Reflections on National Drive Electric Week, Orlando Edition

Now that it's over, I can't believe it's done. In my wildest dreams, I didn't imagine that NDEW Orlando would be this great, but it truly was a very special EVent.

As of the evening before, we had 172 attendees registered and 42 cars including 4 Tesla Model Ss, 2 Cadillac ELRs, a large number of LEAFs and Volts, and a handful of one-offs. The weather looked a little scary - the forecast was for rain all day. I couldn't sleep much - excitement and anxiety about all the things that could go wrong kept me up a good bit of the night.

But September 12 dawned clear and pretty, and it looked like we might get lucky. Brian and I loaded the kids and our 2 large coolers into our fully charged Volt and headed over to Valencia's West Campus via highways. After a quick stop at Publix for ice, we arrived on campus a little after 9:30am to begin setting up for the 1pm EVent.

I ran a cart over the Dunkin' Donuts to pick up our 1000 donated munchkins while Brian and Bryce put out the road signs.

We set up the tables and started up the technology in the lecture hall where the presentations would take place starting at 1:15pm. By 11am, we were pretty ready. A few minutes later, our first attendee, Jim, arrived early from Ocala. That's a long trip to make in a Nissan LEAF, so he wanted to make sure he'd be able to get a full charge before running out for some lunch. We ended up pointing out Dunkin' Donuts to him (taking care of one of our two big sponsors) and he helped manage traffic in the parking lot, which was excellent and if he reads this, I thank him profusely.

Volunteers began to arrive in time for our 12pm meeting in the lecture hall. We had some latecomers, so I gave the speech twice. By 12:30, folks were streaming into the parking lot. I parked myself in the lecture hall around 1:00 to be ready for my 1:15 presentation, "Introduction to the Electric Car," and Brian handled the steady stream of incoming organization representatives and attendees, along with our very organized volunteers, Karen and Anna.

At one point, almost all 16 tables that we had put out were occupied by folks from First Green Bank, the Sierra Club, the Central Florida EV Association, Reed Nissan, and a host of other supporting organizations. The biggest excitement, however, was probably what was going on in the parking lot. Brian got some footage of the rows of vehicles and narrated it for us.

My presentation was very well attended and received. I had a little helper assisting with slide transitioning. 

Credit for that photo goes to my cousin Meryl, who came out to show support and hopefully learned something about electric cars that I had not already told her.

Following my talk was the indomitable Thron Crowe, one of the biggest EV advocates in central Florida and a former Valencia student who certainly helped to influence my decision to drive electric. I don't have a photo but he was on the front page of the local and state section of the paper on September 14, which is probably making him more famous than would an appearance in my blog.

Following Thron, we had a great presentation by City of Orlando Fleet and Facilities manager David Dunn, who talked about what the city is working on in terms of electric vehicle infrastructure and sustainability. 

Next, we got a wonderful overview of how and why Seminole State College utilizes electric car conversion to teach students about project life cycles in their engineering technology program. Jason Gaschel and one of his students were entertaining and informative.

Our wrap-up speaker was Daniel Gehking, who uses solar power in his home for charging his car and running his home electricity. His talk was educational and interesting, and we all learned about the competing solar choice amendments in Florida. I'm not sure how many petitions were signed following the talk, but I know Dan was very excited by the stack of signed documents he took with him at the end of the day.

The feedback has been so positive, I hardly know how to get my head in the door. In addition to the Sentinel coverage, we also had WESH 2 news cover the event, as well as WFTV Channel 9.  This was in addition to all of the pre-event coverage that we had, including an article in the Sentinel Saturday quoting me quite extensively.

Here I am talking at length to the WESH 2 reporter. Sadly, none of my super-pro-EV statements made it to the cut, but it's just as well. My hair was a sweaty mess.

I'm pleased to say that although it did rain, the bad weather never got really bad, and the rain didn't come in until about 45 minutes before the event ended. By that time, we were down to the 100 or so hard core attendees who were happy to pitch in and help move everything indoors. Everything was cleaned up shortly after 5 by the volunteers before I even left the lecture hall.

All told, we had over 170 folks show up and 50 cars - which was more than actually registered. So much for expecting a 60% turnout! This goes to show that if you hold something in Orlando four miles north of Universal Studios, people will come.

It was a true joy to meet some of the folks from the Chevy Volt Owners group in Facebook. These people have truly taught me everything I know and it was such a pleasure to share the day with them. I hope we can entice more of the CVO folks to Orlando next year.

All in all, an amazingly successful event and I want to thank EVERYONE who made it possible. There are too many people to list individually without fear of missing someone important, so I will limit myself to my amazing husband, Brian, who really took on a huge job making sure everything got where it was supposed to go and everyone knew where they were supposed to be. Next year, he's my co-captain.

Speaking of next year, we will soon begin planning for the next event. Step One is to clear it by my boss to make sure we are okay with Valencia as a venue. After that, I'll be sending out a survey with a few ideas for extending the event to a full day or perhaps two half-days to make sure everyone in attendance has time to do everything fun that there was to do if we also have speakers and tables next year.

THANK YOU to everyone who came out and to those who helped. NDEW-O was a resounding success because of YOU and I can't wait for NDEW-O 2016.