Global Wind Day?

I am a supporter of Wind Energy. I believe that our generation is obliged to seriously increase our generation of clean (or cleaner) energy, whether that be wind, wave, solar, biomass or nuclear. My career is currently dedicated to building teams, growing businesses and ultimately contributing to the growth of the wind energy sector. I spend day in and day out talking to people who already work in companies in the Wind energy supply chain, or who want to work with said companies.

However, I have to admit that Global Wind Day, might have passed me by this year, if it wasn’t for one of my colleagues shouting at me that I should be doing something about it. “It’s your thing”, she said…

So what is the point in Global Wind Day? Essentially I understand that the concept is to raise awareness of wind energy… But what then? Is it aimed at making young people want to work in Wind energy? Is aimed at making local communities want to support the construction of wind turbines in their region (let’s hope some of the local councils are reading this…) or is it aimed at making investors want to invest in the sector?

The success of any of the above relies on extending the message of Global Wind Day beyond the immediate circle that already has a vested interest in the Renewable energy sector. So how have they marketed Global Wind energy day? How have the organisers (EWEA and GWEC with the support of the national Wind Energy associations like BWEA), actually gone about reaching their target markets? How did you read about Global Wind Day (or #GWind09 as it has become on Twitter, which is where, incidentally, I have seen the most activity around Global Wind Day)?

Apparently “thousands of public events will be organised simultaneously” on Monday 15th June 09. But searching via the Global Wind Day website only brought me details of 3 events in the UK. Just 3?! Surely that can’t be the case. (I have to add an NB that two of those events are organised by RES - well done RES). So I turn to BWEA to see what they are doing about this Global Wind Day thing… and there’s nothing on their website. So where is it being publicised? I can only imagine (hope) that things are more proactive on the other side of the pond. The American Wind Energy Associations, does at least lead on their home page with the story “Show Your Support for Wind Energy on Global Wind Day, June 15”…

To be fair, Vestas mentioned the day under “campaigns” on their website. ABB released a press release for a bit of publicity (good on them). But Vestas, ABB and RES are in the minority here, and I don’t see the UK broadsheets or tabloids picking up on this – should they be?

If I was Josephine Bloggs working in an un-related sector, and going out my usual routine – home, car, office, car, gym, car home – only listening to Radio 1 or Radio 4 and scanning The Times at lunchtime, would I have known about Global Wind Day?

The idea of having a “Wind Energy Day” is a great idea for a PR and awareness campaign, but if you’re going to do it, isn’t it worth doing it well? (And I would love to practice what I preach and be more involved next year – if someone from GWEC or EWEA is reading this, give me a shout.)

Let me know what I missed, and how you recognised Global Wind Day yesterday.

By Clare Buxton
Sector Lead for Wind Energy, EcoSearch

Get in touch:
Email: clare.buxton@ecosearchglobal.com
Twitter: @CEBUX
Or via LinkedIn

News Bites from EWEC

The European Wind Energy Conference took place in Marseille this week from 16th - 19th March. We have pulled together a couple of interesting videos from the event, produced by Quadrant MC.

From Ronald Sunden, CEO of LM Glasfiber & EWEC 2009 Conference Chair.



And for an overview of the wind industries financial future:



For more interviews and other videos, take a look at these search results from YouTube.

Using Twitter to get the most out of Conference Networking

Now that we are in the age of Blackberries and web 2.0, is it any wonder that the way we approach networking is evolving?

Most of us manage our contacts using a service like LinkedIn or Xing. This can help us stay in touch, find new and interesting people and discuss all manner of business.

Some people are starting to realise the benefits of using Twitter (a young and rapidly growing networking site) to give industry events an extra depth. The service has, until recently been the play ground of geeks and techies and is only just starting to show its immense power for Business. Here are just a few benefits of “tweeting” at a conference.
Discovery of new people and organisations:

This week the European Wind Energy Conference is taking place in Marseille. Twitter’s immediacy means that you can find out what’s happening right now. The image below is taken from a twitter search to show who is talking about the event.

You can use twitter search in the early stages of an event to find out who else is there so you can start following them and receiving their updates.

Maximise Learning:

It isn’t possible to attend every single session at a conference or visit every single stand. Attendees often twitter live from lecture and panel sessions as they are happening to let their network know the juiciest insights and the biggest revelations they are being privy to.

Of course some conferences are tweeted more extensively, and using more sophisticated techniques, than others. It all depends on how many attendees are using the service. I was at the Social Networking World Forum in London last week and found the event to be very thoroughly covered by the ‘twittersphere’.

I have highlighted my use of a Hashtag in the above tweet. Hashtags are an informal way of making it easier to search for the tweets you want to find. If everyone at the event put #snwf somewhere in their tweets, I would only have to search for those four letters in order to see everything that was happening.

Never feel left out again:

It’s not always possible to attend every conference in your niche. Now you can “listen” to what’s happening by simply running a twitter search even if you are unable to attend. It doesn’t stop there, sometimes people are nice enough to tweet links to photos so that you can see what’s happening. The twitpic service makes this really easy.

Keep listening and get more value after the event:

Sometimes it would be nice to know what everyone else thought of the conference in more than 140 characters! After conferences, a lot of people write blog posts and articles about their experiences and what they learned. These posts and articles are often linked to with tweets in the days following a conference, so don’t stop listening just because the event is over.

How to get in on the action:

• Set up a twitter account for free 
  
• Use the search function to find some people with similar interests to follow. You can follow anyone you find interesting on twitter, it’s all about discovery
  
• If you are going to be attending an event make sure you tweet about it and search for others that might be doing the same. 
  

The next big event that EcoSearch will be attending is All-Energy ’09 in Aberdeen on 20th & 21st May. The hashtag for this event should be #AE09.

You can learn more about Twitter on Wikipedia.

By Katharine Robinson,
Research Associate
Twitter: @EcoSearch