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Julian Spector
Editor at Canary Media
Julian Spector is a prominent journalist and the Senior Reporter at Canary Media, where he specializes in reporting on the clean energy sector. His work focuses on critical areas such as energy storage technologies and the transition to a carbon-free energy grid. Spector has been with Canary Media since its inception in April 2021, following a significant tenure at Greentech Media, where he covered the rise of grid storage technologies and other clean energy developments.12
Background and Experience
- Previous Roles: Before joining Canary Media, Spector worked as a staff writer at Greentech Media for nearly five years, where he reported extensively on topics including solar energy, electric transportation, and energy-efficient buildings. He also served as a CityLab Fellow at The Atlantic, contributing to discussions on sustainable urban development.12
- International Reporting: His reporting experience includes conducting grant-funded journalism in Bangladesh, focusing on climate change impacts and responses.12
Education
Julian Spector holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Duke University, where he received several honors, including the Angier B. Duke Memorial Scholarship.1
Contributions and Recognition
Spector's articles have appeared in various reputable outlets, including The Guardian, Al Jazeera America, and Mother Jones. He is also an experienced speaker at industry events and podcasts related to clean energy.12
Current Focus
At Canary Media, Spector continues to explore innovations in clean energy manufacturing and the burgeoning clean hydrogen sector, contributing to the broader discourse on sustainable energy solutions.2
Highlights
It's election season and everyone's talking about how they want to bring back American manufacturing. Over in clean energy world, that's already underway, as the US is finally making strides in solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles. And it turns out, much if this new factory investment is flowing to the pivotal swing states likely to decide the election.
I'm spending this summer reporting from those states for a Canary Media Inc. series we're calling "On the line: America's clean energy manufacturing boom." The first story dropped today, and it's about what happened to a small town in Georgia when it became the heart of US solar manufacturing.
I spent a week getting to know Dalton, population 34,000, nestled among the forested ridges and green lowlands of northwest Georgia. This community prides itself on making more carpets than anywhere else in the US. But that became a problem in 2008, when the recession crushed homebuilding and therefore carpet sales. One-quarter of the jobs disappeared in a few years, and the city led the nation in job losses.
Local leaders knew they needed to diversify. They eventually got the chance with solar, when Qcells North America wanted to onshore panel production in response to Trump import tariffs. When the IRA passed, 2 years ago this week, Qcells doubled down and built a whole new factory next door. Now the company employs 2,000 people in Dalton for high-tech, robot-driven manufacturing. The factory beat its promises by a longshot:
Qcells originally promised to invest $130 million and hire 525 people within five years, Dalton economic development leader Carl Campbell told me.
“They did it in three months,” he added. “In terms of an economic development project, they check all the boxes: Everything they said they would do, they did it faster than they said they would do it.”
Now that kind of transformation is coming to dozens of other Georgia communities building factories for solar, batteries, EVs. Setting aside the politics of it all, this is bolstering communities, giving young people new career paths they're excited about, and sending more of the benefits from the clean energy transition home to American workers. But the politics are pretty fascinating too, so stay tuned for the next article when I dig into that.
Let me know what you think, and if you have any questions about cleantech manufacturing in swing states!
This little birdy just turned 3 years old!
Canary Media Inc. is growing and thriving as a nonprofit news startup tackling the essential coverage of the shift to clean energy. We started scrappy at a time of great upheaval in the media industry. The broader industry hasn't gotten any more stable, so it makes me proud and grateful to say that Canary is thriving and going stronger than ever at the start of our third year.
The company funds incisive reporting like my recent trip to the Gulf Coast to document the rise of a billion-dollar clean hydrogen industry. We're covering the rollout of transformational climate policies seemingly every day. We dig into the nuts and bolts of buzzy technologies to let you know what's real and what's wishful thinking.
Reader support is pivotal to making this critical, authoritative journalism possible. We've got super low overhead, so the money goes right into the reporting and investigating that you get to experience for free any day of the week. If Canary's writing has taught you something valuable, or helped you nail a job interview, or just sparked your curiosity about a cleaner energy future, please donate a few bucks to keep this thing going.
And guess what? We've got an anonymous donor who's going to triple the first $5,000 of donations we get. Please act quickly to maximize your impact! Cheers everybody!
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
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