This site offers the opportunity for anyone to nurture a community here. In a time before Facebook had invented Facebook Groups, I read Digital Habitats by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D Smith. Little did I know that Wenger had been writing about communities of practice for years and after many years of writing about how groups of people learn together. Digital Habitats highlights how people work together online, and even though the technology options have grown enormously, the basic orientations remain:
- Open ended conversations
- Meetings
- Projects
- Access to expertise
- Content
- Relationships
- Context
- Cultivation
- Individual participation
Three rhythms occur in group work:
- synchronous vs asynchronous communications - eg meetings vs emails
- participation vs reification - the idea that you spend time listening, talking, reading but also the necessary creative time to 'reify' eg produce work, reflect and deepen understanding etc.
- individual vs group identities
In the field of energy efficiency, I have wanted to support ordinary people to learn and help each other for many years. I have worked alongside energy efficiency advisory services in Government and I believe Governments are always too conservative about energy choices that people are willing to make. They don't want to recommend private providers, they won't support DIY efforts and they can't judge how important sustainability is to individuals, so they opt for economic criteria to justify choices instead.
What would it look like if people supported each other instead? My Electric Efficient Home facebook group gives us a taste of the answer. A large community. Answers to any question you can ask. Not always well informed answers, but a variety to choose from. For someone new to the group, you can dip in, do research on energy issues you might need to know only once in your life and get important questions answered. A generous community of energy advisors help with answers in the group and probably get sick of answering the same questions when newcomers repeat them. This site is offered as a self-organising space that can support longer lasting resources and allow the energy advisers to learn together.

The world is awash with discussions of communities of practice. People like Adrian Segar and Harold Jarche focus on the support for learning. Sites like this one focus equally on the support and shared purpose that people build together. I believe we can't transition our social practices, our energy system and other fundamentals like transport and food unless we have strong support for keeping up with the pace of change. Support for learning is all part of that. It's also empowering to learn and understand more, so meets a foundation principle of the Coalition for Community Energy.
So what could a community of practice for energy efficiency advisers do?

This is the key question I would like us to explore in the comments below or in the attached google doc - but first let me give us some ideas through the lens of the people I have reached out to:
- Energy coaching and the challenges of providing volunteer services:
- Enova Community, as the non-profit arm of Enova, offers free energy coaching to customers.
- Z-Net Uralla have also invested heavily in providing energy advice across their community.
- CORENA offer additional advice to community buildings, especially important because they want to be funding more than solar - energy efficiency, getting off gas and electric vehicles all need extra analysis.
- Resources we could all share for supporting new energy advisers
- Cal has started a supplier forum http://www.ephe.com.au/forum/
- CORENA continues to refine its solar requirements and discovering new pitfalls for customers in a very competitive market
- Resources for households
- James developed the following inspired by MEEH https://suburbanearthship.
wordpress.com/actions/ - I like using the Ecologic App for a reminder of all the places in a home (or small org) that uses energy, a breakdown of use and ideas for efficiency.
- James developed the following inspired by MEEH https://suburbanearthship.
- A policy voice:
- I chatted to Energy Consumers Australia who started this whole idea because I tweeted their article about Western Sydney and will try and develop some relationships with Vic, NSW and federal bureaucrats operating in this space.
- and general news - eg as the Victorian scorecard assessors legislation goes national and it might even be possible to make a living in energy advisory work.
Please offer your ideas in the comments below or directly in the google doc