EMAIL INTERVIEW  Anto Budiardjo & Ken Sinclair

Anto Budiardjo is President & CEO of Clasma Events Inc., the organizer of BuilConn held annually in North America, Europe and Asia as part of Clasma’s ConnectivityWeek (www.ConnectivityWeek.com). ConnectivityWeek is a collection of conferences and tradeshows related to smart connected devices, regularly made up BuilConn (www.builconn.com), M2M Expo (www.m2mexpo.com), GridWise Expo (www.gridwiseexpo.com) and DRExpo (www.dr-expo.com)

Please send comments and questions to antob@clasma.com.

The Energy Revolution at BuilConn

There are 6 events co-located with BuilConn this year, all part of what we call ConnectivityWeek.

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Sinclair:  I see BuilConn is gaining a great deal of support this year.

Budiardjo:  Without doubt 2008 will be the strongest year yet for BuilConn, from prominent Keynotes, expert speakers with real-life experience, and an expo floor full with vendors of products and solutions. The tide is turning on connected buildings and the convergence with IT.

Sinclair:  You say real stories, what do you mean?

Budiardjo:  It is clear that convergence with IT is happening all around us, after years of talking about this subject at BuilConn, it’s gratifying to see implementation occurring worldwide. Clearly the drive towards energy efficiency, sustainability and green buildings are helping. We will have a number of panels talking about much of this during this year’s event.

Sinclair:  You have ASHRAE, CSI and many others as speakers?

Budiardjo: Yes Ken, we’re excited about the breadth of new speakers we have this year; it supports the strong trend I mentioned before. Your readers should look at the article on this at this link.

Sinclair:  Tell my readers about DR-Expo, HomeConn, IndConn and other the events.

Budiardjo:  There are 6 events co-located with BuilConn this year, all part of what we call ConnectivityWeek. The first and most important to AutomatedBuildings.com readers is the DR-Expo, this is the second time we’ve organized this event. I have said this before, the business opportunities to your readers from DR are real, significant and available NOW! Utilities and ISO’s are having problems enrolling Demand Response participants, and your readers are in direct line to be able to secure this lucrative revenue.

Sinclair:  How do my readers find out how?

Budiardjo:  By attending the DR-Expo co-located with BuilConn. Visit www.dr-expo.com and review the agenda.

Sinclair:  And home automation?

Budiardjo:  Yes, HomeConn is also co-located with BuilConn this year. It is surprising that many of the issues that face commercial buildings are very similar to residential buildings. HomeConn is organized in partnership with ZigBee, HomePlug and a host of other organization. As with BuilConn, the focus is on energy. Much of HomeConn will be about the rollout of smart meters in California over the next few years, millions of them! See www.HomeConn.com.

Sinclair:  You are also partnering with the OPC Foundation.

Budiardjo: Yes, we are excited to be partnering with OPC to organize IndConn, focused on Industrial Automation and Connectivity. As you know Ken, OPC is often used in building automation, so this event is critical to your readers as well. It will be no surprise that the focus of IndConn will also be on energy. In fact we are organizing an I2G (Industrial-to-Grid) Summit as part of IndConn, similar to the B2G Summit we held in New York in January. See www.IndConn.com.

Sinclair:  And ZigBee Expo.

Budiardjo:  ZigBee is an important technology especially in the smart meter rollout I mentioned earlier. Almost all of the utilities involved are rolling out ZigBee enabled smart meters, which means that in a short number of years there will be millions of homes with ZigBee infrastructure in them., This in itself will open up a huge new market for energy management products. While this is in the residential market, the mass adoption of this technology is very likely to transfer into the commercial building market. See www.ZigBeeExpo.com.

[an error occurred while processing this directive] Sinclair:  I see M2M is also part of BuilConn.

Budiardjo: It’s interesting that we’ve been talking about M2M for a few years now, and it’s only now that the full potential of M2M is taking shape. You see Ken, the scope of technologies and applications we will cover at ConnectivityWeek in May can really only be made to work with a new way of thinking about smart devices, M2M is that way of thinking. From smart device technologies, to the impact of all these smart devices to business models, the philosophy brought about by M2M is the glue to make it all work. We see M2M as the key enabler for the energy Killer-App we keep on talking about. See www.M2MExpo.com.

Sinclair:  And of course GridWise Expo, how is that going?

Budiardjo: Incredibly strong Ken. The Energy Bill passed in December 2007 is driving a huge amount of interest for Smart Grid from all angles; utilities, technology providers, service companies, integrators and IT companies. You see the business opportunity with Smart Grid is simply enormous. You may recall that at GridWeek, Jeff Sterba outlined a problem that had a $900b price tag on it. And believe it or not, buildings can be part of the solution, it’s real and very valuable Ken, to those who understand the opportunities. See www.GridWiseExpo.com.

Sinclair:  Looks like it’s going to be an interesting week in May.

Budiardjo: Yes it is, we look forward to you being there. Tto get a real broad view of ConnectivityWeek, visit www.ConnectivityWeek.com.

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