🎧 #015: Deb Noller on the acceleration of smart building adoption post-COVID

“I call that the year that I tried to sell Uber to the taxi drivers. You know, taxi drivers have spent a lot of money on their medallions or their plates. They get up every morning, they know how they make their money, right. So there's no reason to change. If nobody's on the block eating your lunch, then you're just going to get up every single day and do the same thing.”

—Deb Noller

Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter and podcast for smart people applying smart building technology—hosted by James Dice. If you’re new to Nexus, you might want to start here.

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Episode 15 is a conversation with Deb Noller, CEO and Co-Founder of Switch Automation.

Summary

• It's always fun talking to Deb. We've had three conversations so far, and I always end up with amazing Deb quotes. She's a quote machine.
• Switch has an awesome team, so we talked about her keys to hiring and attracting talent in the smart building space.
• We unpacked what it means for a building to be ‘digital-ready,’ and how Switch has evolved their approach to figure out whether a building is ready to get smart, or whether it actually needs basic connectivity upgrades first.
• Deb also gave her answer to why building technology is 20 years behind the tech in our personal lives, and much, much more.

Mentions and Links

1. Switch Automation (2:34)
2. Johnson Controls, Honeywell, Siemens, Schneider (7:41)
3. CBRE, JLL, Cushman & Wakefield (7:47)
4. BACnet, Modbus (11:00)
5. McKinstry, Glumac (11:42)
6. Dx3 (24:36)

You can find Deb Noller on LinkedIn.

Enjoy!

Music credit: The Garden State by Audiobinger

Disclaimer: James is a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). All opinions expressed via Nexus emails, podcasts, or on the website belong solely to James. No resources from NREL are used to support Nexus. NREL does not endorse or support any aspect of Nexus.

THE ABOVE AUDIO, VIDEO, SUMMARY, AND LINKS WILL ALWAYS BE FREE. PODCAST DEEP DIVES WITH MY REACTIONS, MY TOP HIGHLIGHTS, AND THE FULL TRANSCRIPT ARE EXCLUSIVELY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS OF NEXUS PRO.

Here’s this week’s deep dive outline:

• My reaction
• My highlights
• Deb’s answer to James’ favorite question
• The connectivity problem, how Switch has learned to approach it, and how their new product DX3 helps get them on the same team as their clients
• How Advanced Supervisory Control plays best right now in large portfolios of small buildings and why it’s so compelling there
• Deb calling out the consulting engineer industry
• Deb’s outlook on the industry post-COVID (hint: it’s accelerating)
• How the smart building tech market in Asia differs from elsewhere
• Full transcript
• Get the deep dive