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Episode 180 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Chris Tjiattas from Walmart.
Episode 180 features James Dice, Rosy and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Chris Tjiattas from Walmart. In this episode of the Nexus Podcast, the Nexus Labs team breaks down the top stories relevant to energy managers, facility managers, IT/OT managers, and workplace managers.
Introduction (0:50)
At the Nexus (1:20)
Smart Buildings Program Management (7:58)
Digitizing Operations & Maintenance (19:44)
Sign off (29:46)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S702533-16073.
Note: transcript was created using an imperfect machine learning tool and lightly edited by a human (so you can get the gist). Please forgive errors!
James Dice: [00:00:00] Hey friends, if you like the Nexus Podcast, the best way to continue the learning is to join our community. There are three ways to do that. First, you can join the Nexus Pro membership. It's our global community of smart billing professionals. We have monthly events, paywall, deep dive content, and a private chat room, and it's just $35 a month.
Second, you can upgrade from the pro membership to our courses offering. It's headlined by our flagship course, the Smart Building Strategist, and we're building a catalog of courses taught by world leading experts on each topic under the smart buildings umbrella. Third, and finally, our marketplace is how we connect leading vendors with buyers looking for their solutions.
The links are below in the show notes. And now let's go onto the podcast.
Welcome back to the Nexus podcast. It's James. I have Brad and Rosie here with me as usual, and we have a surprise guest that will reveal in [00:01:00] just a second. We're gonna talk through what's going on lately in the Nexus Labs community. So, um. Strap in. Yeah. And if you want the full experience, uh, the best way to engage with us is to be subscribed to the newsletter where you can find every piece of content we probe, publish, and invites to all of our events and all of that.
Uh, what's been going on at the nexus lately? Um, Rosie, you wanna start us off?
Rosy Khalife: Sure, I'll kick it off. Um, so much has been happening. We've really been working hard on Nexus Con. Um, I'll have Brad give us a quick update on where we're at with abstracts. I've been working on curating the attendee list. We have a lot of awesome people that are joining us.
Uh, just a quick thing. Tickets are going up. Prices of tickets are going up on June 15th, so if you haven't got your tickets but are planning to come. It would obviously make sense for you to buy them before then. Um, and then the second thing that I would love your help on is we're working on our after party.
So last year we did not have an after party, like we [00:02:00] didn't have a formal after party, but this year we will and it's gonna be awesome. We're working on a really cool venue, hopefully, fingers crossed. Um, but where I would love your help is. Hearing like what has made a great after party for you? Like what are you kind of looking for?
Uh, we have a bunch of different ideas and so we're just trying to figure out like what do people want and how we can make it the best experience. So if you have 2 cents and a quick minute, shoot me a note. I would love to hear your thoughts. Brad, you're it.
Brad Bonavida: Okay. I, I'm so stoked for the proposed venue that we're not talking about yet.
Me. Oh yeah. That would be cool. Anyway, uh, quick update from the abstracts point of view. So, uh, I talked about this a little bit, uh, a couple podcasts back, but we received like 140 something abstracts, which is a lot because we accepted like. 58, I think, last year. So, um, it's a lot to work through. We've read every single one of them.
Uh, we've summarized everyone, we've categorized everyone, we've used AI to summarize everyone and, you know, mix and match them every which [00:03:00] way. We've got a rough template of what we think it is going to look like, but now is the time that we're gonna get our supervisory control board involved. So James, I think you talked about that two podcasts ago, that we have this supervisory control board who's experts, uh, mainly building owners who are gonna come in and make sure that the different tracks, it, o ot, facility management, energy management, are actually what building owners want to experience and what they want to hear.
Um, so. In the next two weeks, I'm gonna start doing the meetings with those groups, get their perspectives on what we have. They'll want some things changed, they'll have ideas that we haven't considered yet, and kind of do one more iteration and that's when we'll be able to start telling people, um, that they're accepted and, and move on from there.
So that's all gonna happen in the next like two to three weeks, which is pretty exciting.
James Dice: I'm really proud of the supervisory control name because it's the classic thing where you go to chat GPT and you're like, what should I name this? And I went through like three rounds of it with the chat GPT, and I hated all, all of its ideas and then I just [00:04:00] decided it was supervisory control on my, the human brain wins with my own creativity.
Good job. Nice. I love it. Um, okay, one more update. We have a partnership that we just inked last week with boma, which is fun. Um, we're gonna be doing a. It's Boma Canada, right? Um, BOMA Canada or Boma? Bc. BC Yeah. BC Specifically. Bbc. Yeah. So Western Canada version of boma. Um, building Owners and Managers Association.
If people don't know, um, and we're gonna be doing a white paper around, it's kind of like a follow up to our existing white paper around simple building or small building controls. Um, they want to sort of dig into sort of like a buyer's guide to simple building controls. So that'll be fun for us to dig into that over the next couple months and hopefully come out with something that moves the market forward a little bit more.
So stay tuned for that. All right, uh, let's bring in our, our special [00:05:00]guest who's, who's one of our supervisory control members, uh, Chris Jadis.
Chris Tjiattas: Chris, welcome. Woo. Thank you for having me. And I love the supervisory control board name. I just have to say, uh, you know, a little double entendre there with, uh, controls and organization.
So I love
James Dice: it. I don't know if Chad JT can do double entendres. I don't think, I don't think it can can grab. That's
Chris Tjiattas: the next revision. Probably oh four will, uh, we'll bring that one out.
James Dice: Yes, yes. Well, thanks for having us or thanks for joining us. Um, you are in week two at Walmart, so congrats on your new job there.
Can you tell us what's, what's your role?
Chris Tjiattas: Absolutely. Just took a new role with Walmart, as you mentioned, uh, here in Bentonville, Arkansas. Um, and the role is really focused around strategy and building automation systems and digitizing general merchandise. So. My role here is going to be supporting the facility services team and figuring out how [00:06:00] to, um, use IOT and ot.
Um, to save money for customers by doing predictive analysis on equipment that normally wouldn't be connected to OT infrastructure or smart building infrastructure. So it's a big challenge. One of the coolest things about Walmart is anything you do, it automatically goes big. There's no such thing as, as doing something halfway.
If, if you do it here, it, it, you know, has tens or hundreds of millions dollars of impact, um, pretty quickly. And, um, so we're, we're hoping to figure out a path forward with a, a pretty big problem, um, that I think a, a lot of owners have. And, uh, but still drinking from the fire hose here. So hopefully, we'll, we'll have more details in time for Nexus Con on how it's going.
I.
James Dice: Yes. Yes. And we'll, we'll obviously be pulling you into our, our content. We have a, a good ongoing series around refrigerated retail, and I think you're gonna wanna, you're gonna wanna comment on that once you get your, your feet underneath. Yeah. [00:07:00]
Brad Bonavida: Digi, you said digitizing general merchandise at the beginning, right?
Is that the term? Exactly. Never heard anybody say that before. I was like trying to figure out what that meant in my brain, but I think you explained it pretty well, what the goal is.
Chris Tjiattas: Yeah. It's, it's anything on the, the floor, um. Supports what's being sold. Um, now, again, i, I, I hope, uh, I hope I'm not this speaking, but, um, last time I, I, uh, heard about the definition.
It's, it's essentially anything, um, supporting what's being sold on the store and behind, behind the, uh, the storefront. Cool.
James Dice: All right. Well, yeah. People will have to join us at the conference to hear, hear more, maybe. Absolutely. All. Let's dive in. I think, uh, this first topic is, is gonna be. Near and dear to your heart, given your case study from last year at Nexus Con.
Um, so the, the first, um, category of content we have here is Smart Buildings program management. We had an article that I wrote a couple weeks ago called [00:08:00] Pilots Are Broken, but here's how building owners and vendors are rethinking them. And I interviewed, um, a bunch of vendors that I would say got pretty hyped about this topic at Nexus Con last year.
It was a. It was a source of debate. Um, we did the buyer vendor symposium. Buyers were on one side talking about how pilots suck. Vendors were on the other side talking about how pilots suck. And then we removed the wall and they sort of finger pointed lightly, finger pointed at each other. And so I interviewed Montgomery Technologies, code Labs, mapped and facil ai.
And what surprised me about this article and, and the interviews in this, is I heard Joe, Joe like. Interrupted me in the first 30 seconds and was like, don't call it pilot, call it a trial. And I, I sort of crafted the article around that thought as like defining out what you're testing. Right. And then what else surprised me was mapped in code labs, like really gut, kind of [00:09:00] like standoffish in a way that like they're basically just like we stopped doing on strategic pilots years ago.
And I thought that was fascinating in that like as an industry. We know there are still unstrategic pilots happening out there. They're definitely happening. Or else people wouldn't be debating it so hard at the conference. Um, and yet you have these vendors that are just taking a stand and say, we don't, we don't do that anymore.
I thought that was surprising. Um, and then, yeah, I, I thought what was spicy to me here, and we really wanna lean into the spice because of this year's, uh, nexus con theme. Which, uh, people should check out my LinkedIn if they haven't seen that, uh, as far as the teaser, and we'll obviously have more, uh, more announcements around it.
But, um, we're definitely leaning into the spice this year, and I, I thought it was interesting from hearing from these vendors kind of just like calling out buyers and saying like, you're, you're not ready. Like, are you really ready to actually do this? [00:10:00] And as a vendor, basically taking a stand and saying like, you're not ready, so we're not gonna do it in the way that you wanna do it.
Here's how we recommend doing it. I thought that was interesting. Um, but, but Chris, did you, did you have any thoughts to, to
Chris Tjiattas: sort of build on here? Just wanna start out real quick with, uh, a little leak leaves. Um, all thoughts and opinions are my own, uh, and, and I'm not representing Walmart on the podcast today.
Yeah. I think, um. One thing that was really interesting is if you're a building owner and you haven't read the article, uh, and I don't get any money from you guys or anything like that, right? Like we're, uh, we don't, we don't have any signed relationship. You really need to go read it. It's, it's a 10 minute read, and I think it really gives a, a 20,000 foot level view of, uh, some of the key challenges an organization might have in executing a pilot.
Um, I love the idea of using the name trial instead of pilot. Um, but at the end of the day, it really [00:11:00] boils down to if you're a building owner or you're a consultant foreign owner and you're just running pilots without really a core plan and strategy behind it, then you're gonna leave a lot of money on the table.
You're gonna waste a lot of time, and you're never gonna know if it was actually a success or not. And I think that's probably the, the biggest thing. Not to spoil the article for those who didn't see it, but I think that's one of the, the key issues is going into a pilot without an overall strategy or a plan, you're, you're gonna be missing out on a lot of the benefits and not realizing, um, the mistakes or being able to capitalize on the mistakes that you made.
Um, when you do a pilot,
Brad Bonavida: in my previous role, I was with a tech vendor and we were like death by a million pilots. Like I would say it was probably the biggest issue we went through is that we had so many pilots that gave us so much. Um, hope that we had this big deal coming around the corner, and it always fell through in frustration because it wasn't well-defined of what success criteria was.
[00:12:00] Um, I think a lot of times it had to do with somebody on the building owner side who had a lot of, uh, they, they wanted their company to adopt some sort of smart building technology, but they actually didn't have the. Capability or the influence to make it happen. So their budget's smaller or like their, their influence is smaller, so that's what they could do, you know?
Um, and it reminded me as well in your article, James, just talking about the financial part of it. I think it was, uh, it was Matt White, uh, from Intelli build at the symposium who was talking about. The importance of the pilot not being free, because if it's not free, then you are triggering their procurement system to go, which can give you some like actual feelings of can they pay for this if it were to work out, you know, and, and that's a big deal.
Like they might not even know that they have obstacles there in terms of like. Once it comes to paying for the real thing, can you actually do it? Can you get those people involved? [00:13:00]
James Dice: Yeah. And can the two organizations actually sign a contract together? Can that actually work? Right.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah.
James Dice: Right. Um, Chris, this reminded us of your presentation at Nexus Con last year, um, in this, this sort of Swiss cheese model.
Do you want to walk us through that briefly?
Chris Tjiattas: Sure. I, I'd love to, to touch on that, but I, I wanna go back to something Brad just mentioned. Um, and, and maybe we can. Circle, uh, circle that for a moment, which is, um, free pilots. Um, I think there's, there's, there's a little bit of spice in that topic. So the, the thing is, if you're willing to do a free pilot of any sort of value for a customer, then you're not really doing them or yourself any benefit.
And if you're an owner and you're gonna waste your time doing a free pilot with somebody who's only gonna half it because they're doing it for free, then you're wasting your time. And I think. If, if you're able to put together a real ROI, again, going back to that whole have a plan and a strategy. If you develop an [00:14:00] ROI for something, you should be expecting a, a to save money or make a profit by doing something, and the pilot is just testing that idea, right?
To validate the results. Now, it might not, of course, just like any business decision, but if, if you're, if you're not willing to pay for it and you want the vendor to do it for free. Then it's probably not a good idea and I think that might be a good litmus test. Does that, how does that resonate? Yeah, absolutely.
Brad Bonavida: Can, can I ask you one more question on that, Chris? Just from me putting your building owner's hat on. When we were struggling so much as a, when I was a technology vendor and we were struggling so much to get people to get past pilot, we tried Hey,
James Dice: real quick, Brad. Real quick, Brad. It's important to note that that vendor that you work for, they're not around anymore and like one of the reasons is of this exact topic.
Yeah, totally. So it's like a huge deal, right? Yes,
Brad Bonavida: yes. Very huge. Like this was death by pilot for sure.
James Dice: Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: Um. But I was gonna say, Chris, we, we got to the, there were, um, instances where it was [00:15:00] like, okay, people aren't following through, so let's try to put within the details of the pilot. Like, if this is successful, then you need to move forward in some way.
I, I tried to do that specifically on a project, and the building owner was like, taken aback, like, whoa, what are you trying to do? You're trying to like, lock me into something. Like, what do you mean I have to sign up if it works Right. And like, it was a little bit like. Apprehensive at that point. Like, I don't, I know you're new to this building owner role, but how would you feel about that?
Is that a weird thing to, before, you know, commit based on some sort of metrics beforehand?
Chris Tjiattas: No, absolutely. So I think there's, there's a, a paradigm shift here if you, if you wanna take a different view on that. If, if you're, if the owner isn't sure. By using your technology and your services, they can actually save money.
Um, if they're not certain of that, why would, why would they even wanna do it? And, and I, I'm trying to think of how to spin this a little bit. [00:16:00] They should want to use your technology more there should, they should already have a plan to get the funds to continue using your services after they execute the first pilot, assuming that they're capturing the savings or making the profit.
Using the technology and services that you're providing. So to just test stuff for the sake of testing it, um, without a plan. They're not going, they're not, uh, going in with the mindset of we're just validating something we already expect, which is mm-hmm. By using Brad's companies. Technology will save a million dollars this year.
Instead, they're just going, this is a cool technology, let's try it and see what happens. And when you say, well, you know, we need something for the effort that we're putting in, um, I think on the vendor side, you should be asking the question, well, what's the return you're getting on this? Because if you get a good return, then I should expect business from you.
Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Or at least to share the business across a couple competitors if, if we're not a closed platform or something like that. Right, right, right. Right. [00:17:00] So I think what happens is a lot of people get attached emotionally to technology or to ideas, uh, into the sex appeal of, of something that they might have read in a newsletter or seen at a conference, not Nexus con and, you know, gravitated towards it and are are excited to try it or sell it to management.
But they're not thinking of it from, from the more grassroots perspective of, you know, how can we bring value to the company? How can we bring value to our customers? And that, by the way, that goes on both sides. You know, I'm, we're we're talking about business owners here, or uh, building owners, but that also applies to, to vendors.
You know, having done owners consulting for 11 years before this current position, you know, I would call other vendors and be like, you know, we're really interested in using your technology. We really wanna understand it. Um, but we need to understand how it works. So I can write a, a pilot plan and a statement of work and put together a cost estimate so we can do those, uh, you know, do that calculus in-house [00:18:00] and determine if we want to use it or not.
And I. It was wild. It was more than half the time I would say that either we would just get a sales rep who would try to desperately piece together, you know, without a technical background who would desperately try to piece together some numbers for us and, and promise us the world without really being able to demonstrate that they could actually deliver on it.
Um, and then we wouldn't understand the underlying technology so we could actually scope it and, you know, come up with, with a cost benefit analysis on our side. Um, or we just wouldn't get a call back. That happened, I would say more than half the time with new technologies that we would want to try. Um, on the flip side, um, we would get tons of engagement and, you know, people would call with like a CTO and a senior VP and, and all the way down both the business development and the technical side.
But they would wanna a signed contract before we ever did a pilot. And that was, that happened, I wouldn't say as often, but that did happen to [00:19:00]where they would want a firm commitment before they would, you know, license us the technology or, or, you know, uh, fly somewhere and help us install the, the tech.
James Dice: Interesting. That's super interesting. The article has a pretty good case study from Code Labs in the, in the article around the, a retail portfolio that they're working with. And they, they really zoomed in, in the trial around one specific, not, not a persona, an actual human. And they said like, if we can change this guy's job, then we can change all the.
It's people like hims job and like I, I thought it was cool how they sort of like started with that atom within the organization so people can go check that out. Let's move us on, let's move on to digitizing operations and maintenance. Um, our next article that we published, so last week by the time this comes out it'll be two weeks ago, is, is around using gamification and AI to engage and sort of hook.
Technicians and operators on digital tools, and I interviewed Visit and [00:20:00] 75 F and Brainbox ai and what surprised me for this article was basically the ability for, you know, it felt like this was, is grounding AI and all of the hype around AI into something that I believe is one of the core problems with our industry, which is the ability for AI to help sort of bring in less technical.
Technicians and less technical operators and facility managers. And sort of bridge a gap if they don't understand how a systems system works. There's potential for the AI to really start to understand the system and how it works better. I'm trying to like not, not talk about this in a hypey way. I'm like really trying to, but I actually believe in what, specifically around what 75 F and Brainbox are sort of bringing to the market here.
Around the ability for the AI to understand how the system works sort of better than the operator and better than the technician does, which is not really true of the control [00:21:00] systems of the past. So I thought that piece, I'm pretty bought into the hype around that piece. Yeah. Um, and a lot of the gamification stuff is interesting and, but that's, that the AI piece is the piece that really surprised me around this.
Just the ability for that. Gap to be bridged a little bit more. What's what was spicy here in this article is I don't understand what's taking the vendors so effing long to do gamification. Like all of us have been getting gamified by all of the social media apps for like. Almost two decades now, and like, why are we just talking about this in 2025 as like a cool thing now, you know, you guys know what I mean?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, totally. I, I think that a big part of it is that so many of these softwares. So, so many software companies, so many technology platforms come from the engineering side and up, and my personal experience was, it took me a long time as an [00:22:00] engineer to recognize the importance of design and like really solid user design.
You know, so you get like the nerdy, uh, engineer back there, electrical engineer who've developed some platform and they're really proud of how much it can do. They've never even thought about the fact that it's like the most boring looking thing possible and that that matters today for sure. Um, so I think that's a big part of it.
Uh, you know, people gotta realize that design is necessary. And there's a couple of Nexus con abstracts that we've gotten about exactly that, about how important user design is to how good your building application is.
James Dice: Huh. Interesting. Rosie, were you gonna say something?
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, I was just saying that I think sometimes the people building a lot of these tools are just so excited that they can do so much.
Kinda like what you were saying, Brad, that they lose sight of the fact that the user initially at least wants simplicity to start. Yep. To be bought into the thing and then once they're bought in, like Sure, it's so cool that I can like manipulate this and create all these different [00:23:00] widgets, but like I don't need that from the get go.
And so some, especially in demos, I see this a lot where we're getting a demo and it's like they're throwing the kitchen sink at us and it becomes so overwhelming that I sort of lose sight of what the thing does to begin with. Um, and I think it goes back to user experience and how they design the thing.
Yeah,
Chris Tjiattas: totally. I, I wanna take the opposite of James' opinion on the technology. Can I do that for a second? Yeah, definitely. So, so I, I reread, I reread the article last night and to, to kind of, um. Uh, recalibrate what I thought about it. You know, I, I do think that technology as it unfolds makes, you know, makes people and their lives better on the whole.
Um, but you know, you mentioned in the article a little bit about how, uh, some of the social media platforms and, and the gamification, um. Draws [00:24:00]people to use technology in their lives, but also it, it also draws people to take out, um, some of the more human characteristics of their day-to-day activities.
Like, you'll see things posted on X or Facebook or Instagram, um, or, you know, comments to, to posts and stuff like that, that people in real life would just like never really say or think maybe. Um, and yeah, I think bringing that into a technician's, um, uh, work life might not be, I. The best. Right? I think also another thing that you have to be really careful about is if you have a really health or healthy culture within your, your business that is supportive and open and, um, where maybe being second, third, or last place, you know, uh, amongst your peers is, is sort of cherished and seen as a growing opportunity, then I think gamification could be a positive [00:25:00] thing.
But if you don't have an absolutely healthy culture. Within your, your workplace environment, you know, where maybe being last on an app where maybe you take more time than you should with equipment because you really care where you're just new and you're not up to speed, and so you're never gonna be number one.
You know? Uh, it could be really disheartening, especially in a field where, you know, um, uh, it's hard to get new people anyways. I feel like it, it could be, uh, gamification could, could lead to. Feelings of, of shame and stuff. And you did mention that in the article, but I think it, it was sort of as a potential risk, but I actually think that's, that's a key risk.
Um, you don't want to incentivize people, um, in an environment to, to compete in an environment where there's just not healthy competition. And I think unfortunately, that that might be a lot of places more, more so than there, there aren't, so,
Brad Bonavida: yeah.
Chris Tjiattas: Yeah. That's a great point.
Brad Bonavida: I would say like I. I agree with you in terms of leaderboards, [00:26:00] something like that is sensitive, but I'll take the other side.
When it comes to just like using the UX to make it more fun, like we talk about dopamine hits, you talk about that, James in the article, and like there's the reference to like the social dilemma, which is like what social media is doing to people's lives. But when it comes to like a job that needs to be done.
I see making it fun and making someone feel good. When you're achieving a, the thing that you need to achieve as a total net positive, like that's where gamification and you user design that uses dopamine to get you to care is, is beneficial. Rosie, we were just both talking about this. 'cause we have so many metrics within our own system and like we had done a meeting that we had needed to get off our plate and like I was so happy to click the button and see it, change colors and see it go off our to-do list.
And it just like, I don't know, it makes you wanna do your job and like reminds you that you've accomplished something. I, I think it's got a lot of power.
Chris Tjiattas: Can I bring in one more point to, to that [00:27:00] effect? Yeah. I'm just playing strict devil's advocate here. So, so I, I do agree with you on a lot of those points, but I think, have you guys heard of the Good Hearts law?
No, I have not. Or maybe the Cobra, Cobra effect. Okay. So, um, this isn't quite as exciting as Swiss cheese, but it's pretty close. Um, it, it basically says, um, that when a measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure. When a measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure. So, for instance, this actually happened with, I, I believe it was, well, Wells Fargo, like a, a few years ago, they, they had like tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in, in fines levied, like against them because they had all these false accounts, the bonuses for Oh yeah.
All the account managers were, were strictly, um. Around or, or a big portion of their bonus structure was based on how many accounts you opened, and so there's only so many customers. [00:28:00] Uh, to get, and therefore, you know, instead of increasing values for, for customers in other ways, like maybe ensuring that they deposit more money and, you know, that obviously is good for the bank or, you know, use their investment tools once they open an account or whatever.
It just, it strictly became about opening as many accounts as you could. Not, not that that's an excuse for illegal activities, but it led to, you know, incentivizing people to, to maybe do things they really wouldn't have considered otherwise. And, and not that, you know, somebody pushing a green button too many times is going to marking task complete, gonna necessarily be a nefarious activity.
However, I could envisage. Uh, an environment where, you know, a technician feels really good by checking off tasks and maybe checking off the task is, is more important than actually completing the task. Or, you know, if, if there is some sort of leaderboard or there is some sort of incentive tied to it, like financial or something like that, where getting that quick dopamine hit and, and checking off that task is, is more important than actually performing the [00:29:00] work itself.
So I think. I don't think this is an impossible problem, but I think there do need to be a lot of considerations in ui, a lot of considerations in the design of the tool to make sure that, um, the incentives that you use and the gamification that you have for it is, is, uh, well thought out. Um, and you sort of look at the adversarial effects of, of that measure becoming the target before you roll it out.
Fascinating. Sorry, was that, I didn't mean to be a total Debbie Downer about that.
Rosy Khalife: No, you're right. I like it. That's a great example of Wells Fargo. That is
James Dice: a great example. That's
Brad Bonavida: really just feel like gamify with caution. That's what you're saying. Ga we, I think we did.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah.
James Dice: I just asked us at the beginning of this discussion what's taking vendors so long and I think we've done a really good job of answering that question here.
Alright, cool. Let's end it there. Let's go to carve outs. Uh, so, so Chris carve outs are just something fun from your personal life. Or work that's just gets lets the audience get to know you a little bit better. It could be something you read, listened to what you did last [00:30:00] weekend, et cetera. Um, I'll go first.
I just finished a book called Meditations for Mortals. Uh, it's by this author named, um, Oliver Berkman. He wrote 4,000 Weeks, which is, he's a little bit more famous, about 4,000 weeks. But, um, meditations for Mortals is his most recent book, and it is just a really interesting, it's like five minute chapters.
And it's designed to, you're just supposed to do five minutes a day and there's 28 of 'em, so it's four weeks. And I thought it was a really cool format for a book. And it's basically just like, um, stop assuming you have so much control over your life. And I thought it was, it was really good, really good for me to, um, you know, nexus has this grand vision of accelerating a whole industry, and I think sometimes we're just.
So small and we're making small sort of progress. And so for me it's like, why don't we just limit what we expect we're gonna be able to do in a day? And I think that it's been [00:31:00] really helpful to, to, to read that and, and go home at night and be like, you know what? The small incremental progress was was enough for today.
So. Weeks. It's a great book. That's a good one. That's a good one. Rosie. You go next.
Rosy Khalife: Cool. Um, I tried this new thing. Well, what's, what's a really, it's an old thing for me, but I used to always have a planner that was like a physical planner and like throughout college and beyond. And then when I started my first company, I had all my planners still.
And I've sort of like drifted away from that because I feel like, what if I lose it or. We have to always be connected, but it's been two weeks now that I have got. Back into it. And so I'm using a planner I used in called, like this is the same company, it's called Passion Planner. And I, this was like one of my first planners and so I bought it again.
I was like, lemme just try and just see what happens. And I've been loving it. It's really cool. It's nice because it incorporates your personal, with your [00:32:00]professional, like your, your Workday stuff. And I feel like sometimes during my workday, I'm so focused on my work that like. What about me as a human and like the other stuff that's going on in my life, right?
And so it kind of like encompasses it into one cohesive view, which is really nice. Like we are people beyond just the work that we do. Um, and so, so far so good. It's only been two weeks, but I will keep you all posted. So if anyone's been feeling like they should try a planner again, like, now's the, here's the nudge.
Go for it. Give it a try.
James Dice: Nice passion planner. Okay.
Chris Tjiattas: Uh,
James Dice: Chris, how about you?
Chris Tjiattas: So, uh, I can't really talk about work right now 'cause I'm still figuring out where the coffin machine is and the, the quickest route to the cafeteria. Um, but I, I think, uh, in terms of, uh, personal life, I. We just moved to Bentonville, uh, Arkansas, and I don't know if everybody knows, but apparently it's like the mountain bike capital of America.
Oh, yeah. Brad knows. Okay. I'm getting a nod from Brad. Oh yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. So we're, we're starting to do a deep dive [00:33:00] into mountain bikes and, and, uh, you know, the gear and the. Uh, different kinds of trails and everything. So we're, we're pretty excited to find a new hobby and, uh, something that is, is relatively kid friendly, depending on the trails.
Um, and diving into that. So I've never really been into mountain biking or even really considered it as a hobby, but I think we're living in an area where, um, uh, you know, to be accepted by the broader community, you almost have to, uh, indulge. So that's what we'll be working on the next few months.
James Dice: Just so everyone knows, I, I live in Boulder and I have a friend that lives in Boulder also, and he's a mountain biker and he actually made a trip to Bentonville, which blew my mind because we obviously have a lot of mountain biking options here in Boulder, but he flew him and his bike flew.
To, I don't know if you fly bikes, you probably don't fly bikes. You probably ran a bike. Sure.
Rosy Khalife: I don't. You do. You can. You can
Brad Bonavida: fly bikes, you can fly, you can take it apart
James Dice: and
Rosy Khalife: it's a whole fly. No problem. Take
James Dice: it apart. Oh wow. Okay. It's a whole thing. So he [00:34:00] flew to Bentonville to mountain bike in Bentonville.
So that shows how like, oh yeah. Intense. It is there. All right, Brad, let's wait
Rosy Khalife: before Brad goes. Chris, once you get settled, can we come visit you?
Brad Bonavida: Yes, please. Okay. And bring your mountain bikes.
Rosy Khalife: Okay, we're coming. Seriously, I'm
Brad Bonavida: going mountain biking this afternoon with a guy who went to University of Arkansas and is so good at mountain biking because of the Bentonville trails.
It's like a real thing. Anyway, Brad, we're, we're gonna connect. Yeah, we're, talk to me. I got lots of recommendations for you. I've never been to Bentonville, Brad. I got bike recommendations,
James Dice: Brad. I can teach you stuff.
Brad Bonavida: I don't know if I can teach, but I can tell you stuff. Um, my carve out is a, a newsletter recommendation that is not part of the smart buildings industry, a different style of newsletter.
It's by James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, which I've actually never read, but I know is a really popular book, but it is newsletter is called 3 2 1, and he does three quotes from other people. Two ideas of his own, and then one question for you at the end. And the whole [00:35:00] thing is like six sentences long, right?
It's just all of those things. It's super short. So I've never seen like a newsletter like that that's like, here it is. And then you kinda leave it and you're like, whoa, I like, gotta think about all this now. So I, I just think it's really well done. It takes about 30 seconds to read. Oh, Rosie, do you, do you look, have it too?
You subscribe. I too, and I think a million subscribers. Yeah, it's crazy. That's great.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah,
James Dice: I think it's like 3,000,003. Okay. I don't
Rosy Khalife: know. It's something ridiculous. It's awesome. He's a great, he's he's awesome. Yeah. Good one. Brad, Chris. All right. O
James Dice: over and out. Chris, thanks for joining us. Yeah. Appreciate Chris.
Thank you guys.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, thank you Chris. Great
James Dice: chatting.
Rosy Khalife: Okay, friends. Thank you for listening to this episode. As we continue to grow our global community of change makers, we need your help. For the next couple of months, we're challenging our listeners to share a link to their favorite Nexus episode on LinkedIn with a short post about why you listen. It would really, really help us out.
Make sure to tag us in the post so we can see it. Have a [00:36:00] good one.
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Episode 180 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Chris Tjiattas from Walmart.
Episode 180 features James Dice, Rosy and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Chris Tjiattas from Walmart. In this episode of the Nexus Podcast, the Nexus Labs team breaks down the top stories relevant to energy managers, facility managers, IT/OT managers, and workplace managers.
Introduction (0:50)
At the Nexus (1:20)
Smart Buildings Program Management (7:58)
Digitizing Operations & Maintenance (19:44)
Sign off (29:46)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S702533-16073.
Note: transcript was created using an imperfect machine learning tool and lightly edited by a human (so you can get the gist). Please forgive errors!
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The links are below in the show notes. And now let's go onto the podcast.
Welcome back to the Nexus podcast. It's James. I have Brad and Rosie here with me as usual, and we have a surprise guest that will reveal in [00:01:00] just a second. We're gonna talk through what's going on lately in the Nexus Labs community. So, um. Strap in. Yeah. And if you want the full experience, uh, the best way to engage with us is to be subscribed to the newsletter where you can find every piece of content we probe, publish, and invites to all of our events and all of that.
Uh, what's been going on at the nexus lately? Um, Rosie, you wanna start us off?
Rosy Khalife: Sure, I'll kick it off. Um, so much has been happening. We've really been working hard on Nexus Con. Um, I'll have Brad give us a quick update on where we're at with abstracts. I've been working on curating the attendee list. We have a lot of awesome people that are joining us.
Uh, just a quick thing. Tickets are going up. Prices of tickets are going up on June 15th, so if you haven't got your tickets but are planning to come. It would obviously make sense for you to buy them before then. Um, and then the second thing that I would love your help on is we're working on our after party.
So last year we did not have an after party, like we [00:02:00] didn't have a formal after party, but this year we will and it's gonna be awesome. We're working on a really cool venue, hopefully, fingers crossed. Um, but where I would love your help is. Hearing like what has made a great after party for you? Like what are you kind of looking for?
Uh, we have a bunch of different ideas and so we're just trying to figure out like what do people want and how we can make it the best experience. So if you have 2 cents and a quick minute, shoot me a note. I would love to hear your thoughts. Brad, you're it.
Brad Bonavida: Okay. I, I'm so stoked for the proposed venue that we're not talking about yet.
Me. Oh yeah. That would be cool. Anyway, uh, quick update from the abstracts point of view. So, uh, I talked about this a little bit, uh, a couple podcasts back, but we received like 140 something abstracts, which is a lot because we accepted like. 58, I think, last year. So, um, it's a lot to work through. We've read every single one of them.
Uh, we've summarized everyone, we've categorized everyone, we've used AI to summarize everyone and, you know, mix and match them every which [00:03:00] way. We've got a rough template of what we think it is going to look like, but now is the time that we're gonna get our supervisory control board involved. So James, I think you talked about that two podcasts ago, that we have this supervisory control board who's experts, uh, mainly building owners who are gonna come in and make sure that the different tracks, it, o ot, facility management, energy management, are actually what building owners want to experience and what they want to hear.
Um, so. In the next two weeks, I'm gonna start doing the meetings with those groups, get their perspectives on what we have. They'll want some things changed, they'll have ideas that we haven't considered yet, and kind of do one more iteration and that's when we'll be able to start telling people, um, that they're accepted and, and move on from there.
So that's all gonna happen in the next like two to three weeks, which is pretty exciting.
James Dice: I'm really proud of the supervisory control name because it's the classic thing where you go to chat GPT and you're like, what should I name this? And I went through like three rounds of it with the chat GPT, and I hated all, all of its ideas and then I just [00:04:00] decided it was supervisory control on my, the human brain wins with my own creativity.
Good job. Nice. I love it. Um, okay, one more update. We have a partnership that we just inked last week with boma, which is fun. Um, we're gonna be doing a. It's Boma Canada, right? Um, BOMA Canada or Boma? Bc. BC Yeah. BC Specifically. Bbc. Yeah. So Western Canada version of boma. Um, building Owners and Managers Association.
If people don't know, um, and we're gonna be doing a white paper around, it's kind of like a follow up to our existing white paper around simple building or small building controls. Um, they want to sort of dig into sort of like a buyer's guide to simple building controls. So that'll be fun for us to dig into that over the next couple months and hopefully come out with something that moves the market forward a little bit more.
So stay tuned for that. All right, uh, let's bring in our, our special [00:05:00]guest who's, who's one of our supervisory control members, uh, Chris Jadis.
Chris Tjiattas: Chris, welcome. Woo. Thank you for having me. And I love the supervisory control board name. I just have to say, uh, you know, a little double entendre there with, uh, controls and organization.
So I love
James Dice: it. I don't know if Chad JT can do double entendres. I don't think, I don't think it can can grab. That's
Chris Tjiattas: the next revision. Probably oh four will, uh, we'll bring that one out.
James Dice: Yes, yes. Well, thanks for having us or thanks for joining us. Um, you are in week two at Walmart, so congrats on your new job there.
Can you tell us what's, what's your role?
Chris Tjiattas: Absolutely. Just took a new role with Walmart, as you mentioned, uh, here in Bentonville, Arkansas. Um, and the role is really focused around strategy and building automation systems and digitizing general merchandise. So. My role here is going to be supporting the facility services team and figuring out how [00:06:00] to, um, use IOT and ot.
Um, to save money for customers by doing predictive analysis on equipment that normally wouldn't be connected to OT infrastructure or smart building infrastructure. So it's a big challenge. One of the coolest things about Walmart is anything you do, it automatically goes big. There's no such thing as, as doing something halfway.
If, if you do it here, it, it, you know, has tens or hundreds of millions dollars of impact, um, pretty quickly. And, um, so we're, we're hoping to figure out a path forward with a, a pretty big problem, um, that I think a, a lot of owners have. And, uh, but still drinking from the fire hose here. So hopefully, we'll, we'll have more details in time for Nexus Con on how it's going.
I.
James Dice: Yes. Yes. And we'll, we'll obviously be pulling you into our, our content. We have a, a good ongoing series around refrigerated retail, and I think you're gonna wanna, you're gonna wanna comment on that once you get your, your feet underneath. Yeah. [00:07:00]
Brad Bonavida: Digi, you said digitizing general merchandise at the beginning, right?
Is that the term? Exactly. Never heard anybody say that before. I was like trying to figure out what that meant in my brain, but I think you explained it pretty well, what the goal is.
Chris Tjiattas: Yeah. It's, it's anything on the, the floor, um. Supports what's being sold. Um, now, again, i, I, I hope, uh, I hope I'm not this speaking, but, um, last time I, I, uh, heard about the definition.
It's, it's essentially anything, um, supporting what's being sold on the store and behind, behind the, uh, the storefront. Cool.
James Dice: All right. Well, yeah. People will have to join us at the conference to hear, hear more, maybe. Absolutely. All. Let's dive in. I think, uh, this first topic is, is gonna be. Near and dear to your heart, given your case study from last year at Nexus Con.
Um, so the, the first, um, category of content we have here is Smart Buildings program management. We had an article that I wrote a couple weeks ago called [00:08:00] Pilots Are Broken, but here's how building owners and vendors are rethinking them. And I interviewed, um, a bunch of vendors that I would say got pretty hyped about this topic at Nexus Con last year.
It was a. It was a source of debate. Um, we did the buyer vendor symposium. Buyers were on one side talking about how pilots suck. Vendors were on the other side talking about how pilots suck. And then we removed the wall and they sort of finger pointed lightly, finger pointed at each other. And so I interviewed Montgomery Technologies, code Labs, mapped and facil ai.
And what surprised me about this article and, and the interviews in this, is I heard Joe, Joe like. Interrupted me in the first 30 seconds and was like, don't call it pilot, call it a trial. And I, I sort of crafted the article around that thought as like defining out what you're testing. Right. And then what else surprised me was mapped in code labs, like really gut, kind of [00:09:00] like standoffish in a way that like they're basically just like we stopped doing on strategic pilots years ago.
And I thought that was fascinating in that like as an industry. We know there are still unstrategic pilots happening out there. They're definitely happening. Or else people wouldn't be debating it so hard at the conference. Um, and yet you have these vendors that are just taking a stand and say, we don't, we don't do that anymore.
I thought that was surprising. Um, and then, yeah, I, I thought what was spicy to me here, and we really wanna lean into the spice because of this year's, uh, nexus con theme. Which, uh, people should check out my LinkedIn if they haven't seen that, uh, as far as the teaser, and we'll obviously have more, uh, more announcements around it.
But, um, we're definitely leaning into the spice this year, and I, I thought it was interesting from hearing from these vendors kind of just like calling out buyers and saying like, you're, you're not ready. Like, are you really ready to actually do this? [00:10:00] And as a vendor, basically taking a stand and saying like, you're not ready, so we're not gonna do it in the way that you wanna do it.
Here's how we recommend doing it. I thought that was interesting. Um, but, but Chris, did you, did you have any thoughts to, to
Chris Tjiattas: sort of build on here? Just wanna start out real quick with, uh, a little leak leaves. Um, all thoughts and opinions are my own, uh, and, and I'm not representing Walmart on the podcast today.
Yeah. I think, um. One thing that was really interesting is if you're a building owner and you haven't read the article, uh, and I don't get any money from you guys or anything like that, right? Like we're, uh, we don't, we don't have any signed relationship. You really need to go read it. It's, it's a 10 minute read, and I think it really gives a, a 20,000 foot level view of, uh, some of the key challenges an organization might have in executing a pilot.
Um, I love the idea of using the name trial instead of pilot. Um, but at the end of the day, it really [00:11:00] boils down to if you're a building owner or you're a consultant foreign owner and you're just running pilots without really a core plan and strategy behind it, then you're gonna leave a lot of money on the table.
You're gonna waste a lot of time, and you're never gonna know if it was actually a success or not. And I think that's probably the, the biggest thing. Not to spoil the article for those who didn't see it, but I think that's one of the, the key issues is going into a pilot without an overall strategy or a plan, you're, you're gonna be missing out on a lot of the benefits and not realizing, um, the mistakes or being able to capitalize on the mistakes that you made.
Um, when you do a pilot,
Brad Bonavida: in my previous role, I was with a tech vendor and we were like death by a million pilots. Like I would say it was probably the biggest issue we went through is that we had so many pilots that gave us so much. Um, hope that we had this big deal coming around the corner, and it always fell through in frustration because it wasn't well-defined of what success criteria was.
[00:12:00] Um, I think a lot of times it had to do with somebody on the building owner side who had a lot of, uh, they, they wanted their company to adopt some sort of smart building technology, but they actually didn't have the. Capability or the influence to make it happen. So their budget's smaller or like their, their influence is smaller, so that's what they could do, you know?
Um, and it reminded me as well in your article, James, just talking about the financial part of it. I think it was, uh, it was Matt White, uh, from Intelli build at the symposium who was talking about. The importance of the pilot not being free, because if it's not free, then you are triggering their procurement system to go, which can give you some like actual feelings of can they pay for this if it were to work out, you know, and, and that's a big deal.
Like they might not even know that they have obstacles there in terms of like. Once it comes to paying for the real thing, can you actually do it? Can you get those people involved? [00:13:00]
James Dice: Yeah. And can the two organizations actually sign a contract together? Can that actually work? Right.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah.
James Dice: Right. Um, Chris, this reminded us of your presentation at Nexus Con last year, um, in this, this sort of Swiss cheese model.
Do you want to walk us through that briefly?
Chris Tjiattas: Sure. I, I'd love to, to touch on that, but I, I wanna go back to something Brad just mentioned. Um, and, and maybe we can. Circle, uh, circle that for a moment, which is, um, free pilots. Um, I think there's, there's, there's a little bit of spice in that topic. So the, the thing is, if you're willing to do a free pilot of any sort of value for a customer, then you're not really doing them or yourself any benefit.
And if you're an owner and you're gonna waste your time doing a free pilot with somebody who's only gonna half it because they're doing it for free, then you're wasting your time. And I think. If, if you're able to put together a real ROI, again, going back to that whole have a plan and a strategy. If you develop an [00:14:00] ROI for something, you should be expecting a, a to save money or make a profit by doing something, and the pilot is just testing that idea, right?
To validate the results. Now, it might not, of course, just like any business decision, but if, if you're, if you're not willing to pay for it and you want the vendor to do it for free. Then it's probably not a good idea and I think that might be a good litmus test. Does that, how does that resonate? Yeah, absolutely.
Brad Bonavida: Can, can I ask you one more question on that, Chris? Just from me putting your building owner's hat on. When we were struggling so much as a, when I was a technology vendor and we were struggling so much to get people to get past pilot, we tried Hey,
James Dice: real quick, Brad. Real quick, Brad. It's important to note that that vendor that you work for, they're not around anymore and like one of the reasons is of this exact topic.
Yeah, totally. So it's like a huge deal, right? Yes,
Brad Bonavida: yes. Very huge. Like this was death by pilot for sure.
James Dice: Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: Um. But I was gonna say, Chris, we, we got to the, there were, um, instances where it was [00:15:00] like, okay, people aren't following through, so let's try to put within the details of the pilot. Like, if this is successful, then you need to move forward in some way.
I, I tried to do that specifically on a project, and the building owner was like, taken aback, like, whoa, what are you trying to do? You're trying to like, lock me into something. Like, what do you mean I have to sign up if it works Right. And like, it was a little bit like. Apprehensive at that point. Like, I don't, I know you're new to this building owner role, but how would you feel about that?
Is that a weird thing to, before, you know, commit based on some sort of metrics beforehand?
Chris Tjiattas: No, absolutely. So I think there's, there's a, a paradigm shift here if you, if you wanna take a different view on that. If, if you're, if the owner isn't sure. By using your technology and your services, they can actually save money.
Um, if they're not certain of that, why would, why would they even wanna do it? And, and I, I'm trying to think of how to spin this a little bit. [00:16:00] They should want to use your technology more there should, they should already have a plan to get the funds to continue using your services after they execute the first pilot, assuming that they're capturing the savings or making the profit.
Using the technology and services that you're providing. So to just test stuff for the sake of testing it, um, without a plan. They're not going, they're not, uh, going in with the mindset of we're just validating something we already expect, which is mm-hmm. By using Brad's companies. Technology will save a million dollars this year.
Instead, they're just going, this is a cool technology, let's try it and see what happens. And when you say, well, you know, we need something for the effort that we're putting in, um, I think on the vendor side, you should be asking the question, well, what's the return you're getting on this? Because if you get a good return, then I should expect business from you.
Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Or at least to share the business across a couple competitors if, if we're not a closed platform or something like that. Right, right, right. Right. [00:17:00] So I think what happens is a lot of people get attached emotionally to technology or to ideas, uh, into the sex appeal of, of something that they might have read in a newsletter or seen at a conference, not Nexus con and, you know, gravitated towards it and are are excited to try it or sell it to management.
But they're not thinking of it from, from the more grassroots perspective of, you know, how can we bring value to the company? How can we bring value to our customers? And that, by the way, that goes on both sides. You know, I'm, we're we're talking about business owners here, or uh, building owners, but that also applies to, to vendors.
You know, having done owners consulting for 11 years before this current position, you know, I would call other vendors and be like, you know, we're really interested in using your technology. We really wanna understand it. Um, but we need to understand how it works. So I can write a, a pilot plan and a statement of work and put together a cost estimate so we can do those, uh, you know, do that calculus in-house [00:18:00] and determine if we want to use it or not.
And I. It was wild. It was more than half the time I would say that either we would just get a sales rep who would try to desperately piece together, you know, without a technical background who would desperately try to piece together some numbers for us and, and promise us the world without really being able to demonstrate that they could actually deliver on it.
Um, and then we wouldn't understand the underlying technology so we could actually scope it and, you know, come up with, with a cost benefit analysis on our side. Um, or we just wouldn't get a call back. That happened, I would say more than half the time with new technologies that we would want to try. Um, on the flip side, um, we would get tons of engagement and, you know, people would call with like a CTO and a senior VP and, and all the way down both the business development and the technical side.
But they would wanna a signed contract before we ever did a pilot. And that was, that happened, I wouldn't say as often, but that did happen to [00:19:00]where they would want a firm commitment before they would, you know, license us the technology or, or, you know, uh, fly somewhere and help us install the, the tech.
James Dice: Interesting. That's super interesting. The article has a pretty good case study from Code Labs in the, in the article around the, a retail portfolio that they're working with. And they, they really zoomed in, in the trial around one specific, not, not a persona, an actual human. And they said like, if we can change this guy's job, then we can change all the.
It's people like hims job and like I, I thought it was cool how they sort of like started with that atom within the organization so people can go check that out. Let's move us on, let's move on to digitizing operations and maintenance. Um, our next article that we published, so last week by the time this comes out it'll be two weeks ago, is, is around using gamification and AI to engage and sort of hook.
Technicians and operators on digital tools, and I interviewed Visit and [00:20:00] 75 F and Brainbox ai and what surprised me for this article was basically the ability for, you know, it felt like this was, is grounding AI and all of the hype around AI into something that I believe is one of the core problems with our industry, which is the ability for AI to help sort of bring in less technical.
Technicians and less technical operators and facility managers. And sort of bridge a gap if they don't understand how a systems system works. There's potential for the AI to really start to understand the system and how it works better. I'm trying to like not, not talk about this in a hypey way. I'm like really trying to, but I actually believe in what, specifically around what 75 F and Brainbox are sort of bringing to the market here.
Around the ability for the AI to understand how the system works sort of better than the operator and better than the technician does, which is not really true of the control [00:21:00] systems of the past. So I thought that piece, I'm pretty bought into the hype around that piece. Yeah. Um, and a lot of the gamification stuff is interesting and, but that's, that the AI piece is the piece that really surprised me around this.
Just the ability for that. Gap to be bridged a little bit more. What's what was spicy here in this article is I don't understand what's taking the vendors so effing long to do gamification. Like all of us have been getting gamified by all of the social media apps for like. Almost two decades now, and like, why are we just talking about this in 2025 as like a cool thing now, you know, you guys know what I mean?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, totally. I, I think that a big part of it is that so many of these softwares. So, so many software companies, so many technology platforms come from the engineering side and up, and my personal experience was, it took me a long time as an [00:22:00] engineer to recognize the importance of design and like really solid user design.
You know, so you get like the nerdy, uh, engineer back there, electrical engineer who've developed some platform and they're really proud of how much it can do. They've never even thought about the fact that it's like the most boring looking thing possible and that that matters today for sure. Um, so I think that's a big part of it.
Uh, you know, people gotta realize that design is necessary. And there's a couple of Nexus con abstracts that we've gotten about exactly that, about how important user design is to how good your building application is.
James Dice: Huh. Interesting. Rosie, were you gonna say something?
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, I was just saying that I think sometimes the people building a lot of these tools are just so excited that they can do so much.
Kinda like what you were saying, Brad, that they lose sight of the fact that the user initially at least wants simplicity to start. Yep. To be bought into the thing and then once they're bought in, like Sure, it's so cool that I can like manipulate this and create all these different [00:23:00] widgets, but like I don't need that from the get go.
And so some, especially in demos, I see this a lot where we're getting a demo and it's like they're throwing the kitchen sink at us and it becomes so overwhelming that I sort of lose sight of what the thing does to begin with. Um, and I think it goes back to user experience and how they design the thing.
Yeah,
Chris Tjiattas: totally. I, I wanna take the opposite of James' opinion on the technology. Can I do that for a second? Yeah, definitely. So, so I, I reread, I reread the article last night and to, to kind of, um. Uh, recalibrate what I thought about it. You know, I, I do think that technology as it unfolds makes, you know, makes people and their lives better on the whole.
Um, but you know, you mentioned in the article a little bit about how, uh, some of the social media platforms and, and the gamification, um. Draws [00:24:00]people to use technology in their lives, but also it, it also draws people to take out, um, some of the more human characteristics of their day-to-day activities.
Like, you'll see things posted on X or Facebook or Instagram, um, or, you know, comments to, to posts and stuff like that, that people in real life would just like never really say or think maybe. Um, and yeah, I think bringing that into a technician's, um, uh, work life might not be, I. The best. Right? I think also another thing that you have to be really careful about is if you have a really health or healthy culture within your, your business that is supportive and open and, um, where maybe being second, third, or last place, you know, uh, amongst your peers is, is sort of cherished and seen as a growing opportunity, then I think gamification could be a positive [00:25:00] thing.
But if you don't have an absolutely healthy culture. Within your, your workplace environment, you know, where maybe being last on an app where maybe you take more time than you should with equipment because you really care where you're just new and you're not up to speed, and so you're never gonna be number one.
You know? Uh, it could be really disheartening, especially in a field where, you know, um, uh, it's hard to get new people anyways. I feel like it, it could be, uh, gamification could, could lead to. Feelings of, of shame and stuff. And you did mention that in the article, but I think it, it was sort of as a potential risk, but I actually think that's, that's a key risk.
Um, you don't want to incentivize people, um, in an environment to, to compete in an environment where there's just not healthy competition. And I think unfortunately, that that might be a lot of places more, more so than there, there aren't, so,
Brad Bonavida: yeah.
Chris Tjiattas: Yeah. That's a great point.
Brad Bonavida: I would say like I. I agree with you in terms of leaderboards, [00:26:00] something like that is sensitive, but I'll take the other side.
When it comes to just like using the UX to make it more fun, like we talk about dopamine hits, you talk about that, James in the article, and like there's the reference to like the social dilemma, which is like what social media is doing to people's lives. But when it comes to like a job that needs to be done.
I see making it fun and making someone feel good. When you're achieving a, the thing that you need to achieve as a total net positive, like that's where gamification and you user design that uses dopamine to get you to care is, is beneficial. Rosie, we were just both talking about this. 'cause we have so many metrics within our own system and like we had done a meeting that we had needed to get off our plate and like I was so happy to click the button and see it, change colors and see it go off our to-do list.
And it just like, I don't know, it makes you wanna do your job and like reminds you that you've accomplished something. I, I think it's got a lot of power.
Chris Tjiattas: Can I bring in one more point to, to that [00:27:00] effect? Yeah. I'm just playing strict devil's advocate here. So, so I, I do agree with you on a lot of those points, but I think, have you guys heard of the Good Hearts law?
No, I have not. Or maybe the Cobra, Cobra effect. Okay. So, um, this isn't quite as exciting as Swiss cheese, but it's pretty close. Um, it, it basically says, um, that when a measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure. When a measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure. So, for instance, this actually happened with, I, I believe it was, well, Wells Fargo, like a, a few years ago, they, they had like tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in, in fines levied, like against them because they had all these false accounts, the bonuses for Oh yeah.
All the account managers were, were strictly, um. Around or, or a big portion of their bonus structure was based on how many accounts you opened, and so there's only so many customers. [00:28:00] Uh, to get, and therefore, you know, instead of increasing values for, for customers in other ways, like maybe ensuring that they deposit more money and, you know, that obviously is good for the bank or, you know, use their investment tools once they open an account or whatever.
It just, it strictly became about opening as many accounts as you could. Not, not that that's an excuse for illegal activities, but it led to, you know, incentivizing people to, to maybe do things they really wouldn't have considered otherwise. And, and not that, you know, somebody pushing a green button too many times is going to marking task complete, gonna necessarily be a nefarious activity.
However, I could envisage. Uh, an environment where, you know, a technician feels really good by checking off tasks and maybe checking off the task is, is more important than actually completing the task. Or, you know, if, if there is some sort of leaderboard or there is some sort of incentive tied to it, like financial or something like that, where getting that quick dopamine hit and, and checking off that task is, is more important than actually performing the [00:29:00] work itself.
So I think. I don't think this is an impossible problem, but I think there do need to be a lot of considerations in ui, a lot of considerations in the design of the tool to make sure that, um, the incentives that you use and the gamification that you have for it is, is, uh, well thought out. Um, and you sort of look at the adversarial effects of, of that measure becoming the target before you roll it out.
Fascinating. Sorry, was that, I didn't mean to be a total Debbie Downer about that.
Rosy Khalife: No, you're right. I like it. That's a great example of Wells Fargo. That is
James Dice: a great example. That's
Brad Bonavida: really just feel like gamify with caution. That's what you're saying. Ga we, I think we did.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah.
James Dice: I just asked us at the beginning of this discussion what's taking vendors so long and I think we've done a really good job of answering that question here.
Alright, cool. Let's end it there. Let's go to carve outs. Uh, so, so Chris carve outs are just something fun from your personal life. Or work that's just gets lets the audience get to know you a little bit better. It could be something you read, listened to what you did last [00:30:00] weekend, et cetera. Um, I'll go first.
I just finished a book called Meditations for Mortals. Uh, it's by this author named, um, Oliver Berkman. He wrote 4,000 Weeks, which is, he's a little bit more famous, about 4,000 weeks. But, um, meditations for Mortals is his most recent book, and it is just a really interesting, it's like five minute chapters.
And it's designed to, you're just supposed to do five minutes a day and there's 28 of 'em, so it's four weeks. And I thought it was a really cool format for a book. And it's basically just like, um, stop assuming you have so much control over your life. And I thought it was, it was really good, really good for me to, um, you know, nexus has this grand vision of accelerating a whole industry, and I think sometimes we're just.
So small and we're making small sort of progress. And so for me it's like, why don't we just limit what we expect we're gonna be able to do in a day? And I think that it's been [00:31:00] really helpful to, to, to read that and, and go home at night and be like, you know what? The small incremental progress was was enough for today.
So. Weeks. It's a great book. That's a good one. That's a good one. Rosie. You go next.
Rosy Khalife: Cool. Um, I tried this new thing. Well, what's, what's a really, it's an old thing for me, but I used to always have a planner that was like a physical planner and like throughout college and beyond. And then when I started my first company, I had all my planners still.
And I've sort of like drifted away from that because I feel like, what if I lose it or. We have to always be connected, but it's been two weeks now that I have got. Back into it. And so I'm using a planner I used in called, like this is the same company, it's called Passion Planner. And I, this was like one of my first planners and so I bought it again.
I was like, lemme just try and just see what happens. And I've been loving it. It's really cool. It's nice because it incorporates your personal, with your [00:32:00]professional, like your, your Workday stuff. And I feel like sometimes during my workday, I'm so focused on my work that like. What about me as a human and like the other stuff that's going on in my life, right?
And so it kind of like encompasses it into one cohesive view, which is really nice. Like we are people beyond just the work that we do. Um, and so, so far so good. It's only been two weeks, but I will keep you all posted. So if anyone's been feeling like they should try a planner again, like, now's the, here's the nudge.
Go for it. Give it a try.
James Dice: Nice passion planner. Okay.
Chris Tjiattas: Uh,
James Dice: Chris, how about you?
Chris Tjiattas: So, uh, I can't really talk about work right now 'cause I'm still figuring out where the coffin machine is and the, the quickest route to the cafeteria. Um, but I, I think, uh, in terms of, uh, personal life, I. We just moved to Bentonville, uh, Arkansas, and I don't know if everybody knows, but apparently it's like the mountain bike capital of America.
Oh, yeah. Brad knows. Okay. I'm getting a nod from Brad. Oh yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. So we're, we're starting to do a deep dive [00:33:00] into mountain bikes and, and, uh, you know, the gear and the. Uh, different kinds of trails and everything. So we're, we're pretty excited to find a new hobby and, uh, something that is, is relatively kid friendly, depending on the trails.
Um, and diving into that. So I've never really been into mountain biking or even really considered it as a hobby, but I think we're living in an area where, um, uh, you know, to be accepted by the broader community, you almost have to, uh, indulge. So that's what we'll be working on the next few months.
James Dice: Just so everyone knows, I, I live in Boulder and I have a friend that lives in Boulder also, and he's a mountain biker and he actually made a trip to Bentonville, which blew my mind because we obviously have a lot of mountain biking options here in Boulder, but he flew him and his bike flew.
To, I don't know if you fly bikes, you probably don't fly bikes. You probably ran a bike. Sure.
Rosy Khalife: I don't. You do. You can. You can
Brad Bonavida: fly bikes, you can fly, you can take it apart
James Dice: and
Rosy Khalife: it's a whole fly. No problem. Take
James Dice: it apart. Oh wow. Okay. It's a whole thing. So he [00:34:00] flew to Bentonville to mountain bike in Bentonville.
So that shows how like, oh yeah. Intense. It is there. All right, Brad, let's wait
Rosy Khalife: before Brad goes. Chris, once you get settled, can we come visit you?
Brad Bonavida: Yes, please. Okay. And bring your mountain bikes.
Rosy Khalife: Okay, we're coming. Seriously, I'm
Brad Bonavida: going mountain biking this afternoon with a guy who went to University of Arkansas and is so good at mountain biking because of the Bentonville trails.
It's like a real thing. Anyway, Brad, we're, we're gonna connect. Yeah, we're, talk to me. I got lots of recommendations for you. I've never been to Bentonville, Brad. I got bike recommendations,
James Dice: Brad. I can teach you stuff.
Brad Bonavida: I don't know if I can teach, but I can tell you stuff. Um, my carve out is a, a newsletter recommendation that is not part of the smart buildings industry, a different style of newsletter.
It's by James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, which I've actually never read, but I know is a really popular book, but it is newsletter is called 3 2 1, and he does three quotes from other people. Two ideas of his own, and then one question for you at the end. And the whole [00:35:00] thing is like six sentences long, right?
It's just all of those things. It's super short. So I've never seen like a newsletter like that that's like, here it is. And then you kinda leave it and you're like, whoa, I like, gotta think about all this now. So I, I just think it's really well done. It takes about 30 seconds to read. Oh, Rosie, do you, do you look, have it too?
You subscribe. I too, and I think a million subscribers. Yeah, it's crazy. That's great.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah,
James Dice: I think it's like 3,000,003. Okay. I don't
Rosy Khalife: know. It's something ridiculous. It's awesome. He's a great, he's he's awesome. Yeah. Good one. Brad, Chris. All right. O
James Dice: over and out. Chris, thanks for joining us. Yeah. Appreciate Chris.
Thank you guys.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, thank you Chris. Great
James Dice: chatting.
Rosy Khalife: Okay, friends. Thank you for listening to this episode. As we continue to grow our global community of change makers, we need your help. For the next couple of months, we're challenging our listeners to share a link to their favorite Nexus episode on LinkedIn with a short post about why you listen. It would really, really help us out.
Make sure to tag us in the post so we can see it. Have a [00:36:00] good one.
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This is a great piece!
I agree.