"the real thing" sessions?

Hi All,

I think one of the many things we really need to do is strengthen our links - which means usefulness - to those who actually want to do something already, not just those who might want to do something at some vague point in the future...  That way, we can increase our ability to have an effect - we're working with the grain rather than against it.  [This doesn't mean however that I think we should stop trying to work with everyone; I still see that absolutely as something that PP needs to do.  Rather, different folks need different strokes...]

So, new page for the PP website – “the real thing”?

On Friday, I had another idea about a PP website page, and for a regular PP event which requires minimal organising by us – one dedicated to events at which local people with real experience of using low carbon technology share their experiences with us, called “the real thing”.

Southwark FoE are running Homes Going Green in SE15 again – this is a very good course for newbies, but I think there’s a real need for one-off sessions [low commitment for busy people who can’t commit to 5 months regular attendance] on specific issues, as we’ve already arranged for solar thermal.  In addition, I suspect that there are many people who wouldn’t be interested in a total newbies session, they want a bit more than that [rightly or wrongly!].  I suspect there are many people who want to know what the real experience of using something, or trying to do something is, particularly if they’re thinking moderately seriously about implementing a particular green measure.  And it’s those people in particular we need to be strengthening links with, because they’re already interested in taking action so we have a shared interest right from the start… and thus they’re more likely to be interested/able to be active with us rather than passive riders…

 [This is analogous to my experience of learning to program in MatLab, a mathematical environment; MatLab provide a booklet called “Getting Started with MatLab” when what you really need, my supervisor often pointed out, is a bigger book with more info and real world examples called “How to Get A Bit More Started with MatLab”.]

I also think that these sorts of “the real thing” sessions would be far more attractive to people – there’s nothing that brings something to life and helps you understand something like a real-world example.  Furthermore, I think these sessions would also help build our social networks in a supportive way if they were done in a more sociable format and emphasising the fact that it’s local people who are talking about their experience e.g. cake and coffee with chat about the real experience of using X from local people who’ve already done it.  [I’m thinking if we can ask Yannis at The Frog to host on a regular basis one evening a month say, provided that there’s a minimum spend in his café at the event… What do you think Lesley?  I’m not sure a pub would be a particularly great venue, likely to be too dark or too noisy – but I’m open to suggestions; any other ideas?]

Off the top of my head I can think of at least 14 topics that we could do, which is definitely more than enough to be going on with, and for 6 of which I can think of several people we can ask to do a 10 minute session about their experience:

1. Solar thermal [as already arranged]
2. Insulating a Victorian property
3. Fold-up bikes
4. Secondary glazing
5. Electric vehicles
6. Biodiesel vehicles
7. PV ?
8. Planning issues, esp in conservation area
9. Loft insulation
10. Wood-buring stoves?
11. Grey water systems?
12. Centralised heating systems – many people don’t know about these and I don’t think we’re going to build support for CHP by trying to ignore the problems there have been in the past; we need to build public awareness so we get decent properly functioning centralised heating systems in future with controls…
13. Solar gain
14. LED lighting

This model has lots of advantages:

1. using resources, esp local contacts, we already have to hand – and offering those contacts something of value too… They get to learn more from fellow pioneers and therefore the event is useful to them, whereas if they’re the sole speaker [a] it sounds like a hell of a lot of work and pressurising responsibility and [b] the speakers don’t get any benefit from giving us a talk for which we absolutely cannot pay them…  So its more likely to actually happen!!!
2. minimal organising by us – we already know most of the contacts, and the basic format can stay the same – we introduce, provide a one/two minute explanation of the basic summary, invite each speaker to talk about their experiences for a max of 10 minutes [would give them a standard crib sheet with the questions we’d want them to answer; max 3 speakers per event], we then facilitate questions/discussion, possibly in small groups if enough numbers so people get to know each other a bit and feel able to ask questions that they might otherwise not, then summarise with key learning points that people want to contribute at end of session, and ask people for the next steps they’d want to see.  We then write the learning points up and put them on the website as a resource for future reference, and follow up on the next steps as best we can [hopefully including some of the people who came, at least eventually…]
3. friendly and interactive, not teacher-ish in style so good for real adults, not pseudo-school kids
4. virtually no resource use needed – thus we can keep this running on a frequent and regular basis and build awareness of us as a real effective local group.  I also haven’t seen anything of this type on Project Dirt yet – if I were thinking of buying solar thermal panels right now, this is the sort of thing I’d really want to know, so I’d be really interested in one of our “real thing” sessions.  Its therefore also possible that this will also help build our active networks “oh, you’ve just moved to Peckham – you should check out Peckham Power, they do really useful sessions with people who’ve already tried using new technology and you meet interesting people there…”

in addition to the fact that it provides what some people already really want to know...

I think the “the real thing” page would need to have links to further pages itself, one for each individual topic, rather than be organised as a long blog or comment page, so that people can see at a glance that they want to look at the notes on biodiesel vehicles, for instance.

I think it would also be good to flag up those future sessions we want to do on the webpage, and invite people to contact us if they have expertise in this area.  We could also do repeats of technologies, if new people come along with experience to contribute… helps us develop a bigger picture and there’s bound to be people who were unable to get to a session they really wanted to so would like a repeat…

Hey Jack, is this me starting to get my head round crowd-sourcing/mashing activities?

I’m aware this format may not be immediately accessible to those who live in social housing who have limited opportunities for influencing these sorts of technologies in their own lives – Lesley, can you think of a way round this please?  [Actually, I just realised over the weekend that we’re quite challenged locally, in that most of our social housing is of different type to the private housing – Hyde Farm is different in that everyone, if I understood Hugo correctly, is in the same sort of Victorian/Edwardian housing.  Maybe that are other topics that would be more directly relevant to people in social housing?  [Might even be possible to get a couple of local social housing groups residents e.g. Wandle on Queen’s Road, Notting Hill Housing at Sarawak Court, to do quick sessions about their experience of their estates energy issues – hmmm, can see that might not happen, especially if residents have lots of criticisms to make and the managers don’t want that made public… any other ideas?]  But even if it isn’t easy for us to address issues of social housing residents at all of these sessions, I think this could be a really effective, minimal input for us way for us to build our supporters’ network actively, visibly and in a way that is fun and enjoyable… and that we should do it!  I'm more than happy to co-ordinate if you're agreeable.

Please let me know your comments

Bw all

Anna