AutomatedBuildings.com Editorial

The fastest growing businesses in the world, such as Uber and Airbnb, using tools like disintermediation and price transparency, create a marketing model that brings buyers and sellers together in an efficient, regulated and innovative manner.

Also known as shareconomy, collaborative consumption or peer economy, a common academic definition of the term refers to a hybrid market model (in between owning and gift giving) of peer-to-peer exchange. Such transactions are often facilitated via community-based online services. Uberization is also an alternative name for the phenomenon.

From Jim Lee's last two articles on the Road to Transparency, I have pulled this quote,

This trend is typical of how “software eats the world.” Uber creates transparency on your transportation needs from initial ride request all the way to payment, compare that with the unknowns of hailing a taxi.

We are just returning from a few days of living in San Francisco, and we have been "Uberized;" an amazing simplification of what was a frustrating experience into the personal driver on demand app. A fun, sustainable way to move around a city. The leap to autonomous electrical vehicles is not hard to imagine.

In areas where Uber is not available, it is morphing the politically controlled Taxi into new performance partnerships in which they are actually improving their services. Change drives change, but how will it change our industry?

Not all references to Uber are positive, as it is a digital disruptive business at the front of the social wave of change, as an industry it is our challenge to extract the easy and efficiency of the concept and apply it to improving our connection and correction of Comfort, Satisfaction, and Wellbeing.

Change is happening, as depicted in this extremely well read last month's article Cope with the IOT Revolution by Staying Agile, The article states, As the smart building industry rapidly evolves, management strategies pioneered by software developers can help us successfully adapt.

So how can our industry use "Uber" thinking to delivery Comfort, Satisfaction, and Wellbeing to be a major player in the productivity arena?

How are we positioning and exploring nontraditional partnerships in our industry to support an Uber think approach, to providing our services focused on satisfaction, care, documented well-being, and measured productivity improvement?

My Locations is just the first of more location-based capabilities we will be unveiling for Comfy. As today’s workforce becomes increasingly tech-savvy and mobile, we’re committed to helping each and every person be their best self at work—which includes making Comfy easier to use, everywhere.

Storey: Virtual occupancy metering (VOM) is a method of people-counting without the need for physical sensors. It’s like Google Traffic, but for indoor environments. Our solution, called Bridge, uses existing Wi-Fi activity data to generate VOM data and enable occupant-demand control of building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, without the need to install new equipment such as motion detectors, video cameras, or physical sensors.

VOLTTRON An agent based open-source distributed control and sensing platform for buildings, the power grid, and the integration of the two to support the deployment of energy efficiency and grid services to increase consumer benefits. A deployment platform from which commercial enterprises can develop and sell products without license constraints and an easily integrate solution into their product lines; A tool that can accelerate the industry adoption of transactive based controls, advanced building energy analytics, and new pioneering energy-related applications and algorithms; A Linux-based software solution that is the ‘engine’ for robust cyber secure solutions connecting devices, data, storage, transactions, decision, and control.

Moving forward, we plan to continue prototyping a VOLTTRON-based energy audit and recommissioning service, making use of its core functionality. We want to get the tool in the hands of our engineers as soon as possible so that we can focus our development in the right areas, using an agile approach. I’m delighted to hear that PNNL is continuing to play a leadership role in the research community and that they are working hard to move towards an open source software foundation and community.

Other platforms are evolving as well like this EdgeX Foundry - Vendor-Neutral, Open-Source which will simplify IoT development and deployment for a wide variety of applications.

Our contributing editor Therese points out in her article this month, Facebook announced at its mid-April F8 developer's conference that it intends to make its in-app camera the first Augmented Reality platform. It is not waiting for AR glasses to be perfected. Occupants playing with the ‘fridgenotes’ feature could become a facilities manager’s worst nightmare. Or property managers could get ahead of this feature and incorporate this mode of occupant feedback into their workflow processes.

These articles talk about transformative change, Investing in Occupant Comfort How thermal comfort enhances productivity, and how to achieve it , BuildPulse

The obvious Haystack Impact of all this is the naming requirement of a lot more things and services so these virtual services can be self-discovered and machine manipulated on demand.

The lighting piece of our productivity puzzle is also driving us toward lighting as an Uber-like service. A large topic for another issue.

I have highlighted a few articles and interviews in this month's issue, but there are many more included speaking to our industry transformation.

The May issue of our global online magazine has taken on a west coast of America theme, very pleased to hear more from the rest of the world. Please share your thoughts in articles and interviews; this is a great discussion you want to be part of.

Please read our Discussion on Using the Uber Model - not the forklifting but the unpacking of Uber to identify the two or three most applicable elements from its operating machinery and growth execution that can spark transformative opportunities in your industry.

As always this new issue is a nest of great articles, columns, reviews, new products, interviews and of course the steady stream of news depicting our rapid evolution and journey to "Openness."

Tell all our sponsors you saw their ads on the AutomatedBuildings.com web-site and thank them for supporting your free access to evolving Automated Building Industry information. Click on their ads and view their valuable products and services. Please review all Our Sponsors.

The news just keeps flowing thru our web-site, and RSS feeds daily, and of course, the only way to find what you are looking for in the vast quantity of information on our site is with our site search engine http://www.automatedbuildings.com/search/sitesearch.htm

As always lots of new products, plus be sure to check our event calendar to see the number of events we have in our future.

R U Going to Realcomm/IBcon? https://www.realcomm.com @ the Intersection of Commercial and Corporate Real Estate, Technology, Automation, and Innovation?

www.AutomatedBuildings.com is a media sponsor of this amazing event and several of our contributing editors and myself will be in attendance please join us. A great place to meet in June in San Diego.

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