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25 minute read
In this episode of The Heat Pump Podcast, Amply co-founder Ed Smith talks with Brent Davidson, founder of the US Heat Pump Summit. Brent’s journey from building climate-tech software to starting one of the most compelling HVAC events in the country is a case study in how community, business strategy, and technical know-how can come together to drive real change.
And the Summit? It’s not just another trade show. It’s two days of contractor-focused training, business insights, and peer-to-peer learning—all built around the future of HVAC.
What you’ll learn
- 🚧 Why Brent Davidson started a contractor-first summit—and how it grew
- 🔥 How heat pump conversations differ from solar, and why that matters
- 🛠️ What makes a good installation—and why business structure is key
- 🤝 How community and peer learning can drive quality at scale
- 📍 What to expect from the next Summit in Worcester, MA
What makes the US Heat Pump Summit Different?
Brent’s focus is simple: put the right people in the room and spark the right conversation. That means:
- Business and technical content side by side
- Contractor-first agenda—not just utility program talk
- Peer-driven roundtables, not just sales booths
- National trends + regional relevance (hello, cold climate heat pumps)
It’s the only event where the people in the room actually want to talk about Manual J, coefficients of performance, electric strip backups vs. supplemental dehumidification, and customer acquisition in the same breath.
Why This Matters
Heat pumps are gaining ground—but success doesn’t come from equipment alone. It comes from design, training, and business models that reward quality. That’s what the Summit is about.
And Brent? He’s not trying to run yet another conference. He’s trying to help build an industry.
Timestamps
[00:00] - Introduction
[03:04] - Brent’s background and his career.
[04:53] - Importance of community and storytelling in climate work
[07:57] - Lessons from past events and expectations for the Worcester event.
[14:17] - What does a good heat pump installation look like?
[20:58] - Why were heat pumps chosen as the starting point for the US Electric Home Summit?
[24:07] - Heat pumps prioritized for energy savings, design complexity, and contractor demand.
[27:44] - Recommended resources for learning about building science, electrification, heat pumps, and HVAC
Connect with Brent Davidson:
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Brent Davidson: There are so many misconceptions about what heat pumps can do, how building science should be applied. We're finding that there's a community aspect of getting with the people who are saying, I gotta differentiate in my market. I. I'm coming at it from the business side. I gotta attract better talent. So I think it's first and foremost, we're trying to be the place where that conversation's happening, we're trying to put together content that's also appealing for folks who are at the start of something like a heat pump electrification journey. And we're also trying to have the right folks in the event, both in training and attending that are further along in that journey.
[00:00:38] Ed Smith: Hi, and thanks for joining. We've got a slightly different kind of episode today, so we're releasing it as a bonus episode. We interviewed Brent Davidson, who's putting on the US Heat Pump Summit. We went last year and we loved it.We figured folks who are listening to the Heat Pump Podcast.Might love to know about the Heat Pump Summit. So enjoy this bonus episode and our conversation with Brent Davidson.
[00:01:05] Brent Davidson: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:06] Ed Smith: All right. We're going to talk about you and your background and spend most of the time talking about the Heat Pump Summit. But before we even get into you, just give folks a quick plug, like, what is the US Heat Pump Summit so they know what's coming later in the episode?
[00:01:20] Brent Davidson: Absolutely. Yeah. So the US Heat Pump Summit is first and foremost entirely a contractor focused event. That's one thing we always like to clear up right off the bat. You can pretty easily guess the topic which is heat pumps. And so that covers HVAC and plumbing. And in short, the goal of the event is to provide not only the technical training and the things you expect from something called the US Heat Pump Summit, but also we're really leaning into our third event this year in Massachusetts, the business side of things. And we'll get into this at length. We see a lot of building science, and quality work ends up dying at the margins or dying on the vine in the field, even if that tech is trained. You have to put them in a business environment that's really going to make sense to deliver building science. So we're trying to hit it on the technical side, trying to hit on the business side, put something together for your whole organization. And yeah, excited to tell you more.
[00:02:05] Ed Smith: Awesome. And we didn't go to your first one in California. Eric and I went to your second one in Colorado last year. It's not surprising that the guys who put on the Heat Pump podcast were super stoked about the Heat Pump Summit, but it was I mean, it was our favorite event of the year last year, and we didn't say no to anything. We basically everything we got invited to were like, we should go because we're still trying to figure out the industry, and it was a heck of an event.
[00:02:28] Brent Davidson: Thank you. Yeah, yeah, the one in Denver. Yeah. Like I said second. So quick lineage and jump on if you want to guide my story here at all. But quick lineage I'm in the San Francisco Bay area. The very first one was actually in Berkeley Creative Story, how we pulled it off. And then it was, okay, there's something here. Let's try it in a new market so we can try it at a cadence faster than waiting a full year. And Denver for long story, was a good market because the network I had and then yeah, found a really interesting university building a bunch of really interesting folks, great building science community in the Denver area and pulled it together. And we were lucky enough to have Ed and Eric from Amply come by. So yeah, we're very excited about it.
[00:03:04] Ed Smith: Awesome. All right. Let's definitely get into that more. But let's talk about you for a sec. Tell us about your career arc, because it's not totally obvious how you ended up running something like the US Heat Pump Summit. Tell us about Brent Davidson and how you got to where you are now.
[00:03:20] Brent Davidson: Yeah, I'm the typical journalism school to software to HVAC trajectory. It's a well-worn path.
[00:03:25] Ed Smith: A tale as old as time.
[00:03:26] Brent Davidson: A tale as old as time. Yeah, every parent's dream. That is the very shortest way to tell the story. But essentially, I've been doing software things for a while and in various capacities, and was in solar and doing things that were utility scale engineering financing tools, like really nerdy stuff, talking about just massive projects, then had some opportunities to shift towards the home. And so we can talk about some startups and some interesting angles there coming from the solar side and that view of the world on home energy. But it just put me face to face with contractors. And some folks were doing just solar. Some folks were doing heat pumps as well, and it just became clear that heat pumps are a technology that makes phenomenal sense for all kinds of reasons. But at the same time, I saw that there wasn't quite a consensus on really the right way to do things. And so that was where the initial idea started to come from. And getting with great folks in the industry early. Shout out to Bill Spohn, who was the very first supporter of the US Heat Pump Summit back in 2023, helped me unpack that a little bit more. And ultimately, someone who likes to solve problems. I just found that there were a lot of great software tools in the space, amply as one of them. And he didn't pay me to say that, by the way. But it's true. And the end of the day, I just figured, I think, that the core tooling is there from a software perspective, but the message and the conversation needs to be driven more significantly. And yeah, through some family friend connections, I knew a fair bit about the trade show industry and said, let's try one out, because I think someone needs to drive that conversation in a new way.
[00:04:53] Ed Smith: Now tell me more about that. Because like, I've never heard anyone say that sentence before, I saw this problem and had some connections in the trade show industry, so I started a trade show. It's not the sort of thing, and it sounds like there's an interesting topic, an interesting story behind how you pulled the first one off in Berkeley. Tell us more about how you went from insight to, I should do a trade show to pulling it off at a pretty good level of success in California as the first one.
[00:05:14] Brent Davidson: Awesome. Yeah. To be fair, I was giving you my talking point answer a little bit there. So the a little bit more behind the scenes is there's a couple cities around the US. They have Climate Week. So San Francisco, not Portland. They probably have one too. I know Seattle, New York, San Francisco have a climate week. So San Francisco, it's all very tech focused. And in spring of 2023, I was at that event and I thought, this is really amazing. There's some phenomenal minds in the room here, a lot of burgeoning industry interest in home energy. And after going to several days of events, I realized there is no one here who probably knows how to read a tape measure. So how are we going to do this if we're not connecting these communities in some way? And I think there's a lot of misunderstanding from both sides of just how both industries work. Software as well as the in the home actually getting the job done side. So the inspiration for the first one was let's get these two groups together. We're in San Francisco, the Bay area. There's a lot of forward thinking contractors, a lot of forward thinking technologists. And so it was I think there's something here. And let's just dive in. And I was in a mode of looking at how do we have an impact in this space? I left a full time job a few years prior to do product consulting with early stage founders. And so that's how I got even deeper into the home part of the world. And the second part of your question was like, how do you just wake up and decide to trade to do a trade show? It's just approachable, as starting a software company comes with a certain set of hurdles, and in hosting an event, there's a different set of hurdles, but they're not quite as time committing.
[00:06:37] Brent Davidson: In terms of the long run. You're not asking money from investor, you're asking for some support, in my case, from a forward thinking distributor in California, Pace Supply. They were very early to see that there's something to this conversation. And so they were an anchor sponsor and then tech clean California, one of the statewide rebate programs. The main one also saw upfront there was something here. So with not realistically that much work, I could canvas and say, this event is going to happen. And at the worst case, it'll be me and my tech friends and it'll be an expensive party I hosted. At the best case we're going to get take from in particular those two pace supply tech clean California and then you no longer list Dykan ended up coming in as a main sponsor as well, and meeting those folks really helped me contextualize this message and understand the industry a little bit more. So it was a really, truly a case for anyone listening with an entrepreneurial bent of at some point you have to just get started because you don't know where the story leads. And I think I knew that just enough to push myself off the edge and commit 4 to 5 months and some financial risk, modest in the scheme of what it costs to start a tools and trucks and branding and all these things that it takes to start physical contracting business. But it's still enough. You have to work your way down that path to have the confidence to do it. So yeah, interesting journey and it's definitely led somewhere. So it's very exciting.
[00:07:57] Ed Smith: And so starting there. What did you learn in the first one that led you to change things in the second? And then what did you learn in the second that led you to do the third? And what should people expect from the third? So I'm actually gonna give us the arc of those three and the build for what it's going to look like when it happens in Worcester in the fall.
[00:08:16] Brent Davidson: Yeah. Perfect question. So the first one really, I alluded to a bit was like tech people and contractors. There's a little bit more of that story of I'm coming very much from the energy nerd perspective, and that energy nerd is thinking about the grid. You're thinking about the sources of energy. You're thinking about kind of like heady topics like if you really get into solar, most of the energy with an asterisk on Earth comes from the sun. That's where I'm starting from. So any building science nerds that want to go down in that corner, find me and let's have a call. I'm not a grid expert. There's some things I'll defer to the folks on, but I knew there was a portion of knowledge in electrification that was missing, in my opinion, from the contracting side to answer questions from a homeowner like, isn't the grid not reliable? Just some of these basic, fundamental things. If you're asking someone to fuel switch from gas to electric, it's a different system. There's pros and cons to both. And so there was a lot of grid energy services demand response kind of content in that first zone. I thought this will be interesting. Help fill in some of these questions. The feedback was basically that's interesting, but I'm still basically trying to just get the job done in the first place. Those things are great. They can help close a sale margin or an engaged homeowner or something like that. So the second one was really just leaning into that core technical training, the feedback of the second one, and a lot of intuition too, from attending other conferences, other events was there's this spectrum of the perfect installation, pure building science.
[00:09:42] Brent Davidson: Like, I'm going to show up, take this leaky home, turn it to a passive home. And that's my mission. On the other end of the spectrum, there's this sort of sleazy sales guy, watched a lot of motivational YouTube videos get pumped up once it closed this whole thing. And I think I see that a lot of folks feel that those things can be at odds. But really, if we can connect a business side, like I said, she's my right hand on the appropriate side spectrum. If we can connect like a quality sales side with a quality installation, then that's your recipe for success. So for the third one, we're really leaning into a much more significant business track because of what I was saying. Before, you could have a technician who's passed all the building science courses or whatever you've thrown at them. But if your organization, business wise is not structured in a way that's going to reward or incentivize that technician executing the knowledge in the field, it's still not really being delivered fully. So we're trying to pair two parts. It's called the US Heat Pump Summit, which is obviously getting into a lot of technical stuff on heat pumps. But at the same time we want to be presenting business content, successful stories of contractors that are doing it right and having success marrying those two. So I think that's the larger model that we see both in events and sort of other things that we're considering on the horizon.
[00:10:54] Ed Smith: Super interesting. All right. And then just a quick plug I want to dig into more about it. It's actually it's in Worcester, Massachusetts. And when is it.
[00:11:01] Brent Davidson: I should have been more specific. So in my opener there. So it's November 18th and 19th in Worcester, Massachusetts, Central Massachusetts. We'll have a New England focus, but it's definitely still something that is relevant for a national audience.
[00:11:14] Ed Smith: Now I want to talk about that piece. And all right. So I got the message that and it's interesting you laid that out because actually I could we could tell that from the agendas. So Eric and I didn't go to the first one because we thought, it looks a little academic to us. At that point we were just really trying. It's very that's.
[00:11:29] Brent Davidson: True. That's literally what I just said. Yeah. It was a little high minded.
[00:11:33] Ed Smith: Yeah, exactly. And then the Colorado one looked like super technical, which we were into. And it was great. I'm just thinking back to Eric Kaiser's presentation. You had a bunch that just were awesome. And so this one's going to be a mix of business and technical topics, which is the sweet spot for. And that's where we like to operate, and that's where most of our conversations with our customers happen. If I was a heat pump contractor and I needed to get to Massachusetts with a plane, what would draw me there? What are they going to get that makes it worth the time, the money to get all the way to Worcester and spend a couple of days just talking about heat pumps with us?
[00:12:09] Brent Davidson: Perfect question. The shortest answer I can give is just immersion in this topic. That's twofold. The business and technical portions I mentioned, as well as being in a room full of people who get it or who want to get it and are there to learn, maybe from scratch. As you look across the industry. I've been here a few times now talking about heat pumps and I've used Heat Pump Summit. I have been laughed at with good spirits. I get it by and I won't name them, but by people who are in the manufacturers booth working for manufacturers. There are so many misconceptions about what heat pumps can do, how buildings science should be applied what even building science is. And we're really finding that there's a community aspect of getting with the people who are listening every episode here on the Heat Pump podcast, who are paying attention to these tools, who are digging in our own ways of maybe they're less technical, but they're saying, I got to differentiate in my market. I'm coming at it from the business side. I got to attract better talent, I need to. We've heard some interesting stories of hiring from nontraditional areas. I need to find my own lane of pipeline talent. How can I attract them? Something new? Technology. So I think it's first and foremost, we're trying to be the place where that conversation is happening.
[00:13:22] Brent Davidson: And that's not me to guide that conversation. That's me to put the people in the room to have that conversation. And I think we're trying to put together content that's also appealing for folks who are at the start of something like a heat pump electrification journey. And we're also trying to have the right folks in the event, both in training and attending, that are further along in that journey. So we're still in the middle of speaker selection. I can speak to that a bit more of some more specifics on this content, but in general, trying to have things that are kind of that one on one, 1 or 2 level course, but also up from there and then have it clear on the schedule. So those are a few bullet points. But if you're interested in building science, if you're interested in heat pumps, if you're interested in understanding how to position your business for what is a broad trend towards electrification, somewhat market dependent, this is really the place that's going to happen more so than, in my opinion, unbiased of what we see at law of the other industry events that have a, we can just say, a more status quo approach to things.
[00:14:17] Ed Smith: Awesome. All right. So what I heard there was, if you're a contractor who wants to build a business where you are doing the majority of heat pumps, or you want to shift your mix of the equipment you're installing to be more and more heat pumps and differentiate in your market, like what folks are going to get out of this is like minded contractors who have walked that path and get real, tangible advice on both how to build the business I'm imagining that's everything. Generating leads all the way over to, like, the technical install side. What is a good heat pump installation look like? How do you select equipment? That sort of stuff. So it's really for folks who are either it's broadly for folks who see the opportunity in heat pumps, whether they are already or want to get there. That's who should be coming.
[00:14:59] Brent Davidson: Exactly. And I'll underscore how valuable being shoulder to shoulder with other folks are. We can sit here on the podcast and blast this message out to a lot of folks, but everyone who's listening is going interesting, interesting parts of this. You want to meet the other people who are in that same reaction. And so everyone's been to a lot of events. One thing that we're trying to lean into and add that we're not seeing as much in the skilled trades events that at least I've been to, are more opportunities for meeting your fellow attendee. There's a lot of networking cocktails. You're standing there. The onus is on you to break into someone's conversation. So we're still in that planning phase a bit, but hosted roundtable discussions by attendees for attendees planning one on ones that are not like some sales engagement. It's really important to connect this community because and I think this was on Corbett's podcast, talking about the few number of people who actually even know what building science is. Now you're facing an opportunity with this event to come and be in a room where not only everyone knows what it is, they're making their significant professional existence around it in some way. That looks different for everyone. Not everyone's a building science purist, but we're attracting quality folks. So it's about that attendee experience and just getting shoulder to shoulder with folks and talk and shop.
[00:16:06] Ed Smith: Love it. You teased it there like that. You could go deeper into content and speakers and stuff. You don't have to like just lay out the agenda. But if you want to go deeper into that, I bet folks would be interested. Like, what are some of the sessions you're thinking about planning?
[00:16:19] Brent Davidson: Yeah. So when this podcast airs, there will be more updates to the site. We have really high quality speaker committee, I'd say shout out to Peter Trost, Dan Wilton and Chris Moran. I think for the northeast crowd, Chris Moran is I get the impression that he knows some folks there. Same thing. Peter Trost, Energy Circle and Dan Wilton House center for Energy and Environment, longtime trainer. So I will drop those names because folks know that those are quality people, and we're coming at them where we want to create great partnership there as well, anchoring the content and great stuff for a few folks names folks might recognize who have agreed, although we don't have it necessarily pinned down all the sessions. Ty Brannaman HVAC chicks. Jennifer. Those are two that come to mind. And then, frankly, if you want to see some guests from the Heat Pump podcast, I think this will be a great place to do it. But we're in conversations with a lot of them. But with respect to where this conversation is at, at the point of recording here, I don't want to necessarily mention names and signs them up for something they haven't agreed yet. But we're finding in general people are really excited to come see, like I was saying, being shoulder to shoulder and being at a place where everyone's got on the same page with this stuff.
[00:17:21] Ed Smith:That's awesome. All right. And I know you've got plans beyond the summit. It seems like the summit the two of you put on so far, and the third one you're planning has been a catalyst for you thinking about what's needed in the space and for this target audience you have identified. So what are some of your plans beyond the summit?
[00:17:38] Brent Davidson: Yeah, absolutely. So there's a couple of threads to this, and I'll get increasingly vague because I don't want to give away all the beans here. But first and foremost, the thing right now is called the Heat Pump Summit. That's an HVAC and plumbing audience. There's a lot of opportunity, a lot of work to do. Like we've been talking about these conversations. We want to drive, from my perspective, coming from the world of solar. There's a lot happening that I think the broader HVAC and plumbing industry is aware of, but maybe not fully appreciated how much this can impact. This is a bit market dependent based on solar penetration, etc. but let me give you two examples and then I'll give you a specific answer. Something that we are doing if I'm a solar installer and I'm coming up to a house and I'm going, I'm taking a house that has a furnace and no solar and selling them solar. It is in my best interest to understand how to generally get a ballpark estimation of the heat pump size that's going to be needed for that electrical load in the future. You can have a pretty quick conversation with someone if they didn't get a furnace in the last couple of years. That lifespan of solar is quite long, so you're definitely going to be most likely shifting to a heat pump at some point.
[00:18:43] Brent Davidson: If you don't size the solar for that future additional load, you're setting that up that customer for a significant potential increase in their heating and cooling costs, because it will, a lot of folks might not know, is when you in a lot of markets, when you shift to solar, your profile of your electrical rate changes substantially. And there's really good reasons for that. We can go into. But you can screw someone if you don't take that into account. On the flip side, if I'm HVAC installer and I'm coming to sell you a heat pump and you have solar, it's kind of that same thing in reverse. Am I really equipped with a conversation to go deep into how your rate plan works? The load profile within the day because your solar isn't consistent through the day. Huge generation in the middle of the day. How does that match up with your heating or cooling load? Just fundamentally, from that perspective, it's hard to argue that these trades should be talking to each other more. Whether or not you bring everything under one roof, that's a separate decision. That's not for everyone. For some people it is. But the first thing we want to do is expand this out to be something like the US Electric Home Summit. For contractors, that branding might be a little confusing. We'll work on it, but in some way getting solar, electrical, plumbing and HVAC under one roof to be driving a high performance electric home conversation.
[00:20:02] Brent Davidson: The other piece that's coming in that is the home battery. I was at several solar conferences this year, including Intersolar versus Re plus, which is a separate one and shows 60% batteries at this point. So I'm not going to go into battery. We can get back there. I'll leave it to Ed Smith, the beautiful moderator of the Heat Pump podcast, to take me there. So first thing, expand that out to be the sort of multi trades event with that focus. Then when you look at it an event is great, but it's only once a year. So there's obviously other information we want to start providing in different formats digitally that are engaging with success stories from contractors failure stories. Things that fit this line of business and technical. Those sort of foundations that we have beyond that. What's the problem with event? You only get together once a year. What's the problem with some kind of online information? You're sitting at your computer. So smaller events that could take place maybe with more of an owner focus. But that's kind of where I'll stop there. It's a little too far out for me to say too much more. I don't want to. I want to call my shot and then change the strategy too much.
[00:20:58] Ed Smith: But I love the idea of the US Electric Home Summit. Now, you mentioned solar and your experience there and it was deep. You gave me like the sort of the quick answer before, but given your experience there and your ambition to do this sort of more broadly as an electric, home focused event and network, why did you pick heat pumps as the place to really lean in? I mean, US Heat Pump Summit, it's about as on the nose as you can get coming from the guy who we have the Heat Pump podcast. So I'm with you there, but why did you pick this place as the right place to start?
[00:21:33] Brent Davidson: That's a great question. There's two answers. The gut answer is you got to pick one. The more answers I think I saw more a more dynamic situation around heat pumps. Everyone listening to this podcast knows you can box, swap, and call it a day, and homeowner for at least a while will probably think it was the right job. Everyone also knows you can go phenomenally deep on building science and turn every home into a passive home. With solar, it's a lot more market dependent on what the utility is doing for rates. Frankly, your solar resource punchline is it's better everywhere than people think. Even Michigan. I grew up in Wisconsin. These are places where you're starting to see more solar. It's a pretty cloudy place in the winter, spoiler alert, but it just seemed like there was a bit more topics to dig into, a bit more misconceptions, and then importantly, just from a strategy perspective, there was not a clear place across HVAC that was really driving a heat pump specific conversation. And that's obviously the entry point to that broader electrification conversation in solar. It's a little newer industry. The industry. The events are a little bit newer, so that focus is more in line with, I think, where the industry is at. Whereas in HVAC, I think we see there's still a lot of one foot in the traditional way of heating and cooling, one foot in heat pumps. And I think that's fair for those events and those organizations, because we're not at a point where every single home, everywhere should switch to a heat pump. But we're getting to a point where it's depending on your region, etc. majority. So that's how I think that made sense. And plus, once you get on early stage call with Bill spoon, he just opens all the doors for you and makes you feel like HVAC is an inviting place. Get that shout out in there again.
[00:23:06] Ed Smith: That's a great that's a great answer. And definitely a big shout out to Bill and a friend of the pod who's he just does so much for the HVAC industry in general. Absolutely. It was interesting to hear your answer on that, because you and I have met and chatted a bunch different events, but I guess I hadn't asked you that exact question. The way we came about it was similar. I'll just swap stories. So for the first 18 months or two years of Amply like Eric and I were serving homeowners, we were doing for homeowners full home electrification. And this is. It's Eric's wheelhouse, right? He loves doing this sort of stuff. And so for homeowners, we'd do a design that involved solar, a battery, an EV charger, new panels, heat pump, hot water, and we would produce these fully designed reports for folks that would it would cost it out with. So the upfront cost, ongoing cost would do net savings if there were any. And then we'd look at total energy use and carbon output and all that sort of stuff, because that was often an important piece for homeowners. And we were surprised that heat pumps were number one in whatever category mattered.
[00:24:07] Ed Smith: They were on par with solar in terms of total cost. Hvac is your single largest source of energy in the home. There were the single largest source of savings, though sometimes it competed with solar. And if you did both, it was like a real nice twofer. Yeah, most importantly for us, it was the single largest time suck. So when we'd spend 30 to 40 hours designing system for a homeowner Like, do they have ducks? The ducks work. If not, you're going to have to convince the homeowner that Douglas is the way to go. And what are the esthetic impacts and Manuel J. Manuel. S Manuel D so for us, we're like, it's number one in every single category. And there are plenty of software solutions in the solar space. And so that led us to heat pumps. And then once we were in it, we were surprised at how many. Your target customer is our target customer, right. Contractors who either are just focused on heat pumps or want to focus more and more on heat pumps. That's super interesting to hear your answer there, Brent. Thank you for that.
[00:25:00] Brent Davidson: No, good to hear your background too. And the solar side. I will say there are a surprising number of people who don't want to see the solar panels from the front of their house, and if your house faces south, too bad that's it's that or nothing. But yeah. No, the HVAC is from a overall complexity standpoint, number of factors. And then throw in the human factor. It is a different ballgame. I'm not going to pretend like solar is super simple, but there's overlap. But they're their own beast for sure.
[00:25:21] Ed Smith: Awesome. All right. So for folks who are interested in this, and I imagine and maybe the answer is different, whether it's a contractor or a distributor or manufacturer or whatever. But folks who are interested, who do you want to hear from? How should they reach out?
[00:25:34] Brent Davidson: Your question of how they inbound to me. So first and foremost us heat pump summit.com. And then I'm just brant at us heat pump summit com. That's Brent with an n b r e n t. I will always respond to Brett as well, but the email servers won't. Maybe I should make that as a backup email. Yeah, we're happy to hear from everyone. You know currently there's obviously exhibitor sponsor opportunities. We're in a lot of conversations. I'm not going to say the exact manufacturers were with yet, but yeah, it's manufacturers. It's and then a bit of long tail of companies that like to exhibit at these types of events where they know there's going to be a building science receptive audience for distributors, especially anyone in northeast Mid-Atlantic area. The just there's how events work. There will be a focus of attendance from there. So very strong audience. And then I'd say if you're a startup out there, but I feel like I'm connected with most of the startups already. But if we're not, I definitely want to hear from you trying to put together some special offerings for startups, because we understand they're in different positions as well. But yeah, first and foremost, anyone who's excited and wants to talk shop on this and to be a part of the event in some way. We will have volunteer opportunities as well. I don't have a number on that yet, but we haven't started soliciting. So if that's of interest to you, save a bit on the ticket cost and help us out. That's a big part of making events happen. That's a quick little rundown on a few of the folks we're looking to get in touch with.
[00:26:45] Ed Smith: Or Brent, this has been awesome. Before I get to our final question, do you want to recap logistics for folks about when it is and where they can go for more information?
[00:26:56] Brent Davidson: Awesome. Yeah, so it is this November 18th and 19th of November this year in Central Massachusetts. So it's in Worcester, mass. And it's at the DCU center.
[00:27:07] Ed Smith: You'll have to work on that a little bit. Brent. It's Worcester, but you'll get there.
[00:27:12] Brent Davidson: I have a lot of progress. So if you're googling it.
[00:27:14] Ed Smith: You have.
[00:27:15] Brent Davidson: Spelled, I won't say the phonetic. That's insulting to the northeast. It is spelled differently than it sounds. So just come to our website US Heat pump Summit comm. You'll see the correct spelling. You'll be able to google map it whatever you want to do there. And yeah, 18th and 19th November going to be at DCU center. Awesome venue for trade shows. And yeah I'm Brent at US heat pump summit. Com reach out with anything. Like I said exhibitor opportunities were shown through the speaker committee for that opportunity. Volunteers and just anyone who wants to nerd out on this stuff.
[00:27:44] Ed Smith: Awesome. All right. As always, our final question. What resources would you recommend to the audience? Could be blogs, podcasts, whatever that has helped you get up to speed or learn a bunch on this topic at the intersection of building science, electrification, heat pumps, HVAC.
[00:28:02] Brent Davidson: Yeah, absolutely. I think any shout out definitely begins with a guy like Brian, or I was able to attend the HVAC symposium this year, and I would say, you got to go. You got to go to both. I have to say it. That's awesome. It's a similar thing, if you like that event or if you wish you could have attended, then our event is definitely going to be complimentary. We're obviously fully heat pump focused, but it is an event that's a more intimate size. It's an event that is really bringing out folks who care about this stuff. And but I will say you have to bring a jacket. We were in a wonderful park basically for his event in Florida will be in Central Mass in November. So it's a little bit different climate but other things still spoons building science podcasts. Awesome resource. I mentioned Chris Moore and one of our speaker committee members, and I saw you as hvacproblog.com,I think is the URL really great writer on that stuff. Wide ranging. He gets into business topics as well. And then obviously our speaker committee, Peter Trost with Energy Circle, really great marketing company for all the all encompassing needs there. They have really great weekly webinars. So I assume their URL is energycircle.com go sign up for those. Peter's on it all the time. Dan Wheldon, House veteran trainer. He's got great videos online, etc. other things would be some of the manufacturers have good blogs. I know Mitsubishi Train has one HVAC tech show I think and LG Pro blog. You'll be seeing them at the show in one way or another. I can say that much. And yeah, on the energy side, there's one volts is a podcast that gets pretty far into the energy side. And then there's another one that's a bit more entrepreneurial and energy called What it Takes. What that's put on by one of the groups that invest in these kind of companies. So those would be two that might be a little bit newer on the radar. A lot of our listeners probably know about that list that I just gave there.
[00:29:44] Ed Smith: Awesome. Brent, thank you so much for being on the Heat Pump podcast.
[00:29:48] Brent Davidson: Thanks for having me. It was a real honor.
[00:29:53] Eric Fitz: Thanks for listening to the Hip Hop podcast. It is a production of Amply energy. And just a reminder that the opinions voiced were those of our guests or us, depending on who was talking. If you like what you've heard and haven't subscribed, please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to reach out! You can reach us once again at hello@amply.energy. Thanks a lot.
