The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) hosts the 50001 Ready Utility Network Series, a forum for utilities, public benefit administrators (PBA), third party implementers, consultants, and regulators who share an interest in energy management systems (EnMS) including ISO 50001 and DOE’s 50001 Ready program. Through these webinars with presentations and discussion, stakeholders can learn about DOE energy management resources. In addition to the ratepayer community learning from its shared experiences, DOE receives feedback on how to build additional value into the 50001 Ready for program administrators and implementers (https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/50001Ready/50001-ready-program-administrators-and-implementers), helping steer updates to existing tools and development of new ones.
In July’s webinar, DOE has developed a set of outreach/training materials meant for those involved in utility/PBA programs to educate and promote inclusion of 50001 Ready as part of energy efficiency and customer engagement program offerings. Attendees shared input to help DOE produce resources that meet needs and fill gaps.
50001 Ready
Utility Network Series
September 2018
Transcription:
Peter Therkelsen: Good morning/afternoon everyone, this is Peter Therkelsen from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Welcome to our fourth U.S. DOE 50001 Ready Utility Network Series webinar. We’re very much excited about today’s webinar, one, because we think it’ll probably be a little shorter than the fully allotted hour, and two, because this is one of the first big chances that we are looking for all of you, our participants, to provide lots of feedback on materials that we are developing in – with consultation from utility network members, for you all to hopefully use in ways that benefit you and your businesses to evaluate and incorporate and sell and understand 50001 Ready to utilities, to customers, and internally to your own or other organizations. And so we have both Sandy Glatt, of the U.S. Department of Energy, and Sergio Diaz, of Sergio Diaz Consulting, will be presenting both on the intent, the structure, the makeup of these materials, and then not presenting the materials one-for-one, but going through the purpose and the intent of them in a way that we’re going to be asking for your feedback, either through the chat function live today, or through a very short five-question or so Google form that we have put out for – to facilitate your comments. And just from the get-go, we released the materials, the training materials about a week ago, along with that Google form, and we’re really appreciative and thankful to see 12 respondents to that request for input, with very thoughtful, very pointed responses, both positive and negative, with the negative comments almost being more helpful where people pointed out, on this slide, you say this – that’s very challenging as a sales approach, or you mention this, this, and this, and you’re missing another component.
So, we can go ahead and get started with some just general kind of housekeeping activities, and then I’ll turn it over to Sandy to present the intent of what Department of Energy is doing with these training materials, and then Sergio will get into a little more of the technical details about them, and then I’ll wrap it up with again an opportunity to solicit more comments.
So, again, welcome to the fourth webinar of the 50001 Ready Utility Network Series. My name again is Peter Therkelsen with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. I mentioned we’ll have Sandy Glatt and Sergio Diaz presenting today. As you may have discovered, you’re on mute by default. Please use the chat box at any time to ask questions. We are – have scheduled – a couple scheduled breaks to look for questions in the chat box, and can unmute individual participants to ask questions if that would be better. But please make questions at any time through the chat box. This session is being recorded and will be posted online along with the transcript and slides of today’s materials. If you’re not familiar with the Zoom functionality, you can double-click or press Escape to exit the full screen view, and there should be a control bar at the top or bottom of the screen for your use.
As I mentioned today, we’re going to go over some training materials that have been developed around the 50001 program, give an update on what materials are being developed at large, and then really focus in on the purpose, intent, structure, and hopefully use – and call for feedback on program administrator and implementer slide decks that are being developed.
And this being our first of two natural pause points, just to ask any questions – see if there’s any questions from people out there, any concerns off the bat, or questions about the purpose of this call. I don’t see any in the chat box right now, so I think we’ll move ahead quickly, and turn it over to Sandy.
Sandy Glatt: So thank you Peter, and thank everyone for joining us today. I want to echo what Peter said – I have briefly taken a look at some of the comments that have come in, and appreciate the thoughtfulness and in many cases, things that I think we have some suspicion of – and are never quite sure how to fix. I think we learn as we develop materials that we tend to communicate and ask questions or look for questions to come back to us based on what’s important to us, and one of the challenges is, what’s important to us at DOE for instance, is not necessarily what’s important to you. And so, you know maybe if you can sort of look at it that way – we aren’t wed to the messaging in any way, shape, or form, and we aren’t wed to structure or anything else, and again, it’s coming through our lenses. And so, if cost-effectiveness, or case studies, or you know, what’s the important thing to your customers, or to who you communicate with or how this would be used in your world – that’s really what we – the kind of feedback we want to get from you to help us improve this.
Additionally, you know, as these materials roll off while we – we often put them out in PDF format, we will make all of this stuff available in editable format, so folks, you know, who have a comfort level and have already talked about strategic energy management and other things, and are very happy with their communication pieces, but want to pull in the information around 50001 Ready to add to their existing communication pieces, we’re not preventing you from doing this – we don’t copyright our stuff, we don’t want that level of ownership, we don’t have any of those kind of private sector challenges – this is public sector materials, which means you guys have paid for it in one way, shape, or form as taxpayers, and it becomes available to you.
So, the materials under development. What we’re going to talk about today is sort of this advocacy promotion. So this is – for us, it’s sales, which we are absolutely not skilled at – I don’t think there’s a sales position that exists, that I’m aware of, in the federal government. We don’t hire sales people – they would make a lot better money in other places than at the federal government if they’re good at it. And so this is a bit of a challenge, but the idea is, how do we make a case for this program, this set of materials in this program, and doing the 50001, you know, energy management system, even just at the Ready level. And trying to communicate to folks to make a business out of this. So that’s what we’re going to talk about. In addition to that, some additional materials – and I think most of you guys are aware this is what we do best – we do software, we do training materials. So some of the stuff that’s coming down the pipe – most of you I would expect have seen or are familiar with the Navigator, which is the – sort of the guidebook to putting 50001 Ready in place, or putting the 50001 energy management system in place, all but certified.
It’s really guidance. What we are developing now is going to be a companion training workbook, which is going to be much more of a hands-on, how to do it. Various tabs that have all of the different templates in a much more organized fashion, including samples of the templates built in. So again, it’s going to be a step above just the guidance of what the Navigator is, and really, here’s all the hands-on stuff. This is how you know you’re getting it done, here’s the various templates and tools to get these steps done, and know that you’ve gotten them done. This is a work in progress – our goal is to have it completed, you know, hopefully by the end of the calendar year. There will be beta versions probably coming out for folks to look at sooner than that. We vision this as key curriculum for sort of one-on-one cohort training, or one-on-one kind of coaching. So you have an interested customer, but you’ve got the ability to provide some decent coaching and technical assistance. This is really going to be the workbook that would kind of walk through with them – it’ll again be customizable and we’re looking at examples across various kinds of sectors, industrial, commercial, and federal, because the needs and examples are going to be different. The jumpstart 50001 Ready – we have two to two-and-a-half day curriculum that we’ve been delivering to a subset of folks that work with us at DOE. These are our Better Plants partners, these are industrial, some water, wastewater folks who’ve sort of signed on to a particular voluntary pledge program. One of the perks they get for being part of that pledge program is some in-house training done in their facility. Typically it had been done in energy system areas, or treasure hunts, and things that you’re familiar with. We are finalizing a curriculum around 50001 Ready.
So this is really a classroom curriculum – sets of slides, hopefully with some instructor manuals. It could be converted easily into, you know, a couple hour cohort trainings, and delivered in a variety of different ways. So just so you know that this is coming and going to be available – the slides decks will be made available, and again it will be customizable, but the vision is either a webinar where people are looking at the slides and there’s an instructor, so it doesn’t have to be literal in-person, but it’s an instructor-based curriculum. And then the third is we do have our expert training, which is certified practitioner in energy management systems. For those of you that are in the potentially technical assistant/coaching world, and think that any form of 50001 – ISO or Ready – is something that you want to be working in, I cannot highly recommend enough that you become a certified practitioner. The good news is it had been just sort of weeklong classroom training – now twice a year it’ll be done in online format, so spring and fall. One class just started, so the next one will be in the spring in the online format, and I think one classroom course typically per year is being done, although sometimes other folks do get out there and host classroom training. But again, cannot recommend it enough if you want to be a direct technical assistance provider or coach. Next slide, Peter.
Peter: Sandy, just want to jump in – we’ve got a question through the chat box: will you all ever offer a one-day training classroom talking someone through the whole experience and steps of 50001 Ready? So a more condensed one-day classroom training.
Sandy: You know, we would certainly look at developing materials where there is a demand. And that’s kind of a first-time, you know, getting people together in a workshop. I’ve seen it done - actually one of the folks we work with, Pencap? In Pennsylvania – they’ve done it in a one-hour webinar where they walk through each of the 25 tasks, so I think it would probably not be in the level of detail, but we can follow up with whoever asked that question and, you know, others can pipe in. If there’s a market for something like that, we can absolutely develop it. I would say the jumpstart, we could probably take the materials in the jumpstart and turn those easily into a one-day, you know, people could come for 6-8 hours, and could really get walked through each of the 25 tasks with a decent level of understanding of what they are, and a pretty good review of what the various tools are, would be my thought.
Ok, now we’ll move on. So again, this advocacy promotion – the idea here, it’s really content based on not so much recruiting end-users, not about going out and getting folks to actually implement, so not recruiting your customers, although as we develop these various resources, we realize that the messaging and a lot of the communication pieces and even individual slides are consistent across the various audiences, but this is the idea of, you know, how do we talk to you folks? And make – you know, what’s the messaging to you, for this to be something appealing and why you would want to go do this. If you’re an implementer, what would be the messaging that you would want to be able to take to potential programs that you are interested in working with. Most of you don’t fit in these other categories, but trade associations – for us to be able to get to the trade associations and say, hey, this is the value added for your customers. Service providers – there’s a variety of different kinds of service providers – direct engineering firms, and other folks that go directly to end users trying to, you know, message to them of the value of this, and bringing their customers into the fold.
I will tell you, we could not be happier, and would not encourage more – anybody who could make a business proposition utilizing the 50001 Ready resources, we support. I mean, that’s how the market grows – if people can make money off of delivering this resource, or could make a business proposition, we would love to see it happen, and you know, these are who we’re trying to communicate with here. Next slide.
So again, I kind of talked about this already, but the materials we asked you to look at, you know, really the idea here was, you know, how do we get – communicate to program administrators and implementers how to use 50001 Ready and understanding how it can fit in to a whole variety of different types of programs, or types of program offerings. It’s not a one-size-fits-all, at least from our perspective, and we think it can be utilized in a pretty broad range. The additional materials that we’re going to be developing are, you know, kind of based off of this selling 50001 Ready program internally, so that would have to be within your organization, or within your set of partners that you work with. And then finally selling it to the program customers, and again, I think there’s a lot of crossover. But looking at the deck that we sort of sent to you – the thought process there is us, DOE, trying to make the case to you guys to do this, and did we effectively do that. And do those slides effectively do that, and do they effectively – could you use those – the same slides effectively to make the case to, if you’re an implementer, a utility program – not so much a customer but the next level that you would sort of want to sell these services to. Next slide.
I think this is – my final slide is just simply – if you haven’t, based on the email that we sent out or in the invitation, if you haven’t gone and looked at the presentation, and then associated with the presentation, is the short questionnaire. It is on our 50001 Ready webpages that we’ve shared with you before, and it’s Ready Utility feedback, but you can also find it by clicking through to Utilities and Implementers and kind of finding it that way. And if you have any problems we will email you the link or take a picture for your screen, or do whatever is helpful right here.
Please don’t be afraid to be robust in that short questionnaire, and if you have a lot of comments or if you want to download the deck and mark it up, we’re happy. I had a question earlier – somebody sent me an email and said, you know, hey, can we send this out to others who can provide comments on this? And the question is absolutely yes. And given I’ve probably talked too long, we will turn it over now to Sergio.
Sergio Diaz: Thank you Sandy. As Sandy mentioned, we’re pretty thick-skinned on this, so we’re looking for your feedback, and any feedback that you give us will not only help this slide deck improve, but there’s a lot of similarities, a lot of similar slides with the other trainings we’re developing, so any input you give us will also help us improve the other trainings that we’re developing.
And with that said, you’ll also notice that we divided all the presentation into sections, and the reason for doing that is that we’re trying to keep the sections consistent between different slide decks. They’re slightly edited to be more focused on this group, but the idea was that if you’re developing a presentation using these materials, and you don’t need to explain what an energy management system is because you’ve been running an SEM program for years, that you could take out that section if you wanted, or if you just wanted to present pieces of it. So we’ll make sure that the Powerpoint presentation, the source file is available so that you can take slides – whatever slides you want and use them however you – is best for you.
And with that, I’ll mention that this slide deck, the target audience is really program administrators and implementers who either are not familiar with SEM or not familiar with the 50001 Ready program, so we – we probably overpopulated the deck assuming that folks were not familiar with either so that you had access to both sets of slides. But again, it doesn’t mean you have to use all of them, and even within a section, you don’t have to use all the slides, you can use whatever slides fit what you need to do better.
The slide deck’s split up into three sections – the first one goes through what an energy management system is, so it tries to explain ENMS, it gets a little bit into CEI and SEM. The second section gets into the 50001 Ready program generically, and then the third section gets more specifically into how can utilities and program administrators use the 50001 Ready resources and program.
The – I won’t go through all the slides – what we’ll assume is that you’re able to get to the slide deck and can download it and look at it, which is probably a good thing because there are a lot of slides and a lot of information there. But I’ll just walk you through the purpose of each section and a few sample slides that will let you see how it’s being handled. So that first section as I mentioned – it’s an overview of what an ENMS is, and primarily focusing on a company – why is it important to a customer? How might they implement it? And it gets into a little bit of some of the key elements that come out of it. This section isn’t specific to 50001 necessarily, it just tries to explain comparisons to other management systems like quality management systems, financial quality – or financial systems in a company – to explain that you know, the relevance of a management system. And then I put together a couple slides that try to talk about 50001 and at least the minimum elements. There isn’t a lot of SEM program documentation – we drew from minimum elements and did a small comparison of, is ISO and minimum elements – are they complementary, are they not, and tried to explain that a little bit for this audience.
The next section gets into more detail with the 50001 Ready program, and as you go through the slides you’ll be able to see that it tries to explain not only why is DOE putting together the 50001 Ready program, but what process would a customer follow to become 50001 Ready recognized. And so in that section you’ll see the description of why DOE put together the program, the process, and then a lot more details into the different tools that are available for anyone utilizing the program, whether it’s an end user or a utility, including the footprint tool, the register of implemented actions, the ENPI Lite, and screenshots and links to all those tools, so that if you’re interested in looking at that, you can do that. So that section is the general program, not necessarily what’s specific to the utility market.
And then the – section three is where we get into what is – Peter if you can go onto the next slide - where we get into a little more about what materials are available, and then how can the materials be used. And there’s a little bit of an explanation about some of the concepts that Sandy talked about that we’re looking for folks that – to be able to use this in any way they can, whether it’s offering a full program built around 50001 Ready, to just pointing customers to 50001 Ready and not necessarily engaging them, and anything in between, as well as whether they’re customizing materials or just using materials as-is, or just using the materials as an initial guide to help them develop ideas for their own program.
And as Sandy mentioned, we’re not wed to folks using any of these materials exactly in the way that we’re suggesting or showing that it can be used, but that we’re using – we’re trying to provide items that can help you at least start thinking about how to use them. So that section three has a description of that, plus the appendix has the same presentation that we showed a couple months ago, where it shows all the materials available to the utility and implementer market in more detail. It shows the samples, some of the guidance, and some of the other materials that we’re developing, so that folks can see where they’re at, can find them, and if they want a screenshot of it, it’s available to them.
Peter: Great, thanks Sergio. So, as I mentioned this is kind of a short one, but… because we’re hoping to either get feedback in real time from you right now, or to either prompt you to go check out the materials and provide feedback through the Google form. We’re looking to get feedback on the presentation materials themselves, on the value of the slide deck to help sell a program internally that uses 50001 Ready, on additional resources that might be useful – we just had earlier a question about one-day trainings on all the 25 tasks in the Navigator, and on the value of a slide deck to help recruit customers. Recruitment is generally a theme that we commonly hear brought up as being challenging, and it’s no different for national programs as well as utility and other regional programs.
And again, a big thank you for the 12 responses we’ve gotten to date from people. Again, that feedback includes the negatives, and Sergio mentioned we’re pretty thick-skinned, and as Sandy mentioned, these materials are of no value to anyone if they’re not of value to you. So please give us all the constructive comments and pointers as possible. Yes, throwing in a couple positives now and then does make us feel good, but we are really looking to make this work for you.
I want to show you once again the URL and what the website looks like for getting to the presentation materials themselves – not this presentation but the actual training materials as well as the questionnaire. At the Better Buildings Solution Center, which is where all of 50001 Ready materials are housed, you go to that URL with the extension 50001-ready-utility-feedback, you’ll be able to get there. And again, this – we’ll send a follow-up email to this webinar with the link to the presentation materials and the questionnaire as well for your convenience.
And with that, questions, live right now – and we’ve already gotten one on the chat box. Maybe more of a statement: it might be helpful for DOE to convene a “users group” of public benefit administrators to discuss how they are using the material, sharing best practices, and lessons learned. Sandy, would you like to chime in on that comment?
Sandy: Yeah, I was looking at that – that’s an interesting comment. I think – I like the idea and I think we can reach out to the folks and the folks that are out there kind of … using this are interestingly enough using it in very very different ways, based on sort of the kind of unique space that they’re in, or the amount of technical assistance that they’re able to provide, and the structure of their programs and their areas, so I like that idea. I guess we’d have to learn a little bit about how much folks are willing – you know, one of the things we’re sensitive to, and you guys can kind of help us understand, is particularly the implementers or the folks who, you know, are getting hired by the utilities to implement SEM offerings, are certainly protective of the resources and their program models. And so, maybe help make sure we can do this in a way that wouldn’t be treading on people’s sort of intellectual property or the way that they’re actually, you know, conducting the work or combining it with stuff that they have already generated or creating. But I like the idea and we’ll maybe do some reaching out to the folks that we know who actually are in fact implementing this.
Peter: Thank you Sandy. Anyone else have comments or questions, you can either write it out in the chat box, or just say in the chat box, unmute me, it’s too long to type, and I’ll unmute you so you can ask right now.
Sandy: I have one question for folks – you know, one of the things that we are talking about, you know, we have this tendency to do or be … you know death by powerpoint. We are looking at maybe video vignettes and things like that, or video kinds of training – do folks have thoughts around non-powerpoint type communication resources?
Peter: That’s a very good point – we are very prone within the DOE sphere to create a lot of walls of text on powerpoint slides, and one of the feedbacks we’ve already gotten from people is, a lot of words, and maybe an effort needed to either translate a lot of that into speaker notes, or more compelling presentations, or as Sandy mentioned, trying to get into the new age of video technology, catching up a few decades here and looking at, you know, different styles of either making short YouTube videos or longer, kind of get everyone in the same room and watch together. Some responses coming in talking about video training being very good, need to keep it short and focused, 3-5 minutes on each topic, a good idea. Another question: could you talk a bit more about your potential train-the-trainer online session in the spring?
Sandy: I can, I’m going to actually – George’s question – about demonstrating the tool…we have done several webinars for specific audiences. We’ve had several utilities and we have, you know – we have done it in an online format where we actually walk through the Navigator, but that is sort of as a communication, here’s what it looks like, here’s what the information is, so I’m gathering you’re talking about sort of more hands-on training, where you’re actually sort of walking through steps and things like that. And I agree – interestingly enough, I did take the first online certified practitioner pilot, and they actually used the Navigator – they actually used the Navigator as the workbook for the class, and, you know, when we did have webinars as part of the training we did walk through specific examples – we used case studies, so I think, George, that makes a lot of sense.
So, the certified practitioner training – this is a fairly in-depth training around the ISO 50001 energy management standard. It’s really understanding what the – the way the training as I mentioned has been structured, it’s been structured around the 25 steps in the Navigator, so – and what the Navigator’s done, is the Navigator takes the ISO 50001 standard and then breaks it – a long, very dense document to read – and it takes that document and breaks it into 25 specific tasks that have actions associated with them. It’s – they’re doing it in a 10-week format where there is one webinar and then, you know, assignments – you have a webinar and then there are assignments that are given – the one I took, they’re still using this model – it’ll kind of be based on a case study, you’ll actually use all the tools and work your way through sort of putting, you know, working your way through all of the tasks. There is a cost associated with it – it’s delivered by Georgia Tech, and you take the course and if you – they’ll give you kind of a pass/fail, grading your homework, and etcetera, and then to become certified, there is an exam that you have to, you know, go to one of those exam centers and actually take. And so in addition to what you would learn in the class, you are required – would be required to have some engineering skillset. You wouldn’t – you’d have a hard time passing the exam if you couldn’t answer some regression questions and things like that. I did not take the exam, for the record, because I would not have been able to answer those questions.
I hope that answers the question, if not – and so again, I think they’re looking at a – he didn’t give me a specific date…as soon as we have specific dates, we actually are going to get on the website, you know, the springtime thing, and as soon as we have an explicit registration date, we will get that up on our website. And folks like you, who get communication pieces, we’ll try to make sure we get that out, but – and we can also help you potentially get on – if you’re very interested, get on the Georgia Tech training list, so that when it does come out, you’d get a communication directly from them.
Peter: A couple more comments – joining together – one, that video case studies of SEM can be compelling, and useful for social media, etc. Kind of like, how it’s made show on cable, which kind of has a personal fan of – I understand and can totally get behind – is followed with an agreement that being able to point customers to short, DOE explainer videos or case studies would be great support. And I’ll mention that there’s a great model of this from Energy Trust of Oregon – I know of at least two pretty short, maybe 4-5 minute little videos focusing on – I believe one of them was a potato chip manufacturer, and interviewing people at that facility about their experiences with the Energy Trust program, which were very compelling.
Department of Energy has, you know, done a couple videos like that, a while back – they were much longer, and focused on a different program, but I think that’s a great idea to have, kind of in their words, from the customer’s perspective, of the values and usefulness of an energy management system. One that builds around 50001 – ISO 50001 through the Ready program.
Sandy, any thoughts on that?
Sandy: No, I agree, these are all good helpful comments in terms of the different kinds of, you know, training media that would be more helpful for you folks, and things that you could use and get people’s attention. And a lot of this speaks directly to the comment – the individual who commented on the slide deck. And it was actually sort of horrifying when I was looking at slides that Sergio was showing, and I – we know this already – there is so much text on every single slide, and so much information, and it’s – the challenge of what we know, those of us who are developing the slides, who have a lot of information, and have a lot of knowledge about this, but recognizing that the recipients don’t. And, you know, writing a book on a slide is probably not the best way to communicate information that they don’t have a lot of background knowledge. And so I think all of this is supporting some of that, is to get things in more palatable, bite-sized pieces where we’re not just drowning folks in information and expecting them to be able to absorb it and not get overwhelmed.
Peter: To build on that with a question for everyone – you know, we’ve seen kind of two potential uses of these materials by people like yourselves – one being that you use the materials as-is ultimately presented, and don’t really go through and change anything; another is you either select certain slides to use in your – for your own use, or that you use some of the basis of the content and really change it up a lot. You know, put different branding on it, put different colors, put different messaging, change the presentation itself to really suit your presentation style, or how you know to communicate with the customers or individuals you’re speaking to directly.
I guess a general question is, how much effort should we as the creators of these materials put on making it polished, polished, polished, such that we wouldn’t kind of intend for people to be changing the materials, or is it more to have the structure and content that then can be manipulated by others for their own use, in their own way. Basically, it boils down to, should we put a lot of time and money into making these really pretty, and making them more graphical and less text-heavy, with the thought that people will use them as-is, or is that kind of a waste of effort because you will want to go through and modify them anyway for your own purposes.
And while I let people think on that, I will show our last slide, which is kind of – again, goes over the main contact points and the URL’s for the different resources. The first, the long Better Buildings Solution Center one, where you can find materials that have been put together, and the Google feedback form, which we’ll email out links to after this. And then, of course, our general – the easy URL that we point everyone to if they’re interested in 50001 Ready – energy.gov/50001Ready, which you’ll find resources beyond utilities – beyond those for the utility sector, and then of course, contact Sandy at her email to be added to this network distribution list, pass it on to your friends and family, if they are interested in this type of thing. And you can sign up at energy.gov/50001Ready, again, for updates – email updates on the program at large.
One response to my question of good graphics being available for use as appropriate and that visual communication is much better than text, so again, that kind of reinforcing of thought of moving away from text to more graphical presentation.
Sandy: I’m going to throw one more question out for the folks – when you guys are saying case studies, are you saying, examples of utility programs that are using 50001 in their programs, are you asking for actual customers that have gone through and implemented it and getting sort of the customer’s, you know, attestations, or what you call them, quotes saying, “oh, this was wonderful – it only took us three days to get this whole thing done…we love…” you know, what are people saying, what are they meaning when they say case studies?
Sorry we’re making you guys type all this out.
Peter: Again, if you have something long – more long than you’d want to type, just say unmute me in the chat box, and we’ll open it up and you can say your comments live. Customer value proposition is most compelling to sell the story. Case study = focus on customer experience. Customer satisfaction. Individual case studies would be the most helpful. So, very…
Sandy: So folks, they want examples of customers, I would suspect across different sectors who have done this and what their experience was and both in terms of getting it done, and then the usefulness in their energy savings, etc., etc. So that’s very helpful.
Okay, well, you guys – you guys do have opinions, which is great, for those of you to think about – I thought Peter’s question was very helpful because this is important to us – the difference between us, you know, going through the time and effort to put really clean finished products in place, versus where you guys would probably modify it anyway for your purposes. The more kind of feedback – you don’t have to do it right now – but the more feedback that you can give us on that would be super. Please feel free to share anything else in terms of, you know, communication pieces and your thoughts, and take a look at the slides. And this will be kind of an ongoing conversation across the time that we do the Network Series, you know, trying to continue to improve all these resources. And hopefully, as Peter noted on this – in the future, in future upcoming calls, we’re going to try to do some more of what we did in our second call, which was to have specific examples of where this is being used, and have the customer and potentially the implementer or the utility on the call. We’re hoping to maybe do that in the next one in November.
Anything else from – we’re seeing a couple more questions come in.
Peter: Yeah, just a couple more comments. One is about the balance of polished versus – having it polished would be helpful – does not preclude someone from making specific content. The last comment that’s come in is that 3-5 minute videos is able to send a compelling message that explains the process and benefits. So, basically turning into the – taking that value proposition to the customer, putting it into a very short graphical video message that can be conveyed quickly, hearing that very consistently.
Sandy: All right, so thank you everyone, and again, you have ample opportunity to provide us comment – feel free to email any of us directly as well or give us a call if you have a lot more to say on this.
Peter: And while we will always take your comments and feedback in the future, it is possible to – if you’re intending to look at the materials and provide feedback, I think we were looking at within a month or so, or within four weeks – Sergio is that correct? We were laying out the calendar, would be the most helpful.
Sergio: Ideally, yes, that way we can try to act on the feedback, and have a new version available for our next meeting. We’re trying to use these meetings as also an opportunity to complete materials, so yes, if we can get your feedback within a month, we’ll make sure we have enough time to update, review, and send out a new version or a more finished version to the group by then.
Peter: Great, thank you Sergio. So we’ll send out that requested timeframe along with a link to the training materials and the feedback form, right now after this call. Sandy, any last closing?
Sandy: No, thank you everyone for your time, and we’ll talk to you again in mid-November, is the plan.
Peter: Great, thank you everyone again, and we look forward to seeing you all soon, or talking to you in a couple months. Bye.