By Dave Georges, Tigercomm Senior Vice President
In July, I had the opportunity to represent Tigercomm at the Association for Demand Response & Smart Grid’s (ADS) National Town Hall Meeting, which is maybe the largest annual gathering for these industries. Our friend Judith Schwartz, had organized a Consumer Engagement Workshop for the day before the Town Hall, and she had some of the best and brightest in the smart grid and demand response industries participating.
Judith had invited us to help facilitate the Workshop, and as I was overseeing the construction of a smart grid industry website, I couldn’t pass up the chance to hear what industry experts had to say about growing these crucial sectors.
Over the next three days in the Reagan Center, I was happy to hear the principles on which we designed and built the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative’s (SGCC) new site www.whatissmartgrid.com validated, again and again.
The key to explaining smart grid and smart meter technologies to increasingly time- and attention-impoverished consumers is to engage them in a two-way conversation, and talk about what matters to them. For instance, the new SGCC site has sections that are devoted to various audience segments, addressing the issues that market research tells us they care about.
The smart grid and demand response industries have made great strides in the past few years in more effectively communicating their technologies’ importance and benefits to consumers. And, if the presentations at ADS’s Town Hall meeting are any indication, that trend will continue.
