Special
Feature
IDEA’s Forums: Your
‘meetup’ opportunity
Have a question about packing
valves? Or maybe one about
system commissioning? Or
about using woodchips or even tires as
a fuel source? Then IDEA’s forums may
be for you.
Forums have played a vital role in
information exchange among IDEA’s
members and are one of the most-cited
benefits of IDEA membership. They serve
as interest groups for IDEA members and
are intended to help members solve
technical or business problems, to share
innovations or technology applications
and to network more efficiently.
Forums provide a venue – one-on-one
and online – for members with common
interests to interact with peers and share
information and technical advice through
meetings, conferences and on-line interactions.
All forums are open to all IDEA
members – participate in one or
more, if you wish.
Forum members meet at least once
a year at the annual conference in
June. The Campus Forum meets at
the Campus Energy Conference.
Forums play an active role in organizing special conferences and workshops.
NEW! Forums are now accessible
online using Google TM Groups. All members need to do is create an account and
join the online forum to participate! (The
previous online forums have been discontinued.) You may sign up for as many
online forums as you wish – and you can
opt out at any time.
After registering as an online forum
member, you can post and respond to
posted items. To elicit timely responses,
you can click on the option to send an
automatic email to all or a selection of
your forum colleagues announcing that
you have made a post. Recipients can then
access your post with a mouse click and
respond immediately.
Detailed information on how to use
these new IDEA Forum Google Groups is
available at www.districtenergy.org/
GoogleHow ToInstructions.pdf. FAQs are
at www.districtenergy.org/Google/
Forum_FAQ.htm. Or feel free to contact
Len Phillips at IDEA (508) 366-9339, ext.
104, or len.idea@districtenergy.org.
IDEA staff recently realigned and
consolidated the forums to make them
even more relevant to the issues facing
our industry today. Check out table 1
for a list of the forums, their co-chairs
and the types of topics that may be covered in each forum for 2008-2010.
Forums offer something for everyone. We encourage you to leverage the
convenience and power of the new
Google Group-based IDEA forums to
reach your IDEA peers.
Table 1. IDEA Forum and Google Group Structure 2008-2010,
Current IDEA Forums
Business Development
Groups
Campus Energy
Co-chairs
Cliff Braddock, Austin Energy;
Steve Kutska, Xcel Energy
Typical Topics
of Interest
Acquisitions
Commissioning
Customer contracts
Customer service
Government agencies
Industry data
Industry promotion & education
LEED and green buildings
Legislative and policy
Life-cycle costing
Marketing and promotion
Membership
Personnel training & retention
Rate design
Strategic selling and
marketing skills
Ted Borer, Princeton University;
Aurel Selezeanu, Duke
University
Carbon inventories
Electrical system design &
management for reliability,
efficiency and load flexibility
Financing
Master planning
NFPA 70 E Standard for
Electrical Safety in the
Workplace
Personnel training & retention
Sustainability energy options
and benefits
