Fremont, CA for what I didn’t see. The signs on the old factory were gone. Those persistent thorns in the side of American solar, had finally vanished, closing

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February 20, 2013 4 comments
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Top 10 Women of Sustainability

written by Lisa Ann Pinkerton

In this second installment in our series on leading women in cleantech and sustainability sectors, we offer up our top picks for the sustainability sector. Quite often this category is dominated by women working in Corporate Social Responsibility, as it’s a sector where women have made great strides to gain leadership roles in the last few decades. However, for

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February 21, 2012 1 comment
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Top 10 Women of BioFuels

written by Lisa Ann Pinkerton

As the founder of the Bay Area networking group, Women In Cleantech & Sustainability, I am keenly interested in learning about who the media thinks as being the most influential women in the field. However, it feels like every top ten list for women in Cleantech always lists the same lovely ladies. This is not to say that the women are not contributing

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January 17, 2012 0 comment
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