I’m cross posting a blog post I posted this morning regarding a friend of mine’s quest to identify an individual within the DOE who can assist her launch her small wind venture.
A friend of mine here in Austin is launching a business that delivers small wind solutions to communities. It occurred to me as she was telling me about her business, that I know absolutely nothing about small wind, yet I do know about a little thing we’ve come to know in 2.0 circles as the “strength of weak ties.”
As she described her excitement (and frustration) with her new venture, I wondered if I could be any help to my friend. I asked her if there was one person or one piece of information that would help her move further toward her goals. She thought about it and said, “Yes!” She explained that there is a great deal of stimulus money being made available for wind projects and wind research, but she has found it difficult to cull through the various funding opportunities on the DOE website. She is hoping to find a person she can talk to who can help her find the right grant opportunities.
As a huge fan of GovLoop, the Sunlight Foundation, even the federal teams at Booz Allen Hamilton and CSC, in addition to all my social connections/friends I have in the D.C. area, I wondered if I could help my friend my posting an APB for this person she is seeking at the Department of Energy. My friend is very industrious and will go far with a name and phone number.
So… if you know anyone (or know someone who knows, etc.) the name of a person at the Dept. of Energy who can help my friend find grants to fund research and projects in the area of “small wind” (wind turbines that produce 100kw or less), please either comment here on my blog, send me an email or DM, or contact me in any way that makes sense.
Best case, we’ll find the right person for my friend. Further, I’m interested (as a 2.0-ologist) to see what happens when we harvest our social networks for expertise outside of our traditional competencies.
We were talking to Robby Robertson from Copernicus Energy yesterday. He is doing small business installations of renewables. We did talk about the small wind products. I’ll message you with his contact information.
Oh, one other thing. Grants.gov has a plethora of opportunities in renewable energy. Funds have been written into almost every major piece of legislation that has been passed in the last several months. Robby has been looking into that and what the cap and trade bill is going to do to energy costs from traditional producers.
Thanks so much Jana. I am going to ask my friend to join GovLoop… in the mean time, I will forward these comments.