Monday August 25

7:45 – 8:30. Registration. Beverages and light snacks.

• 8:30 – 10:00. Opening Session. Introductions and flash interviews. Plus – the faculty will deliver four-minute previews of the upcoming sessions.

10:00 – 10:20. Break. Snacks and beverages.

• 10:20 – 11:30. Laying the Groundwork, a planning and brainstorming forum in which we lay the groundwork for the conference. We’ll begin to feed our industry knowledge into the Habitat X 2014 White Paper, focusing on market opportunities, suggestions for lowering barriers to implementation, and recommendations for strengthening the market for home performance and renewable energy services.
• 11:30 – 12:00. The New Visual Shortcuts, a video production project. Ben Cichowski will facilitate mini-sessions each day that produce content for the Summer National Video Project. You’ll get lots of highly relevant experience — Ben is a writer and co-host of WxTV.

Catered Lunch in the famous dining room at Chico Hot Springs.

• 1:00 – 2:30. Session A: Leadership Bootcamp 1,  a fast-track workshop with Amy Fazio and Chris Dorsi. We’ll do an analysis of successful people and organizations in the home performance industry and other sectors. We’ll draw from expertise in the room to create relevant templates and provide personal guidance. All conference participants will join this session and create a Leadership Development Plan that’ll support your study later in the week.
• 1:00 – 2:30. Session B: The Mind of the Homeowner: Selling Home Performance, with Gary Upton. We have seen a lot of industry discussion about the difficulty of selling home performance. But few organizations have gone to the effort of collecting direct and verifiable data about the mindset of the homeowner during this process. The folks at Decision Analyst have done so, and Gary will share the data.

2:30 – 2:50. Break. Snacks and beverages.

• 2:50 – 4:00. Session A: Leadership Bootcamp 2, an advanced workshop with Amy and Chris.  Participants may choose to join this refinement of the previous session. You’ll learn how to expand the influence and effectiveness of everyone in your organization by setting clear goals, being strategic about prioritization, and enacting key metrics to monitor progress. We promise: we will go away with relevant action steps for yourself and your organization.
• 2:50 – 4:00. Session B: Join the Wireless Revolution, a hands-on workshop with Habitat X faculty. This session will focus on the revolution in testing brought on by the advent of wireless tools. We’ll look over all the current equipment, pass it around, and show you how it’s used. And we’ll focus our expertise on the question, “How do we take advantage of these tools to improve our work, save time, and make more money?“. You may be surprised to learn how this equipment can be used in sales, training, program design, and quality control. You’ll get to handle lots of the new equipment. Includes a vision statement by Colin Genge and connections to remote test sites.
• 4:10 – 5:00. Interview with Larry Zarker. Larry has been involved in the business of home performance as long as any of us, and he has the stories to prove it. We hope that this candid interview will shed some light on how Larry has stayed focused, where he thinks he has done the most good, and where he believes we can each position ourselves and our organizations for success. Expect to hear an update on the emerging nexus of health and energy. With ample Q & A.
• 5:00 – 5:15. Wrap up and debrief.

5:30 – 7:00. Hosted reception in the Chico Gardens: Casual attire. Your families or guests are invited. Dinner on your own afterwards, with three options right at Chico Hot Springs.

Tuesday August 26

7:45 – 8:30. Informal networking. Beverages and light snacks.

• 8:30 – 10:00. Panel Discussion: The Home Performance Industry is Ready to Go. Where’s the Market? A moderated Industry Panel with Casey Murphy, Chandler von Schrader, Rick Blumenthal, Steve Malon, and others. We address a topic of critical importance to the home performance industry, asking a set of questions which are not new, but for which we have not yet seen realistic answers. These veterans will offer up insights to the policies and business practices that have, and have not, been successful in creating markets for sustainable housing. With ample Q & A. Re-broadcast to Habitat X Members.

10:00 – 10:20. Break. Snacks and beverages.

• 10:20 – 12:00. Session A: The Truth About Training, with J West and Brad Turner. This session, taking cues from J West’s recent article in Home Energy Magazine and Brad’s broad experience at Southface Institute, is designed to provide guidance for educators, administrators, and curriculum developers who want to tune up existing curricula.
• 10:20 – 12:00. Session B: Big Data = Big Solutions, an exploratory discussion with Colin Genge and Joe Medosch. These guys know more about the next generation of diagnostics than anyone in the country. A primary focus of this session: big data projects that do not have an intentional focus, or problem to solve, often have a high rate of failure.

Catered lunch in the dining room at Chico Hot Springs.

• 1:00 – 2:30. Session A: Speaker’s Boot Camp, a Toastmaster work-lab with Chris Dorsi. We’ll compress a lot of learning into this break-the-ice speech practice. Many participants in this course have said they should have taken a course like this twenty years earlier. You will start standing and delivering better than you had ever thought possible. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to gain constant improvement in your speaking skills.
• 1:00 – 2:30. Session B: Operational Excellence for Home Performance. A work lab with John Dendy. The premise: the greatest challenges of organizational leadership are not technical — the nuts-and-bolts stuff is easy compared to achieving operational excellence. In this session you’ll apply a thoroughly vetted set of operational principles to employee training, customer service, and the interview and hiring process. You’ll identify potential improvements that are fine-tuned for your own organization and industry.

2:30 – 2:50. Break. Snacks and beverages.

• 2:50 – 4:00. Session A: Writers’ Boot Camp, with Chris Dorsi. We’ll study and practice the skills of written communication by focusing on the principles of Plain Language, focusing on the applications that we each use in our work. This popular workshop, in one form or another, has become a hallmark of the Habitat X Conferences.
• 2:50 – 4:00. Session B: Customer Service, Sales, and True Leadership, an interactive learning lab. It’s from a position of professional maturity that the most effective leaders focus on this triad of skills. In this lab, we’ll explore how you and your organization can fine tune your existing processes to deliver a seamless customer experience.
• 4:10 – 5:00. Interview with Amy Fazio. We’re honored to welcome Amy to Habitat X for the first time. Fresh off a four-year stint as the CEO of Affordable Comfort, Inc. (ACI), we suspect she’ll appreciate not having to be in charge of this conference. Expect a far-ranging dialogue that touches on Home Performance, social evolution, and the under-pinnings of family life. With ample Q & A.
• 5:00 – 5:15. Wrap up and debrief.

5:15 – 6:00. Flash Consultancy (optional). We place our most respected experts in an informal consulting environment so you can get some face-time to discuss the topics of your choice. We’ll set a timer for 15-minute slots, and you can circulate alone or as a small group to meet with whoever you’d like. This will be repeated on Wednesday night.

Optional no-host dinner in Gardiner, Montana, 25 miles up-river at the border of Yellowstone Park. Outdoor attire. Your families or guests are invited.

Wednesday August 27

7:45 – 8:30. Informal networking. Beverages and light snacks.

• 8:30 – 10:00. The Countdown to 2020, Passive House, and Net Zero Energy, a group visioning session with Duke Elliott, Leif Magnuson, Joe Medosch, and others. We’re close enough to these audacious deadlines that it’s time to consider what the future might actually look like. We’ll compare progress in Europe, North America, and California (yes, it’s a separate country) and look for openings that are relevant to everyone in attendance. With ample Q & A.

10:00 – 10:20. Break. Snacks and beverages.

• 10:20 – 12:00. The Nexus of Energy and Health, a moderated presentation with Larry Zarker of BPI and Leif Magnuson of Pacific Gas and Electric Company. These two professionals, working from within vastly different industries, are helping lead this important new initiative. Expect a tightly moderated discussion directed to answering these questions: How solid IS the science that connects asthma and the home? Who will be the major players in this initiative? What are the roles of government, health care industry, the home performance industry, the certifying bodies, and others? What are the next steps needed to further connect these disparate parties?

Catered Lunch in the dining room at Chico Hot Springs.

• 
• 1:00 – 2:30. Session A: Reinventing Fire — Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era, a business planning session with Habitat X Fellow Ryan Boswell. We take lessons from the famous treatise by Amory Lovins and the futurists of the Rocky Mountain Institute, identifying specific approaches for the each person’s organization. Go home with a planning document you can present to owners, managers, and funders.
• 1:00 – 2:30. Session B:  Excel at Advanced Diagnostics, with J West and Joe Medosch. We focus here on using your experience and skills of observation before you get out the tools. Learn what we’re really evaluating when we do diagnostic tests, and see how to streamline the process by choosing the right test procedures. You will get lots of hands-on experience in this session.

2:30 – 2:50. Break. Snacks and beverages.

• 2:50 – 4:00. Creating Success, an interactive discussion with Duke Elliott of YesHaus. Duke has huge experience across several sectors of the home performance industry. He’ll present a sometimes-surprising view of success in this session, stressing the value of moving past failure to fine-tune your organization. His case studies prove the validity, as does Duke’s personal experience.

• 4:10 – 5:00. Interview with Colin Genge and Bill Spohn. This will not be the first time we have put Colin or Bill on the Habitat X hot seat, and with good reason. They’ve both been involved in the engineering and design of home performance technologies for the last three decades, and they have the stories to prove it. Join us to learn, for example, how the concept of pressure diagnostics was first envisioned and ground-truthed at Retrotec, and how engineers at Bacharach were forced to invent critical gas testing technologies because no one else had done so. We’ll also ask each of these successful entrepreneurs to share what they’ve learned about managing change during turbulent business times.

5:15 – 6:00. Flash Consultancy (optional). We place our most respected experts in an informal consulting environment so you can get some face-time to discuss the topics of your choice.

Optional no-host dinner: Pine Creek Cafe, 15 miles down-river in the Paradise Valley. Your families or guests are invited. 

Thursday August 28

7:45 – 8:30. Informal networking. Beverages and light snacks.

• 8:30 – 10:00. Open Space Session. We save this session for what has become the most-requested session: quick moving presentations and hands-on projects on customized topics that are recognized and requested during the week by attendees. We use this time to provide focused and relevant content that is fine-tuned for everyone’s needs and interests. Presented by the Habitat X faculty and guest experts. Talk to Chris if you’d like to present during this session.

10:00 – 10:20. Break. Snacks and beverages.

• 10:20 – 12:00. We Create a Future of Sustainable Housing. A facilitated round table that includes Duke Elliott, Tiger Adolf, Ryan Boswell, Leif Magnuson, and other futurists. We always schedule this inclusive discussion for the last day so we can gather all the components from the week’s work, create a sketch of the industry as we know it, and create a forward-looking and doable vision for our industry. We’ll identify barriers to success, describe opportunities for industry success, and create a wish list for regulators, policy-makers, and industry leaders. We’ll capture this session’s outcomes as a position statement in the Habitat X 2014 White Paper.

Catered Lunch in the dining room at Chico Hot Springs.

• 1:00 – 2:30. Technology Disassembled, hands-on disassemblies with Bill Spohn and Colin Genge. Bill and Colin know a lot about test equipment — and they have the patents to prove it. Come learn from the guys who developed a lot of the equipment we work with each day, and watch as they disassemble digital instruments, explore the guts, and explain how it all works. See the details in the Habitat X Journal.

2:30 – 2:50. Break. Snacks and beverages.

• 2:50 – 5:00.  Pecha Kucha Presentations, moderated by Amy Sheppard and delivered by faculty and participants. Sit back and go for a ride as the bravest presenters among us tell a succinct story with 20 slides of 20 seconds each. That’s less than seven minutes to stand, deliver, and sit down!

Adjourn Conference.