July 01, 2014

New York Energy Week: The Surprising Things

By Peter Gardett

First principles are important. Rooting New York Energy Week in the priorities established by a community of volunteers, participants, sponsors and advisors paid off in the second iteration of the event series last month with panels of exceptional insight, unusually impactful networking and deserved attention for an industry that too often flies under the radar in the country's largest city.

The energy business has traditionally been a centralized affair, and large energy events have had their content dictated by central groups of organizers. But the business itself is going through a transition to a model of distribution generation, origination and engagement and New York Energy Week's highly unusual model of distributed leadership and its broad net for ideas is emblematic of that shift.

A distributed system can be hard to manage, but experience, systemization and clarity of purpose are remarkably effective in getting the benefits of a large organization without the cost of wasted time, effort and overhead. New York Energy Week's second year was an excellent example of how compelling ideas, clear communication and defined task sets can set free creativity in solving problems and ultimately result in events so reflective of multiple forms of expertise that they overshadow the outcome of traditional command-and-control management approaches.

Read the full piece at The Washington Post. 

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