EMAIL INTERVIEW – Jim Young and Ken Sinclair

Jim Young, Co-founder Realcomm Conference Group

Jim Young is the co-founder of Realcomm Conference Group which produces Realcomm, IBcon and CoRE Tech, the world’s leading conferences on technology, automated business solutions, intelligent buildings and energy efficiency for the commercial and corporate real estate industry. As Realcomm’s leader, he leads the organization and interacts on a daily basis with some of the biggest companies globally pertaining to some of the most advanced and progressive next generation real estate projects under development.

Sinclair: I’ve heard you’ve themed this year’s IBcon conference “REvolution” because of the speed we are seeing adoption of intelligent building technology in the industry. Tell us a little about that.

Young: The journey of the smart building has been a long one. We have gone from single solutions with no integration being applied to one building at a time, to open, interoperable, integrated and IP centric platforms connecting multiple buildings in a portfolio. Many in the industry feel we have now jumped the adoption “chasm” to the next chapter of smart buildings and the impact to operations, energy efficiency, sustainability, occupant experience and financial optimization, will be extraordinary.  We are very excited this year to present dozens of best practice case studies at IBcon showing how far we have come.

Sinclair: Tell us a little more about those case studies.

Corporate Campus
      

Hospitality / Entertainment
      
 

Office Portfolio
      


Retail – Mall
      

Sinclair: Wow!  Those are pretty impressive examples.

• BAS, BMS, EMS, BOS - Uncovering the Smart Building Platform
• Building Network Design - IPV6, Wireless and Beyond
• EMS Strategies - Getting Beyond Dashboard Hell
• Analytics & Visualization - Turning Data Into Action and Results
  
• Realignment - Driving Process Change Throughout the Organization
• Extreme Operations – Connecting Everything to the Network
  

In addition to these great sessions where the conversations and debates will be happening, we have added a new venue called the Smart Building Best Practice Showcase where attendees will get to interact with project leaders from 25+ of the world's most progressive and successful implementations of smart buildings, portfolios and campuses.

Sinclair: What will this Showcase include?

Some of the projects we will be showcasing include:

• Vornado/Charles E. Smith - Energy Use & Budgeting Using Predictive Analytics
• Environmental Systems, Inc. - A Working Example of an Intelligent Building
• IBM Research Ireland - Creation of a Smart Building Research Living Lab
• Rudin Management - Di-BOSS Digital Building Operating System
• GSA’s 1800 F. St – Possibly the Smart Building in the US
  

And a host of other examples from AMP Capital, Liberty Property Trust, Tridel, Forest City, MIT and Procter & Gamble, to name a few.  This session alone is worth the price of admission!

[an error occurred while processing this directive]Sinclair: How about data analytics?  It’s a pretty big topic these days; will you be covering that as well?

Young: Yes.  Collecting, organizing, analyzing and converting the data into action are the keys to success. The analytics and visualization systems managing the data are at the core of this effort. We have assembled and will present several global best practices about advanced analytics and visualization relating to real estate operations and energy management.  In addition to Microsoft sharing how they are now collecting 500,000,000 pieces of data from their corporate campus every day and what they are doing with it, we’ll hear from several others whose organizations are doing similar strategic things with the data their building systems are collecting. 

BTW, we recently published an article on what Microsoft is doing; here’s a link if your readers are interested in more details:  Microsoft Collecting 500 Million Building Data Points From Campus Per Day (http://realcomm.com/advisory/advisory.asp?AdvisoryID=579)

Another important session on data will be one we are calling “Getting Beyond Dashboard Hell.” Anyone involved with energy issues for buildings and portfolios is likely very familiar with this topic.  There are so many dashboards they have begun to blur.  This session will hopefully help attendees make some sense of the chaos.  We also wrote about this topic in a recent Advisory titled, Facility Information Management Dashboards - Understanding the Complexities (http://realcomm.com/advisory/advisory.asp?AdvisoryID=575)

Sinclair: Sounds like IBcon is the place to be next month if you are interested in the intelligent buildings topic.  Any final words?

Young: This year’s conference is definitely going to demonstrate the magnitude of what is going on in the industry.  We searched the globe and will be presenting what we believe are the most forward thinking, progressive, visionary, comprehensive, large scale and relevant examples of this next generation of smart buildings, portfolios, campuses and communities. These case studies and all the other content being presented will demonstrate to the industry that we have jumped the chasm and that Smart, Connected, High Performance and Intelligent Buildings are at the center of a transformational REvolution that will forever change how we manage, operate and use buildings!

Thanks for the opportunity to share these details with your readers!