Comments by Ken Sinclair
Founder/Publisher - AutomatedBuildings.com

Our December issue is our AHRExpo 2015 Chicago preview.

Our December theme “Creating your Collaboration” started with my puzzling with the process of how industry knowledge gets past on. AHRExpo is the annual event where we present our free education sessions to the industry. This is our 16th year of presenting these sessions and hosting the third annual Connection Community Collaboratory meeting. Online Collaboration is how today's education occurs.

Education is not an affair of "telling and being told" but an active process; I am a poor presenter but a good connector of concepts and resources for the active process. As a connector of concepts and resources I need to be questioned by those seeking knowledge to be of use.  My value is not the knowledge that I can share, but the knowledge I can connect folks to so they can self-teach themselves their way.  I am but a catalyst in the process of learning.

I am still struggling with the best way to transfer the industry dumps of information to incoming practitioners of our industry. We came to call this "The Dinosaur Dump" when we dropped 20 to 30 years of industry experience on some poor incoming practitioners who did not even ask one question…..smile.

Contributing Editor Therese shares her wisdom here; Learning via "Sage of the Stage" - a popular style that dates at least from Plato/Aristotle - may be over.  What's a knowledge base, but a glorified FAQ. Collaboration platform is a synonym. That is how I see this, someplace where someone who wants to learn will go when the moment is right to find just that something that will fulfill the learning/collaborating need at hand.

This useful information falling on my desk forms the simplest of collaboration platforms; email.  Read her article where she muses; “Lots of people are trying to 'solve' email… Maybe the solution will be that everyone who uses email will die off.”  Ben Evans, Analyst, Andreessen Horowitz

I am likely closer to dying off than she is.........smile.  But the point is we need to evolve beyond email.

I am arriving at the conclusion that everyone in our industry needs to develop their own interactive Ask questions, get them documented online for their purposes, and decide which and how to share them with the world using their collaboration platforms.

The collaboration platforms need not be complicated.  If you are not concerned of death by email, it could be as simple as creating a common Ask email address for all to share thoughts and interact on searchable email.  Of course several companies have in-house Wikipedia or other collaboration tools such as some lightweight platforms that pull knowledge base apps (dropbox) together with messaging, ie www.slack.com.

Please read my review Dinosaur Dump Evolves to Ask Auto then to “Creating your Collaboration” and share your comments with Ask Auto.

When we originally created the Ask Auto LinkedIn group I thought I would be answering the questions but it has now become clear that Auto is the community of AutomatedBuildings.com not just me.  This makes this group much more powerful and with the correct educational focus and nurturing this group can become a living resource in our industry.

Very pleased to see where it might go. Feel free to join and post your questions or answers.

These are early days of trying to figure this Ask Auto out so please share your thoughts with us.  askauto@automatedbuildings.com

[an error occurred while processing this directive]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".

We welcome our newest sponsor Optergy. Optergy is a technology company that produces a software platform named Aurora.  Aurora is dedicated to the business of managing buildings, facilities and enterprises with tools to improve efficiency, performance and processes.

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 truly 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. 

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