Episode 313 ControlTalk Now The Smart Buildings Podcast: The Power of Your People Network: Use it or Lose It!

I apologize in advance for my AI transcriber who does not spell as well as the average 10 year old. I made some corrections, but it would take to long to correct all her mistakes.

 The following is a presentation and the ControlTrends Podcasting Network

Eric stromquist: Welcome to. ControlTalk Now ( news of the week) your HVAC and Smart buildings, podcast with Ken Smyers and Eric Stromquist Now Your source for HVAC and Smart Building Control News you can use now here is Eric.

Eric Stromquist: Hi, this Eric Stromquist welcome to episode 313 ControlTalk. Now the HVAC and Smart Buildings lvideo cast and podcast for the week ending April 28th, 2019 I am joined as usual by your coast to mine the man, the myth, the legend, the one the only new and improved Ken Sinclair, aka auto. Welcome to the show.

Ken Sinclair: Thank you very much stepping in and the big shoes, the man from Pittsburgh.

Eric stromquist: Well that’s right. And for our listeners out there, this is your final chance to win at $50 Amazon Gift Card. Uh, we have a contest is going on in which is called wear in the world is Ken Smyres and Ken. Ken Auto. I’m gonna let you play it right here. So here are your choices. Number one. Ken [inaudible] is being contracted out by GSA to help them do a deep dive and cyber security visa vi building controls as choice one choice two Ralph Lauren and this a little known fact. Kenny used to do some modeling. Ralph Lauren is shooting or doing a photo shoot for their summer collection and Napa Valley and Ken is one of the models there. He’s actually out doing a photo shoot in Napa Valley. Choice number three Ken has been hired by an undisclosed manufacturer at an undisclosed location to help them revamp their building automation control line. Choice number for Ken is on a mission from God. Choice number five all of the above in choice number six none of the above. Do you want to venture a guess?

Ken Sinclair: Well, the the one where he was helping redesign someone’s smart buildings control system seemed fairly natural for the kinds of stuff he does. I think I did. I guess

Eric stromquist: that’s that. That’s your guess in. I’ll tell you why. I acn neither confirmed or deny that because this is really a game that our community is point a, you’ll be watching this on the youtube channel. Just reach out and comments, the first person that gets it right. Get some $50 Amazon gift card and a really swell prize and Ken, I’m really good at really swell prizes, so we’ll, we’ll, we’ll head on that for sure. But a dude, thanks so much for stepping in and fell on him for Kenny, why he is gone. But, uh, listen, lots going on. You and I are going to be doing a lot of traveling as well as Kenny and uh, but let’s start with your, the theme of your may issue, which is coming out here in the next couple of days.

Ken Sinclair: Great. Thanks Eric. Uh, the theme at the May issue is, the other interesting thing is it’s going on early because Jane and I are on our way to control con, uh, in Detroit. Uh, uh, Scott, Scotty Cochran has graciously invited us and she’s even got me as a keynote, which I’ve never been a keynote in my life, so that’ll be pretty interesting. But yeah, I’m glad you let me practice here a little bit. Anyway. Anyway, our theme is connecting creative communities. And I think a, it’s not really new news, it’s what we’ve been doing. Uh, certainly what automated buildings and a ControlTrends has been doing a, as a mainstay of what, what, what we do, what we provide, but we’re kind of expanding that a little bit and having ourselves take a big picture look at, uh, what, what really sticks with us as in this industry. And uh, uh, you know, I’ve done, uh, in the automated buildings of, first of all, I’ve been at this a 50 years, uh, in building automation and a, the last 20 years as automated buildings. And we did a bunch of these flyovers where we could actually take 20 years and a couple of minutes you could drift over them. And, uh, what, what is the obvious message that comes out of that? And it is that the people are the constants, the people and their communities are the only thing that actually keeps, keeps on keeping on, right? So, so another way to say that will be technologies come and go, but people are here forever. Forever. If that’s right, you take a, an example of some way, you know, we know really well, like John Petze, you see them in the early days with Andover, uh, telling us that ether net is going to change the world. And then you see him reappear with Tridium and tell us that a Niagara framework is going to change the world. And then you see him go with the Tridium company and change the world. And then you see him, uh, off with sky foundry, uh, being very frank all the way along. And, uh, so, so we’re just, we see these people reappearing and of course then haystack. So there you go. On a 20 year period, he shifted through some pretty major, uh, place for our industry, but is still involved. And I think if you look at everyone’s life, uh, it, it starts to, starts to kind of play out that way. So that’s, that’s kind of the message. And, uh, so I think that the message back to systems integrators and master systems integrators and just the industry in general, is that we need to invest more in our people and invest more. In our connection communities. I don’t think we really understand how powerful they are and how probably the bigger thing is that what they talk about is the stickiness and the stickiness of having a strong connection communities is, is amazing if you support BacNet, if you support, um, you know,

Eric stromquist: well hang on, I got to hop in here from it cause you are saying a whole lot and I think we need to break down and do a deeper dive on some of these things so could not agree more about the people. I think the people at the end of the day, you know, we’ve talked a lot on the show about you know, technology and automated intelligence and all this kind of stuff that that might sort of a uproot some of the people. And I want to deal with that a little bit later in the show, but, but you know, the whole concept of the people, and I think you have the, you would probably agree that the HVAC and Smart building automation controls community close knit community, right? I mean it’s kind of the same players. They change companies. You gave a great example of John Petzy.

Ken Sinclair: Okay.

Eric stromquist: And there’s knowledge that can only come from experience, right? And so you take the fact that it’s a people based business at the end of the day because the products will come and go, but the people can stay the same a and they do. I mean most people don’t leave this industry for other industries. At least that’s been my experience. But now you talk about the fact that we’re really in the information age. I mean you could say data. You know, we’ve talked about data being the new gold. So it really is about usable information and we’re also being inundated with so much information that there’s no way that you or I or anyone individual’s going to be able to process it all figured out how to make it useful. Then you put in the concept of synergy. So your, your theory about the groups and the collaboratorium makes so much sense. Not only is it I think a natural evolution, but I think it’s a very practical agree or disagree.

Ken Sinclair: Very much agree. And the other thing we’re seeing too is there’s a bunch of other movements that are changing, changing our world real fast. And, uh, of course the open nus movement to, uh, as we move into the it world. Uh, everyone points out that some of these things aren’t really all that open, but, uh, the, but they, they’ve got such buy in that, you know, once you get over a few, uh, 10, 10 million or a hundred million or something, I don’t care if it’s a standard or not. Uh, it’s worthwhile taking a look at. So we’re, we’re starting to be pushed by those, uh, those communities. And we also, we have to interface with them. We were, we are, we thought I OT, uh, in the, in the beginning we thought iot would take us over and it’s become, I think pretty clear is that what has to happen is we have to become iot because we have to drag with us those, uh, the experiences of our communities and basically make that part of it. But there’s a lot of interfacing that needs to go on as, as always I’m on my bandwagon and saying we’ve got to grow younger and how do we do that? We do that through our younger mentors and we need to grow. Uh, we have up to get people, uh, at a, at a greater rate than we are. We have to attract the minds of the industry. We have to make our industry much more exciting than it is. And, uh, well how do you think we’re doing with that? Uh, I think we’re struggling, but I think we’re making progress. Uh, I’m extremely pleased. I’ve got a, a, an interview in our may issue and we’ve got a, Brad, our young gun has a, as a, a new employee that is a, a young person who, who explains her path as an engineer to end up at, uh, uh, ses consulting and how she didn’t really intend to be an engineer and how she went through education and she’s struggling trying to find something that an excite her and something where she feels she can make a change. And A, it turns out that a, that the ses is that, and I think we need to tell those success stories. The other thing that I’m, uh, on about is, uh, the idea that we actually have a tremendous amount of women working in our industry and there’s a, an opportunity for them to, for us to recreate their jobs and basically, uh, put them closer to, uh, like let them own projects, let them do some of the customer relationships, let them work with, uh, some of these concepts such as building emotion, which are a little touchy feely or a little softer, and also allow them to do that from where they are, uh, using the work anywhere kind of thinking. So that’s sort of some of the stuff we’re going to chat about in Detroit because these guys have got me pretty excited about what, what’s going on up there. Well, and in our,

Eric stromquist: I love the way you just shine the spotlight on, on things that most of us don’t have time to stop and think about. Right. But I think they’re very pertinent, very relative to our industry. I mean, Kenny Smyres not calling you the Notradamus to the industry. It’s like you’re always seeing, I’ll farther out than the rest of us and, and nine times out of 10 you’re spot on. So I encourage our audience when Ken’s talking about these things [inaudible] tune in because even though it might not seem relevant now my experience of, of, of having the pleasure of knowing you over the last eight or nine years or so where we’ve done interviews and, and sort of attract automated buildings. I mean, you, you, you tend to be spot on with this, but, but again, I’m a, you identified the fact that we’ve got a lot of tribal knowledge, a lot of people leaving the building, so to speak.

Ken Sinclair: You’ve been an advocate of younger people, uh, women in anybody else. It can come in and help fill that void. And what I hear you really saying now, and I think it, it’s how do we create a former or process to be more effective with the, with the communities, right. And you know, you’ve, I think the last episode we talked about was it the community, when you explain to our audience a little bit about that again and sort of see how that relates, cause you got the people but then it’s not just having the people, it’s about putting them in groups or combinations where you get a synergistic effect and they can create or understand at a rate far greater than they might be able to individually. But the exception of you and Brad, Brad White, uh, yeah. Last, last month’s article, the community of practice and that, that went back, uh, that came out of Ahr. Uh, in the session we did with Theresa, it was Teresa that, uh, that brought it out. And then she actually is, has clarified that just a minute. I didn’t invent this. I just, I just brought it to the table and uh, but in my, my book, uh, you get full points for bringing stuff to the table cause there’s, there’s a whole lot of stuff out there that, uh, has been around for a long time that we should be using. We’re not using, but anyway, it’s just a concept. And a, it, it says that when we organize ourselves in a community of practice, we tend to support each other. We tend to, we tend to work and interact a lot better. And, uh, I think if we look back and I’ll certainly control trends is, is a, uh, a community of practice. The all the people buy your products and they, they basically appreciate the information. It’s part of our education that’s part of our, it turns out in be part of our social life. Uh, it, it becomes a community, but it’s a community of practice. Is that the things we are doing? And of course this, the May issue just builds on that. And it, it says, okay, once you got that kind of concept in your mind, just roll your eyes a little wider and, uh, you know, and shake your head a little more. And now start thinking about some of our big communities of practice, which would be folks like, uh, like the systems integrators, the master systems integrators and uh, and, and Scott’s a control con. Um, that’s, that’s really his community of a practice. And then we move off into the haystack, which is the next event rolling down. And for most of us in the industry, and it, it is an actual, I use it as my glowing example of a community of practice because we were all in the middle of the middle of nowhere, uh, chugging along. And, uh, again, there’s this person who had, uh, had been involved with our industry for a long time and had to basically move through a bunch of technologies, said, here’s the next technology we need to look at. We need to solve this naming problem. Let’s look at [inaudible]. And he gathered around him a whole bunch of a community of practice of people who actually believed that that was a good way to go. And so they actually created this community so we can all roll her eyes back and we can actually see and the creation of that community. And I think that’s a pattern that we all need to think about moving forward because, uh, we need to create new communities of practice. Um, uh, one of the big themes is going to be a in Detroit, uh, uh, Scottie has an article on our, in our may issue and it’s about location services and how important that’s going to be. And that one starts to show up a little bit at haystack. But really it’s you on the head at real. If you take a look at how many, uh, uh, supporters, sponsors, exhibitors I guess is the correct word, are there, I mean there is just a myriad of folks that are selling products that are based on or close to location services and this is kind of a new field for us. So using that as an example, it’s something that both you and I have got to get to learn more about. And the best way to do that is to connect ourselves to their connection communities. And when we’re hiring people, when I’m also expanding this out too, is that that may be more our criteria than if they have an engineering degree or they have eons of expertise in pneumatics like me. But, uh, they have eons of experience in a new technology that we don’t, well, no, and they bring with them their connection communities, they’re value is enhanced and making any sense. Yeah, no, it’s making a lot of sense. It also,

Eric stromquist: what I hear you saying is that, that sort of having the social skills, right? And, and maybe more so with the newer people, the digital social skills. I mean, back when we came along, I mean, I know when you hired people in our hired people and the early days, you know, part of what you looked at, well how are they going to get along with the rest of the team? Right? But that was, but now it almost seems like you have to have the digital social skills as well. And you know, it’s, I’m reading about companies now, for example, that, you know, are collaborating, obviously email’s been around for a while, but they’re, they’re collaborating with dms and chats, right. And you know, and instant messaging and stuff like that. So there’s speed with that, uh, that, that connection. But there’s also gotta be a predilection or you know, a willingness to adopt that, which I think to your point, the younger people naturally do that. But, uh, you know, some of the more mature, younger people like me and use, sometimes that’s a bit of a challenge. But you saying that that’s part of it, you know, having the digital social skills,

Ken Sinclair: very much so. And I think that is, is putting way more emphasis on my plea to our industry to grow younger. Um, it was funny, I think maybe on the last one I was, I was pushing words around and I used the word digital immigrant and I was trying to use it on the wrong end of the spectrum. And when I basically googled it and started reading what is a digital immigrant, you and I are digital immigrants. We don’t, we don’t do digital. We basically came from a different world and we’re now trying to, we’re trying to exist in this digital world where we’re struggling. And then there’s the digital natives, which, uh, like Brad and his people. And then we’ve got these, the new folks who are just immersed in it and digitally enhanced, uh, they can’t function without digital. And so what’s happening is as we start to grow younger and as, as, as a old digital immigrants come to this new country and we’re trying to learn to speak this language and we go out and we find a digital native who, who’ve speaks, it speaks a language reasonably well, but really what we’re looking for is there a connection to these digital augmented kids that are basically, uh, basically grew up with a, an iPhone for a soother. And uh, so we need to get connected to them and that they’re the people that are going to lead us into augmented reality and into artificial intelligence and stuff. So there’s, there’s a lot of stuff going on.

Eric stromquist: I’ve got a story to tell you about that because as you know, I’ve got a, Oh, she’s six now, daughter Evelyn Grace and everyone has started writing books. She can’t write yet. She can’t read yet. But what she’s done can, she’s, she’s figuring out her mom’s phone that they’re seeking press a button. And it will record. So tell stories. It gets recorded and then she’s figuring out how to wirelessly they print them. I mean six years old, she’s printing these little books that she writes. And again, she can’t write yet physically she’s learning to write and she, you know, as learning to spell, she’s in kindergarten for crying out loud. But to your point, this is somebody that on her own figure it out. You can pick up her mom’s phone, hit the, hit the record button and record books.

Ken Sinclair: It’s pretty phenomenal. But yet you, you bring her into your office and you say, oh you want access to a printer? And she says, what’s a printer? What’s a printer? And I go, I don’t understand that process. I know how to do it, but I don’t know how to do it your way. That’s a very good example cause then we’re seeing that on. But then, okay, now the other thing is, is our future, our industry’s future and growth depends on how we get connected to those folks and bring them in. And what I’m, what I, one of our problems is, is we’re this close shop industry, uh, Hu who’s do basically hasn’t, hasn’t really appealed to the public and we’re starting to get more appeal. As you know, global warming. There’s the big buildings are a big problem of that. So we’re getting, so the young people are looking at us as well, maybe if I can help these guys that are struggling with these big buildings, I can actually make a change in the world. So they’re starting to be some, but we need a much better image. We need to be, their industry is actually becoming quite exciting. And the other thing is, is where it was an incredibly closed industry that you try and bring a new idea into our industry and we collaborate. Um, and now I think we’re a little more receptive. So if you’ve got a new phone APP or you’ve got a new way of doing something that we never even thought of using phones or even using device lists, technologies which are starting to evolve faster than phones and start to use a voice as a platform. And you know, all of these things that are kind of kicking around in an it world, they need to be brought to our meetings. We need, but we need to somehow have a campaign to let the industry know that we were, we’re a changed industry and we are, we’re looking for new ideas and where we’re growing. We’re growing younger.

Eric stromquist: Well, I, I gotta tell you something. It was like a, I know you and I both been on the campaign as well as Kenny Smyres to attract younger people in an industry and we’re trying to put a spotlight on it because this is one of the few industries that you can actually come in not being in a cubicle farm if you want, really want to have an impact on the planet, uh, footprint. I mean, you can, and not only that, you can document it because we’ve got the analytics programs and everything else too. It’s one of the few industries that I know this left that, uh, that, you know, if you got any talent in any gumption, meaning you’re willing to learn, you can pretty much write your own ticket. It’s challenging. It’s fun and you know, we’ve created a young gun to work. Ward is a way to sort of, you know, put recognition on these younger folks. But you know, like I told you before, I will know that you and I have done our job and Kenny’s martyrs have done our jobs when a young person, and we’ll just use the mail, the example is able to go into a bar and you got a rap musician, you’ve got a movie star and you got them and you’ve got a really nice looking attractive lady and she walked up to the rap star and goes, what do you do? I’m a rap star. What do you do? I’m a, I’m a an actor. What do you do? I’m a billionaire. What do you do? I’m in the smart buildings. Control business just goes, you’re the one I want. We will have arrived when we do that. Yeah, go ahead. I was just hoping to fight. How do I share? Share a picture here. Maybe it’ll be too, you should have a share screen down at the bottom, but if you don’t, wouldn’t go find a four year old and they can help us with, yeah. Would be down at the bottom of your screen today Okay. Oh, there it is. It’s asking me what do I want to share? Here we go. Can we Kim, sorry about that. No worries at all. It should have been ready to do this. All right. I’ll let you know when it comes up. There you go. There you go. So there, there’s a, there’s a new new, uh, energy. So I think, do you think, what do you think we could get her to come on the show? Uh, I think, yeah, I think our viewership would go way up. So she’s a little bit Brad hired, Huh? Yeah. But anyway, if you add in there, there’s some other words that came out of this work. Kind of neat to, uh, the title, if you can read it. It says, job crafting on leashes, new engineering talent, even heard that word. And that came from Brad’s, uh, uh, engagement specialists, which he has. And they’re basically trying to, you know, have a better interface with their clients and stuff. But this whole idea of job crafting, a letting the person come in and almost defined the job that they’re going to do, where they’re going to work and her, her title is eventually a job came around to combine it to all my passions and allow me to work in an industry where I felt like I was truly making a difference. I mean, that’s, that’s the words, but we need to get that kind of a message out more to the industry. Well, what we should do, can you enact collectively have Kenny Smyres this we should get, you know, people like Stephanie after they’ve had a little bit of time in the industry, we should get them to come on and she’s already done it in your publication, but they ought to become the poster children for our industry. We ought to do some video testimonials and things like that and, and to attract people in. Well, that’s very cool. Brad white is one of the most innovative guys. I know. He’s one of your mentors. I’ve got a, I’ve got a couple of 30 year old mentor so they’re getting too old for me. I’m looking for a new mentor, somebody in their twenties. If you want to metro me, I’m available. Yeah. Okay. The but then, yeah. So anyway, we tell we got to get, we’ve got to get more of that information out now actually I guess that’s what we got going with the young guns. Uh, again I think we have to know maybe for Orlando we have to have the younger guns or something like that. We know baby guns, BB guns and I can, I do want to argue the other side of this a little bit because I, although I do agree with you that you know, we definitely need to bring the younger folks in and mentor them. Okay. I think there’s, there’s the younger people need to be mentored by some of us too. And I’ve been reading a book that I encourage our community to check out. It just really opened my mind. The book is called deep work by a guy named cal Newport in what cows arguing and a, in the book, the part of the premise and the book is that, uh, among other things, one of the themes are we just doing busy work or we actually do in deep productive work. And what he’s basically saying is that, you know, we’re so distracted by so many things. Our email box, our texts, our social media that we do shallow work really, really well, you know, getting things done like emails and stuff like that. But deep work really requires, you know, taking a undistracted chunks of time and going very, very deeply into a particular subject or a particular endeavor of field. Now what’s interesting about this to me, one of his premises, cause you know, you and I and Kenny Smyres have talked about, you know, with artificial intelligence coming in, all, uh, you know, is, is it going to be the end of the facilities managers are going to be an end to this and ended that. And, uh, what, what he’s basically saying is he’s saying that yeah, he thinks a lot is technology advances in artificial intelligence advances and stuff like that. A lot of the people that do the shallow work might be susceptible to being replaced by machines or bots or whatever.

Eric stromquist: What he’s arguing is that the people that can do deep work, okay, which includes concentrating on something for a long period of time or always going to be in demand. And, and one of the final things I’ll say about this and I’d like to get your comment is that the skills that it takes to do shallow work, high e being able to multitask, focus on bunch of different things at the same time, the social media and stuff like that, that if you do too much of that, you lose the ability to focus and go deep. So it’s almost like, at the very least, if you’re coming up, you want to be able to do the shower, but you also want to set a time, a couple hours a week where you hone that muscle and be able to go really deep and concentrate for a couple of hours at a time without distraction. What do you think about that?

Ken Sinclair: Yeah, I think I very much agree with it. I, uh, my, my, uh, method of dealing with that is I get up in the middle of the night when nobody’s around and then do my deep, deep thinking and writing. I can’t write when there’s a, when there’s interruption and stuff you have to have, basically it’s going to be quiet for three or two or three hours. So you can put together a concept and even just yo head off a bunch of directions and read, read a bunch of pieces of the Internet that are coming together and just trying to, trying to assemble any of those thoughts. So, yes, but I think the other thing we need to do is to refocus our, uh, our workforces. And this is how I think we’ll grow younger is that we start taking some of those folks that are doing that shallow stuff, uh, and, and bring them in, bring them into the deep end. And I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised that, uh, how well they can cope with it. And, uh, again, the remoteness, uh, one of the problems with, uh, the women workforce is a, they, they have a much better handle on, uh, on balance and how their life is balanced. And basically, uh, just, I mean in the final analysis, this, this isn’t like food, it’s just a job. Uh, so, but that being said, but then when it comes to things like ownership, they’re extremely good at. So if in fact they get attached to a project and they own the project, they will certainly, um, work with that client. Uh, they tend to have better people skills generally, especially then our software people and our hardware people, they sometimes a lack, uh, like social social skills. And that was one thing that Stephanie noticed is that she said, these guys don’t want to go out of the office and talked to the client. I’d rather go out and talk to the client and know she’s a social person, so she wants to, she wants to basically make the client why, why isn’t the client happy and go out and talk to them. That’s the only way you’re really gonna find that out. And so she’s almost a bridge between maybe your deep thinkers. Maybe that’s what we need. Maybe we need an agent, a basically you just, you just coined another phrase. I don’t really realize it or not the bridge. Uh, and, and I think, you know, this has been around for a while. I mean, you know, I know you, you started out doing service and fail. So you know, that being able to talk to people is really, really a key skill and not everybody can do it. And that’s in a world where we’re growing up, you know, 180 character, hundred 42 characters or whatever. And when we get used to that somebody that can actually be the bridge and communicate. I mean, I think that that’s, that might be the highest paying skill here in the next several years. So I liked it. The bridge man, you know, people ask me what I now, so I’m the bridge. You’re the bridge to Canadian bridge. I’m the U s burners Kent’s, Kent’s Myers, Ken Sinclair and Eric Trump was, or the bridges. Yeah. We kind of are in a way, right, with your publication to my publications. What we’re doing is we’re assimilating information, curating information that we think she is one that we’re bridging it hopefully in a way that’s easily consumable to the people that don’t have time to necessary curator. But what we need is we need somebody who reaches out to people who would potentially be bridges, uh, between our or social side, the people in our buildings and, and what it is we’re doing. And also that we make that reach out attractive enough that, uh, that folks want to go into it. The young folks now as they come out, they’re looking at autonomous vehicles. That’s pretty exciting. And what I’m trying to spend as a, whoa, have you thought about autonomous buildings? And uh, cause we’ve got all exact same problems we’ve got to solve. The autonomous vehicles are going to run into uh, the autonomous vehicles. Uh, or sorry, the autonomous vehicle is going to run into her autonomous buildings. And uh, we had a suit hot on while back there and we’re talking about that she’s got a program going now where she’s, uh, she’s offering a free, a free trial for folks to kind of get involved in what she’s, she’s pitching. And uh, you know, I think there is value for us as an industry to try and get our heads around thinking like autonomous vehicle folks. And obviously as we started to move into our smart cities, which is just another connection community we have to learn about. And we probably need people in our company who are well connected to the communities of smart cities and we need people who are connected to the communities of autonomous vehicles. We need to have all these tentacles going out. As we put more of those standard calls out and we become a more diverse solid company, uh, that is sort of happening and understand some of the problems of the day. I think what we’ll do is we’ll raise our a presence, uh, to these young people that in fact, I hadn’t even thought of those guys. A lot of them would never think that we would ever even be in that business. Automated buildings. That’s pretty boring stuff.

Eric stromquist: Well, you know what I’m thinking almost is, is when you’re saying this, it’s almost like getting a can get you talk about a, a group practice group of imagine if everybody chipped in some money and then all of a sudden you’re watching a, the equivalent of game of Thrones or some on TV and you know, this TV show is brought to you by the Smart Buddy and Vac controls community where you have the chance to do this, this or this. I mean it’s, you know, how else can you are, you know, running advertisements and non trade publications if you’re going to really try to attract people in. It seems like that might be a route to go. Right?

Ken Sinclair: Yeah. Well I think again, the communities, if we look back, it’s kind of funny, this all can, I just came together as we started talking about these communities of practice. I’d been part of them and use them all my life, but I’d never, it never kind of thought of how we need to highlight them a lot more. And I think the community of practice is also the way that we will recruit. Because if, if you are kind of interested in any piece of this, whether it be a machine vision or whether it be location services, if that kind of intrigues you or you’ve kind of caught that as something you haven’t thought about, you basically you start following these communities and if the communities and up through one of their members leading you back to our industry. I think that’s the way things work these days rather than, um, rather than us reading and being in the old days, we used to watch TV and then we, we bought whatever they put, whatever ads they put on and that’s what we bought. But we don’t do that anymore. We now we go and we look at stuff and they serve us ads that basically the places we look. So everything is right. But to your point, maybe it, maybe it’s an internet campaign on Instagram or whatever. But my question for you would be, I mean, if you were to assert, you know, go to a career day at colleges, how many people in college even know that this fieldings yest and then you know what it’s about. Yeah, that’s, that’s right. I mean, it’s, um, like even, even the Ashury booth, which is, is, is, it’s, it’s always there. It, uh, most of our community events and it’s, when you go there, you know, they’re talking at a pretty high level. Uh, it’s, it’s hard to attract, uh, the, the young minds. I think so we, yeah, we just need to do a whole lot better job of that. We need to show them, actually the location services, I think has a lot of sex appeal. When they actually, and they get it real quick, they say, well, what we’re really doing is we’re tracking the people through the buildings. Like a Google maps, traps, car trucks, cars and traffic and all that information is used and they say, Oh wow, that’s neat. Hadn’t even thought of doing that, you know, and that, and then of course, want you to do that. Then there’s all of these, uh, technologies that, uh, peel off of that in both a may issue. And in the article that we wrote for connected contractor, uh, in it, at the end of it, I started talking about a real calm and I point out the amazing amount of, uh, uh, companies, they have like 40 or 50 companies that I’ve never heard of. And I, I pride myself in this industry that I tried. I tried to keep track of, you know, new companies and usually I go to an event and there’s usually 10 or something, but there’s just a myriad of people who are selling services that you and I haven’t even talked about. We need to talk about them. The other thing that it became real obvious when I started, I actually, what I did is I actually went to every one of the exhibitors at a real calm. I be gone and tried to figure out what is their play, what are they doing, how do they make money, how are they fitting in to our industry hub? Why are they the buildings, uh, uh, of that. And it was an amazing eye opener to see the different approaches they’re taking, uh, coming into our turf wars from the reasons. Ken, let me interrupt. What were some of the reasons the, were some of the reasons you heard and what were some of that surprised you? Location services and just basically tracking, uh, what’d they call it? Just basically occupancy sensing and then those are become big things. And what this is, this is the crossover that we’ve been looking for. The crossover. Uh, we always talked about the three 3,300 rule and we wanted to get over into that 300 rule and we were still trying to do it with, with energy and uh, and then we started, you know, or maybe if we can move the blinds up and down, we can catch their attention, but location services basically saying where the people are and then starting to react to, uh, where they are and what we want, what they want to do, you know, that starts to open this next thought of autonomous building.

Eric stromquist: Uh, so the whole dynamic I think is changing. It’s becoming a lot more exciting. But in the final analysis, don’t, don’t fear all you control trenders and automated building folks because all that’s really going to do is put more emphasis back on providing the correct conditioning and control and a better interface. Uh, you know, we’re not going to get by with that, uh, 1980 DDC system. We’re going to have to have a faster, uh, communications and stuff. So it’s, it’s our industry is, is going to go crazy and it already has gone crazy, but you haven’t seen nothing yet. It’s going to real. So, so all of these pieces are fitting together. The other piece that was in there that just blew me away that I hadn’t thought so much about is the wireless. Uh, we, again, this is an issue that we grew up in a wireless world.

Ken Sinclair: We were excited that we sort of understood the ether net. Then we said, wow. Then either and that’s better than rs four 85. Yeah. Wow, this is great stuff. And then we kind of came with the it folks and they started talking about security and all these things we kind of grew into that, that was happening with g five coming is the whole wireless thing is, is becoming a very serious contender to wire. So now we’re actually seeing and add the real calm. There’s a lot of talk about, uh, the wireless systems in the building. And so now should, should they, should our devices, can we afford to put a wire connection on our devices or do our devices just simply become wireless? And as the OEM pieces of our industry move in to the building, do they just wake up wireless? They find themselves, the person now at the factory is in control of their device and they, they have that key connection. They also do their analytics to see how the client is using it. It’s just a whole new world of, of how we do this. We get this, we’ve got the other concept is getting kicked around a Poe power over ethernet and some are touting that as well. This is the solution. We’ll, we’ll bring the power with the uh, with the wired a intern with the wired network connection and then, but now they’ve raised the question, what if there is no network connection? It brings up a whole bunch of other issues about how do we have to, we have to own the airways. I think that’s a different concept for us. Uh, then you start bringing in how the government is going to make money off of it. Cause that’s gotta be a concept that’s eventually going to come in. So it, you know, it’s like there’s a saying Ken, there’s nothing changes but the changes. Yeah. Boy, it just seems like we’re getting a lot, which is why, uh, you know, I encourage our community. Yeah, definitely check out automated buildings.com because you know, as you can tell Kenton, Claire stays on top of the changes and, uh, if you want to look out into the future a little bit, this is a great publication to check out. But what else do you have in the May issue? Can and look forward to

Eric stromquist: mmm.

Ken Sinclair: Lots of stuff. Not that it’s hard to just pick one out, right? Yeah. Yeah. It makes it actually is, but generally we’re talking, uh, about the, uh, the focus is on the, um, on the building of bringing the communities together and the three events because a, that’s sort of the next big thing in my life is I’m off to control con and then I’m off to haystack and then I’m off to a real calm, real calm. And we’re basically involved in all of those shows in some way, uh, at Realcomm where we’re talking about the user interface. And there I was able to change their words to, uh, two autonomous interactions. And I think these are some words that we need to have to start a new, a new meaning for AI. Right? That’s right. Thomas Interactions. I love it. Kept my baby. She go, maybe she called autonomous or new interactions. A X, right. I taught one. Yep. Yeah. No, a acts would be valuable at a x would be, uh, autonomous, uh, user experience there, which is actually your goal. So that’s exactly where you’re going with, with that. But maybe, maybe that’s it too is if we, I always loved the architectural, uh, uh, industry because every time I was on a new architectural project, there was like 10 new words. Like, you know, no, whether it be fenestration or you know, somebody. So I was like, that’s insane. Can Man, yeah, you do love the word. So man, you come up with some great words. One was the one you had coke competition or go competent. Yeah, you saw. So one, what we want to publish on control trends is an automated buildings can sing choir dictionary for those who uh, cause you do come up with the best words, the most descriptive word, which is a great thing.

Eric stromquist: Well, listen, uh, the May issues coming out, uh, next couple of days. So be sure you check that. [inaudible] should be online this afternoon. Oh, this afternoon. Okay. But automated buildings. Taco, yeah. Listen to your filling in for Kenny Smyres. So we’ve got to cover a couple of extra post here. So are you good with that? Can you hang around post? Okay. How much time share my screen and this is where you kind of come a really intelligent stuff that um, I don’t know about. Let me say this is, this is based on the fact that I can read. No, I got you. Okay. So let me do this and then I got to come in here and we’re going to go. Okay. You know, teach them. I once said, Ken, anywhere, anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, at least at first. So we’re going to get to watch me do this poorly, at least at first cause I can’t see this cause that’s in the way to move this out of the way.

Ken Sinclair: All right, let’s this.

Eric stromquist: Oh Man, this has been fun. I can’t tell you much. I appreciate it. And a year gas was a can a can Smyres is a way sequestered by a manufacturer and that may, okay, here we go. So you can see my screen right now, right. Okay. Slow down a bit if I have to read. So here was the last episode, 311 where I episode 312 posts for the week. We had was smart building gold strikes every two years. And we’re talking about data and making it usable and we’re talking about haystack connect, which we’ve already mentioned both for anything you want to add to that.

Ken Sinclair: Uh, I’m going to be there. I’m looking forward to it. Uh, lots of new stuff going on there. The, uh, the pitch fest I think is going to be good. Uh, one of our advertisers and yours as well as contemporary control and they’re going to show us a, uh, their raspberry running a haystack, which I think is really impressive and I think that’s probably going to have a big effect on the industry. We’ll call this, we didn’t talk about this last week, but this was one of my favorite great conversation in two of our favorite people. You and Suda. Let’s take a look at that real quick and maybe you can break this down for our community a little bit. What you guys were talking about cars. I didn’t understand it. How is Iot Day, which, um, is a, um, I belonged to the Internet council. Uh, uh, and uh, it’s a great resource for me. That’s, this is where I get, it’s my, uh, my connection community that I bring all these wonderful ideas to you that you wonder, how did, how did that old guy think that up? Well, he didn’t, he was basically talking to these people and they, uh, they implanted that idea and certainly sue has one of those kind of folks. So anyway, so we’re just, we’re just chatting about the collision of, uh, of, uh, atonomous interaction in buildings and basically how that relates to, uh, uh, to her, her field. And she has some, uh, of a program going right now where you can actually engage in her program for free for a few weeks. Uh, if you go to our, or a Twitter site, Twitter, Twitter site, you can click on it there and you can get the details about it or go to [inaudible] site.

Eric stromquist: Very, very cool. Okay. And then we have real calm, I be cons, smart Boning integrators summit. It will be June 12th in Nashville, which is,

Ken Sinclair: and actually, so I’m actually, uh, the moderator on the user interface. Very cool. And actually I’ve interest, uh, um, basically Scott is, is organizing the systems integrator session and he allowed me to be the moderator, but he said, I want to be on your panel. So obviously he wants to control what I, what I’m going to say about the user experience. But I know he’s big on location services and uh, uh, I think we’re going to see some exciting stuff in Detroit. We are. And then a good friend of mine in yours, George Thomas has company contemporary controls, has some new products come. They came out which are really awesome. So you can check those out on controllers. We’re not going to tell you what those are. You just got to go check it out. It’s definitely worth taking a read. And then I wanted to hit this post for sure. Pid Tuning costumes can cause you’ve turned a few loops in your day as I have and a lot of people out there weren’t kind of sure how to do it. And uh, you didn’t know I had a copy of the Mona Lisa in my house. Did you? But, uh, what, what, what were were your proportional ban or a gang guy back in the day? Actually we should to write our own controllers we had, because what we found is a lot of the processes we had weren’t proportional and they’re mostly time based. And so we would write our, a lot of our own controllers, uh, I’ve had the worst, worst example was those in pitch motion fans. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with those. They basically they had a high stresses that was just unbelievable. They would, you’d push them, push them, push them, and then they finally lurch in the veins would move and it would make a great big change if you were trying to control static pressure. It was just chaotic. And uh, it was a fellow from the UK that help help write some of the first algorithms we used. And uh, we s we were able to actually able to control which could net what could never be controlled before. So I actually have several where proportional and direct dialed right out. Yeah. Good for you, man. Good for you. With that. Dan has kind of as much an art as it is a science. I think so. Uh, and you know what, part of the gist of this video that you’re doing h vac and you’re doing know chill water valves and stuff. I usually you have to go with the proportional and enter call. You get on an industrial side, you get to put that derivative van or something. I can’t Sinclair’s on that so we can, I’m just realizing, man, I had this totally wrong. Uh, we’re APP actually on episode 313 of control talk. Now the smart, that doesn’t sound lucky. Well that’s all right but you, but hey, I can’t think of a better guy to do this and listen, I remembered to turn the recorder on. So I think we are pretty lucky here. That’s dropping fires. Stepped out. He didn’t want to, he was, who’s worried about that? Three 13. He’s pretty smart about it, about that. Then we had the uh, 20 days until haystack connect. Got another link you can get on there. Then we put a, can we put up a series on indoor air quality super, which is really good. That’s a big part of it. And what the cool thing about it is it’s actually five episodes. If you get out here in quick, you can get all five episodes because you can see that because you know, man, you got to have the training, right? So I don’t have that a good guy, they put on the cover his butt. And then, you know, we, uh, we sort of wrapped it out here with, um, the last one was a Siemens man. I mean, I know you’ve played with some compromises and the day and a Siemens came out with a new economizer and it is near and dear to my heart buddy, you know, has potential amateurs and it has a dip switches. No, you don’t have to use a software tool to program at, uh, they kind of feature featured it a little bit, but, but it’s Kinda like the best of the new world and the whole world can. And um, uh, it, it’s got some very sophisticated control algorithms in there. And one of the really, really cool features about it that I thought was, has got a smart plug in place. So depending on whether you hook up to temperature sensors or one or two MLB controllers are one or two c o two sensors are one, it knows that. And then it automatically puts the right configuration in their voice and then you can just get to adjust a couple of these potential amateurs. It makes me feel young again, even thinking about this, you’re set and you’re ready to go. So I kind of appalled them a little bit.

Eric stromquist: They, you know, I think it’s a really elegant solution and something that they, uh, you know, the d featured, they didn’t put the digital display on it, but, uh, they went back. So for old guys like us, man, it’s, it’s like picking up an old film camera. It just, so that’s what I had. That’s what we had on the site this week. Uh, and uh, listen, I courage you to check out automated buildings.com. Our guest this week has been Kent, Kent Auto, Sinclair, a friend of the show or the most knowledgeable guys in the industry. And you know the great thing for me coming up as I’m going to be at all these same shows that I is going to be out. So Buddy, we’ll look forward to catching up with you then. And uh, hey, if you’re part of our community, you know, he’s, he’s friendly, he doesn’t bite well much.

Speaker 1: Uh, if you hadn’t met Ken yet, you definitely want to shake his hand and um, and, and meet him at one of these meetings. Alright, so listen, now we’re going to see how adaptable you are, Ken, because you talk about this young mindset and also you’re going to have to Kenny’s part on the sign off here. Okay? Okay. So at the right time you put your thumbs up. Go Indeed Eric. Okay, you ready? Okay, here we go. All right, there you go. That’s another week on control talk. Now you’re smart. Bonus video cast and podcasts for the week ending April 29 2019 this has been episode 313 a special thanks to our guests this week. The owner editor of automated boating’s dot com the one the only Ken auto, Saint Claire. Hey, we appreciate you tuning in. Uh, with that, remember, be bold, stand control, stay relevant, and collaborate with somebody this week. Indeed, Eric, indeed Kenny Sinclair.