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Episode 182 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs.
Episode 182 features James Dice, Rosy Khalife and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs. 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 (1:43)
Integrating, Connecting, and Securing Devices (6:02)
Digitizing Operations & Maintenance (12:04)
Smart Building Champions (20:20)
Rosy’s Rant (28:25)
Sign off (34:38)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S706971-16073.
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 Rosie and Brad with me. Say hi.
Rosy Khalife: Hello?
James Dice: Hello. How's it going? How are you guys doing?
Brad Bonavida: [00:01:00] Fantastic.
Rosy Khalife: Lame. How are you really doing, Brad?
Brad Bonavida: Fantastic. Okay. It's Friday. I'm happy to be here.
Rosy Khalife: That's good. I'm having a great day too. It was, um, we had a lot of rain recently and today's finally a sunny day, so I can't complain, so that's good.
James Dice: I just thought of Bill Weather's lovely day.
Rosy Khalife: Good
James Dice: song. All right. Welcome to back to the podcast. Uh, this is our biweekly take on what's going on with the Nexus Labs community. So we'll walk you through what's going on with Nexus Con and what's going on with our events and what we've published in the last few weeks.
Um, as a reminder, we do the Nexus newsletter every week, so if you want the full take on everything, definitely subscribe there. Uh, what's going on at the Nexus, you guys?
Rosy Khalife: Okay, I'll, I'll jump in first. So nexus con planning and [00:02:00] participation and all of that has, has been going really well and people are really excited to come back and we're super excited to have you all join us.
Um, just a quick reminder that ticket prices are going up the end of June, so I'm not sure when you're gonna hear this, but hopefully you'll hear it. Before that happens and you can buy your ticket and get yourself registered and then book your hotel and so on. So if you have any questions, um, shoot us a note and we will try to help get those answered before that deadline happens.
James Dice: So the tickets are going up in price by like 200 bucks, right?
Rosy Khalife: So yeah, we'll
James Dice: save 200 per person at your company. That adds up. That adds up the time. Um, we also did a webinar last week. Um, and what I thought was cool about it was people had a lot of questions about the conference, but also, um, Rosie you brought on three people from three different roles that talked about why they're returning this year.
So we had Devin from Lockheed, we had Reed [00:03:00] from McDonald Miller service provider role, and then we had, um, Elizabeth from R Zero talking about why she's coming back to exhibit. And it was just, it made me feel so proud of this experience that we created. That people wanna come back to, um, which was cool to see.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. We'll put the link to that webinar in case you weren't there. We'll put it in the show notes. It's also on the Nexus Labs LinkedIn. Like if you go there, you'll find a little clip and then you can watch the whole thing.
James Dice: We, we need something from everyone that's listening to this. Um, let us know what you think about if you come to Nexus Con, what you think about a beginner's workshop explaining, um.
Kind of the core frameworks to smart buildings, um, before the conference starts. So kind of like a pre-conference workshop, um, that kind of teaches a shorter version of our smart building strategist course. Uh, let us know what you think of that. So reach out to us on LinkedIn or send us an email. Um, if you would take that, let us know, [00:04:00] uh, because if you don't let us know, we're not gonna do it.
Brad Bonavida: Uh, one other thing on the conference is it's been a long time coming, but by the time this podcast is published, the agenda will be complete and on our Nexus Con website for people to view. So, uh, whether you've bought a ticket or not, go check it out. It, it gets me excited every time I look at it, uh, because there's some really good sessions that we're gonna have and other things outside of sessions that we're gonna do.
Um, it's gonna be difficult to pick which room to be in at a lot of times, but yeah, uh, please do check that out. It's, uh, we got a lot of, we got a lot of good topics. It's gonna be a good one. The
James Dice: community swamped us in abstracts. So we, Brad, has been swimming in all of your proposed presentations for the last, what, six weeks, Brad?
Brad Bonavida: And, uh, yeah. Let's see. Yeah,
James Dice: more about that. You've done a really, really great job. Creating an agenda that's very intriguing. [00:05:00] So yeah, people can check that out. Once this podcast comes out, just go to our website.
Brad Bonavida: Oh, and then, uh, that also reminded me, shout out to Drew Dupre, who's speaking 'cause he's got a piece.
Uh, he's gonna be talking about, uh, APIs and interoperability and like kind of red flags around APIs that building owners need to look out for. And he posted on LinkedIn like, Hey, I'm gonna be talking about this. Like what do people think? What is the biggest issues they've seen? So he's crowdsourcing his presentation via LinkedIn, which is like genius level.
Other people should probably be doing that if they want to make good presentations. 'cause I think he got a lot of good comments on, you know what to talk about. Yeah. He got a lot of great comments.
James Dice: Alright. Yeah. So thank you Drew. Shout out to you are a beacon of the. Um, alright, let's jump in. Let's talk about what we've published, a couple articles we're gonna highlight here that people can dive into more deeply on our website.
Uh, let's start with operational technology. Brad, you had a, a piece about open source that you wrote, [00:06:00] which got a lot of traction.
Brad Bonavida: A lot, yeah. This, this one was so fun. Uh, it just has people have such strong opinions and like history on it. Uh, it was called what open, what is open source and building automation and, and why building owners should care.
And I learned so much throughout the process, honestly, that I didn't know as well. Um. We made an infographic for this that I think, you know, you should read the article, but if you wanted to kind of grasp the situation, we've got a good image that shows it. Um, and it's, it's a spectrum. It's, it's a complicated thing to say what is open source and building automation.
So we kind of tried to show that spectrum from left to right. Um, and just extremely briefly, like on the left, that's closed, that's proprietary, that's kind of where the industry started in like. The eighties, nineties, and early two thousands of proprietary protocols and everything's closed down and it's really hard to get service 'cause only one person can service your system.
And uh, you know, it was really difficult for a lot of building guts. And then you start [00:07:00] to move to the right and like, open communication is the, one of the first things that people start to talk about, which, you know, backnet is, the common phrase that comes to mind is devices from different manufacturers can all speak backnet.
Now things can talk together. It's, you're, you're not there yet. Then you get into like product sales and software licensing, and that's the point where you can, there's competition across the vendors, so different people can actually get into the systems and service them and configure them, and you're getting this competition across vendor to vendor.
And then you get into open tools where you actually don't even have to pay for the tool, it, whatever you need to use to, um, actually configure that device or get into the backend. It's free to access. Then finally all the way to the right side is like true open source as they talk about in the IT world or in software development, where all the way down to the source code of how the system runs is openly available and updateable.
Um, so yeah, and it's a spectrum and a lot of, you know, one thing I learned across this whole [00:08:00] journey in this article is that. Maybe you don't wanna be fully open source. Like there's a lot of, like, there, there's benefit to being there, but then there's, there's, um, service providers or technology vendors who will wrap something that's somewhat proprietary on top to give you value.
Um, like, uh, straddle automation commented on the article. They were one of the people we interviewed and they build their system on Node Red, which is a completely open source programming model, but they have Ocn Plus, which is like. They put this wrapper that, that helps you use node red effectively in HVAC controls.
So it gets really confusing on where, what's open source, what's not open source. And there's a lot of strong opinions, but generally the consensus was more open means better competition means better for everybody. Um, yeah. What'd you guys think?
James Dice: Oh, it's a great piece. Um, and I love the infographic. I I agree.
People should go just check it out 'cause it explains. So much of the article just in the visual form, so [00:09:00] well done on that. Um, it reminds me of, um, I wanna do a shout out to David Blanche, who's, um, the CTO of Bit Pool down, um, in Australia. We did an interview with him, which you cited, I think you linked to in the, in the article, Brad.
Um, and the point that he made was, you know, other industries have been transformed by open source by. Like it's, it is about giving, building owners choice. Yes. But it's also about, um, using technologies in your stack that are more common with technologists and increase the pool of people that could work on your tech stack.
Right. Um, versus like today, like there are a lot of barriers to working on your tech stack in the buildings industry. You have to have a license, you have to go through training. And it's all around these different, you know, proprietary ecosystems usually that, um, when you install a proprietary system, you've now limited the number of people that could work [00:10:00] on your building, right.
Um, versus the open source movement is about, I. Increasing that pool of people that could work on your building. And I think that was my, the, the main takeaway for me that hearkens back to what David said, you know, many years ago when we, when we interviewed him
Brad Bonavida: related to that point. Uh, it was really interesting, a concept I hadn't heard about or thought about was how this relates to LLMs as well, so.
To your point, you're closing people off from being able to like, you know, do work in this industry because we've got proprietary systems. But also if you ask CHATT to help you code in a proprietary system, it's gonna like hallucinate because it doesn't have the open source information to work off it.
Whereas if you ask it for support in. Node red or python or something like that. It's has unlimited options to go search from. Which then is another thing that breaks down the barrier to entry to people actually working on these systems.
James Dice: Yeah, yeah. Not to mention [00:11:00] the, the modeling piece which you have in there.
Open metadata, like the ability to, for an AI to understand what the system is doing and what it means is a lot more difficult when you have proprietary stuff going on. Um, I'll just leave this as a little tease for everyone. We can go to our, our LinkedIn and the comments or my LinkedIn, when we shared this article, the comments, there's a lot of, um, debate and sort of, um, I'd say like myth busting, I guess, around Niagara, you know, being the, the biggest platform that everyone's using.
So, uh, definitely go down that rabbit hole if you're interested or you're using Niagara today. It seems like everybody thinks that. Everybody uses Niagara and open interchangeably, and this article helps you figure out like where exactly is that line. Um, and I think that's an interesting discussion that we don't need to go into right now.
Yeah. [00:12:00] All right, next one. We had, um, another article you wrote, Brad. Um, Brad's been pumping 'em out while he is doing the agenda, uh, for the conference, which is great. Um, it's called Rewiring Design and Construction. Uh, you wanna give us an overview there?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, sure. So the concept here was that we have some technology vendors in our community that are doing some pretty amazing things of trying to like bring integration way earlier into the conversation when you're.
Building a new building or you're retrofitting a building. Uh, the two examples that we kind of highlighted within the piece were overcast innovation. They make these, they call 'em clouds as their product and think of like a ceiling tile, but it's got all the, the electromechanical pieces. Inside of it before it even gets to the job site.
So all of your HVAC controls, the damper, the diffuser, the fire safety equipment. If there, uh, the lighting, the if there's an occupancy sensor, wifi, all those [00:13:00] things are put into AV as well. It's all put into the, the ceiling panel, the cloud. Offsite, everybody gets it working perfectly and then they kind of just lift it into place.
So the genius of it is that it's bringing the conversation of like these pieces working together and integrating together way earlier into the construction of the building. 'cause usually, you know, you, the ceiling is up and then everyone's like, okay, I need to like, get wires going and like get my devices connected.
So really unique, uh, solution there to move things forward. Then the other one is Matic, which is a startup out of California that has created. 50 volt DC BUS system. So this powers all your IO OT devices, and they like to compare it to like the USB of of IOT devices where you plug in this wire, this 50 volt, 18 gauge, single, you know, wire, and you've got power to pretty much all of your iot devices, and it's automatically communicating as well.
So now you're bringing all of like the division 23 [00:14:00] communications, all those things into, uh. Elec, the, the electrician's work or somebody's work who's powering the device too. So that's also bringing it upstream. Um, and so those are two really, you know, cool, unique products that are kind of changing the way you'd look at, um, integrating devices within a building.
I wanted to ask you guys though, again, this one got good attention on James' LinkedIn. One of the comments, uh, I don't know Bram Chen, but I liked his comment. He said, MSIs usually have skin in the game, so they're not always best suited to offer advice here. I thought was really interesting. If an MS i's job is to integrate all these pieces together, could they have a little bit of bias against these new products that are kind of doing a lot of this integration more seamlessly?
Is it taking their jobs in in some ways? What do you guys think?
James Dice: Well, it obviously depends on the msi, right? So like when we interview Brian Turner at OTI Bri, the way that Brian would say this, and he'll text me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm right. Um, the. [00:15:00] Is they have a toolkit, like for every use case they're trying to enable for a building owner.
They have vendors that they know work, they've done it before, they've integrated them together. They've enabled this use case with this toolkit of vendors or technologies or whatever. Um, they're not benefiting, but it is easier because they know. They're not benefiting financially by using those products, but it is easier because they know and they've done it before.
Right? And so they're gonna prefer that, um, they can, there's less uncertainty, right? Um, around that. There are other MSIs though that, um, right, they're, they're coming to the market with a product that they resell, right? That solves the problem, but they're benefiting financially from using that. Right. Um, and I'm not saying any, anybody does that or anybody doesn't, but that's definitely in the market where you're coming to market as [00:16:00] an MSI and your main goal is to use this exact platform, uh, and get the building owner to install that platform or that this technology or whatever.
Um, and so I, I think, I think Bram, is that how you say his name? Bram? Um, I said Bram, I don't know if that's right. Yeah, I think Brahm is right, because what you're talking about with these technologies is like actually changing the way that construction's done and knocking down some of the silos in the construction process.
Right? And you know, if you're coming in here with a, a hammer and everything looks like a nail, right? Then these things are over here, a screwdriver, and you're like, I don't even know how to,
Brad Bonavida: yeah.
James Dice: How to take that.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. I, the, the business like analogy or the, the business term I always hear that comes to mind with the way you're explaining MSIs is like playing offense in business rather than playing defense.
And MSI that's playing defense here is like, oh, we gotta avoid these things. It's taking our work and Ms. [00:17:00] I that's playing offense is like. People are gonna come to me. 'cause I'm going to know which technologies integrate faster from the beginning. I'm gonna get in front of this, I'm gonna be the one who knows how to install DOMA and Overcast, and that's gonna, you know, get me more business because people are gonna realize how I'm picking out the technologies that are integrating from the beginning.
Yeah, yeah,
James Dice: yeah. And it goes both ways too, right? They might test out those technologies. And they might wait because they're new and like they, it's a new building and like you don't wanna install something that's not gonna be around. And like, there's a bunch of things they're weighing as the, the technologists, right.
Um, that are needed. I think what, what, when you wrote this article, what I thought about is similar, which is we've done. I don't know. Brad, what do you think? Like 10 different content pieces around, including at the conference, around changing the construction process to be better at enabling smart buildings [00:18:00] and Yeah, almost all of those are all about better coordination, uh, getting the consultant on board, getting the integrator involved earlier.
They're all like humans talking, right. Like talk better, right? Or like change the process, right? This is more like, okay, we're not gonna change the process. We're just going to use different technologies, right? That aren't siloed. They're connected from by design. So I think that's good to like start bringing in these different ways in which the construction process can get transformed.
And I, I think the article was, was great.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah.
James Dice: Yeah,
Rosy Khalife: that's a good point beyond just talking, because as we know, just talking or collaborating doesn't always result in the
Brad Bonavida: action
Rosy Khalife: that we need to be taken. Yeah,
Brad Bonavida: yeah. And both of these companies talked a lot about like how big change management is to convince people that this is the right thing to do, but it, they're forced to like, it's like an afterthought of like, you did this [00:19:00] project, do you realize how cool it was that you were able to do this all like in this new way?
Let's all get on the same page that this is a great way to do it. So yeah, it really forces it, um, early on.
Rosy Khalife: It's also gonna be a, a, a big education game for them, for, for these companies. You know, a lot of folks don't even know that these technologies exist. Right. And so as a baseline it's like, hi, we're here and then here's how we can make your work easier, better, you know, more efficient and so on.
So yeah, we're, I'm glad that we can be part of that storytelling of just raising brand awareness that they even exist to begin with.
James Dice: Yeah. Yeah. I think we should continue to cover this topic. Yeah. But maybe branch out beyond the. Service provider, answer, no offense to the service providers, but maybe we need to start covering it from a different angle.
Like, what does the developer think? What does the GC think? Um, what's the, what's the operator think when they get handed this [00:20:00] building that doesn't have these sensors that would've been in this, you know, uh, overcast cloud panel, right? If they would've thought about that, right? So. We'll, we'll continue to talk about it because it's, yeah, I
Rosy Khalife: think it's
Brad Bonavida: a great topic.
James Dice: Alright, what's next?
Brad Bonavida: Okay, next. Uh, we have a recording. Um, so if you haven't been keeping up, we have all of our Nexus Con 2024 recordings on our website now. So if you're a pro member, you can kind of digest. All of last year's Nexus con, um, on your own time, which is really cool. There's some amazing stuff in there and nobody saw all of it.
So every person out there has something to see.
Rosy Khalife: Good point, Brad. Uh,
Brad Bonavida: yeah. So, uh, this is the craziest
James Dice: thing though. Someone could pay $35 and they could watch every presentation from Nexus Con last year. That's correct.
Rosy Khalife: It's a deal guys. It.
James Dice: It's crazy. I don't know.
Brad Bonavida: The, our, our last one that we, uh, that we posted, uh, since we kind of went chronological, is the [00:21:00] closing keynote.
Um, so I have a clip here. I was joking before the podcast. I know it's gonna make James cringe because it's recording of him. I'm gonna stay. But, um, just to tee it up a little bit, he's, he is been talking about crossing the chasm and how we, you know, get, adopt, uh, excuse me, accelerate the adoption of these technologies in our buildings.
And in this minute 30, he's talking about. What building owners can do and what technology vendors can do to speed this up. So give it a listen and then we will chat about it. Like we're one
James Dice: industry right now. Um, and so I had some ideas on how we might start. So I think buyers can work together more. Um, so not only sharing like we just talked about, but also setting up, um, buyer consortia.
We have a little bit of that going on, but I'd really love to see more. Buyers get together and say, here's, here's what we need. Unifying requirements, validating vendor claims all together. Um, vendors, um, [00:22:00] participating in creating transparency in the marketplace. That's what we wanna see out of you guys over the next year.
Help us, help you guys get the buyers of the table, um, partner with each other. We did a petro with two of our partners showing how you can fulfill a use case together. I would love to see more of that. Um, and then we had a session today, yesterday that, um, and the champions track around creating playbooks.
I think a lot of people credit try to, um, create a playbook that's based on their technology alone. Uh, newsflash, there's 90 plus different technologies in our marketplace. And there's 40 something plus vendors here today. There is no smart buildings roadmap. That includes one type of technology, and so continuing to work together to create roadmaps that include which technologies enable other technologies, right?
We have plenty of content around that. We have plenty of content around, um, use cases that are enabled by multiple different vendors. And so continue to partner, continue to put together [00:23:00] Multi-Tech playbooks so that buyers can have some idea on, on what they should do first and what and next.
Brad Bonavida: So cool.
Real, real quick, I think the, the buyer part got cut a little short, but another thing that you said before, I think the clip started, was about buyers being actually willing to share their success stories and like tell people what worked. Um, but I wanna ask you guys. Like that was what, seven months ago now?
Eight months ago. Uh, are we seeing this happen? Are we getting there? Are people doing these things that we, that James called 'em out for here?
James Dice: Um, I will say, let's start with the, the positives. Um, our building owner meetups that we've been doing for three months now. I think when you step into one of those breakout rooms, it's a little bit awkward at first.
Everyone's kind of feeling each other out. But at this past month, we let it go for what, 30 minutes Brad? Um,
Brad Bonavida: yeah, 35. Yeah,
James Dice: 35 minutes that, you know, you'd have 10 building owners in a breakout room and they do get [00:24:00] into the weeds there and they do start to share what's actually going on. And so I think we are making inroads.
I will say a lot of the stuff that I was challenging everyone is to like. Come and participate with what we're doing. And I think we kind of spent the last eight months kind of operationalizing the conference, like the conference worked for us and we wanna keep doing it. And so we were creating the processes that allow us to keep doing that and not necessarily focusing on industry transformation as much in the last eight months.
But I still think what I was challenging everyone to do is still extremely valid. What do you guys say?
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, no, I think so for sure. I, I mean, I think people are doing some of those things maybe just as much as they were before or, or slightly more. I think the point you said about I. Um, partnering with others and like creating that playbook that isn't just about, you know, your one category or like your [00:25:00] one technology is super important.
Um, and I am seeing some more of that and even sometimes I see it, you know, we have our partners in the Nexus community, right? So our partners are the vendors that we work with that we get to tell their stories and hear what they're doing and so on. And so what ends up happening sometimes, which is so fun for me, is they connect with each other.
Because they are partners of, of ours. And so because they're in the Nexus community, they, you know, ask me to connect them to another CEO or founder or whatever, and then they end up connecting and, and finding ways to collaborate together and work together. And so sometimes you just need a little bit of that push.
And so the fact that we provide that. It is awesome and, and kind of helps people, it helps accelerate that partnering up. And so, you know, I'd love to find more ways for us to facilitate that. And so, um, we're constantly trying to find ways to make those types of introductions for, for the companies that we work with because it's so valuable.
Um, so I think that's one thing that stands out [00:26:00] from, from your list, James, as something I definitely see happening, like we have normal. Working with a bunch of other partners in our community. We have R zero working with other comp, like there's just so much collaboration happening, which is really tough.
You've been there, ne is a great one. Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: Mm-hmm. I was gonna say the same thing, Rosie, like that's the, out of all the things that James mentioned in the clip, the biggest indicator I have is these technology vendors being like, okay, we just do this. Like, who can help us as another tech vendor to do these other parts of it so that it's even a stronger offering?
We see a lot of that. I can't say that I've seen building owners be more willing to share their story. It's probably like about the same as it was last year. And I was thinking about that. I was reflecting on it. And it's funny because like if you're a big organization and you're in charge of the smart building piece, you might really wanna share your story.
But that's, that's not the person who's like unwilling. It's like all these other parts of the department that are slowing them down. Whoa, whoa. Marketing won't allow that. You know, legal won't allow that. And [00:27:00] it's like, ah, it's just. So frustrating to not be able to tell other people how, what worked and what didn't work.
James Dice: I will say though, like your agenda that you're putting together, our agenda that you're putting together, you're turning away case studies like Yeah, yeah,
Rosy Khalife: yeah. And I'll say you had a bunch of building owners submit abstracts to talk about their own success stories, so there is some more than we had last year.
Brad Bonavida: Absolutely. Yeah. And, and when a building owner submits an abstract of their own case study and there's not even like a service provider or tech vendor involved, that's when, you know, it's like someone who genuinely cares to share this story. Like there's no, they, they just care about it and want other people to learn from it.
It's, it's cool to see. Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: It's awesome.
James Dice: Um, I think it's funny, like listening to that back again. And I think it's funny that I said the word consortia. Like I would never use that in a sentence. Some, for some reason I, yeah,
Rosy Khalife: I was like, where'd you get that from?
James Dice: To put that on a slide [00:28:00] apparently. Um, what's funny to me is that challenge is probably like a 10 year challenge for the industry and.
I, I was just like saying it like it is, but I don't know if I expected there to be any progress on a lot of those things in eight months, you know?
Rosy Khalife: Yeah,
James Dice: right. I might just have to pull that slide up again for everyone. I
Rosy Khalife: think you should
James Dice: this fall. Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: We may need to vote of like, where are we at now versus last year or something.
Yeah. Okay.
James Dice: Next. Rosie's rant. Rosie, what do you got for us?
Rosy Khalife: Okay, so, I mean, there's so much to rant about all the time, and it's so hard for me to pick. What to talk about. But if you don't know what this is, this is basically where I pull from my experience, my background at in startups and marketing to talk about something in our industry that is like sort of irking me or that I hope can change.
And so, um, the one I wanna talk about today is one that James highlighted on his LinkedIn, and some of you saw that post, which [00:29:00] was about demos, product demos, where he calls it like science. What's the word you use?
James Dice: Mad scientist.
Rosy Khalife: Mad scientist. Which I think
James Dice: Brad coined that actually.
Rosy Khalife: Oh, okay. Well, I love it and I think it's a great term.
And it's really when someone is showing you product demo and they just go into every nook and cranny of your solution in a way that's way beyond what the person watching even wants to know. And so, James, I'll let you go off for a second and then I will add my thoughts.
James Dice: Well, I just think like smart buildings.
Platforms, software, they do a lot of things. And like if you have 15 minutes to sell your situation to a potential buyer, um, number one, don't take 35 minutes. Uh, number two, like show the outcomes and show like the high level result of what your product does and prove that it can be done. Prove that [00:30:00] it's real, but you don't need to click on every button.
You don't need to show me every screen, every dashboard, every view, every analytics. Show me the backend like, like stop all of that. So that's my piece. Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: Okay. That's great. I think one way to like sort of remedy this is when you're getting close to the end of the time of the allotted time for your demo, you can always ask the person that's watching your demo ask them like, is there something I didn't show you that you would like to see?
For example, I could quickly show you the backend. I could show you how, um, work orders are submitted. I could show you how it looks on a phone. I could like, I don't know, right? Like whatever, suggest some things and then let the person choose their own adventure in terms of how they want this demo to end.
And like what nerdy thing do they wanna see? If anything. And maybe they're like, no, this is helpful. Like, can we talk about some of your success? Stories, then it's like they want outta that
James Dice: Rosie, that they should do that upfront. They should ask that.
Rosy Khalife: I, yes, [00:31:00] definitely ask it upfront also. For sure, for sure.
Yeah. I would ask upfront, like, what are they hoping to get out of this demo? And people are usually, you know, if, if they've got to the point where they've already booked a demo with you, they have a sense of what they're looking for. Like, oh, I'd like to understand, you know, how you showcase leak detection or something, whatever.
Right. And then it's like, okay, let me, let's zoom in on that first and then I'll show you all of the other capabilities that we have.
James Dice: And I, I think we can all admit that like we love our industry and we love our partners, but of all of our partners, they, many of them do this like to us when they're showing us what they do, right, they go into this mode.
And I think it's a little bit of like a, like most of the people that the people in our industry are talking to all the time are in the smart buildings bubble. But I think what people don't realize is a lot of times you're giving a demo and that person is outside of the smart buildings bubble. We are a bubble.
We are [00:32:00] very insulated. The words we use, the acronyms we use, the stuff we talk about is smart buildings, bubble things. And then when you're giving the demo, you're talking to a facility manager, for example, and. 95% of their life is not spent thinking about technology in any way. They're thinking about why is that toilet leaking and why can't I just get this vendor to do what I say and like fill out the work order properly and I gotta redo our budget for next month?
Or what, like they're, they're thinking about all these other things that aren't in the smart buildings bubble. And the demo should be acknowledging that you're outside the bubble, right? Mm-hmm.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. That's great advice. And that starts with asking good questions to begin with.
Brad Bonavida: I think I, one last thought on that is I, it's.
It doesn't correlate the amount of effort or genius that you put into developing something does not correlate to how much value that it's adding to your customer. So like if you're the [00:33:00] developer of this thing and you're like, man, this part was the smartest thing that I ever thought about, or the hardest part to build in my system.
Your bias is like, I better show 'em that I, I flipped it. So you can look at it this way with these analytics and you're excited about it because it's your science project that you put together that was really hard. But like maybe the value's all over there at the part that you're really bored about.
'cause you look at every day and it's not this new thing. Like you gotta be able to separate those two pieces from one another.
James Dice: So
Rosy Khalife: true.
James Dice: And I.
I feel that demos should be more grounded in actual workflows of actual humans.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. So
James Dice: like start the demo by saying, this is the human's life. We're changing
Rosy Khalife: a hundred percent,
James Dice: and then here's the workflow that we're changing and here's a demo of that workflow change. Right? Yeah. A lot of times it's like.
Like, it's too big. What's big? It's like
Rosy Khalife: throw the kitchen sink at me. And then me as [00:34:00]someone who needs, who is supposed to buy this, has to figure out for you how I'm supposed to use this. Yeah. Like, why don't you do the work for me? You know, I'm a facility manager so you know what my pain points are. You know what I'm thinking about, you know, what your thing is supposed to solve for me.
Do just like close the gap and, and make it easy for me to understand how this is gonna help me.
James Dice: So you might say, today your technician does this workflow and here's how they do it. And
Rosy Khalife: and this is how long it takes them.
James Dice: Yeah, yeah. Whatever, whatever. And
Rosy Khalife: now using this is gonna take them less time. Like
James Dice: with our product.
Yeah,
Rosy Khalife: yeah, yeah.
James Dice: Alright, let's, let's, let's call it there. Uh, let's close with carve outs. Okay.
Rosy Khalife: I'll go first because I never get to go first.
James Dice: Go.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. And that's. My turn today. No, I'm just kidding. Um, okay, so my carve out is a TV show, and I was joking that I don't always watch like new TV shows, but anyways, this is new.
You can watch it now. [00:35:00] It's called Sirens. I, yes. Have you seen it? I'm watching that. I watched
James Dice: that. I don't, I don't, haven't finished.
Rosy Khalife: You finished it.
James Dice: Finished it already.
Rosy Khalife: You watched it. That doesn't even seem like, is it good watch?
James Dice: It's really good. It's really good. Yeah. Okay.
Rosy Khalife: I don't know about really good.
I just think it's a good, it's, it's, it's fine ish. Okay. I don't know about really good. It's, I think it's really
Brad Bonavida: good.
Rosy Khalife: It's interesting. There's some thought provoking concepts in it. Um, so if you haven't seen it, you should watch it. I think to say one thing that's not a blooper is. It makes you rethink who you as a person, um, look up to and who you think is the villain.
There's, there's like some themes around that and how you can rethink those things.
James Dice: Um, what do you think blooper means, Rosie? I.
Rosy Khalife: Oh, um, spoiler. I meant,
I meant spoiler. I meant, that's
James Dice: good. Okay, cool. Mine, mine [00:36:00] is a TV show too. It is. Um, stick on Apple TV with Owen Wilson.
Rosy Khalife: Oh yeah. I haven't seen that yet. Show
James Dice: about, um, he is like a washed up, former golf prodigy that, uh, has gone through some hard times and now he's coaching. A young 17-year-old prodigy, and so it's, it's hilarious.
It's really good. Mark Baron's in it, uh, who's a cool comedian, really funny guy as well, so Cool. Check that out. I'm,
Brad Bonavida: I'm audible at the last second. You guys convinced me to do a show. I watched this a little bit ago, but have you seen this studio with s Seth Rogan? Nope. No. Oh, you got it. It's so good. It's so funny.
But one thing that's really cool is that. Uh, there, the, I think it's episode two is called the Woner, and I didn't know this, but in Hollywood, a wonderer is like, when you do a whole, like a really long scene without cutting, so you just keep Yeah. Moving the camera. You keep going, you keep going, keep going.
Do
Rosy Khalife: that film like that
Brad Bonavida: and who know? There's a, there's a lot. [00:37:00]
Rosy Khalife: Oh, okay.
Brad Bonavida: But it's like a style and it's like, you know, you're more pro if you do it, but it's like the way that Seth Rogan did it is that the, the show's all about a studio. So they're in the show, they're recording a movie. The whole scene in episode two is about a one that they're recording, but then the actual show, the studio does a one through it too.
So it's about this wonder that's occurring. But in real life, the show is shooting a one and you're like, you know, watch, it's, it's pretty cool
Rosy Khalife: just for that episode. Very mad, just,
Brad Bonavida: I think they do a lot of 'em, but in that particular episode, there's only like two or three cuts throughout the whole, like 35 minutes.
So it's all about them filming this wonderer while Warner's actually occurring in real life while they're shooting it. It's kind of cool.
Rosy Khalife: Um, that's awesome. Oh, lost in London is the one I I'm talking about. It's a Woner. Yes, it's a Woner. Nice.
James Dice: I'll have to check that out. There's a show on Netflix called Adolescence.
Rosy Khalife: That too is a wonderer. It's
James Dice: a Wonderer, yeah.
Brad Bonavida: Oh, okay. I've, yeah,
Rosy Khalife: it's. Those are wild. When you're watching. I'm like, [00:38:00]how the fuck did this happen?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. And if someone screws up at like the very end of it too, start over. Just reset the whole thing.
Rosy Khalife: Really. I don't even, yeah, I guess so.
James Dice: It's wild. All right, ending this episode.
We'll see you all in a couple weeks.
Rosy Khalife: Thanks for listening. See you guys. Bye. Later.
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Episode 182 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs.
Episode 182 features James Dice, Rosy Khalife and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs. 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 (1:43)
Integrating, Connecting, and Securing Devices (6:02)
Digitizing Operations & Maintenance (12:04)
Smart Building Champions (20:20)
Rosy’s Rant (28:25)
Sign off (34:38)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S706971-16073.
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 Rosie and Brad with me. Say hi.
Rosy Khalife: Hello?
James Dice: Hello. How's it going? How are you guys doing?
Brad Bonavida: [00:01:00] Fantastic.
Rosy Khalife: Lame. How are you really doing, Brad?
Brad Bonavida: Fantastic. Okay. It's Friday. I'm happy to be here.
Rosy Khalife: That's good. I'm having a great day too. It was, um, we had a lot of rain recently and today's finally a sunny day, so I can't complain, so that's good.
James Dice: I just thought of Bill Weather's lovely day.
Rosy Khalife: Good
James Dice: song. All right. Welcome to back to the podcast. Uh, this is our biweekly take on what's going on with the Nexus Labs community. So we'll walk you through what's going on with Nexus Con and what's going on with our events and what we've published in the last few weeks.
Um, as a reminder, we do the Nexus newsletter every week, so if you want the full take on everything, definitely subscribe there. Uh, what's going on at the Nexus, you guys?
Rosy Khalife: Okay, I'll, I'll jump in first. So nexus con planning and [00:02:00] participation and all of that has, has been going really well and people are really excited to come back and we're super excited to have you all join us.
Um, just a quick reminder that ticket prices are going up the end of June, so I'm not sure when you're gonna hear this, but hopefully you'll hear it. Before that happens and you can buy your ticket and get yourself registered and then book your hotel and so on. So if you have any questions, um, shoot us a note and we will try to help get those answered before that deadline happens.
James Dice: So the tickets are going up in price by like 200 bucks, right?
Rosy Khalife: So yeah, we'll
James Dice: save 200 per person at your company. That adds up. That adds up the time. Um, we also did a webinar last week. Um, and what I thought was cool about it was people had a lot of questions about the conference, but also, um, Rosie you brought on three people from three different roles that talked about why they're returning this year.
So we had Devin from Lockheed, we had Reed [00:03:00] from McDonald Miller service provider role, and then we had, um, Elizabeth from R Zero talking about why she's coming back to exhibit. And it was just, it made me feel so proud of this experience that we created. That people wanna come back to, um, which was cool to see.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. We'll put the link to that webinar in case you weren't there. We'll put it in the show notes. It's also on the Nexus Labs LinkedIn. Like if you go there, you'll find a little clip and then you can watch the whole thing.
James Dice: We, we need something from everyone that's listening to this. Um, let us know what you think about if you come to Nexus Con, what you think about a beginner's workshop explaining, um.
Kind of the core frameworks to smart buildings, um, before the conference starts. So kind of like a pre-conference workshop, um, that kind of teaches a shorter version of our smart building strategist course. Uh, let us know what you think of that. So reach out to us on LinkedIn or send us an email. Um, if you would take that, let us know, [00:04:00] uh, because if you don't let us know, we're not gonna do it.
Brad Bonavida: Uh, one other thing on the conference is it's been a long time coming, but by the time this podcast is published, the agenda will be complete and on our Nexus Con website for people to view. So, uh, whether you've bought a ticket or not, go check it out. It, it gets me excited every time I look at it, uh, because there's some really good sessions that we're gonna have and other things outside of sessions that we're gonna do.
Um, it's gonna be difficult to pick which room to be in at a lot of times, but yeah, uh, please do check that out. It's, uh, we got a lot of, we got a lot of good topics. It's gonna be a good one. The
James Dice: community swamped us in abstracts. So we, Brad, has been swimming in all of your proposed presentations for the last, what, six weeks, Brad?
Brad Bonavida: And, uh, yeah. Let's see. Yeah,
James Dice: more about that. You've done a really, really great job. Creating an agenda that's very intriguing. [00:05:00] So yeah, people can check that out. Once this podcast comes out, just go to our website.
Brad Bonavida: Oh, and then, uh, that also reminded me, shout out to Drew Dupre, who's speaking 'cause he's got a piece.
Uh, he's gonna be talking about, uh, APIs and interoperability and like kind of red flags around APIs that building owners need to look out for. And he posted on LinkedIn like, Hey, I'm gonna be talking about this. Like what do people think? What is the biggest issues they've seen? So he's crowdsourcing his presentation via LinkedIn, which is like genius level.
Other people should probably be doing that if they want to make good presentations. 'cause I think he got a lot of good comments on, you know what to talk about. Yeah. He got a lot of great comments.
James Dice: Alright. Yeah. So thank you Drew. Shout out to you are a beacon of the. Um, alright, let's jump in. Let's talk about what we've published, a couple articles we're gonna highlight here that people can dive into more deeply on our website.
Uh, let's start with operational technology. Brad, you had a, a piece about open source that you wrote, [00:06:00] which got a lot of traction.
Brad Bonavida: A lot, yeah. This, this one was so fun. Uh, it just has people have such strong opinions and like history on it. Uh, it was called what open, what is open source and building automation and, and why building owners should care.
And I learned so much throughout the process, honestly, that I didn't know as well. Um. We made an infographic for this that I think, you know, you should read the article, but if you wanted to kind of grasp the situation, we've got a good image that shows it. Um, and it's, it's a spectrum. It's, it's a complicated thing to say what is open source and building automation.
So we kind of tried to show that spectrum from left to right. Um, and just extremely briefly, like on the left, that's closed, that's proprietary, that's kind of where the industry started in like. The eighties, nineties, and early two thousands of proprietary protocols and everything's closed down and it's really hard to get service 'cause only one person can service your system.
And uh, you know, it was really difficult for a lot of building guts. And then you start [00:07:00] to move to the right and like, open communication is the, one of the first things that people start to talk about, which, you know, backnet is, the common phrase that comes to mind is devices from different manufacturers can all speak backnet.
Now things can talk together. It's, you're, you're not there yet. Then you get into like product sales and software licensing, and that's the point where you can, there's competition across the vendors, so different people can actually get into the systems and service them and configure them, and you're getting this competition across vendor to vendor.
And then you get into open tools where you actually don't even have to pay for the tool, it, whatever you need to use to, um, actually configure that device or get into the backend. It's free to access. Then finally all the way to the right side is like true open source as they talk about in the IT world or in software development, where all the way down to the source code of how the system runs is openly available and updateable.
Um, so yeah, and it's a spectrum and a lot of, you know, one thing I learned across this whole [00:08:00] journey in this article is that. Maybe you don't wanna be fully open source. Like there's a lot of, like, there, there's benefit to being there, but then there's, there's, um, service providers or technology vendors who will wrap something that's somewhat proprietary on top to give you value.
Um, like, uh, straddle automation commented on the article. They were one of the people we interviewed and they build their system on Node Red, which is a completely open source programming model, but they have Ocn Plus, which is like. They put this wrapper that, that helps you use node red effectively in HVAC controls.
So it gets really confusing on where, what's open source, what's not open source. And there's a lot of strong opinions, but generally the consensus was more open means better competition means better for everybody. Um, yeah. What'd you guys think?
James Dice: Oh, it's a great piece. Um, and I love the infographic. I I agree.
People should go just check it out 'cause it explains. So much of the article just in the visual form, so [00:09:00] well done on that. Um, it reminds me of, um, I wanna do a shout out to David Blanche, who's, um, the CTO of Bit Pool down, um, in Australia. We did an interview with him, which you cited, I think you linked to in the, in the article, Brad.
Um, and the point that he made was, you know, other industries have been transformed by open source by. Like it's, it is about giving, building owners choice. Yes. But it's also about, um, using technologies in your stack that are more common with technologists and increase the pool of people that could work on your tech stack.
Right. Um, versus like today, like there are a lot of barriers to working on your tech stack in the buildings industry. You have to have a license, you have to go through training. And it's all around these different, you know, proprietary ecosystems usually that, um, when you install a proprietary system, you've now limited the number of people that could work [00:10:00] on your building, right.
Um, versus the open source movement is about, I. Increasing that pool of people that could work on your building. And I think that was my, the, the main takeaway for me that hearkens back to what David said, you know, many years ago when we, when we interviewed him
Brad Bonavida: related to that point. Uh, it was really interesting, a concept I hadn't heard about or thought about was how this relates to LLMs as well, so.
To your point, you're closing people off from being able to like, you know, do work in this industry because we've got proprietary systems. But also if you ask CHATT to help you code in a proprietary system, it's gonna like hallucinate because it doesn't have the open source information to work off it.
Whereas if you ask it for support in. Node red or python or something like that. It's has unlimited options to go search from. Which then is another thing that breaks down the barrier to entry to people actually working on these systems.
James Dice: Yeah, yeah. Not to mention [00:11:00] the, the modeling piece which you have in there.
Open metadata, like the ability to, for an AI to understand what the system is doing and what it means is a lot more difficult when you have proprietary stuff going on. Um, I'll just leave this as a little tease for everyone. We can go to our, our LinkedIn and the comments or my LinkedIn, when we shared this article, the comments, there's a lot of, um, debate and sort of, um, I'd say like myth busting, I guess, around Niagara, you know, being the, the biggest platform that everyone's using.
So, uh, definitely go down that rabbit hole if you're interested or you're using Niagara today. It seems like everybody thinks that. Everybody uses Niagara and open interchangeably, and this article helps you figure out like where exactly is that line. Um, and I think that's an interesting discussion that we don't need to go into right now.
Yeah. [00:12:00] All right, next one. We had, um, another article you wrote, Brad. Um, Brad's been pumping 'em out while he is doing the agenda, uh, for the conference, which is great. Um, it's called Rewiring Design and Construction. Uh, you wanna give us an overview there?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, sure. So the concept here was that we have some technology vendors in our community that are doing some pretty amazing things of trying to like bring integration way earlier into the conversation when you're.
Building a new building or you're retrofitting a building. Uh, the two examples that we kind of highlighted within the piece were overcast innovation. They make these, they call 'em clouds as their product and think of like a ceiling tile, but it's got all the, the electromechanical pieces. Inside of it before it even gets to the job site.
So all of your HVAC controls, the damper, the diffuser, the fire safety equipment. If there, uh, the lighting, the if there's an occupancy sensor, wifi, all those [00:13:00] things are put into AV as well. It's all put into the, the ceiling panel, the cloud. Offsite, everybody gets it working perfectly and then they kind of just lift it into place.
So the genius of it is that it's bringing the conversation of like these pieces working together and integrating together way earlier into the construction of the building. 'cause usually, you know, you, the ceiling is up and then everyone's like, okay, I need to like, get wires going and like get my devices connected.
So really unique, uh, solution there to move things forward. Then the other one is Matic, which is a startup out of California that has created. 50 volt DC BUS system. So this powers all your IO OT devices, and they like to compare it to like the USB of of IOT devices where you plug in this wire, this 50 volt, 18 gauge, single, you know, wire, and you've got power to pretty much all of your iot devices, and it's automatically communicating as well.
So now you're bringing all of like the division 23 [00:14:00] communications, all those things into, uh. Elec, the, the electrician's work or somebody's work who's powering the device too. So that's also bringing it upstream. Um, and so those are two really, you know, cool, unique products that are kind of changing the way you'd look at, um, integrating devices within a building.
I wanted to ask you guys though, again, this one got good attention on James' LinkedIn. One of the comments, uh, I don't know Bram Chen, but I liked his comment. He said, MSIs usually have skin in the game, so they're not always best suited to offer advice here. I thought was really interesting. If an MS i's job is to integrate all these pieces together, could they have a little bit of bias against these new products that are kind of doing a lot of this integration more seamlessly?
Is it taking their jobs in in some ways? What do you guys think?
James Dice: Well, it obviously depends on the msi, right? So like when we interview Brian Turner at OTI Bri, the way that Brian would say this, and he'll text me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm right. Um, the. [00:15:00] Is they have a toolkit, like for every use case they're trying to enable for a building owner.
They have vendors that they know work, they've done it before, they've integrated them together. They've enabled this use case with this toolkit of vendors or technologies or whatever. Um, they're not benefiting, but it is easier because they know. They're not benefiting financially by using those products, but it is easier because they know and they've done it before.
Right? And so they're gonna prefer that, um, they can, there's less uncertainty, right? Um, around that. There are other MSIs though that, um, right, they're, they're coming to the market with a product that they resell, right? That solves the problem, but they're benefiting financially from using that. Right. Um, and I'm not saying any, anybody does that or anybody doesn't, but that's definitely in the market where you're coming to market as [00:16:00] an MSI and your main goal is to use this exact platform, uh, and get the building owner to install that platform or that this technology or whatever.
Um, and so I, I think, I think Bram, is that how you say his name? Bram? Um, I said Bram, I don't know if that's right. Yeah, I think Brahm is right, because what you're talking about with these technologies is like actually changing the way that construction's done and knocking down some of the silos in the construction process.
Right? And you know, if you're coming in here with a, a hammer and everything looks like a nail, right? Then these things are over here, a screwdriver, and you're like, I don't even know how to,
Brad Bonavida: yeah.
James Dice: How to take that.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. I, the, the business like analogy or the, the business term I always hear that comes to mind with the way you're explaining MSIs is like playing offense in business rather than playing defense.
And MSI that's playing defense here is like, oh, we gotta avoid these things. It's taking our work and Ms. [00:17:00] I that's playing offense is like. People are gonna come to me. 'cause I'm going to know which technologies integrate faster from the beginning. I'm gonna get in front of this, I'm gonna be the one who knows how to install DOMA and Overcast, and that's gonna, you know, get me more business because people are gonna realize how I'm picking out the technologies that are integrating from the beginning.
Yeah, yeah,
James Dice: yeah. And it goes both ways too, right? They might test out those technologies. And they might wait because they're new and like they, it's a new building and like you don't wanna install something that's not gonna be around. And like, there's a bunch of things they're weighing as the, the technologists, right.
Um, that are needed. I think what, what, when you wrote this article, what I thought about is similar, which is we've done. I don't know. Brad, what do you think? Like 10 different content pieces around, including at the conference, around changing the construction process to be better at enabling smart buildings [00:18:00] and Yeah, almost all of those are all about better coordination, uh, getting the consultant on board, getting the integrator involved earlier.
They're all like humans talking, right. Like talk better, right? Or like change the process, right? This is more like, okay, we're not gonna change the process. We're just going to use different technologies, right? That aren't siloed. They're connected from by design. So I think that's good to like start bringing in these different ways in which the construction process can get transformed.
And I, I think the article was, was great.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah.
James Dice: Yeah,
Rosy Khalife: that's a good point beyond just talking, because as we know, just talking or collaborating doesn't always result in the
Brad Bonavida: action
Rosy Khalife: that we need to be taken. Yeah,
Brad Bonavida: yeah. And both of these companies talked a lot about like how big change management is to convince people that this is the right thing to do, but it, they're forced to like, it's like an afterthought of like, you did this [00:19:00] project, do you realize how cool it was that you were able to do this all like in this new way?
Let's all get on the same page that this is a great way to do it. So yeah, it really forces it, um, early on.
Rosy Khalife: It's also gonna be a, a, a big education game for them, for, for these companies. You know, a lot of folks don't even know that these technologies exist. Right. And so as a baseline it's like, hi, we're here and then here's how we can make your work easier, better, you know, more efficient and so on.
So yeah, we're, I'm glad that we can be part of that storytelling of just raising brand awareness that they even exist to begin with.
James Dice: Yeah. Yeah. I think we should continue to cover this topic. Yeah. But maybe branch out beyond the. Service provider, answer, no offense to the service providers, but maybe we need to start covering it from a different angle.
Like, what does the developer think? What does the GC think? Um, what's the, what's the operator think when they get handed this [00:20:00] building that doesn't have these sensors that would've been in this, you know, uh, overcast cloud panel, right? If they would've thought about that, right? So. We'll, we'll continue to talk about it because it's, yeah, I
Rosy Khalife: think it's
Brad Bonavida: a great topic.
James Dice: Alright, what's next?
Brad Bonavida: Okay, next. Uh, we have a recording. Um, so if you haven't been keeping up, we have all of our Nexus Con 2024 recordings on our website now. So if you're a pro member, you can kind of digest. All of last year's Nexus con, um, on your own time, which is really cool. There's some amazing stuff in there and nobody saw all of it.
So every person out there has something to see.
Rosy Khalife: Good point, Brad. Uh,
Brad Bonavida: yeah. So, uh, this is the craziest
James Dice: thing though. Someone could pay $35 and they could watch every presentation from Nexus Con last year. That's correct.
Rosy Khalife: It's a deal guys. It.
James Dice: It's crazy. I don't know.
Brad Bonavida: The, our, our last one that we, uh, that we posted, uh, since we kind of went chronological, is the [00:21:00] closing keynote.
Um, so I have a clip here. I was joking before the podcast. I know it's gonna make James cringe because it's recording of him. I'm gonna stay. But, um, just to tee it up a little bit, he's, he is been talking about crossing the chasm and how we, you know, get, adopt, uh, excuse me, accelerate the adoption of these technologies in our buildings.
And in this minute 30, he's talking about. What building owners can do and what technology vendors can do to speed this up. So give it a listen and then we will chat about it. Like we're one
James Dice: industry right now. Um, and so I had some ideas on how we might start. So I think buyers can work together more. Um, so not only sharing like we just talked about, but also setting up, um, buyer consortia.
We have a little bit of that going on, but I'd really love to see more. Buyers get together and say, here's, here's what we need. Unifying requirements, validating vendor claims all together. Um, vendors, um, [00:22:00] participating in creating transparency in the marketplace. That's what we wanna see out of you guys over the next year.
Help us, help you guys get the buyers of the table, um, partner with each other. We did a petro with two of our partners showing how you can fulfill a use case together. I would love to see more of that. Um, and then we had a session today, yesterday that, um, and the champions track around creating playbooks.
I think a lot of people credit try to, um, create a playbook that's based on their technology alone. Uh, newsflash, there's 90 plus different technologies in our marketplace. And there's 40 something plus vendors here today. There is no smart buildings roadmap. That includes one type of technology, and so continuing to work together to create roadmaps that include which technologies enable other technologies, right?
We have plenty of content around that. We have plenty of content around, um, use cases that are enabled by multiple different vendors. And so continue to partner, continue to put together [00:23:00] Multi-Tech playbooks so that buyers can have some idea on, on what they should do first and what and next.
Brad Bonavida: So cool.
Real, real quick, I think the, the buyer part got cut a little short, but another thing that you said before, I think the clip started, was about buyers being actually willing to share their success stories and like tell people what worked. Um, but I wanna ask you guys. Like that was what, seven months ago now?
Eight months ago. Uh, are we seeing this happen? Are we getting there? Are people doing these things that we, that James called 'em out for here?
James Dice: Um, I will say, let's start with the, the positives. Um, our building owner meetups that we've been doing for three months now. I think when you step into one of those breakout rooms, it's a little bit awkward at first.
Everyone's kind of feeling each other out. But at this past month, we let it go for what, 30 minutes Brad? Um,
Brad Bonavida: yeah, 35. Yeah,
James Dice: 35 minutes that, you know, you'd have 10 building owners in a breakout room and they do get [00:24:00] into the weeds there and they do start to share what's actually going on. And so I think we are making inroads.
I will say a lot of the stuff that I was challenging everyone is to like. Come and participate with what we're doing. And I think we kind of spent the last eight months kind of operationalizing the conference, like the conference worked for us and we wanna keep doing it. And so we were creating the processes that allow us to keep doing that and not necessarily focusing on industry transformation as much in the last eight months.
But I still think what I was challenging everyone to do is still extremely valid. What do you guys say?
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, no, I think so for sure. I, I mean, I think people are doing some of those things maybe just as much as they were before or, or slightly more. I think the point you said about I. Um, partnering with others and like creating that playbook that isn't just about, you know, your one category or like your [00:25:00] one technology is super important.
Um, and I am seeing some more of that and even sometimes I see it, you know, we have our partners in the Nexus community, right? So our partners are the vendors that we work with that we get to tell their stories and hear what they're doing and so on. And so what ends up happening sometimes, which is so fun for me, is they connect with each other.
Because they are partners of, of ours. And so because they're in the Nexus community, they, you know, ask me to connect them to another CEO or founder or whatever, and then they end up connecting and, and finding ways to collaborate together and work together. And so sometimes you just need a little bit of that push.
And so the fact that we provide that. It is awesome and, and kind of helps people, it helps accelerate that partnering up. And so, you know, I'd love to find more ways for us to facilitate that. And so, um, we're constantly trying to find ways to make those types of introductions for, for the companies that we work with because it's so valuable.
Um, so I think that's one thing that stands out [00:26:00] from, from your list, James, as something I definitely see happening, like we have normal. Working with a bunch of other partners in our community. We have R zero working with other comp, like there's just so much collaboration happening, which is really tough.
You've been there, ne is a great one. Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: Mm-hmm. I was gonna say the same thing, Rosie, like that's the, out of all the things that James mentioned in the clip, the biggest indicator I have is these technology vendors being like, okay, we just do this. Like, who can help us as another tech vendor to do these other parts of it so that it's even a stronger offering?
We see a lot of that. I can't say that I've seen building owners be more willing to share their story. It's probably like about the same as it was last year. And I was thinking about that. I was reflecting on it. And it's funny because like if you're a big organization and you're in charge of the smart building piece, you might really wanna share your story.
But that's, that's not the person who's like unwilling. It's like all these other parts of the department that are slowing them down. Whoa, whoa. Marketing won't allow that. You know, legal won't allow that. And [00:27:00] it's like, ah, it's just. So frustrating to not be able to tell other people how, what worked and what didn't work.
James Dice: I will say though, like your agenda that you're putting together, our agenda that you're putting together, you're turning away case studies like Yeah, yeah,
Rosy Khalife: yeah. And I'll say you had a bunch of building owners submit abstracts to talk about their own success stories, so there is some more than we had last year.
Brad Bonavida: Absolutely. Yeah. And, and when a building owner submits an abstract of their own case study and there's not even like a service provider or tech vendor involved, that's when, you know, it's like someone who genuinely cares to share this story. Like there's no, they, they just care about it and want other people to learn from it.
It's, it's cool to see. Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: It's awesome.
James Dice: Um, I think it's funny, like listening to that back again. And I think it's funny that I said the word consortia. Like I would never use that in a sentence. Some, for some reason I, yeah,
Rosy Khalife: I was like, where'd you get that from?
James Dice: To put that on a slide [00:28:00] apparently. Um, what's funny to me is that challenge is probably like a 10 year challenge for the industry and.
I, I was just like saying it like it is, but I don't know if I expected there to be any progress on a lot of those things in eight months, you know?
Rosy Khalife: Yeah,
James Dice: right. I might just have to pull that slide up again for everyone. I
Rosy Khalife: think you should
James Dice: this fall. Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: We may need to vote of like, where are we at now versus last year or something.
Yeah. Okay.
James Dice: Next. Rosie's rant. Rosie, what do you got for us?
Rosy Khalife: Okay, so, I mean, there's so much to rant about all the time, and it's so hard for me to pick. What to talk about. But if you don't know what this is, this is basically where I pull from my experience, my background at in startups and marketing to talk about something in our industry that is like sort of irking me or that I hope can change.
And so, um, the one I wanna talk about today is one that James highlighted on his LinkedIn, and some of you saw that post, which [00:29:00] was about demos, product demos, where he calls it like science. What's the word you use?
James Dice: Mad scientist.
Rosy Khalife: Mad scientist. Which I think
James Dice: Brad coined that actually.
Rosy Khalife: Oh, okay. Well, I love it and I think it's a great term.
And it's really when someone is showing you product demo and they just go into every nook and cranny of your solution in a way that's way beyond what the person watching even wants to know. And so, James, I'll let you go off for a second and then I will add my thoughts.
James Dice: Well, I just think like smart buildings.
Platforms, software, they do a lot of things. And like if you have 15 minutes to sell your situation to a potential buyer, um, number one, don't take 35 minutes. Uh, number two, like show the outcomes and show like the high level result of what your product does and prove that it can be done. Prove that [00:30:00] it's real, but you don't need to click on every button.
You don't need to show me every screen, every dashboard, every view, every analytics. Show me the backend like, like stop all of that. So that's my piece. Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: Okay. That's great. I think one way to like sort of remedy this is when you're getting close to the end of the time of the allotted time for your demo, you can always ask the person that's watching your demo ask them like, is there something I didn't show you that you would like to see?
For example, I could quickly show you the backend. I could show you how, um, work orders are submitted. I could show you how it looks on a phone. I could like, I don't know, right? Like whatever, suggest some things and then let the person choose their own adventure in terms of how they want this demo to end.
And like what nerdy thing do they wanna see? If anything. And maybe they're like, no, this is helpful. Like, can we talk about some of your success? Stories, then it's like they want outta that
James Dice: Rosie, that they should do that upfront. They should ask that.
Rosy Khalife: I, yes, [00:31:00] definitely ask it upfront also. For sure, for sure.
Yeah. I would ask upfront, like, what are they hoping to get out of this demo? And people are usually, you know, if, if they've got to the point where they've already booked a demo with you, they have a sense of what they're looking for. Like, oh, I'd like to understand, you know, how you showcase leak detection or something, whatever.
Right. And then it's like, okay, let me, let's zoom in on that first and then I'll show you all of the other capabilities that we have.
James Dice: And I, I think we can all admit that like we love our industry and we love our partners, but of all of our partners, they, many of them do this like to us when they're showing us what they do, right, they go into this mode.
And I think it's a little bit of like a, like most of the people that the people in our industry are talking to all the time are in the smart buildings bubble. But I think what people don't realize is a lot of times you're giving a demo and that person is outside of the smart buildings bubble. We are a bubble.
We are [00:32:00] very insulated. The words we use, the acronyms we use, the stuff we talk about is smart buildings, bubble things. And then when you're giving the demo, you're talking to a facility manager, for example, and. 95% of their life is not spent thinking about technology in any way. They're thinking about why is that toilet leaking and why can't I just get this vendor to do what I say and like fill out the work order properly and I gotta redo our budget for next month?
Or what, like they're, they're thinking about all these other things that aren't in the smart buildings bubble. And the demo should be acknowledging that you're outside the bubble, right? Mm-hmm.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. That's great advice. And that starts with asking good questions to begin with.
Brad Bonavida: I think I, one last thought on that is I, it's.
It doesn't correlate the amount of effort or genius that you put into developing something does not correlate to how much value that it's adding to your customer. So like if you're the [00:33:00] developer of this thing and you're like, man, this part was the smartest thing that I ever thought about, or the hardest part to build in my system.
Your bias is like, I better show 'em that I, I flipped it. So you can look at it this way with these analytics and you're excited about it because it's your science project that you put together that was really hard. But like maybe the value's all over there at the part that you're really bored about.
'cause you look at every day and it's not this new thing. Like you gotta be able to separate those two pieces from one another.
James Dice: So
Rosy Khalife: true.
James Dice: And I.
I feel that demos should be more grounded in actual workflows of actual humans.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. So
James Dice: like start the demo by saying, this is the human's life. We're changing
Rosy Khalife: a hundred percent,
James Dice: and then here's the workflow that we're changing and here's a demo of that workflow change. Right? Yeah. A lot of times it's like.
Like, it's too big. What's big? It's like
Rosy Khalife: throw the kitchen sink at me. And then me as [00:34:00]someone who needs, who is supposed to buy this, has to figure out for you how I'm supposed to use this. Yeah. Like, why don't you do the work for me? You know, I'm a facility manager so you know what my pain points are. You know what I'm thinking about, you know, what your thing is supposed to solve for me.
Do just like close the gap and, and make it easy for me to understand how this is gonna help me.
James Dice: So you might say, today your technician does this workflow and here's how they do it. And
Rosy Khalife: and this is how long it takes them.
James Dice: Yeah, yeah. Whatever, whatever. And
Rosy Khalife: now using this is gonna take them less time. Like
James Dice: with our product.
Yeah,
Rosy Khalife: yeah, yeah.
James Dice: Alright, let's, let's, let's call it there. Uh, let's close with carve outs. Okay.
Rosy Khalife: I'll go first because I never get to go first.
James Dice: Go.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. And that's. My turn today. No, I'm just kidding. Um, okay, so my carve out is a TV show, and I was joking that I don't always watch like new TV shows, but anyways, this is new.
You can watch it now. [00:35:00] It's called Sirens. I, yes. Have you seen it? I'm watching that. I watched
James Dice: that. I don't, I don't, haven't finished.
Rosy Khalife: You finished it.
James Dice: Finished it already.
Rosy Khalife: You watched it. That doesn't even seem like, is it good watch?
James Dice: It's really good. It's really good. Yeah. Okay.
Rosy Khalife: I don't know about really good.
I just think it's a good, it's, it's, it's fine ish. Okay. I don't know about really good. It's, I think it's really
Brad Bonavida: good.
Rosy Khalife: It's interesting. There's some thought provoking concepts in it. Um, so if you haven't seen it, you should watch it. I think to say one thing that's not a blooper is. It makes you rethink who you as a person, um, look up to and who you think is the villain.
There's, there's like some themes around that and how you can rethink those things.
James Dice: Um, what do you think blooper means, Rosie? I.
Rosy Khalife: Oh, um, spoiler. I meant,
I meant spoiler. I meant, that's
James Dice: good. Okay, cool. Mine, mine [00:36:00] is a TV show too. It is. Um, stick on Apple TV with Owen Wilson.
Rosy Khalife: Oh yeah. I haven't seen that yet. Show
James Dice: about, um, he is like a washed up, former golf prodigy that, uh, has gone through some hard times and now he's coaching. A young 17-year-old prodigy, and so it's, it's hilarious.
It's really good. Mark Baron's in it, uh, who's a cool comedian, really funny guy as well, so Cool. Check that out. I'm,
Brad Bonavida: I'm audible at the last second. You guys convinced me to do a show. I watched this a little bit ago, but have you seen this studio with s Seth Rogan? Nope. No. Oh, you got it. It's so good. It's so funny.
But one thing that's really cool is that. Uh, there, the, I think it's episode two is called the Woner, and I didn't know this, but in Hollywood, a wonderer is like, when you do a whole, like a really long scene without cutting, so you just keep Yeah. Moving the camera. You keep going, you keep going, keep going.
Do
Rosy Khalife: that film like that
Brad Bonavida: and who know? There's a, there's a lot. [00:37:00]
Rosy Khalife: Oh, okay.
Brad Bonavida: But it's like a style and it's like, you know, you're more pro if you do it, but it's like the way that Seth Rogan did it is that the, the show's all about a studio. So they're in the show, they're recording a movie. The whole scene in episode two is about a one that they're recording, but then the actual show, the studio does a one through it too.
So it's about this wonder that's occurring. But in real life, the show is shooting a one and you're like, you know, watch, it's, it's pretty cool
Rosy Khalife: just for that episode. Very mad, just,
Brad Bonavida: I think they do a lot of 'em, but in that particular episode, there's only like two or three cuts throughout the whole, like 35 minutes.
So it's all about them filming this wonderer while Warner's actually occurring in real life while they're shooting it. It's kind of cool.
Rosy Khalife: Um, that's awesome. Oh, lost in London is the one I I'm talking about. It's a Woner. Yes, it's a Woner. Nice.
James Dice: I'll have to check that out. There's a show on Netflix called Adolescence.
Rosy Khalife: That too is a wonderer. It's
James Dice: a Wonderer, yeah.
Brad Bonavida: Oh, okay. I've, yeah,
Rosy Khalife: it's. Those are wild. When you're watching. I'm like, [00:38:00]how the fuck did this happen?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. And if someone screws up at like the very end of it too, start over. Just reset the whole thing.
Rosy Khalife: Really. I don't even, yeah, I guess so.
James Dice: It's wild. All right, ending this episode.
We'll see you all in a couple weeks.
Rosy Khalife: Thanks for listening. See you guys. Bye. Later.
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This is a great piece!
I agree.