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Fresh from the Cleantech forum held in San Francisco from Feb 24-26, Antennans Caroline Venza and Wei-En Tan trooped down early one Saturday morning to the Wetlands Preserve in Palo Alto to learn about estuaries, methods of preservation, flood control, and more importantly, to plant some seedlings with the non-profit organization, Save the Bay.

Hundreds of wildlife species and billions of small organisms depend on the Wetlands to survive, and the purpose of this particular project was to remove invasive plants, as well as to reintroduce native plants to the Bay. These plants serve a multi-function of trapping harmful chemicals (methane/mercury) in their roots, filtration (ensuring cleaner water) as well as flood control through strengthening of soil and prevention of erosion.

After a group introduction and short history of the bay, all the volunteers were split up into two groups to begin our planting endeavors.

Initially, we faced an uphill task hacking through hard earth and rocks, but eventually hit our stride and successfully planted at least 40 seedlings.

Caroline was excited about the opportunity to use a pick-axe, whereas Wei-En was similarly obsessed by creating perfect circular seedling beds and covering them with mulch.

Proud of our handiwork

After all that hard work, being so close to the local municipal airport, we decided to fly ourselves to Half Moon Bay.

“Can the American Jewish deli be sustainable? How does sustainability impact the future of deli cuisine and traditional culture?”  These were the topics addressed by the “Referendum on the Jewish Deli” held at the North Berkeley Jewish Community Center. Organized by Berkeley dining institution Saul’s Restaurant and Delicatessen, the lively conversation explored tradition, change, and sustainability as it pertains to the way we eat.

The co-owners of Saul’s, Karen Adelman and Peter Levitt, are committed to offering a more sustainable menu – which means sourcing foods locally, respecting the seasonality of produce and meats, and limiting the use of industrially processed ingredients. However, their incremental menu changes have been met with a wide range of customer responses including intrigue, frustration and horror.

While Saul’s has no intention of becoming anything other than a Jewish deli – they just want to create the Jewish deli of the 21st century – it was clearly going to take more than a simple menu makeover to realize their goal. These proposed changes clearly touched a chord that reached deep into people’s perceptions of cuisine, far beyond the basics of taste and nourishment.

It was clearly time to open the conversation to the community. Saul’s invited a few luminaries to join the discussion: Michael Pollan, journalist and author of best-selling books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, (one of my personal idols); Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic, sustainable business expert and author of The Truth About Green Business; and Willow Rosenthal, founder of City Slicker Farms in West Oakland. Evan Kleiman, host of KCRW’s Good Food and owner of Angeli Caffe, moderated.

The panel’s consensus was that the issue of sustainability in Jewish cuisine (perhaps most cuisines?) reaches way past the fork. Tradition, memory and perception are equally as important as the health and quality of the food we consume. To get through to people and really change the paradigm of food consumption, we must tell a salient story, one that is routed in the tradition of where we have been and enlivened by the vision of where we ultimately want to go.

As a professional communicator, I experienced the core issues as being about dialogue, expression and making connections. In order to encourage customers to embrace the vision of a deli that respects tradition–pastrami will NEVER leave the menu–and adopt a more sustainable, holistic approach to cuisine (like including a Winter Green Salad on the menu), it is essential express that vision as a story, a philosophy, and a passion-driven mission. It’s not about getting rid of the icons of Jewish deli cuisine, but about reshaping them in a way that ensures future generations will be able to enjoy the traditional food of our grandparents, all without sacrificing the environment or their health.

With this panel, Karen and Peter made important steps to ensure they won’t have customers pitching fits over the absence of cold borscht soup in December and, instead, have folks eager to try new additions like their stellar house-made sodas and sustainably produced corned beef. All present all agreed: that means good things, and good food, for everyone!

By now we’ve all heard about how Bhutan tracks not only its GNP, or gross national product but also its GNH, gross national happiness. Antenna recently decided to increase our GCH, gross corporate happiness, by inviting renowned improvisation-performance artist and Buddhist teacher, Nina Wise, to spend an afternoon with us.

Wearing loose comfortable clothing on a Friday afternoon, we gathered in a large, carpeted, unfurnished room. Naturally, one employee tried to hide in his office but we found him and dragged him to the dreaded Happiness Playshop.

Nina explained that modern society directs people into rather narrow ways of being, leaving out a lot of our human birthright that gives rise to joy: simple delights such as moving in unfamiliar and spontaneous ways, making silly sounds, singing, dancing, breathing, meditating and playing games with other humans. Her aim was to broaden our happiness toolset by familiarizing us with a wider set of behaviors.

Sitting in a circle, we introduced ourselves to her and outlined our relevant past experiences. While about half the group had never knowingly meditated for a minute, most had substantial experience with singing, dancing or other endorphin-producing exercise—we have a lot of runners, cyclists and swimmers. Already, we were talking about things we hadn’t shared with most others in the group and were revealing more facets of ourselves, becoming more complete with our peers.

For this first session, Nina started us very gently doing Architecture, an exercise where a small group creates a series of visual tableaux of interrelated poses, each person in turn creating a new pose while the others held their positions. Each pose is individual, yet related to the others. Without touching, the group’s personal space becomes interwoven. Our teams leapt right into this and became downright artistic. As we got warmed up, Nina had some of the teams demonstrate for the rest of us as an audience. It was actually quite beautiful to see.

As writers, we are “word people” so Nina directed us in word-association games—an ideal reminder to avoid boring monosyllables. The creativity displayed by one of our diligent unpaid interns was noticed by several of us. Is it a coincidence that we offered him a job about a week later?

Two hours later as we shared final comments the result was clearly positive. Everyone had thoroughly enjoyed being together in this way.  Faces were glowing, bodies relaxed. Some had enjoyed Architecture the most, some the word games. To my surprise, one of our sports jocks noted that he most enjoyed the five-minute meditation exercise.

Back upstairs at the office, at 5:30 on Friday afternoon, instead of rushing home most folks were spontaneously gathering to go out to drinks, to be together, just being.

The Greenbuild celebration at Phoenix’s Chase Field last night was the best conference presentation I’ve seen, bar none—this from someone who’s been attending about 15 tech industry conferences a year for the past 20 years.

Why? Yes, there was the star power of Al Gore, looking trim and fit and delivering his usual inspiring talk (“We must make it easier for our elected officials to do the right thing and harder for them to do wrong.”). The concert by Sheryl Crow concluded the evening on a great note. The huge projection of the speakers was attractively winged by a split screen image of video footage of nature at work, exceptional green building projects, and people in communities. All good stuff, but what really impressed me was the presentation by the organizers—the last thing you’d usually expect to be exciting.

Rick Fedrizzi, president and CEO of the US Green Building Council declared, “We need not only change we can believe in but change we can build on. We need not only a tipping point but a leverage point.” The audience agreed: It’s time for a green building revolution. “It’s time to move from aspirational green building to informational green building.”

The zero-carbon buildings movement could solve the energy, economic and quality-of-life challenges for the world. If anything can. The 27,000 attendees, including the friendly, funny and hospitable CB Ellis brokers who shared their table and great view with me, all seemed to agree.

Still, what impressed me was the superbly coordinated presentation, first by Fedrizzi, then interweaving many more Green Building Council leaders from around the world: Australia, UK, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Taiwan, Brazil and Italy. Each presenter was perfectly on message and smoothly handed off to the next, like the old friends and long-time collaborators they actually are.

At the heart of most conferences lies someone trying to make money. At the heart of Greenbuild is a huge and growing global network of designers, builders, policy-makers and humanists trying to make a better world. I loved every minute of it.

On the roof, I had the very intellectual job of ratcheting and wiring and carrying panels. I found out what a weeb is (email me at wei at antenngroup dot com if you want to know too) and I also found out that being OCD is a very good thing when arranging panels. No one wants crooked panels on their roof, and we made sure that everything was laid out just nice. We measured and placed the panels on the racks that had been drilled into the rafter, and proceeded to connect the cables together.

Being OCD

Ratcheting is fun!

Finally, after only 4 hours, it was done! Joe, our construction lead on the roof, stayed back to make sure everything was perfect, and then we all leaped down to take the requisite photos on the scaffolding, and to turn on the connection. It was extremely satisfying, especially when saw that we had beat the Google team, who was still up on their roof.

Here’s Joe on the roof, making sure our wiring isn’t going to lead to an explosion

Why do I care about roof rafters? How do I bend conduit? Why am I lying in an attic pulling cables down from the roof? And what the heck is a weeb?

All these questions were answered two weeks ago on Sept. 12, when I participated in Grid Alternative’s Annual Solarthon in Oakland. In this massive undertaking, 300 people gathered on a drizzling, overcast Saturday to install solar panels on 16 houses in one low-income community, in one day. GRID Alternatives is a non-profit organization making solar electric systems a reality for low-income homeowners who otherwise could not afford the systems. GRID does this through an innovative business model where they train volunteers to do everything from designing a system on a sheet of paper to mounting the final panel on a roof. With drastically reduced labor costs, a team of 10-15 volunteers can work slowly and steadily under the guidance of a GRID employee to deliver a complete system at almost half the cost of a typical solar system.

Volunteers

At this event, besides corporate sponsors like Google, there were cleantech advocate teams like the one I had joined, Cleantechies. As part of the Cleantechies team, we had undergone our “installer” training a few weeks prior. We also all had to pledge to raise at least $250 before we got up on the roof. The houses had all been built by Habitat for Humanity, and some of the proud owners were working side by side with us.

When I got to Oakland, I was cranky, tired, and uninspired by the weather. But it was hard to keep that way as a buzz of adrenaline ran through the crowd. The coffee and breakfast provided helped to cheer me up, and I was feeling excited before you could say: “Put on your hardhat!”

Now, I’m no stranger to rooftops and solar installations. Through my work at Antenna, I’ve found myself on rooftops in San Jose to military solar installations in Nellis Air Force base. Some rooftops have been precarious–”just try to hang on” and others have been relatively welcoming and flat. And I’ve also seen tons of different panels. But did I ever know how much a panel weighs, or how to carry one? (37 pounds and facing inwards, FYI). And had I ever installed one before? No. This was going to be a first for me, and I couldn’t wait to get started.

Taking instructions

I was told we would have the opportunity to use power tools. Being non-mechanical in nature, I was excited that someone was trusting enough to empower me with a drill. I was also relishing the thought of mounting the inverter and doing all sorts of construction-y things.

(Un)fortunately, most of the power drilling in the afternoon ended up being done by someone else on the ground team, mainly because mid-day when they asked for roof volunteers, I had already knocked old ladies to the ground in my eagerness to get to the front of the line. I left the others to mount inverter boxes and wire circuitry behind me without a second thought.

Before I clambered onto the roof though, we had to raise the panels up onto the roof, which involved a human chain system of people on different levels of scaffolding passing the panels from the ground-up.

The human supply chain

Check back next week for Part 2 where the real fun begins with the installation: wiring, ratcheting and the admiration of a job well done.

As part of the 2nd Annual InterSolar conference held this week in San Francisco, Antenna Group worked with the Solar Gigawatts team to organize a panel of experts to discuss leveraging your brand in the US solar market.

The panel included PR, marketing and branding experts:

• *Caroline Venza, Vice President, Antenna Group
• *Dr. Isabelle Christensen, Senior Director Marketing & Public Relations, REC Solar
• *Angeline Johnson, Manager, Climate Change and Sustainability Services and Advisory, Ernst and Young
• *Jocelyn King, Director of Worldwide Marketing Operations, National Semiconductor

A full copy of their presentations will be available online after July 21st at: http://solar-gigawatts.com/

Compass

If you are concerned, as I am, that climate instability is a critical issue, then you are very lucky to be a PR pro. Your craft gives you the power to make a difference. No scientific finding will be acted on unless someone has the skill to explain and transmit it. Solutions will go unused unless thousands of PR pros like you and I direct our skills to create understanding and the will to try.

Challenge equals opportunity. There is a ground swell now: Flagship businesses are proving that sustainable practices are safer and more profitable, especially as new policies include the real costs of wastefulness.

Scientists, entrepreneurs and policy-makers are searching for improvements to every practice of civilization. Governments on every continent face the need for transformation. And citizens want to do more than spend their lives as unconscious consumers. Green is good business; it’s industry; it’s life.

Four PR paths

There are four PR paths: Cleantech, Corporate Sustainability, Green Lifestyle and Government Relations. Build on the brand you have. If you excel at corporate counsel, then learn the principles of corporate sustainability. If your expertise is in consumer products, lifestyle or healthcare, then you can shift toward green lifestyle and LOHAS (lifestyles of health and sustainability).

If you’re in government relations, you may already be experiencing a boom in demand. Modern energy and efficiency have been designated the saviors of our economy and environmental woes.

My passion is cleantech. Emerging technology has always excited me: I love being at the edge of change and am willing to accept the business risk that comes with that.

Guidelines for going green

Like a good physician, above all, do no harm. Entrenched power players will keep acting in their short-term self-interest. You don’t have to help them. The knowledge you may have of a dirty business can get you a good job or client engaged in cleaning it up.

Avoid greenwashing, for your company or your clients. Do your homework and bring your heart to your work: How satisfying that is!

Don’t be afraid to set sail in a new direction.  Antenna Group was founded in dotcom days. I met our first solar client at a cleantech venture-capital event. Go meet new people and perspectives.

Build community. If there aren’t useful green networking events in your area, you can organize them for your clients as a way of refocusing their practices and brands. Antenna started our Power Hours three years ago – now we host seven or eight receptions a year, each with a different co-host to spice up the guest list. We also sponsor events.

Extend from your base of strength. Building on one good client in the solar space, we now represent about a dozen solar companies (and many more in other cleantech areas). The first one is still a happy client, five years later. We’re now attracting Fortune 500 clients seeking guidance in areas new to them.

High-tech PR with industrial gunk

Like the technology PR of recent decades, cleantech PR works with wildly creative scientists and entrepreneurs. We try to win our clients a temporary suspension of disbelief so they have a chance to turn their dreams into reality. Using our technical and business knowledge, we paint their products into the landscape and translate their technology’s features into the audience’s benefits.

Unlike Web 2.0 and software high-tech, cleantech is about the messy physical stuff of our world. It spans many different industrial and manufacturing sectors and is overlaid with complex issues of public policy and finance.

For each client at least one audience will be extremely technical, yet you also have to be able to communicate to business, finance, government and community audiences, internationally. If your practitioners do not genuinely enjoy the constant learning about science, technology and policy, you will lose either them or your clients.

In hiring I aim to create a mix of people to learn from each other. Those with strong technical affinity collaborate with skilled PR pros, as everyone grows. My ideal entry-level candidate arrives with a dual-major degree in Communications and Environmental Science or Economics.

Purpose at a premium

While these people are deeply purpose-driven, they are talented high-achievers who expect to be rewarded well. I’m still trying to figure out how to charge the premium the craft deserves. The traditional industrial sector hasn’t invested much in marketing, other than IR or crisis communications.

But marketing spends will grow as the young cleantech industry sees more big successes and becomes increasingly competitive. Companies get the best leverage on their PR investment when pursuing a large market opportunity in the midst of substantial competition. And there’s never been a larger market opportunity than modern energy.

Climate change and a shift in global policy favoring renewables has yielded widespread venture capital investment in the cleantech sector. Over the past 2-3 years, it seems that most VC firms have naturally evolved and now have a “cleantech portfolio” on their Websites. These firms have combed through the scientists and Ph.Ds at the world’s premier learning institutions, appointing the best and brightest to their cleantech advisory boards to round out intelligent investing with deep industry knowledge. Allotment of money, especially in the energy efficiency space, is now mainstream. It appears that all the tools are in place, yet VCs are still getting knocked when it comes to cleantech investing.

Two of the hottest areas now in VC investing are smart grid and energy efficiency, a clear advancement from ten years ago, before the term “cleantech” was even coined, when risk-taking individuals or large corporations gambled on unproven science projects. Could it be that the people doing the investing have not developed as quickly as the technology has? That might be part of it, but an explanation that I heard at a recent conference is much simpler: Cleantech investment “rules” are counter-intuitive to what VCs know.

Traditionally, a venture capitalist will search for or get pitched with a new idea or technology, thoroughly research the markets and become an expert on the innovation that they hope will spawn returns ten times that of what they put in. Investments in the Internet, enterprise technology or IT move very fast, as do advancements in those areas. Cleantech, especially energy efficiency, doesn’t have the same rule book. Energy is colossal—it’s bigger than any other area VCs have invested in before. Two-thirds of the planet uses it. It’s also slow, with R&D moving at an intense yet more measured pace than other technologies that VCs are accustomed to. Policy also plays a large part in cleantech investing, something that has not been a big issue in other types of tech.

Fortunately, investing in the cleantech space still has a lot of room to grow. I think that the success it promises to yield needs a more appropriate measuring stick as expectations are adjusted. Cleantech is still a fairly new game to VCs, and I think it will take time for the returns to roll in the same way they have in the traditional sectors that VCs are very experienced with.

Don Solo/Flickr

Cleantech companies are particularly prone to intellectual-property paranoia. Caution is reasonably called for: do get those patents filed before gabbing.

Industrial innovators burn a lot of capital before reaching healthy revenues. Some directors cut cost corners by keeping portfolio companies in stealth mode for years. A small executive team is expected to reach key customers and get sites installed with little more marketing than a cursory website. Supposedly, this not only saves money but also hides their brilliant innovation from imitators.

Companies may be lingering too long in the shadows, simply because their leaders don’t understand the power of the strategic communications sword. How many VCs or board members do you know who have a strong marketing background? Yet history shows the best technology does not always win. The good-enough solution that is fastest to penetrate the market and relentlessly defends its leadership will win the lion’s share.

Even in situations where staying under the radar might give an edge versus competitors, it also brings a downside: it hides the company from customers, potential talent and the investors needed for each new round. A company that does show market momentum also has a better shot at winning approval for its ARRA application. Smart PR accelerates all those initiatives. So, what is not invested in public relations may instead be lost on a longer sales cycle, larger sales force, costlier executive-recruiter effort, more expensive capital and far more CEO time spent courting reluctant investors.

Shut off from a real market response, a company can get trapped in a self-referential box. Unable to outgrow its anti-marketing culture, it may be on its way to cleantech Betamax, to being Novell instead of Microsoft.

The transition from hiding your light under a basket to being able to dazzle your customers is as difficult for a company as puberty is for a teenager. Luckily, unlike puberty, you can hire people to help you through it.