For months before we met for lunch last week, I had been hearing about Brian Hurd, mainly from Deep Patel of GoGreenSolar. Deep claims that Hurd is one of the sharpest tools in the shed. Has more experience than just about anyone in the solar industry. Knows as much as anyone in the world about the state of solar technology. Started the solar installation program at the East L.A. Skills Center, where he has trained more certified solar technicians than anyone in the U. S. Helped write the State of California certification tests for solar installers. Is a protege of Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, the former Congresswoman from California who admires the work he’s done to create jobs in the community. The web site for the company he founded, Hands On Solar, and the Google results page for ‘Brian Hurd Solar Technology’ bear out all this and more.
Because have I history in the entertainment business, I have witnessed a lot of (and produced my share of) cosmetic excitement, and I have built up a kind of immunity to hyperbole. How could this Hurd character possibly live up to the reputation that preceded him? After all, the bigger they come the harder they fall. “Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy,” is how F. Scott Fitzgerald described the inevitable drowning of our ideals in the immutable tide of our humanity. “It is never a good idea to meet your heroes. Earl Monroe and Groucho Marx are the only two I’ve met who didn’t disappoint me,” says Woody Allen.
That Brian Hurd made such a good impression is all the more amazing in this light.
Impression: He did not assume his role. In other words, he was unassuming. Our ‘lunch scene’ dictated what his role would be. This created a wider range of possibilities for what could be communicated and learned in the course of our conversation than if he had insisted on playing the role of, let’s say, ‘The King of Solar.’ We talked very little about anything that had to do with his high status in the solar industry, and barely touched on any of the data points on his web site. No talk about the employment opportunities he’s created, the curricula he’s designed, the news he’s made. Secretary Solis’ name didn’t come up once. The role that he defined for himself during our lunch scene is one you could call ‘Education Booster.’
Impression: He gives gifts. Deep Patel and I are collaborating with a team of talented community activists on Solar The Sign, a movement to ithe world-famous Hollywood Sign with solar power the night of the 20111 Academy Awards. Brian is a big fan of the project. “If you can solar the Sign, you can solar anything,” is how he puts it. Before we’d been served our food, Brian had given us ten good ideas for how to move the project along. In addressing the problems to be solved, his ideas came at us from all kinds of angles and perspectives, he is a high-powered generator of ideas. Political! Technical! Environmental! Community! Workforce! Education! Deep and I did not have to ask for these gifts, and they were not imposed on us. They combusted spontaneously from the conversation.
Impression: He adds information to the discussion. Facts, figures and numbers about sustainability pour out of Brian Hurd like a second language. The average size of an home solar installation (3200 watts). The trees saved yearly by that installation (1 acre). The yearly carbon displacement of that installation (198,000 lbs.) A good online resource for straw bale construction (The Canelo Project). How strawbale houses are cooled (water channeled through ridged concrete under floorboards). An experiment that restored the grouper population to a one-square mile area of the Gulf of Mexico (his marine biologist brother-in-law, Chris Koenig’s experiment, that’s whose). I should have used a dictaphone, because I was scribbling notes so fast I could barely read my writing afterward.
Impression: He is an educator. He made it clear that while the Obama administration’s heart is in the right place about creating jobs in the renewable energy sector, it cannot happen without aggressive funding for education and jobs training. Transformation, as Hurd expresses passionately, begins with education. “There’s a lot of money for sustainability in the Stimulus bill, but they’re shotgunning it out, and hoping it does some good,” he explains. “That’s not going to work. We need more players in the game, and that can’t happen without education!”
Impression: Despite the dismaying stats leaking from the economy these days like crude oil from a grounded tanker, he is an optimist. He understands that before we can do it, we have to believe it. He has faith that sustainable industries can become the economic engine to turn things around, and that the city and people of Los Angeles can become pivotal players in the turnaround. “Anything,” says Brian Hurd, “is possible in Los Angeles.”
Tags: Brian Hurd, Character, Conversation, Deep Patel, Dialogue, Education, Gifts, GoGreenSolar, Hands On Solar, Information, Solar Technology, Solar The Sign, Strawbale Construction, Sustainability, Transformation
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