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People-Powered Transformation

Sept. 27, 2017
All of us are engaging in a transformation for the greater good. People-Powered Transformation will occur when and as fast as we allow it, but only when all the people it touches embrace that coming change.

All of us are engaging in a transformation for the greater good. People-Powered Transformation will occur when and as fast as we allow it, but only when all the people it touches embrace that coming change.

We need to engage with our future. We need to unlearn and rethink our vast experiences. We need to revisit our preconceived notions of what can and cannot be changed. Discovering that your learned experiences are the new variables is very upsetting. It is, in fact, transforming.

We need to unhinge our minds and discover new paths. We need to go to lunch with a few Millennials while inviting the Centennials or even younger people that have grown up exclusively in the digital age. We need to learn what we do not know and not just keep repeating what we think we know. We need to seek those that will lead the transformation of our industry.

Here are the birth years for each generation: Who are you? and Who are your mentors and trusted advisors?

  • Gen Z, iGen, or Centennials: Born 1996 and later.
  • Millennials or Gen Y: Born 1977 to 1995.
  • Generation X: Born 1965 to 1976.
  • Baby Boomers: Born 1946 to 1964.
  • Traditionalists or Silent Generation: Born 1945 and before

Mentorship, remember, is when a more experienced person helps to guide someone less experienced, and the more experienced person is not necessarily the older one.

I am consumed by the changes now occurring in our industry. Some of these shifts in thought and action need to be shared and discussed within and among our communities. We all need to exchange our perceptions and thoughts while adapting them to our own personal realities.

I find that I never know how I feel and think about something until I write about it. That leaves you victim of my outpourings. Please defend yourselves! Share your thoughts and opinions on the social media stream of your choice, or even (if so motivated) provide an article for our electronic newsletter.

Our job is as always to make complex things simple, but now with a people-powered self-learning intelligence.

Instead of providing answers all I ever do is ask questions, in the hope of being a catalyst for change.

How does the smart building automation industry make the transformation that it needs to undergo?

Our past issues of www.AutomatedBuildings.com start some of the dialogs towards our People Powered IoT Transformation.

Our Personal Assistants remind us constantly of the transformations we all need to make. Simple devices, a speaker you speak to, that connects people via voice and touch to the power of IoT. These hands-free devices provide simple connection to everything that is IoT and the commands that will request action from our industry devices. We are competing with these IoT methodologies. We need to understand where they are better and tell the world where we exceed.  Imagine the journey of personnel assistants evolving, adopted into cars, phones, and even our self-acting building interfaces is not hard. The next step in the transformation is now here with self-learning devices that remember our patterns and preferences.

What is the value of People-Powered IoT Transformation to the thin band of folks that are our industry? Our job is as always to make complex things simple, but now with a people-powered self-learning intelligence.

This article highlights some of the confusing concepts we are all having to deal with can be found in this article by John Pavlus for Quantz Media:

Stop pretending you really know what AI is and read this instead

“You are right to be confused,” says Harvard computer scientist Leslie Valiant, because the terms artificial intelligence and machine learning “are suddenly being used interchangeably in the popular press.” Even Trevor Darrell, a leading artificial-intelligence researcher at UC Berkeley who’s also part of a DARPA-funded project on (wait for it) “explainable AI” admits that “there is no precise distinction—they overlap greatly.”

This article by James McHale, Managing Director of Memoori, explains the importance of feeding the innovation of transformation:

Partnerships & Investments in Startups Gain Momentum as Smart Building Players Boost Innovation

Smart building players are strengthening their open innovation capabilities through investments and partnerships with startups and the incubators and accelerators that support their development. Corporates are recognizing the need to increase their agility and speed in developing smart connected products and services by leveraging software, analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) in order to maintain competitive advantage, to gain access to emerging or disruptive technologies and to accelerate digital transformation. Meanwhile, startups need access to key industry players to better understand the unique challenges and opportunities of the smart buildings sector.

Some bigger picture thoughts in this just out book, A New Digital Deal (https://anewdigitaldeal.com/)

How can we foster the digital enablement of our communities? How to plan for digitalization efforts that deliver value – economically, socially, and environmentally? What can we do to ensure human values are central to the exercise of digitalization? Why have so many ‘smart city’ initiatives produced mixed results and what can we learn from them? What are the stepping-stones for success in building and executing on a smart city or country digitalization strategy? What does ‘digital-ready’ governance for a city, a region or a country look like? How must we prepare for a fertile coming together of investments, start-up acceleration, innovation stimulation, tech enterprise, citizens and the community at large?

I do not profess to understand all of this completely, but I do believe the people-powered transformation will occur when we openly discuss the concepts falling on us and invite them into our daily realities and make them part of our personal transformation.

Please join our discussions in Chicago or Helsinki and create your own dialog within your company and online.

AHRExpo Chicago education sessions, The Future of Building Automation - " Data at the Open Intelligent Edge" identifies an immediate problem in our industry of how the transformation we all must make will occur.

I am extremely pleased to be a moderator and a media sponsor at the 2018 Nordic Smart Building Convention in Helsinki, June 6th and 7th, 2018. I was extremely impressed with the information provided for our readers from last year’s great event. I am looking forward to interacting with panels and attendees at this event to learn more about some of my questions, such as, How does the smart building automation industry make the transformation that it needs to undergo?

We can all be a part of this transformation by creating value from self-learned data while discovering new ways of providing comfort, health, and satisfaction in our buildings. 

More of my thoughts can be found in the podcast linked to this tweet: https://twitter.com/Ken_Sinclair/status/909688408137543680

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