What qualified you to write this book?
The realistic skill set to compile this information is journalistic research ability, a technical background sufficient to separate working technology from hype, and business knowledge to filter out overpriced devices, and firms with poor business cases.
I learned subject research as research director for the noted Southern California public affairs program Background Briefing hosted by Ian Masters. In a second career as a systems analyst, I did scientific, engineering, accounting and financial programming- which required a degree of mastery of the fields automated – and purchasing for a continent-spanning Wide Area Network as well.
Journalistic skill from the first career provided the ability to pick out candidate technologies for evaluation. Technical and business skills allowed a second cut– rejecting most of the candidates. The final step was always to check with experts, whom research skills let me find. But having the ability to reject a large number of candidate solutions kept the number of experts contacted manageable. Someone who was only a journalist, who lacked a technical and business background, simply would not have been able to evaluate and filter out enough possibilities on their own to make this a feasible project. A largely technical person would have lacked the journalistic skills to produce that first “cut”.
Is there some way to phrase this so it can be placed on a dust jacket to help sell the book?
“Gar Lipow, a long time environmental activist and journalist with a strong technical background has spent years immersed in the subject of efficiency and renewable energy.”