Where’s Rich?
If you’ve followed this blog closely, then you’ve noticed that postings are few and far between. One day, that will all be passed. But, for now, I’ve put my priority on building the business and not building the blog.
What does it take to build the business? One thing it takes is a lot of networking. To that end, I’ve worked out a rough schedule of meetings, which you can follow on our Meetup.com groups.
A great meeting to go to will be next Wednesday’s < a href=”http://www.meetup.com/Green-Making-for-the-Silicon-Valley-Area/” target=”_blank”>Go Green Without Going Red meeting, which brings together several members of the local building community to talk about how the typical homeowner can approach turning their home more eco-friendly. I’m preparing to record this talk on video so that we can capture the information for release in various formats.
Setting up a good set of meetings has been a considerable problem for many reasons. One reason is that finding suitable public meeting space that doesn’t break the bank is difficult. Another is that publicizing meetings takes time and money. For the Green/Red meeting, for example, I’ve employed Full Calendar to get the word out to about two- to four-dozen websites. In addition, we posted this to local newspaper sites (such as the Mercury News) and the local Meetup group. (We expect to repeat the panel closer to San Francisco, so I did not list it for the San Francisco Meetup group.) A third difficulty is finding the right speakers for events. Susan Davis of Spectrum Fine Homes was kind enough to help organize speakers for next week’s event.
Beyond the meetings, I’ve also been hard at work on the next revision of the website. To make time for this activity, I had to suspend the news links service. Once the website is revised, I plan to restart that service because I think it provides a lot of value. If you have an opinion on this, then please let me know.
Also this month, we’ve joined up with the Clean Tech Open, a competition for business plans. “CTO” gives out prizes to those business concepts that will do the most to promote sustainability. By providing social networking for the green home building community we believe we are in a position to accelerate the adoption of sustainable building and operational practices across the entire home industry. So, we have entered the “green building” category for the contest and have been working on an executive summary of our business, due to the judges on May 30. Yikes! That’s only days away!
A pleasant reward for entering the Clean Tech Open is that they have assigned us a mentor, Michael Mahre, who has extensive experience in the construction services industry and the private venture sector. He has already been invaluable in helping us to put together our summary. In addition, I’ve persuaded Steve Mezak of Accelerance to help research and develop material for the Clean Tech Open.
At the same time, to help move things forward, I’ve drafted additional help to provide marketing services for those in the green home construction sector. This includes a marketing associate and a dedicated collateral developer. This allows us to flexibly respond to this demand.
By far the biggest draw on my time, however, has been the networking aspect of developing relationships with the design and building firms in the area. To do that, I’ve been participating in many meetings, including US Green Building Council guild meetings, Build It Green local chapter meetings, and recently a NARI mixer, which brought me into contact with a number of people doing interesting things.
For example, Jim Stoch is organizing the Generation Green Expo for September in San Jose, CA. We expect to have more about this show later on.
I also took up Veena Amanpaul’s invitation to go look at their showroom in Fremont, CA, Water Concepts. They had some very nice copper basins from Native Trails. Copper, of course, has natural antibacterial properties, and Native Trails (in San Luis Obispo, CA) makes some products from recycled copper and reclaimed wood.
Water Concepts also had some interesting materials and finishes from Robern, but their website (robern.com) doesn’t have any additional information. If they get back to me with additional information, I’ll post it.
I met a number of others at the NARI mixer, and I’ll post them in the Recent Finds area of the website when I have a chance.
I also have to say that participating in the Sustainable Building Forum has put me in contact with a number of thought leaders in the local green home building and remodeling communities, as well as provided access to a wide variety of firms that provide specialized services (such as SIPs, ICFs, and home performance testing). For more on this, check out the Recent Finds page and go to the Silicon Valley Area Meetup group page for a description of the forum. (Look for the most recent meeting, I’m listing one for each week.)
We are also developing a business around marketing green building services in the online world. We have developed tools and techniques for architects, designers, builders, and others to interact with the online world. These services are derived from our experience in social networking, business processes, quality assurance, and research on new developments (such as those detailed in the Groundswell book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff). From this, we’ve developed a report process that provides insight for businesses about their reflection on the social Internet. For more information, please contact us.
When I talk about our experience in social networking, this includes growing experience on Twitter. Please look for my Twitter posts. You can find out more by going to our Twitter information page, where you can also sign up.
A number of other projects have come up that I’ll need to deal with, as well. But, as you can see, there’s plenty going on right here at Green Making! Please help by participating in our forums or writing an entry for the blog. It is a great way to publicize what you’re doing.
–Rich Wingerter
Tags: Clean Tech Open, LinkedIn, NARI, networking, Silicon Valley Area, Sustainable Building Forum, website