So this was the most public-facing 45 minutes nuclear had in Calgary. I'm keeping it private because overall I think it will provide more value to sample from, rather then present as a whole to the public.
Of the 2 days, only the 2nd day touched on nuclear. So Richard Branson did speak (on the 1st day), but it was very pep-rally and not energy specific. Certainly he did not restate his support for Advanced Nuclear.
This sort of an event was not something I'd ever attended before... I guess I'm used to technical conferences like TEAC or TEC. Even in Calgary, both Kirk Sorensen and Dr. David LeBlanc have spoken at length about MSR... those included technical details even if broader questions were touched on.
You can see Simon Irish (CEO of Terrestrial Energy) tried to include a slide (not shown in this raw-footage) and it was yanked by Michael Liebreich the moderator.
On day 1 Michael also made some curious statements (not captured) regarding Electric Vehicle penetration... that 1/3rd of all vehicles on the road in 10 years are going to be electric. Then here he is moderating the nuclear panel, framing a lot of questions in ways I don't find constructive.
Towards the end of the conference I did interview Caroline Cochrane of Oklo Inc. (As per usual... in an Uber, while driving to airport.) She pulled out a tiny welding rod while we spoke, saying it contained 2% thorium and that minuscule quantity could power a household for a few weeks. (Nice spontaneous visual aid!)
Promotion of Conference
Unfortunately the great experiment I was running with YouTube in advance of the conference might have failed or succeeded... we did not collect any data from the conference to understand its effectiveness.
There were 2 videos.
This one was public (you've probably seen): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN9gJShxUEA ...and it took a bit of effort. Not a lot, but it was extremely lucky I could sit down and get it done the moment I needed to. 23k views.
This one was always unlisted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k56mq5SDPEY ...and basically leveraged Generation Atomic's pitch on Advanced Nuclear. 39k views.
Both were promoted by a geo-targetted AdWords campaign for a Calgary audience. That is why they received the views they did.
The Advanced Nuclear one (always unlisted one) was created earlier, so ran longer, and received more AdWords spend. The total AdWords spend for both in total was ₹2,212.88 ... $42.67 CAD ... $32.85 USD.
Key to this was running these Calgary geo-targeted ads from an Indian Google account, to hit lower bidding targets using the Rupee.
Obviously the effort to edit any of this dwarfs the AdWords cost... but the Indian AdWords campaign is a weird, weird thing... the cost is low, but also the bids do not creep up to reflect the might higher max-bid and budget that had been allowed. It seems like a bug.
So for this to be effective (if it can be effective... still unknown) it would require a long campaign, with very tiny day-to-day spend, in whatever target market was to be influenced. A slow, steady, branding exercise.
To know if it worked at ED, we'd have needed data collected from Energy Disruptors attendees to learn how they learned about the event.
Which ED did not do... none of us did. I ran around asking a handful of people on the last day (before hopping in Uber with Caroline) and was told people had heard about it "from friends" and no one mentioned YouTube.
I do know at least 4 people did come because they saw the videos, but those were people who also contacted me... they saw it on my feed, and NOT via AdWords. So very glad they came, but they didn't prove-out the AdWords experiment.
One funny note is that Global TV used the then-public video in a softball ED promo piece for local news in Calgary. That is the last thing I'd have expected, but possibly was the biggest value-add to ED of the entire process? Again, no numbers. No one cited "TV News" as why they came.
As you can imagine, I get busy at these things. It just slipped my mind to methodically work-the-room asking everyone how they heard about it. (I'd started to when I spotted Caroline who was leaving.)
Random Calgarian Interviews
During non-nuclear day spoke to 4 attendees about nuclear power (on camera). This was for sound-bites as well as actually understanding the already-existing opinions of those attending.
Not a single one had any strongly negative feelings about nuclear power. All had open minds to the topic. Some incorrect understandings about past accidents, but not incorrect understandings that they considered show-stoppers to adoption of nuclear in Alberta.
This was actually eye opening to me, as my past experience discussing energy options with Calgarians was with members of Green Party, who have a more positive impression of what can be accomplished with renewables, and frankly don't see the need for anything else.
Generation Atomic - Eric Meyer
Eric Meyer (seen in the Advanced Nuclear Panel) was in Calgary!
I've known him for years, he's a great guy, if you haven't already please check out Generation Atomic. He's the exact reason I heard about the conference, and why there was an "Advanced Nuclear" video to immediately start promoting ED with in Calgary.
We experimented with gimbals, walk-and-talk interview styles, and shot a ED post-mortem the next day. Hopefully I can put some of that to use for GenA.
GenA's Eric Meyer also had a breakout session discussion on Advanced Nuclear (attended by Rita Baranwal the Director of GAIN)... again, in Calgary. We kinda... got that on video. See disaster which follows.
Terrestrial Breakout Session
ED moved TE to a different room. At the last minute. Literally.
I'd spent an hour setting up cameras in the designated room.
Moving the room messed up the GenA breakout session coverage too, because the 2 rooms were supposed to be right next to each other, and instead of turning on GenA cameras and confirming all was good, I was moving cameras from one TE room (and floor) to the next. (Yes, the 2 nuclear sessions were happening simultaneously. Now on different floors.)
Simon Irish made some excellent points about our modern society's need for energy during this move. Great audio. Video is about as bad as can be imagined without Simon actually being out-of-frame.
Eric Meyer had a great discussion with people not-all mic-ed for audio, and much of it showing the back of his head.
All video quality improves over time as I bounce between the rooms fixing the cameras. But I feel I messed-up the very best stuff (visually) at the start of each conversation.
And that is the story of Advanced Nuclear in Calgary.
Sorry folks.