State Seeks Ideas for Clean-Energy Apps

By KAT FRIEDRICH/ecoMass News contributor

A state Department of Energy Resources marketer who wants to collaborate with civic-minded hackers has invited Massachusetts residents to submit ideas for clean-energy apps by responding to a post on the Energy Smarts blog.

The post, “Clean Energy Hack for Good,” encourages computer professionals to join a volunteer meet-up called Code for Boston. Tom Witkin, the department’s marketing and collaboration coordinator, plans to share the energy-app ideas he receives with Code for Boston members to catalyze innovation.

Read more…

Sandy Propels Boston toward Climate Adaptation

By KAT FRIEDRICH/ecoMass News contributor

BOSTON — Stories from Hurricane Sandy have motivated the local business and civic community to accelerate preparation for emergencies related to climate change. A new 117-page report, titled “Building Resilience in Boston: Best Practices for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience for Existing Buildings,” outlines experts’ recommendations for property owners.

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Candidates Discuss Fresh Approach for Boston Parks

By KAT FRIEDRICH/ecoMass News contributor

ROXBURY — At Boston’s first Parks and Open Space Mayoral Forum on Aug. 15 most of the candidates agreed the city’s parks deserved a grade no higher than a “C.” Some of them also had fresh ideas about reviving public interest in the city’s green spaces.

“Parks matter because community matters,” City Council member Felix Arroyo said.

Read more….

Strong Marketing Is Essential for Energy Efficiency Finance

By Kat Friedrich
Guest Blogger, Energy Efficiency Markets
January 23, 2013

Marketing is an essential ingredient for the success of energy efficiency finance. But too often, finance and efficiency experts focus on technical and financial issues and underestimate the importance of marketing. Using best practices in marketing is necessary to drive demand to the high levels state goals require.

At a New England Clean Energy Council panel in Boston on Nov. 29 titled Monetizing the Savings from Energy Efficiency Projects, the relationship between marketing and finance came up repeatedly as a key issue which needs further exploration in the industry.

Reblogged from the Clean Energy Finance Source. Read more…

Small-Scale Farmers Weather Challenging Season

KAT FRIEDRICH/ecoMass News contributor

DRACUT, MA — Lively insects and unexpectedly heavy rain have challenged the small-scale growers participating in World Peas CSA, a community-supported agriculture program which provides CSA shares to subscribers and food for low-income communities.

Reblogged from ecoMass News. Read more…

Nonprofits Learn How to Tell Untold Stories at Data Day 2013

Data can be integrated seamlessly into stories that benefit communities, presenters told nonprofits and journalists at a conference on June 21. The event demonstrated how one can tap into information sources about communities whose voices are often unheard.

Data Day 2013, held at Northeastern University in Boston, showcased how successful data-based stories engage people on an emotional level. Metropolitan Area Planning Council, Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs, and The Boston Foundation co-hosted the conference.

The morning keynote showed how a team from The Boston Globe accomplished this goal while writing about the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood. Their finished project, 68 Blocks, includes photos, graphs, stories, videos, and an e-book.

“It took months and months to win even the beginnings of trust,” said senior assistant metro editor Steve Wilmsen. After hearing about how a 14-year-old boy was shot, Wilmsen wanted to “pierce the veil of preconceptions” surrounding the neighborhood. As the finished project said, “In a neighborhood known for gunfire, it’s easy to overlook beauty.”

“Half the time, the best things that I got were when I pretended I wasn’t there,” said reporter Meghan Irons. Another reporter, Akilah Johnson, avoided carrying her notebook and used a cell phone and even a church program as substitutes.

The newspaper sourced the “Voices of Bowdoin-Geneva” montage from community pictures found on Instagram. The images show graves, graduations, police, friendships, and family stories.

A survey asked youth whether they thought they would ever spend time in jail. 85.7% said, “No.” 91.7% of the respondents said they had not been in any gangs during the previous year.

The newspaper placed a massive public records request. In the finished project, a map of quality of life indicators shows problems with housing and basic utility services are common in the neighborhood. A second map shows homicides and shootings.

In the workshop “Engage Youth through Data and Mapping,” teenagers from Urbano Project described making public art to communicate data. They made sculptures dramatizing statistics about the MBTA, including crime figures and wait times. They wore the finished sculptures to a festival and talked with passersby about the data.

The teenagers used orange and black plastic discs and small metal weights to build wearable sculptures showing the transit statistics. They also attached painted whistles to t-shirts to depict a graph of various types of crime. All of the materials came from a recycling center in Lynn.

The group painted the whistles different colors to show the different types of crime. 70 percent of the crimes were fare evasions, 9 percent were considered violent crimes, and 15 percent were acts of assault or vandalism.

“We were pleasantly surprised by how transparent the T is with their data,” said Alison Kotkin, a staffer from Urbano Project.

The panel “Storming the Gates of City Hall and Corporate America: Open Data vs. Privacy and Community Change” presented provocative information about our collective privacy – or lack thereof. The presenters also offered tips for nonprofits.

“I usually start all my talks by apologizing on the behalf of all computer scientists everywhere,” said Dr. Latanya Sweeney, who works at Harvard University’s Data Privacy Lab.

“Most data sharing is hidden,” Sweeney explained. “It’s that lack of transparency that causes individuals harm.” She said 1/3 of Fortune 500 companies make hiring, firing and promotion decisions based on health data. 33 states share or sell personal health information. And it’s not difficult for organizations to identify individual patients within these data sets.

Sweeney said computer scientists can solve the problems they have created by following models similar to Google’s.

How can nonprofits get started working with community data? The panel provided many tips. Professor Michael Johnson of UMass-Boston said community organizations can access data and assistance through sources such as:

• Boston Indicators Project
• Metro Boston Data Common
• Boston Research Map Project
• MassGIS
• Mel King Institute for Community Building
• URBAN.Boston
• Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI)
• Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations

David Luberoff, a senior project advisor at Harvard University, encouraged Boston-area nonprofits to sign up on the BARI website to connect and collaborate.

A shorter version of this story was published on the MassNonprofit.org website. 

Shining a Light on Science Misconceptions

When scientists describe how non-specialists misunderstand their language, there’s often a note of sadness in the discussion. If only the United States public was more enlightened than it is today, some bloggers say, then people would understand the language of science. 

A recent Scientific American blog post described how non-scientists in the United States misunderstand the scientific meanings of words like “theory,” “significant,” “hypothesis” and “natural.” A post on the Science 2.0 website provides a longer list of words that are often misunderstood.

What’s wrong with hoping the public will understand scientific language someday? Nothing. But we live in a society where scientists are a specialized group, often socially distant from many of the people who misunderstand them. If scientists want to eradicate misunderstandings and strengthen public awareness of the value of science, better communication and more social interaction is the best solution.

There are tips available online for scientists who want to do a good job of communicating their research and ideas in the classroom. I’ve edited some of these tips myself. When I was working at the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL), I edited two book sections showing how scientists can respond to misunderstandings immediately when talking with students. Here’s a shortened excerpt from one of the sections:

Problems of Terminology

1. Confusing the technical meanings and the ordinary meanings of words.
Some scientific terms have technical meanings that are very different from their common sense meanings.

2. Using words that have technical meanings and not realizing it.
Some ordinary English words are used as technical terms, as explained above, but experienced scientists (such as graduate students and lecturers) are so used to using these words that they often forget that these words have special meanings. So the scientists don’t define the terms and then are surprised when the students don’t know what they mean.

3. Getting confused when using similar but not identical terms.
Certain pairs of terms seem to be difficult to distinguish – for example, “gene” and “allele,” as well as “chromosome” and “chromatid.” To make it worse, some of these terms are synonyms in common speech, such as “inhibition” and “repression.” A good way to clear up confusion is to compare and contrast; compare what the two terms have in common and contrast their differences.

Students sometimes misunderstand terms related to genes and DNA. (Source: stock.xchng)

A second section covers the various types of misunderstandings that can occur.

Preconceived Notions

Preconceived notions are popular conceptions rooted in everyday experiences. For example, many people believe that water flowing underground must flow in streams because the water they see at the earth’s surface flows in streams. Preconceived notions plague students’ views of heat, energy, and gravity…

Nonscientific Beliefs

Nonscientific beliefs include views learned by students from sources other than scientific education, such as religious or mythical teachings…

Conceptual Misunderstandings

Conceptual misunderstandings arise when students are taught scientific information in a way that does not provoke them to confront paradoxes and conflicts resulting from their own preconceived notions and nonscientific beliefs. To deal with their confusion, students construct faulty models that usually are so weak that the students themselves are insecure about the concepts.

Vernacular Misconceptions

Vernacular misconceptions arise from the use of words that mean one thing in everyday life and another in a scientific context (i.e., “work”). A geology professor noted that students have difficulty with the idea that glaciers retreat, because they picture the glacier stopping, turning around, and moving in the opposite direction. Substitution of the word “melt” for “retreat” helps reinforce the correct interpretation that the front end of the glacier simply melts faster than the ice advances.

Students may not understand that glaciers retreat by melting rather than turning around and moving backward. (Source: stock.xchng)

Factual Misconceptions

Factual misconceptions are falsities often learned at an early age and retained unchallenged into adulthood. If you think about it, the idea that “lightning never strikes twice in the same place” is clearly nonsense, but that notion may be buried somewhere in your belief system.

Correcting science misconceptions requires a sophisticated understanding of both communication and science. Investing more resources in science education can help improve public science literacy. But scientists may also need to consider using alternate words for concepts that most people misunderstand.

Social Media Can Drive Environmental Goals Forward

Sometimes a picture is worth 200 Twitter follows. That’s what Ceres‘s online communications director, Brian Sant, learned when he ran a campaign to stop natural gas flares in North Dakota. Oil companies use these flares to burn away unwanted natural gas they do not plan to save or sell.

North Dakota’s natural gas flares are visible from the night sky and rival major cities in their brightness. Sant circulated the following photo of the night landscape of North America via social media and email. The response was electric. Writers picked up the story.

A photo from Ceres’s campaign to stop natural gas flares in North Dakota.

Sant showed the results of this campaign at New England Women in Energy and the Environment‘s March 14 panel discussion, Social Media Success in the Energy and Environmental Sectors. He also described how he uses podcasts, videos and infographics to make data attractive for social media distribution.

Sarah Finnie Robinson, founding partner at Practically Green, talked about her exploration of the nuances of behavior change. Working with an enthusiastic group of interns and staff, she develops social software that companies and individuals can use to alter their environmental behavior.

Practically Green is building on the current wave of interest in gamification – making activities more like computer games – and integrating that approach with social media. The resulting product makes conserving water and other resources less like doing a chore and more like using Facebook.

“You’re not alone,” one of Robinson’s slides said. Robinson wants her software to engage people in communication, not just give them tasks to do in isolation. Based on the rapid expansion of demand for her product, this approach is certainly working.

Cindy Jolicoeur, vice president of Marketing Drive, used a different tactic in her work with the Mass Save energy efficiency program. She leveraged consumer interest in sharing information about deals and taking advantage of discounts to build the fan base for the Mass Save Facebook page from around 2,000 to over 15,000. These likes came as a result of targeted promotions and advertising across multiple media. Consumers developed a relationship with Mass Save and used the page to ask questions about energy efficiency.

“People want to connect with people,” said Cindy Hoots, corporate social responsibility account director at Cone Communications. She encouraged the audience to be informal on social media. Being able to respond on the fly is crucial, she said. She recommended keeping an unofficial FAQ on hand to use in response to stakeholder comments.

“Not all these stakeholders are friendly,” Hoots said. “Some can be a thorn in your side. Others may have an activist bent.”

Building relationships with stakeholders is a complex process, Hoots said. First, one needs to identify who they are. Second, one needs to understand their values and priorities. Third, one needs to learn how to reach them. And that’s just the first phase of action. One also needs to prioritize influencers, reach out to them, and offer them resources they want.

Hoots recommended two online tools for identifying influencers: Traackr and SocMetrics. These sites can give one basic information about the behavior of influencers and help one develop a plan for building relationships.

There are many ways communicators can engage stakeholders and build support for sustainable actions. This discussion demonstrated how Twitter, Hootsuite, Facebook, and other social media tools can support energy and environmental organizations in reaching their goals successfully. Sometimes, all it takes is a surprising picture.

Customize Climate Communication

“What is the main lesson you’ve learned from trying to target specific audiences in your climate work?” David Minkow, who edits content for Climate Access and the Social Capital Project, asked me this question recently.

In three words, my response is: “Customize your messages.”

Today’s media environment is a crowded place, dense with conflicting demands for our attention. In this climate, the messages that rise to the top are the ones with the greatest relevance and the most effective targeting.

Know your audiences. Read the news publications they read – even if you disagree with them. Understand the jargon they use at work and the casual language they use on the weekends. Find out what they do for fun. Become familiar with their values. Try to think the way they think.

One of the best ways to learn how to customize messages for an audience is through cultural immersion. Go and visit your audiences in person. Go out to dinner with them. Get to know their priorities. Learn how to establish credibility with their organizations. Work with them and talk with them as much as possible.

Then, once you know your audiences, use techniques like community-based social marketing. Find out what constraints prevent them from taking environmental actions. Address these challenges through concise and direct communication. When you talk about benefits, tailor your language to your audiences.

Don’t rely on messages about preserving the environment or saving money. These popular messages may not resonate with your audiences at all. To develop messages that work, you need to know your audiences and understand them as well as people in a small town understand their next-door neighbors.

Get to know your audiences’ cultural preferences as well as you know your neighbors’. (Source: Someecards.com)

Saving Science Blogs

Blogs tend to evaporate into the stratosphere of outdated software and broken links unless they are maintained and managed. Now, Jennifer Harbster, a staffer at the Library of Congress, wants to keep groundbreaking science blogs alive.

The Library of Congress began preserving websites in the year 2000. The library chooses which websites to preserve based on their historical value. This year, staff are accepting suggestions of which science blogs to save for future generations. Blogs which feature original research and ideas are the most likely to be selected, Harbster said.

The main goal of the Science Blogs Collection will be to capture a representative sample of science research, writing, teaching and communication, as well as scientific discourse in the United States.

Harbster said the main criteria for choosing a science blog to save are:

1. What is the usefulness of this information?
   
2. Will this blog supplement a preexisting collection?
3. Does this blog have research value?
4. Is the blog at risk?
5. Can the blog be easily captured?

If you want to suggest a science blog for preservation, visit the Library of Congress website and submit your idea.

Meanwhile, at ScienceBlogs, Frank Swain has suggested selling curated collections of blog posts as e-books. If this idea catches on, it could be another way to preserve the writing of science bloggers.

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