Live online commentary from the floor
An energy assessor attending this years NHER conference in Birmingham today has told delegates how he was offered a Home Energy Advisor (HEA) role with British Gas which included a sales commission on its products as part of its remuneration package.
So says the “tweet” coming live from the conference floor this afternoon, thanks to the rapid typing and quick-thinking of Liz Male, of Liz Male Consulting, who kindly provided a running update on events using the Twitter platform:
Energy assessor at NHER Conf says he's been offered role as Home Energy Adviser with BGas. Commission basis to sell their products. Uh oh.
The comment, which will confirm the fears expressed by many energy assessors since the role of Home Energy Advisor was in consultation earlier this year, obviously drew exasperation from attendees listening; Liz immediately fired a follow-up summary of the reaction:
Lot of concern among energy assessors here that energy cos are training up so-called 'energy advisers' who are, in fact, just salesmen.
A few other random Twitumentary updates reported from the NHER conference:
Almost everything Govt planning to do to tackle home carbon reductions will be funded by CERT, therefore energy suppliers in control...
Lots of data (as yet unpublished) giving folk at NHER Conf insight into which properties, by size & age, are best 4 energy saving work.
Interesting discussion at NHER Conf re new technologies. Lots of debate re air source heat pumps - not magic solution to energy needs yet.
A new use for Twitter Lists?
Today’s conference took this whole Twitter thing to another level for me because suddenly I realised a new use for its latest innovation: Lists - launched just a couple of weeks ago (and a feature I struggled to find a beneficial use for, I admit).
Using my own Twitter list of energy assessors (@SocialMike/energyassessors), I was able to plug-in Liz’s live Twitter feed from the conference so other assessors could follow along, too.
I’m sure this idea could be refined further with a bit of forethought; for instance, maybe setup a one-off account just for the event, which others can then put in their list.
Lists allow “Tweeters” (yeah, I hate that term too) to basically group “followers” (another term I hate) into whatever lists you care to create. This can be useful insofar as many twatters like to follow the likes of king-twatter, Stephen Fry, for instance, who might be of no interest to followers of specialist niche lists.
To keep the energy assessor list “pure”, I will unsubscribe Liz from it in the next day or so to give others a chance to catch-up. Hopefully, though, other people who never knew her before will continue to follow after today’s impromptu experiment.
Big thanks to Liz Male who regularly tweets @lizmale.
Tags: NHER, home-energy-advisor
