Driving & Dodging Digital Dinosaurs

If we cannot change and adapt quickly enough in our rapidly evolving world, can we herd and drive our existing digital dinosaurs into the new era? Maybe drive them out of our way? Or simply dodge around them?

If you do not feel the pressure to change, the weight of the new era that is bearing down on us, you haven’t been paying attention.

I am starting to understand. I am being pushed and driven and dodged as one of the Head Dinosaurs, the "Sinclair-Saurus"!

I wrote this 22 years ago as a self-defined digital dinosaur:

I have been on the leading/bleeding edge of the building automation industry for over 30 years. I have seen pneumatic control give way to electronic, electronics turn into mainframe computers as big as refrigerators, mainframes give way to mini-computers the size of suitcases, mini-computers evolve to stand-alone panels the size of clipboards which gave away to micro panels the size of pocket calculators, and now input and output devices become addressable. Now that the hardware had virtually disappeared and the migration of DDC control to the Internet had started it seemed that the next edge was here—and I had better get on with my life's vocation of catching up.

Yes, that is 30 years of industry and consulting, followed by 22 years of AutomatedBuildings.com. 52 years. Yikes! “I had better get on with my life's vocation of catching up"—this is still where I am now trying to get my mind around today's changes.

As always AutomatedBuildings.com is not the change, but offers a springboard and connection to some of the radical change that is occurring. We wrote this review, Pushing Digital Dinosaurs, in the June issue of AutomatedBuildings.com to frame the time and space we see our industry in.

I recently watched the documentary General Magic (https://www.generalmagicthemovie.com), a great account of the necessary failures that lead to success. It answered a lot of questions I had about how we got where we are with IoT today. It reminded me of our start-up in 1999 with AutomatedBuildings.com.

The scope, the numbers, and the need for everyone to work with their piece of the puzzle, yet have it fit the desired solution. This raises the question, are we just at the start of our journey? Does our “General Magic” that we now do daily need to evolve rapidly in the new world of AI? AR? Mobile Experience? And what is next? Will our services be mixed in ways we cannot now imagine? Short answer: yes!  

The times we are living in seem familiar to me. In 1999 we had browser wars, search engine wars, Internet provider wars, the  turning of all business into .com (and of course the resulting dot-bomb, thanks to the over-investment in vaporware). Our first article was about the concept of a large building as an internet identity with its own web address.

May was a very busy month for us all with two major industry events, Controls Con and Haystack Connect and Monday Live every Monday of the month. We use Trust to create our every evolving Building Digital Family; no longer can any one person know it all, so we need to partner with Digital Families of "Trust."

If you missed any of these events you still have a chance to view their valuable content online:

https://controlscon.regfox.com/post-controls-con-2021  

You can visit the conference website for a full list of sessions and descriptions.

https://www.haystackconnect.org/schedule/ 

The Haystack organization standardizes semantic data models and web services with the goal of making it easier to unlock value from the vast quantity of data being generated by the smart devices that permeate our homes, buildings, factories, and cities.

Keeping with our theme, here’s a call-back to our April issue "Adaptation":

What has 50 years in the industry taught me? The more I learn the less I know, but "Adaptation" is our survival superpower.  According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives, but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.

There are great discussions going on on social media. This LinkedIn link leads to ControlTalk NOW podcast. In this conversation we talked about the aging talent pool in building operations and how technology will have to bridge the imminent capability gap in the industry.

This link leads to the amazing work being done by Rob Huntington, where he talks about the shift to Converged Networks (among other things). Key quote:

The sun is setting on building management systems as we know it and change is coming through building operating systems and packaged equipment control, which when delivered will eliminate the need for field fitted BMS control altogether.

Back in the May issue of AutomatedBuildings, Nicholas Waern, our “Building Whisperer” hit many of the same themes we’re discussing here in his article, A  Future That is Bigger Than the Past: 

Is the Building Automation Industry Broken? Or is the Building Automation Industry poised and ready to leapfrog into the future?

I’m very pleased with the June issue of AutomatedBuildings. There are great discussions in all our articles and interviews including these:

What killed the Dinosaurs? The AI-age!  By Nicholas Waern

Is AI overhyped when it comes to the benefits that could be derived when using it correctly?  No, quite the opposite, of course.

Don’t Be a Data Dinosaur! By Mark Petock of Lynxspring

In spite of all of the talk, use cases, an abundance of smart technology, and smart solutions available today to take advantage of; I am amazed at how many data dinosaurs are still roaming around in the built environment.

Teaching Dinosaurs to Dance By Suda Jamthe

Have you ever considered teaching dinosaurs to dance? The secret is technology.

This issue also includes article on managing the new reality of work and an interview on how touchless technology can create a safer, more productive workplace.

In addition to all this, we also discuss the renewed focus on our climate emergency and efforts to address carbon reduction. Better Buildings is an initiative of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) designed to improve the lives of the American people by driving leadership in energy innovation. Through Better Buildings, DOE partners with leaders in the public and private sectors to make the nation’s homes, commercial buildings and industrial plants more energy efficient by accelerating investment and sharing of successful best practices.

In July 2017 I wrote this for contractormag.com:

We need to learn to stream dinosaur dust in our new self-learning online environments.  This industry has a practice of dumping large pieces of information -- which I call "the dinosaur dump" – and that method of teaching is just not working for the next generation, that generation of kids who will one day be in the vanguard of our industry, the same way we are now.

We need to break those large, important chunks of our knowledge into mini moments that are of use to the new workforce. In fact, we need to crush them into dust – Dinosaur Dust if you want to give it a name – that we can then deliver to that generation in a steady stream.

So this is an open call to experts around the industry: can you help me figure out how best to do this? Can you help me connect our reality to their virtuality."

Please join me in learning about the changes of the new era. Do not be a digital dinosaur.