View Dynamic Glass creates glass windows that tint with the sun or at the touch of a button. For View CEO Rao Mulpuri’s keynote presentation at the VERGE sustainability conference in San Francisco, I led a team of writers to develop 14 distinct creative concepts for the keynote.

Rao chose this final concept:

Today glass windows are about as commonplace as walls. But they haven’t changed much since we first started taking them for granted. Yet for all the space windows take up in a building, we at View wondered if windows couldn’t solve some problems. We asked, “Why can’t glass windows be smarter?” and “Why can’t glass windows be more beautiful?” So we combined the best the high-tech era had to offer with this invention from ancient times to reimagine how windows can better transmit light. Ask yourself, “what other parts of the building need a renaissance?”

After the client selected this strategic direction, I wrote a slide-by-slide script telling a story about the power of technology to usher in renaissances. The design team at Duarte used this script to create the final presentation.

The presentation’s central story was about how the invention of eyeglasses played a crucial role in helping Renaissance artists see better so that they could create better. I tied this in with View’s mission and the key point of the talk: sustainability shouldn’t just be measured by the number of kilowatts saved. It should be measured by the quality of life that it brings to human beings.