The Connected Contractor

I am very pleased to be asked to help kick off the launch of a new newsletter called The Connected Contractor. The title conjures thoughts of a contractor who provides connections to the latest trends.

Who am I? Ken Sinclair Editor/Owner/Founder www.AutomatedBuildings.com @Ken_Sinclair

What do I know about Connected?  This is our 19^th year of running a B2B magazine for the global large building automation industry. This industry has traditionally connected comfort and people which involve both HVAC and Lighting. We are in a period of radical change driven by the Internet of Things, IoT. This brings a greatly improved connection to our people via social media. For the last five years, I have headed a connection community of collaborators to educate and manage radical change.

There is an information storm blowing, the constant IoT rain pouring from the cloud, the accumulating self-learning puddles on the edge and occasional showers from the traditional industry. How does the connected contractor weather this storm? I think we need to look away from our technologies and come to the realization that "Our Assets are People, not Technology."

The Internet of Things, “IoT” transformations are bringing significant disruptions to all industries.

Disruption is good because it causes us to review our core values, our reason for being, and adapt to change for survival. These are things that only the people of our industry can do; our existing technologies can not help and have the potential of becoming liabilities.

We need to focus instead on our only assets, our people who have all been through several technology shifts in their lives. They have seen hardware evaporate into software and become data in the IoT cloud or processes acted on at the edge.

People that are deeply attached to their existing technology are very concerned because these IoT-driven changes are coming very fast and are very disruptive to their reason for being.

There are a lot of pieces on the table for sure. We will quickly move to new low-cost IoT-ready processors providing self-learning at the edge and providing amazing new IoT connections. "Open" like we have never seen is occurring everywhere, commoditization of our products, strange new bedfellows, are all part of our future.

Rally your people, your only true asset to set in place a plan as to how best work with today's IoT tools and technology shifts. You may have become so attached to your technologies that you are immobilized to move forward without them, and this is of great concern.

Has your company been reinvesting in your only asset with new people, to grow your company younger and increasing your industry relevance? Our people's skills that create our reasons for being are our assets not our technological flavor of the day or the latest IoT app.

How much money have you spent updating your only assets -- your people? Yourself? Your procedures? Your IoT connections and knowledge?

I am looking forward to being part of this new newsletter aimed at helping you become The Connected Contractor.

Sign up at: contractormag.com/newsletters/signup