[p2tech] from the event horizon: a cry for help

Thu Jul 30 08:04:40 EDT 2009

NH tried this a few years ago.  The NH Small Business Development Center
coordinated the event and invited P2 to present.  We even had a VP of
finance from Citizen Bank give a presentation on why P2 is a good idea,
why their bank makes decisions on environmental impacts, if the facility
is working with various P2 and Compliance Assistance programs or ISO
14001 certified, their loan application gets a higher score and .  She
even encouraged loans for new P2 technologies.

We had bankers talking to bankers, we had case studies, and we had open
roundtable discussions.

Bottom line - It did not work.  Either the banks sent the "wrong" people
(they were forced to come to the workshops rather than wanting to
learn), some wanted to implement these ideas, but weren't high enough in
management to get those changes, and we had horrible turn out.  We
offered the workshops over 3 months at various locations throughout the
state.  NH still thinks it is a great idea, but we could not get support
from the financial institutions.

Good luck - We would love to see some metrics on your success.

Sara Johnson

NH Dept of Env Svs

-----Original Message-----
From: p2tech-bounces at great-lakes.net
[mailto:p2tech-bounces at great-lakes.net] On Behalf Of Burt Hamner
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 11:27 PM
To: 'Vinson, Thomas'; p2tech at great-lakes.net
Subject: Re: [p2tech] from the event horizon: a cry for help

I am at the moment visiting Spokane, Washington, a mid-size city for
whom I helped prepare a sustainable financial statements analysis tool 3
years ago.

After a hiatus they are now back in business with funding for a new
staffer, who is a former banker.  Hooray!

Because we have been working on a horizon-bridging event:  

Get all the business bankers in town to give every business loan
applicant a reference sheet to the local TA and P2 resources, a sheet
that includes phone numbers and a check box, and the bankers tell the
applicant that, next time them meet, the bankers expect the applicant to
have checked into all the TA resources and at least have called them to
learn what is possible.

Why is this a good idea:

Business people don't believe P2 types, they believe their bankers.
They are afraid of their bankers.

A loan application means they are making a decision to do something new;
no one likes to do P2, i.e. change something, in the absence of other
motivators, and as we know, just saving money thru P2 is not enough to
change most of them.  Make P2 incremental, not radical.

You can get the bankers to hand out the reference sheets if they are
ordered to do so by management.

In any average town there are less than 50 bank executives who are
"management" 

So, you P2 guys can exercise some state muscle and ask them to come in
for a meet, give them the reference sheet, and ask for their commitment
to make their loan officers give out the reference sheet.  This meeting
will take 10 hours to set up, 2 hours to conduct, four hours follow up.
And if it works, you will eventually access every business in town that
needs loans.  That is ,  * all of them * 

I am working with City of Spokane right now, TODAY, to make this happen.
We are going to succeed.   Who wants to join, observe, encourage, help,
etc???

Scott, another phrase for "over the event horizon" is "the last mile" .
The last mile in TA is getting the customer to pick up the phone and
call you for help.  If their banker tells them to do it, they will.
After all, they want a loan, and it's in the interest of the banker to
have the TA team help the customer.  The CEOs are the key, they have to
directly order the front line bankers to provide the reference info.
And, hello, I have the names and direct phone of every CEO of every bank
in Seattle still in my outlook contacts.  It would take any of you
readers less than an hour to do the same for your town.  Hint.

Burton Hamner

Cleaner Production International LLC

www.cleanerproduction.com <http://www.cleanerproduction.com/> 

206-491-0945,  wbhamner at cleanerproduction.com 

5534 30th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105

Fax 206-206-339-1686

________________________________

From: p2tech-bounces at great-lakes.net
[mailto:p2tech-bounces at great-lakes.net] On Behalf Of Vinson, Thomas
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 3:36 PM
To: p2tech at great-lakes.net
Subject: Re: [p2tech] from the event horizon: a cry for help

Right now the barrier seems to be more ideological than anything else.
We have disseminated a lot of high quality information in some creative
ways, but most people have no idea of its importance.  

Like an accelerating particle throwing off X-Rays as it descends into a
black hole, we have a good signal, but is lost in the greater noise of
the debate over how to regulate, remediate and conserve natural
forests/wildlife. There is a lot more media attention given to polar
bears drowning than clean factories.  A lot more attention to an auto
industry bail out than the strides to make them more efficient.
Without more attention from the mass media people just don't seem to get
the significance of our P2 approach.  In our workshops it takes about a
half day to get past these old conversations and into what P2 is and why
it works.  

I think the technologies we need to apply are more sociological than IT.
We need, and continue to struggle for a consistent message that will get
picked up and recognized. I think the Breakthrough Institute is on the
right path for energy, maybe we should do something similar for our
group.   They believe it is a question of framing the issue as an
innovation/economic one, not environmental.  

http://www.thebreakthrough.org/index.shtml

As to Facebook, LinkedIn etc...  I find them to be good tools for
maintaining relationships, but not so good for initiating.  As you well
know, I mostly use mine to talk about Star Trek, 60's rock and the
weather.   Although I have a lot of people in my account who are
environmental professionals, we only discuss the environment on rare
occasions through social networking.  That may be a  good thing in that
it helps build relationships and so makes working with people
easier...especially those of us who have national networks.  But in the
bigger picture, it is a small spark in a super nova explosion. 

Thomas Vinson-Peng

Program Director

Zero Waste Network

UT Arlington 

Center for Environmental Excellence

9111 Jollyville Road Suite 111

Austin, Texas 78759

www.zerowastenetwork.org

http://www.uta.edu/ced/

(512) 904-2281 (MAIN)

(512) 904-2287 (Direct)

(512)904-2288 FAX

Tvinson AT uta.edu

________________________________

From: p2tech-bounces at great-lakes.net
[mailto:p2tech-bounces at great-lakes.net] On Behalf Of Eric van Gestel
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 4:07 PM
To: 'Miller, Gary'; 'Butner, R Scott'; p2tech at great-lakes.net
Cc: 'Paula Del Giudice'
Subject: Re: [p2tech] from the event horizon: a cry for help

I am attempting to use Facebook (and LinkedIn) to reach potential
customers.  A few hits on LinkedIn; too early to tell with Facebook.
Please feel free to give a call if you want to discuss in further
detail.

Thanks, and best regards,

-- Eric

_________________________

Eric van Gestel, MBA, CRM

CEO

Enverity Corporation

500 Airport Blvd., Suite 100

Burlingame, CA 94010

(650) 342-5334

evg at Enverity.com

www.ghgTrack.com <http://www.ghgtrack.com/> 

________________________________

From: p2tech-bounces at great-lakes.net
[mailto:p2tech-bounces at great-lakes.net] On Behalf Of Miller, Gary
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 12:18 PM
To: Butner, R Scott; p2tech at great-lakes.net
Cc: Paula Del Giudice
Subject: Re: [p2tech] from the event horizon: a cry for help

Yes, and I'd like to know if anyone is using Facebook to try to reach
their perceived customers and, if so, what have been the results.  I
heard the Utah Geological Survey is doing that but I could not find
anything about that on their web site.

Gary Miller

From: p2tech-bounces at great-lakes.net
[mailto:p2tech-bounces at great-lakes.net] On Behalf Of Butner, R Scott
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 1:45 PM
To: p2tech at great-lakes.net
Cc: Paula Del Giudice
Subject: [p2tech] from the event horizon: a cry for help

Certainly by now, we all know what a black hole is - a celestial object
in which matter, usually a dying star, has collapsed under its own
weight, and (to use the vernacular) begins to suck so hard, that not
even light can escape.

This happens to massive stars which have basically burned themselves
out, and the burden of their mass is no longer counterbalanced by the
radiative pressure of the energy they produce.  

I think the analogy is pretty clear here, folks.   Rather than risk
severe depression from stating the obvious, I'll leave it to the very
intelligent readers of P2TECH to connect the dots.

So in any event, I am standing here (figuratively - actually I am
SITTING here in my cool new ergonomic chair that my employer bought in
hopes of retaining what little productivity I am still able to muster,
for a few more years) on my own event horizon, literally perched on the
edge of obscurity, trying not to be sucked in by the weight of my
rapidly obsolescing knowledge base.  

(yes, obsolescing IS a word!)

But obsolescing or not, every so often I manage to allow a new idea to
escape.  Just like a black hole can "trick" physics, emitting radiation
as it scours the local universe of matter, on rare occasion, through
some sort of social quantum effect, I will absorb all the collective
wisdom of the P2TECH community and attempt to toss out a new idea that's
been forged from all your hard work.

Hey, I never said it was a GREAT analogy....

And so I find myself, committed for better or worse, to helping to teach
a short program on Web 2.0 and the Social Web, at the upcoming Region
9/10 Pollution Prevention Roundtable (October 28-29 in San Diego --
http://www.wrppn.org/ <http://www.wrppn.org/>  for details).   I am
sharing the podium with Rick Yoder, so I have to have something
interesting to say that he HASN'T already heard of - that's a tall
order, trust me.  Rick has great radar for emerging trends.

So with that as background, and with the knowledge that our presentation
is on the role that computing (and especially the web, and even more
specifically, the social aspects of the web, like Facebook, LinkedIn,
etc) might play in P2/Sustainability/technical assistance - here's the
questions I'm seeking input on:

-       Setting aside technical feasibility, how would you like to be
able to access information to help you do your job better than you can
today? 

-       How can we more effectively use information technology to
promote the "P2 agenda?" 

-       Do you think that social networking will change/has changed/is
changing the way that you think about improving the environment?

-       OR, do you see online culture and trends as being a negative
force - one that impedes the P2 agenda?  

Answers taken offline or online, over a phone call or over a cup of
coffee - your choice.  I'll let them all fall past the event horizon,
into the black hole that is my brain, and we'll see if any virtual
nuggets of wisdom emerge between now and October.

Thanks in advance.......

SB

__________________________________________________
Scott Butner
Senior Research Scientist
Knowledge Systems Group 

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
902 Battelle Boulevard
P.O. Box 999, MSIN K7-28
Richland, WA  99352 USA
Tel:  509-372-4946
Fax: 509-375-2443
scott.butner at pnl.gov
www.pnl.gov 

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