I was asked to moderate a panel at the Future Forward executive retreat, a long-running event in the IT community in Boston.  Pretty impressive group of around 150 C-level IT execs in attendance, good smart speakers.  Made sense that the cleantech panel to be held as one of the breakout sessions would be about smart grid and customer energy information, since that is a sector that has strong overlap with IT.

Nevertheless, whereas the panel on cloud computing had something like 80 people, the panel on smart grid / energy data had 8.  The IT execs at the event clearly had very little interest.

Frankly, I can understand why.  These IT execs don't know any peers who've made it rich in cleantech.  They see the overall federal government trends as being pretty much anti-cleantech, after last tuesday.  Why should they pay attention to smart grid or energy efficiency when technologies like cloud computing are closer to them and more proven?

This is happening across the entrepreneurial and tech spaces to some degree: Investors and operating-side people who could be applying all that great knowledge about how to build successful tech businesses, but aren't.  Not necessarily a wrong decision for them, but a missed opportunity for the cleantech sector.  The lack of interest at the IT event is just one indicator of how cleantech still has a long way to go to gain true acceptance within the broader tech community.    

But then that same evening I went to the New England Clean Energy Council's annual Green Tie Gala.  A phenomenal event, perhaps the best Boston cleantech networking event of the year, 400 attendees from across the local community. Investors from some of the biggest name venture firms in the area, tons of entrepreneurs, various high-level state officials, etc.  Demonstrated a huge amount of positive energy about the sector, particularly here in Massachusetts where a governor who's been very supportive of clean energy and energy efficiency got re-elected.

So it's not as if there isn't a lot of entrepreneurial energy and general excitement around cleantech.  It's just that the strong IT community here in Boston, and the vibrant cleantech community here in Boston, don't talk to each other very much.  And that's bad.

Cleantech needs more entrepreneurial talent.  It needs more senior business leadership.  It needs the IT community.  And, based upon the number of IT industry refugees I do see entering the sector, it does seem that there could be a lot of interesting ways for IT execs to tackle big problems and big business opportunities in cleantech.  If the two communities would just talk more, maybe it would happen more often.

I'm not sure how much of what I saw that day is really reflective of a community schism just here in Boston.  I have the impression there's more crosspollination between the cleantech and IT sectors in California, but I would welcome comments from folks there and in other regions as to whether they're seeing the same thing or not.