Blog Post 7

Blog Post 7:  Prompt: up with a list of TEN takeaways / lessons learned / things to do differently in the presentation next time.

Team: Alyssa Milrod, Wesley Guarneri, Caitlyn Somma, Aidan Lynch, Josie Krepps, Spencer Loh

Date Submitted: 10/23/22

  1. Spend more time on the demo (>30 sec)
  2. Talk through the demo video or add audio to it. We did not do this last time, but now that we have more features, it will take more time and explanation to walk through our website.
  3. Speak louder and with more enthusiasm.
  4. Emphasize the financial value that our website brings to the university.
    1. ~$100,000 in savings yearly
  5. Label our slides with keywords from the rubric. Many referees did not catch that some of the rubric items were in our presentation script and not explicitly on the slide.
  6. Quantify the scope of our project in terms of the number of potential students reached. Spencer mentioned that we are going to work with classes like ENGR 010 and ECO 045, which both have >100 students each semester.
  7. Refer to our slides more during Q&A – we were a little nervous/disorganized/distracted and forgot to flip through them when we had relevant slides for a certain question.
  8. A key takeaway – lots of referees (plus Khanjan) often think that our website could influence how Facilities & Services supplies HVAC resources to different buildings. While we still need to explore if this is a potential application, it is unlikely. We need to explain the relationship we have with F&S more clearly – their department has given us access to the energy data, and our project would not exist without their help. It is unlikely that we would be able to use the same data they have to influence how they make decisions, but we still need to explore this.
  9. Clean up the diagram on our problem statement slide so that it matches the style of our coalition diagram and our timeline. Simple font, arrow style, and image quality changes would fix this.
  10. Emphasize that our behavior change model is based on an analysis of 10+ studies. Connecting credible papers about energy feedback to the design of our dashboard will create a more cohesive story.

Blog Post 6

Blog Post 6: Updated energy coalition

Team: Alyssa Milrod, Wesley Guarneri, Caitlyn Somma, Aidan Lynch, Josie Krepps, Spencer Loh

Date Submitted: 10/16/22

Other necessary partners

  • PPL – they serve these 29 counties; all colleges listed fall within the 29 counties
    • PPL supplies meters (~$100 consumer price, cheaper with manufacturer/bulk discount) for reporting energy data at each university – one in each building of interest (could be dorms or other buildings)
    • They already provide their customers with a ‘dashboard’ of sorts – could provide a dashboard for a FEW buildings

Messaging for a Successful Coalition

  • Reach out in one-on-one or other small settings with OOS directors of each school
  • Identify stakeholder interests and common goals:
    • saving money
    • reducing energy usage
    • signaling sustainability as a priority to the community
  • Develop programs specific to each school – does not necessarily have to be the implementation of a dashboard, but instead activities the school commits to that will result in reduced energy usage
    • Energy competition within a campus or between campuses
    • Professors using energy data as a sample in statistics, economics, and environmental science courses
  • Public outreach to the Lehigh Valley/Eastern Pennsylvania region via a social media campaign
    • utilize social media coordinators from each school