Show time is closing in, and as I prepare for the 2026 AHR Expo, I’m struck by how far our “industry family” has travelled. This year marks our biggest and most impactful series of free education sessions in our 27-year history, but the roots go much deeper.
In my mind, we are all on a continuous journey: taking today’s complexity and turning it into tomorrow’s opportunity. My own journey started long before the internet or the cloud:
1966: Joined ASHRAE as a student member.
1969-73: Cutting my teeth at Johnson Service (now JCI).
1974: Managing 5 major buildings—seeing the “owner’s side” of the struggle.
1975: A watershed year—I founded SES, now SES Consulting, and I was part of one of the industry’s first-ever DDC projects.
We’ve moved from pneumatic control to Direct Digital Control, through the DDC revolution, the rise of the internet, and now into the transformative age of AI.
Our theme for 2026 is Navigating Complexity. Escalating Opportunity. I invite you to join us at AHR to see the “Family Map” https://lnkd.in/gUAfc_St of who is who in this new era. Let’s take the complexity that makes our heads hurt today and turn it into the “single truth” that powers the buildings of tomorrow.
A huge thank you to our Sponsors https://lnkd.in/gCamVGBd and Contributing Editors https://lnkd.in/gaYJakSU
at AutomatedBuildings.com for keeping this conversation free and open for everyone.
See you in Vegas!
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