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NexusCon '25 Keynote: What the Connected Buildings Movement Can Learn from Dune's Bene Gesserit
Rosy Khalife, James Dice, and Brad Bonavida (Nexus Labs) opened NexusCon 2025 by laying out the core problem they think is holding the industry back: smart building work is still trapped in disconnected narratives—BAS, energy, space utilization, health, decarb, cybersecurity—so teams keep funding one-off projects instead of building durable programs.
They used the “Bring the Spice” Dune theme as a hook, but the point was practical: if you want momentum inside your organization, you need a shared language of value that executives will actually fund. They also set expectations for the event format—owner-heavy, case-study driven, and designed to force real discussion, not polite conference theater.
The most useful part is the framework they’re trying to standardize across the community: translate building work into enterprise value, prove it with KPIs your organization trusts, and operationalize it with playbooks so outcomes become repeatable instead of heroic.
You’ll also hear the blunt take on why “smart buildings” as a label doesn’t unlock budget on its own—and why measurement, governance, and internal accountability are where most programs actually win or die. If you’re an FM/EM/OT leader trying to scale beyond pilots and pet projects, this keynote gives you a common model you can bring back to your team today.
Rosy Khalife, James Dice, and Brad Bonavida (Nexus Labs) opened NexusCon 2025 by laying out the core problem they think is holding the industry back: smart building work is still trapped in disconnected narratives—BAS, energy, space utilization, health, decarb, cybersecurity—so teams keep funding one-off projects instead of building durable programs.
They used the “Bring the Spice” Dune theme as a hook, but the point was practical: if you want momentum inside your organization, you need a shared language of value that executives will actually fund. They also set expectations for the event format—owner-heavy, case-study driven, and designed to force real discussion, not polite conference theater.
The most useful part is the framework they’re trying to standardize across the community: translate building work into enterprise value, prove it with KPIs your organization trusts, and operationalize it with playbooks so outcomes become repeatable instead of heroic.
You’ll also hear the blunt take on why “smart buildings” as a label doesn’t unlock budget on its own—and why measurement, governance, and internal accountability are where most programs actually win or die. If you’re an FM/EM/OT leader trying to scale beyond pilots and pet projects, this keynote gives you a common model you can bring back to your team today.
This is a great piece!
I agree.