Should CleanTechnica Host A Virtual Clean Tech Conference?
Dear readers, I love and appreciate you all.
Thank you for being loyal and avid CleanTechnica readers, followers, and social media ambassadors. You are helping educate the world and catalyze a clean tech revolution with every article you read, talk about, and share. I hope you are all safe, healthy, and that your loved ones are being smart and hunkering down.
It’s amazing how fast things have changed…just a mere 10 days ago, the thought that I might be more or less housebound for the next few weeks or months hadn’t even registered as a realistic possibility – that was for Wuhan Province and dense cities like New York.
It’s also amazing how fast people are adapting and learning. What is starting as a trend to protect people that has been wisely adopted by progressive cities and states is now shifting into our evolving corporate culture, as people move online for … everything. This past weekend, the President of CleanTechnica’s parent company and I participated in an online sustainability unconference. It had breakout rooms, virtual white boards, voting, and volunteers who were playing the roles of air traffic controller — moving people from room to room.
People talked solutions to food waste, public health, education, clean energy access for hard to reach communities, and support for those in need during these trying times. One theme that consistently emerged was how we can leverage the global response to COVID to help make people aware that we should start now to avert and minimize the impact of the next pandemic: climate change.
Overall, it was a very fun event, with great outcomes. For instance, I am part of one spinoff committee that is looking to address some key action steps we can take now to fight climate change while we have people working from home and not as distracted as usual.
So … should CleanTechnica do a virtual clean tech conference?
Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Some key considerations I’d love your feedback on:
- What niche? Doing it for clean tech in general would get out of hand and be too unfocused. CT could fill a 100 person Zoom conference pretty quickly with EV battery tech professionals or permaculture tech enthusiasts or solar racking system design engineers. So, what niche would you want to join for?
- What features should we include? Panels and conversation? Speakers with slides? Networking? Open space technology/unconference format?
- Would you pay $15-20 for a ticket? To ensure people don’t hold a spot and then don’t show up, we would probably charge a nominal fee. With advertising budgets being slashed, I’ll be honest, we could use another source of revenue nowadays. In your comments, let us know what would make it worthwhile to pay for (features, speakers, etc.)
- Who would you want as a speaker? Who would you be super stoked to see a presentation from?
- What role do you want the CleanTechnica team to have? Should we moderate, present, facilitate…?
- What outcomes do you want to see? Spinoff committees? Proof of concept that in-person conferences and their gigantic carbon footprint can go the way of the dodo?
Thanks! Comment below and let us know your thoughts!
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