Generating blueEnergy

Focus

Mathias Craig — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:15:27 -0700

Business wisdom tells us to focus – do one thing and do it extremely well. But this rests on the assumption that one is surrounded by a well-oiled business environment, where you can focus on your widget and integrate it into the already existing logisitcs, financial, human resource, and physical infrastructure landscape. However, in barren landscapes, where there are few if any partners available, one doesn’t have the luxury of merely focusing on one thing. Rather, one has to develop a holistic solution, an eco-system if you will, that is able to create sustainable solutions. This is not a violation of the focus mantra, but it does have implications, namely that you can’t do eco-system, holistic solutions for everyone. You have to focus somewhere and if you have a broad product/service offering, then you have to be focused in your customer/beneficiary base.

We have learned in our 4 years of operations in Nicaragua that we need to be far more selective of our early customers to help ensure early success that we can build on. The Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua where we operate is rugged, multi-lingual and multi-cultural. Each community has its own characteristics and world visions, and they differ dramatically. There is no “one-size-fits-all” solution out here. More then ever now I can see the need for us to focus on one or maybe two subsets of this population in the beginning so that we can learn about their needs in depth and mature our service offering. With a strong success story there, we can then move on to other customers.

Contrast

Mathias Craig — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 01:59:14 -0700

The creators of the GSBI are true visionaries that have put a structure to their vision. It is a maturing structure with growing pains, but that makes it that much more credible in my eyes and I suspect, the eyes of the other social entrepreneurs attending.

Jim Koch, co-founder of the GSBI program, laid out his case in the welcome BBQ when he said, (paraphrasing), "The challenges faced by the world are growing at a faster rate than our innovate solutions are growing to resolve them." With this he laid out his case for the need to scale our social ventures. While there is much discussion around the virtue and risk of scaling social enterprises, what I think is non-controversial is that for most social organizations there is a huge gap between the impact they have today and the impact they could have if they had a strategic plan and growth capital. For this reason the GSBI's focus is on helping each attendee develop a workable business model and a plan for attracting growth capital.

On day 11 of the program, we presented our business plans to 200 people, including venture capitalists, silicon valley executives, academics, interested citizens. Watching my 15 colleagues I was amazed at the quality of the visions and presentations, as was the audience. Such an environment of enthusiasm, awe, hope.

The following day, on our way to the closing ceremony dinner we walked by the new library and saw flowers piled up near the entrance. We were told that a young student had jumped to his death just after we walked by that exact spot the day before, chatting and laughing, all feeling so relieved that our presentations had gone well.

We stood there for a minute in shock. The contrast was night and day... hope and despair. My mind instantly flashed to a couple years back when my cousin lept out of this world, causing so much pain to our family. At the core of the GSBI and Santa Clara University and the Jesuit ethos is empathy and at that moment I truly felt empathy for the young student's family. The contrast was stark... night and day... hope and despair.

I reflected that this young student's personal despair was a microcosm of the world's despair. And here we were, an enthusiastic bunch tackling the world's pain, an island of hope in a turbulent sea.

As Jim put it, the problems - the source of the despair - are growing faster than our solutions. But what I've always known and what was reinforced after the last 2 weeks, is that this doesn't have to be so. We can create a more equitable, just world. In fact, we have to. And I'm not talking about a pie in the sky, "everything is rosy and easy and the world is perfect" vision... I'm talking about hard work - very hard work. Sacrifice. Grinding it out, but always with a smile on your face because you know this is the only way forward and because you feel that the greater good is something worth struggling for.

Through immense difficulties, we continue on and struggle to build the better world we all want to live in.

Education section of my resume should now read:

Undergrad - Berkeley

Graduate - MIT

School of Life - Santa Clara University

Back to school

Mathias Craig — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:13:20 -0700

I was fortunate to be given a scholarship to attend Santa Clara University's Global Social Benefit Incubator program (GSBI). Every participant is tackling a major social issue such as clean water delivery, health care, education, and energy services. It's an intensive, two-week business training program that takes 20 social entrepreneurs from around the world and helps then scale up their vision. Everyone comes in with passion and the GSBI helps them refine their vision and develop a strategic plan to achieve their objective given real world constraints.

Joining me in the class of 2008 are entrepreneurs from the Philippines, Nepal, India, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Haiti, and Vanuatu. It's an amazing group and it's an honor to be among them.

Each of us is facing a seriously daunting task and each of us is at a point where we need some retooling to take our organizations to the next level. I am really excited to be here and look forward to the next two weeks of intensive learning and sharing.

Not for the weak

Mathias Craig — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:17:17 -0700

Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra

I love this picture. I've got it sitting up above my desk. I love it because it illustrates the drudgery of the fight going on behind the scenes in any revolution. All the talk, all the media, all the flair is one thing, a necessary component, but the real fight is won in the trenches, painstaking foot by painstaking foot. It's not the flashy picture of Che and his hat - the one worn by people around the world who have no concept of what it all stands for; it's an ordinary picture of a long hike up the mountain in the dense jungle. You can tell the pack is heavy and the trail is steep.

My thinking isn't about military revolutions - it's about revolutions of the mind and of habits. Whatever you think of Fidel's Cuban revolution and of him as a person, I think you need to grant that he has dedicated himself fully to his cause, led by example, and worked for a vision where the public's welfare is prioritized over corporate and individual profits. You can argue about the success of his endeavor, but that's for another discussion.

My point is simply that leading a social venture that is trying to change fundamental behaviors and/or work on the fringe of society is leading a revolution of your own. There are no shortcuts; it's a long, steep climb, but one that ultimately has the potential to improve people's lives in a fundamental way.

As I read through other blogs on the Social Edge, I can see a clear theme - all the young start up social ventures are in the fight of their lives. Growing pains some call it. The difficulty of getting the back office support established (accounting, HR, etc) seems to catch most of us by surprise. I knew it would be hard for us, but had no idea how hard. Thanks to our new super-volunteer in San Francisco, Alex Pederson, we've made tremendous strides in the past month and I'm looking forward to returning to program work soon with a new perspective and new powerful tools to help us in our struggle.

Someday I'd like to get back to wind power

Mathias Craig — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:51:05 -0700

I knew building blueEnergy was going to be challenging but I had no idea it was going to be this hard. Nearly all entrepreneurs end up saying that at some point. It's a situation where ignorance is a powerful tool, because if everyone knew how hard creating new things was, most wouldn't do it.

Truth is blueEnergy is as complicated as many huge multinationals, just without the financial and human resources to match. We are a nonprofit, public charity organization (think tight IRS controls) that works in three languages and more than three currencies, and does manufacturing (think accounting - Inventory, Works in Process, Finished Goods, COGS, etc...) in a poor, chaotic developing country. Any one of these dimensions on its own is no problem. There are books, experts and resources that can guide you in how to run a nonprofit, public charity, for example. There are books, experts and resources that can guide you in how to set up a manufacturing operation (think both physical setup as well as accounting). But try to find someone or a great book on multi-national, multi-currency, nonprofit, manufacturing and you will come up empty handed. At least I have.

blueEnergy has to innovate in this space because it's no mans land. It's both a tremendous opportunity and a bit scary at times. We're still very much developing internal capacity to meet all of our needs and this effort will likely continue for some time. Hopefully, once the organization can stand on it's two feet, I can get back to building wind turbines - that was the dream after all.

The elusive quest for growth (funding)

Mathias Craig — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:38:49 -0700

There is a growing consensus that nonprofit organizations and the funding sector don't see eye to eye. Funders almost always want their money allocated to specific expenses and they want all the details up front when an application is submitted. They also tend to favor program expenses, which is a natural - they want to be able to turn around and report the highest "impact" per dollar invested to their board of directors of their funders further up the money stream. In order to prevent fraud and maximize perceived efficiency, they cap overhead and contingency expenses at a minimal level and demand detailed reporting on program expenses. Again, all this is done up front, when an application is submitted, long before program work is actually executed.

But what happens in reality? Real life is unpredictable. Sure, educated guesses about pricing can be made, but price fluctuations, natural disasters, and unforeseen opportunities can't be predicted. In a place like the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, you're on the fringe... very little is certain and you need flexibility and agility to take advantage of opportunities as they arise as well as dodge bullets when they arise. Planning all expenditures a year in advance is totally out of sync with the reality on the ground.

On top of this there is no infrastructure on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. That's why were there. It's a bit of a catch-22 in the sense that it's hard to do development work where there is little development. Everything has to be built from scratch, including office spaces. Creating accommodations so that work can be done is a full-time job. In Bluefields you don't find, you build. You don't rent a nice office space, you create it. You don't hire your workforce, you have to create it. All this entails costs that funders seem loathe to cover, but without these investments, none of the high-profile program work can be done.

If you're a funder and you take a long hard look at blueEnergy and you like what you see, please trust that we are in the best position to make resource allocation decisions. If we have money budgeted for pencils and we realize in the heat of the moment that what we actually need is more paper, please don't nail us down. Take a step back, ask yourself if our actions are indeed in the best interest of achieving our mission, and give us the some freedom to be flexible. We'll end up being more efficient and effective, which at the end of the day, is what we all want.

Who is this guy? Agent 007.2?

Mathias Craig — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:29:33 -0700

I've written a lot about my brother Guillaume Craig, Director of blueEnergy Nicaragua, especially about his "get it done" attitude. He's a self described closer, meaning he's the guy that takes ideas and puts then into practice... gets you from A to Z. On the other side of the equation is our very own Agent 007, Lâl Marandin. He's an opener, someone who loves to network and can get a foot in the door where it doesn't seem possible. Lâl and I were supposed to launch blueEnergy Nicaragua together back in 2004, but I got sick and couldn't travel for 6 months. I offered him the option to cancel, but he went ahead. He arrived with a couple thousand dollars we had raised and not much else... we had no house, no office, no shop, no partnerships, no tools. In his 7 months on the ground he jump-started blueEnergy and gave it a heartbeat. When he returned to France, Guillaume took over the Nicaraguan operation and focused on infrastructure and team building - you'd be shocked to see what he's done in that time. Back in France, Lâl, along with other family and friends, launched blueEnergy France. Despite having another full-time job with the French Government, he's stayed incredibly involved. We're exited that he'll be rejoining the team full-time for 2 years starting in June 2009!

Lâl's been on a blueEnergy media blitz lately, doing his 007.2 stuff that he does so well. Here a few pictures from the past month:

Lâl and President Gorbachev at the Energy Globe 2007 Awards in May 2008.

President Gorbachev reading about blueEnergy at the Energy Globe Awards.

Lâl and associate Matthieu Poulet accept the Energy Globe Award on behalf of blueEnergy from Mrs. Maneka Gandhi (Former Minister of the Environment, India).

Lâl and Mr. Pöttering (President of European Parliament) at the Energy Globe Awards in the European Parliament building in Brussels.

Lâl Marandin and Yann Arthus Bertrand (famed photographer of "Earth From the Air") at the launching of the Chirac Foundation. Lâl attended the event with Colette Grinevald, blueEnergy Board Member and keynote speaker at the event.

Lâl Marandin, Colette Grinevald (of linguistic fame) and President Jacques Chirac of France discussing blueEnergy.

Lâl discussing blueEnergy with Mr. Samassekou (Former Minister of Education of Mali).

Lâl discussing blueEnergy with President Chissano of Mozambique.

... the bitter [followup to "An incredible trip... the sweet"]

Mathias Craig — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

During my trip the price of petroleum surpassed $5 a gallon and nearly everyone in the transport sector took to the streets to demand government price controls. With a transport strike in place, we were nearly paralyzed in Bluefields. blueEnergy doesn't own its own vehicles, rather it relies on its partner, the National Technical Institute (INATEC), for transportation services. blueEnergy typically has access to the Institute's Land Rover but as happens on a regular basis, the vehicle was in the capital city for repairs since no one is able to service the specialty vehicle in Bluefields. This, combined with the extreme pressure on the remaining vehicle due to the strike (as well as the death of the chauffeur's father), left us high and dry at a time we had over 40 people to move around, materials to purchase, community trips to make (think, getting materials from shop/house/office to docks and back), etc.

Amidst this logistical confusion and difficultly, the real bad news came in - Neuman Puchie, leader of the community of Set Net, blueEnergy champion and person friend to us all, died unexpectedly while on a trip to the capital city of Managua. Just one week before, Puchie had captained a boat full of blueEnergy staff to the Pearly Keys to celebrate the successful water purification workshop. Puchie was the reason blueEnergy ever came to know the community of Set Net. He was often the captain that brought us there, the first to help unload the boat, the one to house the blueEnergy teams, and the first up in the morning making everyone coffee. He had a hand in every step of the blueEnergy project in Set Net and was the community champion.

The entire blueEnergy team was in shock at the news of his passing. Most painful was the uncertainty over the cause of death and the prospect that it may not have been natural causes. Nicaragua is a land where facts and information are far and few between, and the pain this causes in times of crisis can be immense, especially to the family. I was so upset I just went to bed early, something I rarely do. What is certain is that Puchie will be sorely missed and the community of Set Net now has a mountain to climb to get back on its feet.

To add insult to injury, on my last day in the capital, the car I was in was pelted with water balloons by transport strikers as we sped along the highway near the airport. As I was talking to our driver, I caught one right in the face. I was lucky all I got was a sharp scare and a soar jaw... others had been attacked with rocks and oil. When you're helping people, you always hope they'll be appreciative, but the world is complex and there's often a monkey wrench that enters the equation. Often times its nothing personal.

blueEnergy's strength is its persistence through the good and bad times and this trip was surely a testament to that.

An incredible trip... the sweet

Mathias Craig — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The trip had many objectives above and beyond the usual human resource, project evaluation, site visits and planning ones that my trips are normally made up of.

I had no more then stepped off the plane in Bluefields when I was met by a blueEnergy team and introduced to Andrea Roach, technical trainer for Canadian... (CAWST). Under the leadership of blueEnergy volunteer Bruno Borgarino, we had partnered with CAWST to come to Bluefields to give a technical workshop on bio-sand water filtering systems. blueEnergy is launching a pilot project to build and install these filters in the homes of its local technicians to study the effectiveness and appropriateness of the technology for the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. The workshop had taken place the week before and was a great success. It culminated with a visit to our shop by the United Nations’ top representative in Nicaragua, Don Alfredo Missair, who lauded blueEnergy’s pioneering work on the Coast.

Upon dropping my bags off at our house, I was put to work assembling shelving in my brother Guillaume’s new house. While still under heavy construction, the house was serving as overflow space due to the extraordinary number of people on site at that time. That is still the blueEnergy culture – you want a bed to sleep in or a shelf to put your clothes on, well start building it. Doesn’t matter if you’re a volunteer, a visitor or the executive director.

The visit was a historic moment because it represented the first time that Colette Grinevald, mother to Guillaume and I and known as the “mother of blueEnergy” as well as the three co-founders (Lâl, Guillaume and myself) were all in Nicaragua at the same time. We took took full advantage of this opportunity to discuss the bigger issues of strategy and vision, particularly as it relates to our international structure and plans for expansion. At the same time Colette continued with her 25 year project of documenting and revitalizing the Rama Language by teaching classes on the Rama language at the URACCAN university as well as hosting other Rama culture events. It was an incredible mix of the history that brought us to Nicaragua and where we stand today.

The visit was also historic because during it blueEnergy hosted its first complete, official community energy system operator training workshop. blueEnergy, under the leadership of volunteer Marie Roussel, brought to Bluefields 12 community operators from the 4 communities blueEnergy is currently active in to learn more about operation and maintenance of the blueEnergy energy system. The workshop was a week long, was taught by volunteer and local staff, and featured blueEnergy’s first complete operator training manual.

Amidst all this, there was a French film crew in Nicaragua to film a documentary on blueEnergy. This will be turned into a full-feature documentary film sometime in the coming year... stay tuned!

Doing it right is far more important then what you do

Mathias Craig — Mon, 26 May 2008 05:40:03 -0700

The life-cycle cost of energy systems is far more sensitive to quality of implementation then the specific technology you use, within reason of course. So much implementation in the world is so incredibly poorly done, that you can rise above the crowd and be competitive just by doing what you do well, whatever it is you do.

Many people focus on the technology implemented to calculate cost. They show you a table that says coal energy costs $X/kWh, hydro energy costs $Y/kWh, wind energy costs $Z/kWh... but what they don't show you is the 10 pages of assumptions that go into the calculation.

A professor of mine at Berkeley once told me of cost models - "remember Mathias, crap in, crap out". It's important to create cost models, but it's also important to remember that they are just models, not crystal balls. They are tools used to create policy, rather than a reflection of necessary truth.

Within those 10 pages of unread assumptions lies the key one - that the project is conceived of and executed well. You take that assumption out and the whole house of cards come crumbling down. Everyone has to play the "cost game" and brag that their solution is the cheapest option, but remember to take it all with a grain of salt as these cost models are a rather precarious breed.

Betz's Law

Mathias Craig — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:25:03 -0800

One of my jobs is to set the guidelines and tone for how much we bog people down with documenting and reporting verses letting them immerse themselves fully in the experience of the moment. Left to their own vices people gravitate towards the latter. But from an organizational perspective, that is like letting 100% of the wind flow through your wind turbine without extracting any of its energy, which of course doesn't make any sense. The organization needs to do work and it needs to tap into the wind to drive its generator.

If the wind is individuals' experience and knowledge, then we must develop a documenting and reporting system to extract as much as we can - but we must also accept that, like with Betz's limit, we can't capture all of it.

If we try to capture too much we stifle individuals' abilities to experience their experiences and even make them forgo some experiences all together. So even if their reporting improves, the content they're reporting on becomes less rich. I realize now that as a "data guy", I was living with the assumption that we should be collecting as much data as possible. Now I can see that the upper limit of the value of information - itself a function of both quality and quantity - that can be captured by a a reporting system is much less than 100%. The key is extracting just the right amount such that the blades and generator spin but the wind moves through unimpeded.

An ode to the iceberg

Mathias Craig — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:32:36 -0800

blueEnergy is just now breaking the surface and as we do, more and more people are finding us to tell us what we should be doing. Sometimes they're right but most of the time they're either telling us we should have done something more or should be doing something more now. There's no doubt we need good advice and help, especially going forward. But we also know where we've come from and what it took to get to where we are now.

We see below the water's surface for our particular situation. People who are now seeing blueEnergy for the first time and think we could have or should be doing more don't understand what it takes to get anything done in the environment we work in. It takes a significant physical, human and organization infrastructure to lift a noticeable chunk of iceberg out of the water. And by significant infrastructure I don't mean bloated overhead - I just mean a highly effective body of knowledge, experience, motivation, procedures, facilities and equipment. And in the environment blueEnergy has chosen to work in, it's a struggle for everything including every inch of infrastructure.

I know in my heart that we have done and are doing all we can with the resources we have. We will continue to improve our efficiency and as we attract more resources and get them to gel with our existing ones we will be able to do more. One thing's for certain, this whole blueEnergy experience has sensitized me to the challenges faced by other organizations just breaking the surface. I look at them now with a sense of awe and admiration and am very careful with my words when offering suggestions.

There's something better than innovation...

Mathias Craig — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:37:37 -0800

Innovation is a wonderful thing. There are always ways to improve the way we build and do things, there's no debate about that. But does the world really need a new type of water filter or does it need people to execute the myriad of good solutions already out there? After all, people need clean water, they don't need innovative water purification technology. Similarly they need energy service to light up their homes and store their medicines, they don't need a flashy new wind turbine design.

Certainly the technology and models used have to be workable... but the chasm between workable and working is large - and people gettin' 'er done is what lies in between.

There are so many workable solutions out there just waiting for motivated, dedicated people with the follow-through to actually execute them. Having great ideas to help people is one thing but actually going out and dealing with the daily grind, the disappointments and the failures and somehow driving dreams into reality, a reality that actually helps people - that's hard. blueEnergy's director in NIcaragua (also my brother), Guillaume Craig, is a master doer. I'm constantly amazed at his ability to turn ideas into reality and the last 3 weeks has been no exception. Everyone within blueEnergy, myself included, and many outside of blueEnergy have a lot to learn from him.

Am I the first person to reflect on the chasm between ideas and action - of course not - so I'm going to stop and get back to work. After all, gettin' 'er done is blueEnergy's true innovation :)

Otherpower in another world, Part 3

Mathias Craig — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:28:41 -0800

This past week was incredible. I haven't had so much fun on the job in a while. I started blueEnergy because I wanted to build wind turbines, but of course my responsibilities require me to be behind a desk most of the time. I'm not complaining at all - I still love what I get to do - but this week was special for me as I got to be in the shop each and every day.

Here's a group shot of the team that got 'er done!

Throughout the week we focused on a modification of our existing design along with two new designs. Our main goal was to create and study several options for a more robust small wind turbine, then make some decisions on which design to hone in on moving forward. We succeeded in building all three models we had aimed to and ran a considerable number of tests. We're still busy compiling the results and will be making some final decisions in the next couple weeks on which model we adopt for our next round of production.

We were honored to have the Otherpower.com crew with us on the ground in Nicaragua and to have the remote advising of Hugh Piggott. For Otherpower.com I think this trip was truly eye-opening and their practical knowledge represented a treasure trove for our local employees and volunteers. We're out to make Bluefields the capital of small-scale wind power in Central America and the events of this past week certainly strengthened our case.

Otherpower in another world, Part 2

Mathias Craig — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:28:08 -0800

There's a lot of talk globally about the need to design for low cost for poor beneficiaries. The logic is simple - poor people don't have a lot of money so you need to design low cost products for them to meet their needs on their budget. Without access to capital it's true that poor people can't afford things with a high price tag. Without access to capital they buy the cheapest goods on the market. What many people seem to not understand though, is that these people pay a high cost using the most logical metric of $ per unit service delivered because cheap products are made from cheap parts and fail early. Assuming one can develop innovative financing mechanisms (my friend Matt over at Kiva.org is working on that), then the poor are no longer constrained to pay the high cost of low price.

A lot of people out there are trying to design a cheap wind turbine to meet the needs of the rural poor. Their number one priority is a low purchase price, which means a small machine, a small tower, and cheap parts. To my mind this doesn't make any sense in the remote, developing world context. When transportation is difficult, the environment is harsh (heat, humidity, and salinity), capacity levels are low, most of your system life-cycle cost is not in the energy system itself, but rather in the pre-installation, operation and servicing of the system over it's useful life. Going through all that trouble to put in a tiny machine that requires the same number of trips, same amount of training, and same amount of community relations, but puts out a lot less energy, seems wasteful to me. And shortchanging on quality materials to achieve a low price tag only comes back to haunt you when the harsh environment takes its toll.

In order to guide our thinking for this week of design, I've had to clarify that our #1 core technical priority is durability. It's the old "Penny wise pound foolish" adage - that to save a dollar in construction but incur a $500 penalty in maintenance is foolish. Investing a little more money up front to create a durable turbine with good energy output means more total energy service delivery, and therefore a low life-cycle cost. Of course there are limits - I'm not saying "spare no expense" - it's just that there are so many improvements that can be had for small amounts of money that it doesn't make sense to pass them up for fear of not being the cheapest turbine on the market.

For the record, priority #2 is some energy production in low wind speeds and priority #3 is ease of manufacture, assembly, and operation.

If you want to read about the Otherpower team's experience with blueEnergy, from there perspective, check these out:

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2008/2/22/23528/6318

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2008/2/25/195437/758