Last week, a colleague and I attended the Intersolar industry event in San Francisco.

This year’s event was bigger than last year, which signals belief in a growing U.S. market for all manner of solar technologies, products, and services. The expo had three exhibit halls full of vendors from all over the world who are eager to tap into the emerging U.S. market.

So far, however, that market remains largely untapped. Sluggish adoption to date may be partially related to the relatively low level of marketing sophistication in this industry. With few exceptions, a lack of differentiation plagues the solar industry. Vendors are struggling to explain what makes them different, and why that difference matters. Booth after booth displayed solar panel after solar panel. There may have been differences between the products, but they all looked the same to me.

The solar industry can learn a lot from other industries. For example, enterprise IT vendors know that customer success stories are key when explaining business benefits of technical solutions to prospects. Customers speak in a language prospects understand. As a result, success stories will be crucially important for solar vendors looking to accelerate sales.

Once created, these stories need to reach and be read by prospective buyers. Of course, the stories can be posted on Web sites, but they can also be proactively distributed in corporate newsletters and magazines, or even as sponsored content in many third-party publications. Success stories don’t work unless they’re read, but when they’re read, they work.

Beyond marketing, the industry seems overwhelmed by complexity. The ocean of technical details about look-alike products is a real problem, but it’s compounded by a myriad of varying city, county, state, and federal regulations and subsidies. Together, these challenges conspire to prevent accelerated adoption in the United States.

We need to standardize, streamline, and encourage the adoption of solar and other green technologies in consistent and meaningful ways. In Silicon Valley, promising work by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network is helping to standardize green building codes across jurisdictions, and aggregating solar purchasing terms and specifications across the region.

Initiatives like these are essential for having the sun shine on a solar future. And so is effective marketing. As the need for clean industries becomes essential, I’m positive the players in the solar field will soon realize the need for more effective ways of operating—and promoting the industry.

Collaboration is instrumental to doing business these days, and IBM’s Lotus software offerings enable people to make critical connections, no matter where they happen to be or what kinds of devices they use.

So why throw an in-person event about it? That’s what IBM does every year, and it makes a ton of sense.

Your modern business environment—the telephone, e-mail, and more recently, a myriad of social and business networking tools—has introduced you to dozens, if not hundreds, of colleagues you would have otherwise never known. In many cases, you’ve used collaboration tools to get an amazing amount of work done with people you’ve never met.

Compare these experiences to the way things worked just a few short years ago. Back in the old days, the primary reason for going to an industry event was to meet new people. While that still happens at events like Lotusphere, today’s in-person events have a new dimension of value: the opportunity to meet people you already “know” but have never met. Such virtual relationships only exist because of modern collaboration and communication technologies. When you have a relationship with someone you’ve never met, the in-person meeting doesn’t start from scratch, but rather builds upon a working relationship that’s already been established. In-person meetings take on more importance and efficiencies, and further accelerate the collaboration.

As a result, these in-person events are more valuable now than ever before.

Lotusphere is also a “can’t miss” event because of its well-deserved reputation for a noteworthy series of news conferences. Is there any other comparable event where so many significant announcements are made about how the way we work will change? This year’s event, held in Orlando, Florida, on January 17–21, was no exception. The number of announcements of improvements to an already robust software family was impressive. For example, Lotus Notes applications will soon be available for iPhone and Android devices, and the Lotus Connections group announced a sweet set of additional features for BlackBerry devices.

TDA’s Paul Gustafson with IBM’s Lisa Wright

And then there was Project Vulcan, which will bring together cloud and on-premises systems with collaborative apps and social networks—and allow people to use these things on desktops, netbooks, and mobile devices. No wonder William Shatner of Star Trek fame was the featured guest speaker.

Proprietary and focused events like Lotusphere are a far cry from the chaos and minimal returns of now (mercifully) defunct events like COMDEX. Lotusphere turns out to be a great venue for partners to build deeper relationships.

I know, because I attended the event this year, and was glad that I did. We’ve been working with IBM since 1987, and since that time we’ve produced all manner of marketing materials for Lotus. I met many people our team works with, and connected with many IBMers whose work with Lotus is relevant for TDA as well.

My one disappointment? I didn’t get to meet the man who played Captain Kirk. Maybe I’ll send him a “friend request” anyway.

You can find more information about Lotusphere and IBM’s collaboration software portfolio by visitingwww.ibm.com/software/lotus.