Lawyers tend to be fond of words and Karl Kumli is . . . no exception. So imagine the challenge for him to talk about the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 (a law which gave a jump-start to renewable energy projects nationwide) in only 6 minutes. But he did exactly that, distilling almost 40 years of legal history (Karl first started working with PURPA in 1980 when he was a law clerk in Washington, D.C.) into 300 seconds. A full house of 200 energy professionals attended the program at Boulder’s unique E-Town Hall on October 27. Old friend and colleague Bill LeBlanc was the emcee for the program.

The forum for Karl’s whirlwind presentation was the Switch~9, a biannual conference put on by the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Association of Energy Service Professionals. The PechaKucha (Japanese for “chit-chat”) format requires presenters to complete their entire presentation using 20 slides which auto-advance every 15 seconds. Karl got it done. (However, after this experience, he advises that his next career move may be as a play-by-play announcer for the NHL!)