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Building Connections in Cleantech: Podcast With Dynamo Energy Hub
147 Plays9 months ago
Get ready for an exciting addition to our GNP Podcast—a brand new series of conversations we call 'Expert Talk.' If you're a fan of our podcast, you're already aware of our commitment to showcasing cleantech businesses and their groundbreaking technologies. Now, once per quarter, you'll have the opportunity to tune in to an Expert Talk episode where we take it up a notch by engaging in in-depth conversations with seasoned cleantech professionals.
In our very first episode of the series, we chat about cleantech marketing and community building with Kristin Barbato and Caroline Banfield from Dynamo Energy Hub. This company brings together traditional energy companies, climate tech innovators, investors, policymakers, and thought leaders to facilitate the energy transition and shape the future of energy. Kristin shares her energy leadership expertise, and Caroline reveals top-notch marketing strategies.
📚 RESOURCES & LINKS
========================
- Dynamo Energy Hub Website: https://www.dynamoenergyhub.com/
- Dynamo Energy Hub Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamoenergyhub
- Dynamo Energy Hub LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamo-energy-hub
👉 Interview with Kristin and Caroline: https://www.npws.net/podcast/cleantech-networking
🌍 SUSTAINABILITY PODCAST CREATED BY NEW PERSPECTIVE
========================
This podcast is proudly sponsored by New Perspective Marketing, a dynamic growth marketing agency in Boston, MA, celebrating 20 years in business. We help sustainably focused B2B organizations grow their brands and scale up revenue. If you or your organization is looking to grow, visit npws.com for more info.
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#cleantech #cleantechmarketing #networking #greenwashing #marketingstrategies
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Transcript
Introduction to Expert Talk Series
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Green New Perspective podcast. We are watching a second episode of our second season and this time we prepared something a bit different for you. If you're a fan of our podcast or you've just watched or listened to a couple of our previous episodes, then you must know how dedicated we are to showcasing innovative tech aimed at combating climate change and companies at startups that are developing those technologies. So we decided to launch a new type of content
00:00:25
Speaker
a series we called Expert Talk that is going to be published one per quarter and the aim of this series is actually to supercharge cleantech businesses. We are inviting cleantech experts, people who have 20 plus years of experience working within this space to share their wisdom and insights to other cleantech businesses. We'll cover topics like marketing, policies, community development, networking, investments, academia and more
00:00:52
Speaker
with the mission to boost other clean tech companies with knowledge and possible connections.
Guest Introduction: Dynamo Energy Hub
00:00:59
Speaker
In this episode, our debut episode, we'll talk about clean tech marketing and community building with Kristin Barbato and Carolyn Banfield from Dynamo Energy Hub. This company brings together traditional energy companies, climate tech innovators, policymakers, investors, and thought leaders to facilitate the energy transition and shape the future of energy.
00:01:20
Speaker
Kristen is basically a sustainability superstar with plenty years of experience within the industry and she'll share her leadership expertise and Caroline is a director of marketing and digital operations at Dynamo Energy Hub and she'll tell you how to build an effective plain-tech marketing strategy. Stay with me, enjoy the conversation and I'll promise you that you're going to love these wonderful ladies as much as I do. Enjoy!
00:01:55
Speaker
Hello, Kristin. Hello, Caroline. And welcome to the Green New Perspective Podcast.
Dynamo Energy Hub's Mission
00:02:00
Speaker
So, Kristin, can you start and tell me more about Dynamo Energy Hub? So, can you tell us a bit about the company's mission, vision, and services? And then, Caroline, can you introduce your role within the company?
00:02:11
Speaker
Thank you so much. We'd love to. So I'm Kristen Barbato, co-founder and president of Dynamo Energy Hub. And the whole idea behind Dynamo is that we create spaces where we connect people in the energy transition. We connect startups with investors, investors with big companies, big companies with startups themselves and governments. So the whole idea is to make these connections and to create spaces to do that. And it's
00:02:34
Speaker
It's been how we've cultivated this global network in the energy transition, energy and sustainability, to bring together these types of different stakeholders within this market. And the way we do that is through networking events, very topical discussions and thought leadership, as well as really cool spaces. And we're in, I think it's almost 15, we're almost rounding the corner on 15 different
00:03:02
Speaker
Cities so the idea is to have these regional networks that are globally connected so that we can enable people to have a forum for being heard and connecting with others that might be their next investor or it might be their next customer or they understand a little bit more about what's going on from
00:03:22
Speaker
a policy standpoint from people who are in the know and in the room where it happens kind of thing. So that's really a clue to pull from my old hometown, New York City, Hamilton Play. We try to
Cleantech Marketing Strategies
00:03:34
Speaker
make dynamo the room where it happens. I am our director of marketing and digital operations. What that means is that
00:03:40
Speaker
I oversee the comm strategy as well as our digital strategy for the firm, both from a back end, a more marketing digital perspective. And I work with Kristin and our other co-founder, Mead, on really honing in on the messaging of Dynamo Energy, of what it is that we do. Firms like Clean Text, but also corporates and investors and policy makers should join us in the room where it happens, to use Kristin's tricks.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to spend part of our time here talking about the marketing within the clean space. So, Kristen, you are in the clean tech industry for a long time now. So can you tell me and to our audience, looking back, what are some consistent themes that you have seen across the clean tech marketing space and what changes do you see happening in the next year? But I've been in this, like,
00:04:29
Speaker
this space for a long time, I've been in energy for a long time, so much so that it's changed names, it's gone from energy to sustainability, now climate, and it's kind of encapsulating a lot of different concepts there. So I'd say that some of these trends that you're seeing now are indicative of so many things that have happened before. There's a lot of policy pushes that are happening to have big companies and small as well as investors to think about
00:04:56
Speaker
double and triple bottom line and how they're making an impact as well as a lot of governance to to really force collaboration where there may not have been collaboration before where very vertically integrated companies are
00:05:11
Speaker
have the necessity to reach out to smaller or innovative companies that are thinking about solutions in a different way. So what that means for our industry and how we're looking at this going ahead in 2023 and now in 2024 and beyond, from a marketing perspective, we're seeing some trends there. And I think we were talking before about where this actually plays in with how companies are thinking about this in terms of what their marketing strategies are.
Trends in Cleantech Marketing
00:05:38
Speaker
And I'll let you talk about some of those ideas there.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of what I've seen from a marketing perspective in 2023 that I think will transition over to 2024, and we'll, I think, talk about some of the unique trends of 2024 a little bit later, but sustainability was a huge messaging point, not just in the clean text space, but also across, you know, all verticals, you saw it
00:06:00
Speaker
with everything from consumer goods all the way down to technology and you know everything in between. So obviously that led itself pretty well to clean techs who are working in the sustainability area and I think really from a messaging perspective made what they're doing a lot
00:06:16
Speaker
clearer because people are already bought into the concept of sustainability. The second big theme that I've seen that is going to be no surprise to anybody is obviously the emergence of AI as not just a reporting optimization backend tool, but as a real content creation tool. I think for me, what I saw change this year wasn't necessarily that AI was invented or anything like that because obviously it wasn't. We've been talking about it for years.
00:06:41
Speaker
But with the emergence of chat GPT as a tool, I felt like the broader community, not just marketers and technology side were becoming more comfortable with it and more understanding of what it can do as a tool. So from a content creation and copywriting perspective, I think that's really a big shift that I saw, which will continue into 2024. We've seen a dynamo and I think is a carryover from the post pandemic era when people were really, really
00:07:09
Speaker
starved for human connection and in-person human connection is that people want to be together. So we're seeing a huge interest in in-person events, in-person networking, getting face to face. I think people are a little zoomed out. So we're seeing a decline in those virtual events that were so big in 2020, 2021, even going into 2022.
Dynamo's Virtual Pivot During Pandemic
00:07:30
Speaker
And we're really having a huge focus in those in-person events and networking. And we have a number of events coming up over the next year, which we're super excited about, which will provide our members and our community with the opportunity to do that. Really excellent points. And that in-person networking, like making those connections, is so important. But I want to say something about how Dynamo actually grew during the pandemic, which was very unique. And I'm sure a lot of companies pivoted in order to survive what was going on with this pandemic.
00:07:58
Speaker
and this very big global disruption. What was so interesting to us is that we, I mean, just to go back a little bit to our founder story, Mead Harris, my co-founder and CEO. And I looked at each other sometime at, I guess it was March of 2020 after we had just launched our first hub in New York city six months prior. And we were like,
00:08:19
Speaker
did we really just launch a new company that's doing like global networking and co-working and events? Like this is nuts, like what are we going to do here? So we quickly pivoted and started doing virtual events because we found that yes, as Caroline was saying, people were starved to figure out how to connect. And since everybody's kind of home and sitting on laptops and trying to figure out how do we get visible? How do we engage people? How do we find our next investor? This is where Dynamo actually grew in
00:08:48
Speaker
like participation or our footprint, so to speak, across the world. So as we were emerging out of this stuck at home kind of scenario,
00:08:58
Speaker
people were clamoring to reconnect. And that's how we went from one hub to almost 15 in the time that it's been like 21 to 23. So we've gotten it grown quickly, but that it is that interactions, those live interactions. And now that we have Caroline leading our efforts in digital operations and marketing, we're seeing that this intersection is really critical.
00:09:24
Speaker
So as Caroline was talking about the kinds of the themes from the market itself, like sustainability, combined with themes in technology like AI, this is rarely where we're seeing a lot of companies start to explore and succeed.
00:09:39
Speaker
And can you, Carolyn, can you tell me about the most effective marketing approaches in clean tech companies in the current market that you're seeing? And I also want to know, how do you feel about greenwashing in the marketing space, especially with the usage of chat GPT and AI, not just chat GPT, other AI platforms for?
00:09:59
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Key Strategies in Cleantech Marketing
00:10:01
Speaker
So in terms of marketing strategies, I think when we talk to our founders, and when I've worked with companies in the past, there are a couple of things that I say you need to do from the outset in order to be successful. The first is to really define what you're actually looking for out of a marketing organization. Do you really want lead gen from?
00:10:18
Speaker
your marketing organization or do you want awareness? Do you want people to know what you do or do you want people to ask to buy it? And those, there is no right or wrong answer. The answer to what you want out of your marketing organization can possibly be just, we want to try a bunch of stuff out and see what works. That's completely valid, but I do a lot of times I'll see
00:10:37
Speaker
start up specifically, start marketing organizations and get frustrated very quickly because they haven't clearly defined what success looks like. So that's the first thing I tell any founder, any corporate, anybody who's looking to really create a marketing organization to do. The second thing is to hone your messaging and make sure that what you're saying is really clear.
00:10:57
Speaker
I make the joke to my team all the time that if you can't explain it to me like I'm a five-year-old, you probably don't understand it. And I'm going to go ahead and tell you, if it takes me more than five seconds to figure out what you do on your website, I'm leaving. If I can't tell from your homepage exactly what you do, exactly why I should care, and exactly why I should buy it, I'm good. Keep moving, and I'm going to keep researching. People do not have long attention spans. We have a couple members who do this really well. One of them is Bill Dee.
00:11:26
Speaker
two seconds of being on their website, you can tell that they do data and software for the built environment in a cloud-based mobile format. And that's great. The rest of those really technical questions can be answered during sales calls, right? You can have those long conversations in that way. So those are the first two things I always say that groups should start with. From a tactical perspective, reactive thought leadership is really effective. So one of our members, Amber, on this summer is based down here,
00:11:54
Speaker
They're based down in Texas in the summer. I don't know if you saw it on the news, but in Austin, where Kristen and I both are today in our beautiful hub with Common Desk, we had 78 consecutive days where the temperature never dropped below 100 degrees. So 24 seven, it was over 100 degrees.
00:12:12
Speaker
Well, Amperon uses machine learning to provide insights into the grid. So they were doing constant thought leadership pieces on the status of ERCOT, which is the market down here in Texas. And that was really effective and well-timed. It doesn't need to be a hugely complex white papers that you spend months writing. If you have an opinion on something, go ahead and put it out into the market and really start working and do that. And that's really where you can also determine how you want to put out in the market. Video is a massive strategy.
00:12:41
Speaker
a good way to disseminate information and short form content. So those would be my immediate suggestions.
Decline of Greenwashing in Cleantech
00:12:48
Speaker
In terms of greenwashing, I am happy to say that I feel like some of the greenwashing messaging that we saw previously is going by the wayside. I think for the last few years we've seen, I will say marketing led sustainability promotion, which by that I mean marketing was asked to spin.
00:13:05
Speaker
a little bit more, especially for larger corporations that are in the manufacturing and supply chain area. Whereas now with these larger corporates, I'm not even corporates in the energy space, but all over the globe, you're seeing actual product efforts to meet those sustainability goals. I mean, I'm sure we all saw the ad campaign with Apple and Octavia Spencer about how they're going to be carbon neutral in the next couple of years. So I think it makes the marketers job a little bit easier when the products are actually aligned with the messaging that you want to put out into the market.
00:13:34
Speaker
Kristin, how do you feel about this? I think that Caroline's right and that greenwashing is kind of going away because I think consumers are getting smarter and more informed so they can kind of pick out what's valid and what just seems like smoke and mirrors. And because of what we're talking about before with some of these policy drivers and governance requirements, companies are really putting out products and solutions that are trying to meet those needs.
00:14:00
Speaker
not just say that they're doing something that is all kinds of rosy. So I agree. And I think that because we're having a much more informed market that it's proving that better solutions are coming to light as well as better messaging. Caroline, I think what you're really saying is
00:14:25
Speaker
It's hard for someone to market something when it's not really doing the job that it's meant to do. So now the companies are getting more innovative. They're enabling better solutions to be put out and products to be put out into the market. It makes solving that problem of, are we being green in many respects easier? How do you distinguish yourself amongst a sea of people who are trying to
00:14:48
Speaker
say kind of the same thing. Yeah and I think Kristen and I are really lucky that we don't have a lot of experience with greenwashing in our membership because our members really are doing the work and they really are doing things that are you know green and sustainable so we don't we don't have to worry about that with the Dynamo membership. People are really you know working towards that. And do you have maybe some like prerequisites when you you know are meeting with new people when you have new people coming to your community
00:15:16
Speaker
Do you maybe check those things if someone is actually doing greenwashing? No, not doing the work because those companies do exist, unfortunately, within the Kleenex space. Yeah, that's a great question because a lot of people will ask us, like, how do you compose your membership? And so I'd say it's mostly self-selection. People who are really serious about making things happen in the energy transition are attracted to Dynamo because they want to work with people who are also
00:15:46
Speaker
equally as energized, sorry, it's kind of funny, enthused about being part of the energy transition and moving the needle on that. So it's definitely a cultivated network of people who are innovative, who are actually doing, like as Carolyn says, doing the work to make things happen.
00:16:05
Speaker
And, but this is something that we look at because we want our membership to be comprised of very strong leaders. And that's what attracts people. So if we're having like networking events or our summits that were happening, we'll talk a little bit more about that later. It is, gosh, I'm going to go back to that stupid analogy or that stupid saying again is like it's being in the room where it happens. And that is a lot about the people who are bringing the ideas, the products and the conversations with that gusto. So yes, it's a very key criteria for us to make sure that
00:16:34
Speaker
People who are part of Dynamo or companies who are part of Dynamo are engaged in actually making a difference.
Dynamo's Initiatives for Startups
00:16:41
Speaker
Can you share some of the most impactful initiatives that you feel like have supported the clean tech industry or at least people within your community? Yeah, I can talk from what we do in terms of programming, so to speak, that
00:16:57
Speaker
I think is geared toward our startups. We do a few things and it has a large largely to do with partnerships that we've developed. So we have a fantastic partnership with Bloomberg NEF. They have a program called their pioneers program where every year they review and select
00:17:14
Speaker
the global movers and shakers of startups that they then feature as part of their summits across the world. So we work with them in helping them to expand their reach in terms of who are these potential movers and shakers that they might become part of this pioneers program.
00:17:34
Speaker
Another is thought leadership that we've done with some of our bigger members like UBS and Alvarez and Marcel. We've done some white papers with both of them. We launched our annual report with UBS this year at Climate Week on, it's kind of like those ones to watch, like who are the clean techs to watch in a certain space. And this year we were really excited about the group that we had and then we get to talk with them. And we had a huge event.
00:18:01
Speaker
a summit for climate week and got to feature some of the folks that were part of that white paper and that discussion. And then we also launched for our Houston hub like coming out party. We had Alvarez and Marcel's launch of our joint paper on investment perspectives and how things have changed looking at what investors were looking at from like clean tech 1.0 to now climate tech
00:18:29
Speaker
2.0. And what are some of those differences in why people are making the investment decisions that they are now as opposed to, you know, 2008 when it was like, oh, it's tech, but clean. So it's the same kind of investment model and everything went completely. Now, what is what's made that difference?
00:18:46
Speaker
It's how investors have gotten more savvy, but also companies have gotten more savvy as well in terms of how their product works with someone's operations. So those are just some examples. We've got another thought leadership paper coming out in the next few weeks. So we're excited about that.
Supporting Innovation and Growth
00:19:03
Speaker
So probably by the time this goes live, we'll have another paper with Alvarez and Marcel looking resilience in the grid. So these are some of these impactful initiatives that we're doing. We're getting visibility for startups that we work with.
00:19:14
Speaker
for these big companies that are doing initiatives that want to partner with others and who are the innovators in the field. So those are just some ways that we do that. We have mentioned your network of clean tech companies several times right now. So how do you feel that network actually supports driving innovation and growth within the clean tech space?
00:19:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a few ways that we can think about this. It's really the collaboration across the network is key. And when we first started out with Dynamo, this is going to be a tip of the hat to you, Caroline, getting us into the digital age here. When we first started out, it was a combining of networks.
00:19:54
Speaker
And I came from government and utilities and had this very odd streak of innovation across working in those very big entities and that type of network where my co-founder and me, she had a global network that was very different in terms of like big investment, big infrastructure investors for big companies that were
00:20:19
Speaker
very critical in leading edge on what's going on with policy and solutions. So she had very big picture. We both worked within like what's the innovation across them. So the collaboration and the networks that we have were kind of like smashing these two networks together and then growing from there. But I will say that that can only go so far.
00:20:40
Speaker
And when we have then expanded our networking collaboration, I call upon a couple of things. One is, of course, those in-person connections. There's nothing like actually having an in-person one-on-one group exchange of information and ideas in order to build that trust.
00:20:58
Speaker
In this digital day and age, we have done a few things to enable our message or the message of our members to get out further. So we've done a few things like creating, I think we're going to talk about a member portal that we created that enables that type of connectivity. We've also created ways for, instead of us being like that personal switchboard, we have others that are starting to talk to one another within our own network because they have that access.
00:21:26
Speaker
And that's part of the member portal. It's part of the digital side to our operations that is starting to expand as we grow globally. So keeping that interpersonal relationship, but with the catalytic effect of the digital connection first, and then seeing how that grows. And we've had some great success stories. I mean, we've had, I was talking at our London launch last month, where we launched our hub there. Congratulations. Oh, thank you.
00:21:55
Speaker
I was talking with one of the CBC corporate venture funds and he was saying how he's like he was just very excited to be part of this network because they're finding deals through us. So it's not just the startups that are our members, but it's the investors and who they're looking to connect with.
00:22:13
Speaker
We also have some other success stories like we have startups who have found their investors. I mean, we just had one that raised $20 million. We had another that raised, I think earlier this year, on the $30 million.
Fostering Collaboration Through Events
00:22:24
Speaker
And then there's also some of those seed round types of engagements that are happening too. So it's not just the giant infrastructure investors and huge
00:22:34
Speaker
gazillion dollar checks, we're looking at helping startups that are in that earlier stage range and going into growth. We have some interesting, other interesting collaboration and network stories around startups finding their next attorney, finding another hire.
00:22:49
Speaker
that they have, finding somebody who is going to serve on their advisory board. So that's really where we see this network having that really exciting, productive effect for startups and other companies. So Caroline, can you tell me, how do you facilitate all those connections?
00:23:08
Speaker
What kind of programs, events, everything that you're doing? Yeah, absolutely. So we definitely have a variety of ways that we engage our membership because we've talked a lot about our events. Those are really, you know, the one of the key ways that we look at cooperation and just getting people in the same room and discussing solutions. So that's a really important asset. The other way that we do that is through our hubs that we have all throughout the US and into Europe. Kristin brought that up. We're sitting in our Austin hub right now, but we're up and down the east coast.
00:23:38
Speaker
We've got three locations in Texas. We are opening our location in Chicago. So we are expanding all over the globe. So really, you know, getting the individual communities together to collaborate between themselves and, you know,
00:23:53
Speaker
get that community feeling together with Dynamo. And then in addition to that, we do regular check-ins with our members to make sure that we understand what they're doing, what their growth patterns are, and we'll sit there and say, you know what, we should connect you with this group or you should speak with this person. And as Kristin mentioned, we actually brought that into the digital environment with our member portal. So it's a secure login portion of our site where members can interact with each other and they can post things that are going on with them, how, you know,
00:24:20
Speaker
if they're fundraising, if they're looking for an investor, they can connect. And it's really, you know, a nurtured digital environment. And then we do regular promotion of our members on our social channels and also through our exclusive Dynamo newsletter that goes, call their member bullet and only goes to Dynamo members. So that's really how we foster a lot of collaboration. It's just by letting everybody know what's going on in the clean tech environment and also bringing people physically together. So those are
00:24:49
Speaker
Those are kind of our big items. I don't know, Kristin, if I missed anything.
Growing Social Media Presence
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to say a few things about what you and your team from marketing have done that I think has been fantastic. When we started Dynamo, we had very, very little social media presence at all. And we're seeing that the way we are engaging with the market through our social media is really having great repercussions. People are finding out about our events, finding out about our membership,
00:25:19
Speaker
through our social media and we have a great team with Caroline's leadership that has started to establish how we approach our branding, our marketing, and then how we engage with our members and others that are critical in the marketplace. So I'm really happy about that. It's funny when you're on LinkedIn with people from all walks of your life and people who may not even be in the industry for
00:25:48
Speaker
you know, energy and sustainability that I'm connected with will constantly tell me like, Hey, I saw you guys are an Austin or you just launched in London. And I'm like, you're seeing this stuff. That's fantastic.
00:26:01
Speaker
I think that's the fun part of us as a startup, but also as our members. You start to see this really natural expansion and the network gets excited about what you do. And as we all know, word of mouth is one of the most effective marketing strategies across the board. So having our digital presence lend itself to that word of mouth is one of the most gratifying things. And every time Kristen says something like that, my heart gets all happy. I run to my team and tell them they're doing amazing.
00:26:29
Speaker
I turn into the mom from Mean Girls. You're doing amazing, sweetie. So it's a very exciting day. With the camera and everything.
00:26:41
Speaker
Yeah. And can someone who's not within the clean tech community join your events because you have some really interesting topics that you go through? Yeah, it's a good question of how do we do this. So our events are for our members. So what happens is a lot of times companies who are
00:27:02
Speaker
very squarely in this space are attracted to becoming members. But I will say that there are others who are starting to get curious about what does clean energy, climate tech, what does this mean to them and their own companies? So we will talk with others and say, you know, if this is something that you'd like to talk about, we can talk to you about what this means and how this works for you and maybe even join us as a guest to a
00:27:30
Speaker
particular topic because you have that germane experience but it's really about making sure that we have the right people in the room so if you're curious if you're starting to delve into this, if you're a company that's looking at how you expand your operations in this space.
00:27:45
Speaker
and can contribute to this conversation in a dynamic way. There I go again, energized, dynamic. We love to see that other companies are maybe in a small way. What we're doing is enabling companies and people to think about how this is impactful to them and their operations. And if that engenders them to become interested in Dynamo and learning more, we'd love to speak with
Global Expansion Plans
00:28:10
Speaker
them. And where do you see the future of Dynamo Energy Hub and
00:28:14
Speaker
What challenges do you see on that way? Caroline, I'll start with some of our things that we've been doing in terms of our growth and then some ideas on challenges and happy to kick it over to you. Because I'm sure you see it from a different perspective as well. As I mentioned, our growth is, I mean, we've had
00:28:31
Speaker
In the last year, I think we've got 13 or 14 hubs right now, and we're rounding the corner on getting up to 15. So our growth, we are going to continue to grow. We want to get to 20, 25 hubs over the next couple of years. So as we're expanding in US and Europe, we want our expansion for our
00:28:48
Speaker
our regions to continue in the U.S., we've got the Northeast, we're going Southeast more, we've got Midwest, we've got the West, and then all the way over in San Francisco, starting to pluck a few hubs and nodes into Europe, but we also see more growth happening in APAC. So that's a lot of areas and territories that we're thinking about, but from a
00:29:15
Speaker
an operational perspective. Caroline, I'm going to talk from some of the events and things that we're doing from a services perspective. We've expanded our events. We now have summits that we do, which are like the big climate week summit that we do in New York City. Next year in 2024, we're going to start our first summer summit in Martha's Vineyard. It'll be our first like few day event where we're having really great
00:29:40
Speaker
thought leadership happening in a beautiful space, but really engaging so that we're enabling some good productive conversations across people and leadership there. So that's one. So that's summits.
00:29:56
Speaker
We also have different series that we do. You'll see that there's different series of events like summer in the city, or we'll have holidays in the hubs, or we've got different kinds of series that we'll do that cross our different hubs. We also have just started recently since we're starting to get these regional hubs up and running. There's been a need for socials. We've got summits, series, and socials. We launched our first social here in Austin.
00:30:24
Speaker
And then we had another boulder. We've got our next one coming up in Dallas and a whole slew on the on the docket for 2024. So that's ways for people who are right in that city to connect with each other, learn a little bit about in a very, very casual way. And we may or may not continue to do some of that.
00:30:43
Speaker
thought leadership or it might just be kind of like an amped up meetup. In any way that we have, we've got these like very high level summits and a series of networking and then socials. So I think those are some of the ways that we're seeing ourselves grow in our programming as well. Caroline, how are you seeing what some of the things that we're doing as a grower
00:31:04
Speaker
I'm going to put this to you and say, it's becoming a bit of a challenge for the marketing team. Absolutely. I mean, I think first of all, I can't give enough accolades to our team that supports our marketing efforts and our general efforts. We have a great team that sits with us at Dynamo and really on the whole, the Dynamo team makes it easy because they're so bought into the marketing efforts and really promoting what we're doing. And we're all genuinely so excited about what we're doing. So it makes my job a little bit easier from a marketing perspective.
00:31:32
Speaker
We're constantly reviewing our messaging, our strategy. What are we doing with email? What are we doing with social? How can we diversify this? How can we get the message out about this? And really looking at it as a holistic strategic comm strategy as opposed to an execution-based strategy. And I think that's something that lends itself into, you know, clean tech marketing as well.
00:31:51
Speaker
in those early stages of the company and you're developing what you're doing, yes, let's get it to a point where we're getting out regular content on a regular schedule. We've got our operational side ready. But now, as Kristin has heard me say over and over again, then your team kind of gets to do the fun stuff. We get to do the creative stuff. Once you have that backend operations, you know, we do this and this and this and this in the sale order, and then we get everything out. You can start getting creative. You can start launching new marketing initiatives. You can start reviewing your comm strategy.
00:32:20
Speaker
and seeing what's working and optimizing. I think growth at any stage lends itself to more creativity and that's really where we're at at Dynamo and where a lot of our members are as well. We have a ton of members that we work very closely with their marketing teams and we've seen them really expand over the last few years and it's been so exciting to watch. I talked a little bit about the interest in sustainability that's been going on on a broader spectrum, especially with the broader interest in sustainability.
00:32:49
Speaker
You know,
Operational Challenges in Expansion
00:32:50
Speaker
we have a ton of members and thinking of some specifically in the EV space that are expanding like crazy right now. And, you know, it makes my job exciting because we get to promote the cool stuff they're doing, the cool marketing efforts they have. And, you know, it gives us ideas for how to diversify our content as well.
00:33:06
Speaker
As we're growing as a company, the challenge of what this means to our operations is not unlike what happens for other companies that are in growth stage, right? As you're growing, what does this mean for your team and how do you meet the challenges of that growth? I think what we have in our company is a really great, and I'm going to use this word tentatively, but a divide.
00:33:28
Speaker
And it's a skill set division where we've got people who are really good with operations and process and then others that are really good in that like external, how do we engage with the market and community.
00:33:40
Speaker
But there's a combination where a lot of our team, we have, like most companies, we have roles that help with the external or help with the internal and operations. But we get along really well. And I think that's largely due to, I'm an engineer. I really am. I'm an engineer by training. So I think in terms of operations and process.
00:34:01
Speaker
We have grown, we've seen that the role that had been done like where the person that was doing like was wearing four hats is now wearing two good hats. Those roles still exist, but now it's with more people. So I think what, Caroline, you were talking about with some of those challenges that we have, not just for marketing, but from digital ops and how we're thinking about it in terms of our membership and processes is how we are looking at our internal operations and
00:34:27
Speaker
how we work in order to efficiently optimize how we engage and service our members and our clients and partners that we have. So I think that the way that we are thinking about the challenges of the market itself, the challenges that our members have, and of course the challenges of just growth in general, we're constantly reevaluating from a marketing perspective
00:34:53
Speaker
How is our message meeting the market? How are our services helping our members? How are our internal operations meeting the needs of our growth? So I love that we are a team built upon people who want to see success and actually really enjoy working with each other. We're kind of joking before about how Caroline's like the mom with the video camera and like cheering everybody on. I'm not gonna say it's like,
00:35:20
Speaker
It's not utopia every day at work, but when we have challenges as a team, we see those as emblematic of what other companies are going through, especially in growth stages. And it's actually quite a privilege to be able to think about the things that we're doing that will help to enable our members to work together better. So I love the fact that we're
00:35:42
Speaker
diving straight into much more of what digital operations means to marketing in an industry that is changing rapidly. It's never dull.
00:35:56
Speaker
With that in mind, where do you see the future of clean tech? For me, what I see is that this is never going away. We're never going to get away from the importance of leading on having clean air, clean water, clean food, clean energy, clean resources.
00:36:16
Speaker
So I think that that is going to be very impactful going forward. I believe that as we have, so that's not going away. Another, another trend that I see going forward is like I mentioned before, a much better informed consumer.
00:36:31
Speaker
workforce of why these issues are so important and how they can contribute to that. So I think that that's something that I see as going forward and that the need for collaboration in real time with real trusted networks will also never go away as well. So that's why I think that what we're building here at Dyno is so fundamentally important to
00:36:59
Speaker
seeing effective change happen in a in a in a not just a smart and fast way, but also practical like you can't collaborate alone. You can't innovate alone. You need to be able to have those those people to bouncing ideas off of so as I stick on even
00:37:14
Speaker
talking earlier about even our own team, those different types of skill sets or perspectives are what make a well-rounded team to meet the challenges of a fast-moving market. Carolyn, for the end, can you share where people can find Dynamo Energy Club online, on socials, everywhere, see what you're doing?
Where to Connect with Dynamo Energy Hub
00:37:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:35
Speaker
Absolutely. So we are on LinkedIn. We are on YouTube with our spotlight on series. We're also on Instagram. And then obviously, DynamoEnergyHub.com has our full events list, as well as, you know, more information about what we have coming up. So please find us. And you can also, everybody's got one, Kristin's name, so LinkedIn message us. Like we said, we love seeing the engagement on the social site.
00:38:00
Speaker
Yeah, and our monthly newsletter is a great resource. So if you go to our website and you want to sign up for our newsletter, that's a great way to get at a snapshot only once a month, a great little synopsis of
00:38:16
Speaker
what just happened, what's going on in the market, and what's coming up for kind of the following month. Well, I'm definitely going to subscribe and we are going to link all the links that you've just mentioned in the description of this video. So ladies, thank you once again for being my guest on the Granny Prospective podcast. Thank you so much. Our pleasure doing it. Thank you so much. Take care.
00:38:44
Speaker
This marks the end of our first expert talk, Conversations, and I really hope you learned a lot from Sustainability Superstar, Christine Rovado, Co-Founder and President of Dynamo Energy Hut, and Carolyn Banfield, Director of Marketing and Digital Operations. Our next episode of this source will be available on our channel in the next two months, and until then,
00:39:06
Speaker
We'll continue with recording and publishing our regular formats, which is presenting innovative technologies and new clean tech companies. New and old. Well, not just new. Our podcast is proudly sponsored by New Perspective, a digital marketing agency based in Boston. If you want to learn more about our sponsor, please check out the info in the description below. See you next time. Until then, stay curious and learn more about screen tech. Bye.