Climate Solutions recently published a series of feature stories called the "Smart Energy Bulletin." (Read 'em at http://www.climatesolutions.org). The last story in the series highlighted their recommendations for building a "smart energy sector" in the Northwest.

By framing their information as a news story with the headline "Northwest Positioned to Lead Global Smart Energy Industry," Climate Solutions found that influential clean energy geek/green design pundit/ sci-fi author Bruce Sterling, editor of the "Viridian List" (http://www.viridiandesign.org), picked up their story and republished to his couple thousand readers with a glowing comment about how amazing Climate Solutions' work was. This provided Climate Solutions with a great hit of publicity that was laser-targeted at the "opinion leader" community they seek to influence.

What should you learn from this? Climate Solution's experience illustrates the way that ideas can spread very quickly through the Internet when they're presented as news. Why? Because the evolution of Internet publishing means that there are lots of editors out there who have built substantial online audiences by repackaging interesting outside content. If you produce materials that are in a format that can be "picked up" by online editors without requiring extensive editing, then you have a good chance of finding that others will republish your materials.