December digest: Analytics 2.0
Hey friends, happy Friday!
Welcome to another monthly digest… a collection of member updates and ideas I’ve been working on this month.
Enjoy.
1—Analytics 2.0
This month, all of my projects seem to be converging on one central theme: The first building analytics epoch, v1.0, is over. It’s time for v2.0.
Version 1.0 has been fun. It took some work, but the value proposition is now proven. There’s a growing level of industry acceptance and countless high-profile case studies, such as the recently-published results of the Smart Energy Analytics Campaign (SEAC), where analytics software drove a median 9% energy savings on 6,500 buildings across the US.
But…. if we’re honest with ourselves, there are many ways Analytics v1.0 projects fell short. Frankly, analytics projects are often pitched and sold on a future vision of their mature potential—with ambitious promises like enabling predictive maintenance, digital facilities management, and creating much higher than 9% energy savings—while most of today’s deployments only realize a portion of that vision.
And in case that statement ruffles feathers, the limited data do seem to back me up here. From the SEAC results, check out the savings inconsistency across organizations…
And beyond the inconsistency problem, Analytics v1.0 has another telltale sign: heavy reliance on building performance and/or energy engineers. I’m not saying those people aren’t important (ahem, I am one), but they don’t exactly grow on trees. My point is that if this technology is crossing the chasm and ready to go mainstream, it can’t be so reliant on mechanical engineers for scale.
And while explaining the current transition is a much longer essay that is coming soon, I thought I’d summarize where my head’s at in case you all have any input or data to contribute. What do you think? Are we ready for a new era or are we just fine as is? Would you like to be interviewed for the longer essay?
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2—Member gathering recording
For December’s member gathering, I attempted to set up two breakout room discussion topics, but we only made it to one of them: new architectures.
That’s okay… this was a fascinating discussion, which is why I let it get a little unstructured. As my best friend says, “you can’t ration passion”! We’ll be returning to a little more structure next month.
If you’re wondering why 70+% of attendees don’t like the term “digital twin”, then give it a watch/listen. Here’s the recording for those of you that weren’t able to attend.
---
3—January member gathering preview
For January, we’ll hit the second topic we were planning to discuss in December: data modeling.
In the last few podcasts (#29 with Google and #30 with Microsoft), our guests have introduced new modeling efforts. I’d like to discuss where we’re headed as an industry with all of these parallel efforts going on (Haystack, Brick, ASHRAE 223, Google’s DBO, Microsofts’ DTDL + RealEstateCore, yet-to-be-announce-ontology 😬, decoder rings, etc).
This will most likely be a panel discussion. And of course, we’ll do breakout rooms. If you’d like to be involved as a panelist, hit reply and let me know.
---
4—Help… I need some volunteers!
Next month, I’m planning to launch a new community software application that will allow all of you beautiful smart building nerds to connect with each other in between our monthly gatherings. It’s like Slack or Facebook groups, except it’s designed specifically for this exact use case.
So… I’m looking for a small group of volunteers to test it out with me to make sure it’s worth rolling out to the whole crew. Hit reply and let me know if you’re in. Each volunteer will get their membership extended by a month as a small thank you.
---
5—Members-only posts
Besides this digest, there have been 3 deep dives / members-only posts in December, in case you missed any of them:
- Episode #30 reaction: baking your cake with Azure Digital Twins
- Top 5 ways we f*ck up smart building projects
- Episode #29 reaction: why Google created their own ontology
☝️ And a final reminder here: It doesn’t seem like many of you read or care much about the podcast deep dives with my reaction and the transcripts. We’re going to cut those out starting in 2021 and spend the time to produce value elsewhere.
Thanks for reading and thanks for being a Nexus Pro member. As always, I’d love if you hit reply and let me know how I can improve your membership.
Finally, here’s to a happy holiday season to you and your family. It’s been great meeting you this year, seeing you meet each other at our gatherings, and I’m looking forward to continuing to change the industry with you in 2021. I’ll see you on January 27th at our next monthly gathering!
—James
P.S. for all of you new members, here are some handy links:
- Anonymous member feedback form (constructive criticism is always appreciated!)
- Modify your account (E.g. change your email address, modify your plan from monthly to annual, etc)
- Submit your podcast interview idea
- Submit your friendly rant podcast idea
- Add your personal Nexus Pro podcast feed to the player of your choice (so your phone automatically downloads members-only podcasts)
- The Nexus Vendor Landscape
- The Archive (all posts with a 🔒 are members only)
- Add your project to the Nexus Labs consulting waitlist
Hey friends, happy Friday!
Welcome to another monthly digest… a collection of member updates and ideas I’ve been working on this month.
Enjoy.
1—Analytics 2.0
This month, all of my projects seem to be converging on one central theme: The first building analytics epoch, v1.0, is over. It’s time for v2.0.
Version 1.0 has been fun. It took some work, but the value proposition is now proven. There’s a growing level of industry acceptance and countless high-profile case studies, such as the recently-published results of the Smart Energy Analytics Campaign (SEAC), where analytics software drove a median 9% energy savings on 6,500 buildings across the US.
But…. if we’re honest with ourselves, there are many ways Analytics v1.0 projects fell short. Frankly, analytics projects are often pitched and sold on a future vision of their mature potential—with ambitious promises like enabling predictive maintenance, digital facilities management, and creating much higher than 9% energy savings—while most of today’s deployments only realize a portion of that vision.
And in case that statement ruffles feathers, the limited data do seem to back me up here. From the SEAC results, check out the savings inconsistency across organizations…
And beyond the inconsistency problem, Analytics v1.0 has another telltale sign: heavy reliance on building performance and/or energy engineers. I’m not saying those people aren’t important (ahem, I am one), but they don’t exactly grow on trees. My point is that if this technology is crossing the chasm and ready to go mainstream, it can’t be so reliant on mechanical engineers for scale.
And while explaining the current transition is a much longer essay that is coming soon, I thought I’d summarize where my head’s at in case you all have any input or data to contribute. What do you think? Are we ready for a new era or are we just fine as is? Would you like to be interviewed for the longer essay?
---
2—Member gathering recording
For December’s member gathering, I attempted to set up two breakout room discussion topics, but we only made it to one of them: new architectures.
That’s okay… this was a fascinating discussion, which is why I let it get a little unstructured. As my best friend says, “you can’t ration passion”! We’ll be returning to a little more structure next month.
If you’re wondering why 70+% of attendees don’t like the term “digital twin”, then give it a watch/listen. Here’s the recording for those of you that weren’t able to attend.
---
3—January member gathering preview
For January, we’ll hit the second topic we were planning to discuss in December: data modeling.
In the last few podcasts (#29 with Google and #30 with Microsoft), our guests have introduced new modeling efforts. I’d like to discuss where we’re headed as an industry with all of these parallel efforts going on (Haystack, Brick, ASHRAE 223, Google’s DBO, Microsofts’ DTDL + RealEstateCore, yet-to-be-announce-ontology 😬, decoder rings, etc).
This will most likely be a panel discussion. And of course, we’ll do breakout rooms. If you’d like to be involved as a panelist, hit reply and let me know.
---
4—Help… I need some volunteers!
Next month, I’m planning to launch a new community software application that will allow all of you beautiful smart building nerds to connect with each other in between our monthly gatherings. It’s like Slack or Facebook groups, except it’s designed specifically for this exact use case.
So… I’m looking for a small group of volunteers to test it out with me to make sure it’s worth rolling out to the whole crew. Hit reply and let me know if you’re in. Each volunteer will get their membership extended by a month as a small thank you.
---
5—Members-only posts
Besides this digest, there have been 3 deep dives / members-only posts in December, in case you missed any of them:
- Episode #30 reaction: baking your cake with Azure Digital Twins
- Top 5 ways we f*ck up smart building projects
- Episode #29 reaction: why Google created their own ontology
☝️ And a final reminder here: It doesn’t seem like many of you read or care much about the podcast deep dives with my reaction and the transcripts. We’re going to cut those out starting in 2021 and spend the time to produce value elsewhere.
Thanks for reading and thanks for being a Nexus Pro member. As always, I’d love if you hit reply and let me know how I can improve your membership.
Finally, here’s to a happy holiday season to you and your family. It’s been great meeting you this year, seeing you meet each other at our gatherings, and I’m looking forward to continuing to change the industry with you in 2021. I’ll see you on January 27th at our next monthly gathering!
—James
P.S. for all of you new members, here are some handy links:
- Anonymous member feedback form (constructive criticism is always appreciated!)
- Modify your account (E.g. change your email address, modify your plan from monthly to annual, etc)
- Submit your podcast interview idea
- Submit your friendly rant podcast idea
- Add your personal Nexus Pro podcast feed to the player of your choice (so your phone automatically downloads members-only podcasts)
- The Nexus Vendor Landscape
- The Archive (all posts with a 🔒 are members only)
- Add your project to the Nexus Labs consulting waitlist
This is a great piece!
I agree.