I was able to carve out some time Thursday to attend the Stanford University d.school's "Creating Infectious Engagement" event on campus.
The first presenter to inform us how he (they were all male, fwiw) leveraged infectious engagement was Nate Taylor, Executive Director of Lights Out San Francisco (info@lightsoutsf.org). Taylor gave a short talk about how he went from idea to event in just six months by focusing on a single, simple idea and allowed people's enthusiasm to power it to come to pass.
The genesis of the Lights Out San Francisco project was that Taylor left his job as Director of PR for Google to in search of "his next big thing." While on travel in Sydney, Australia, he was dining in a restaurant when suddenly the lights went out. All the staff were very calm and collected and produced candles for folks to dine by and carried on almost as usual. Why? Turns out it was the Lights out Sydney event, an event designed to help Australians be more aware of their energy consumption overall and at a singly moment (an hour), cut down on power use tremendously.
Intrigued, Taylor started researching and found out that Lights out Sydney included 2 million people participating and there was actually a 10% energy savings over typical Saturday night in Sydney.
Taylor knew he wanted to make the same thing happen in San Francisco, but how? His game plan:
He identified an organizing principle
- Give folks one simple action to fight climate change
- Give them something tangible they can do to make a difference
- Connect them to communities around them
What the LoSF organizers did:
- created a community based group
- assembled a steering committee to guide the work
- set a specific time and date - turn off lights in SF for one hour on 10/20/07 from 8-9pm
- set up as a Tides Center Project (acted as fiscal sponsor, thus allowing them to avoid having to create their own 501c3)
- create a website
Started simply: Google page creator
developed into a full site w/blog
Built a coalition (enlisted the restaurants, as they were critical to the original inspirational story
- Authored and passed City & Golden Gate Bridge resolutions
- Focused efforts on turning lights out on city landmarks
e.g. GG BRidge, Bay Bridge, City Hall, Alcatraz, Transamerica Pyramid, etc
- Adjusted campaign mid-stream - decided to give away 100K Compact Flourescent Lightbulbs
- changed call to action to "1 hour, 1 bulb"
- Add to Web presence with Facebook, My Space and campaign banners
- Had a volunteer field campaign - feet on the street.
- Did fundraising, getting small amounts of money from lots of sources. They went to a series of companies to get money (not just one), with blessing of environmental groups (who informed them who to avoid getting money from because they were "tainted" sources)
- Had a big event with music, etc
Once the event was announced, people called from all over to say "we want to do it, too" and Taylor convinced them to not do it with the SF event on 10/20, wait for Lights Out America on March 29. (Picked 3/29 because Australia had picked the date as a follow up)
Still, they made tools for these other cities to use that could replicate, were scalable and assisted the organizing
In hindsight: what worked?
- press works if you can giet it, crafting the story/vision is key
- volunteer outreach
- CFLs handing them out, it was like gifting the city in the weeks before the event as a PR campaign
- Focusing efforts on landmarks, not on EVERY house in SF
- Hosting a central event for folks to rally at
- Creating an authentic community-based effort and $ from many sources
- Making web tools replicable
- Handing off to the WWF the responsibility of doing the follow-up March 29 event which WWF branded as its own (Taylor and team created the playbook and handed the entire campaign to WWF, did not wind up working for them -- but WWF built off the momentum created at the SF event)
What didn't work?
- posters, printed materials (cost a lot to develop and only used 25% of it)
- partnerships with the larger institutions
- Big Associations (leant name only, no energy toward the cause)
- Environmental groups (they weren't into the project as Taylor and co were working with PGE, so the enviro groups actually protested LoSF!
- Percentage goals - according to PGE, they saved no energy (the PGE machine was not sensitive enough to measure small amounts of savings)
Bottom line: Taylor feels they didn't go far enough
What's next? (Chapter 2) More than Just One Hour ... make lasting change
Chapter 2: The Facts
- lights and appliances are on in buildings in downtown SF at night, all night
- just the tall commercial buildings in SF use ~ 100 megawatts between 8pm and 8am and that's enough to power ~100,000 homes
- there are 350K homes in SF
- How do we reduce the power consumption at night when very few people are working?!
d.school asked him to tell us "what is infections action?"
1. zero in on one simple idea
2. connect with real people on the ground (relentlessly and enthusiastically
3. don't over-design from the start
4. keep the focus as local and specific as possible for as long as possible
5. be honest, humble and open
Remember: "Good Things Happen in the Dark"
interested in helping Nate with his chapter 2 work? send him an email at info@lightsoutsf.org
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