Founder Note

> “There's this line in Hamilton, 'Let's have a drink, the four of us. Tomorrow there'll be more of us.' And when I started out in green buildi

What's the most important type of data for creating smarter buildings? I'd argue that for every type of building except data centers, it's occupancy data. Why? Here's a non-conclusive list of reasons: It helps building owners (and tenant businesses) understand how their customers are using the space, from office workers to retail customers to school students. It helps optimize the Three S's that are vital to controlling building systems and getting to full autonomy: Setpoints, Schedules, and Sequences of Operations. It helps solve for the optimal balance between the competing goals of better IAQ and lower energy use. It can help improve occupants' experience and find the right space to suit their current needs.

What's the most important type of data for creating smarter buildings?I'd argue that for every type of building except data centers, it's occupancy data.Why? Here's a non-conclusive list of reasons:

In the smart buildings industry, what brings us together is technology-driven innovation to create better experiences for human beings. We started Ne

> "When the iPhone came in, the web was already there. With building systems, it's the other way around. You had a lot of technology in buildings, the

> “I am hopeful. I feel like we're coming together around this issue in a way that I've never experienced in the past. This is something that's within

Quick announcement before we begin: Last call to join Nexus Foundations Cohort 3 [https://www.nexuslabs.online/courses/] along with 40+ other changema

Hey there gamechangers! Welcome to another Member Digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. Speaking of members, there are over 3

> “There's never really been an API for buildings. And this is an impediment to every single corporation, every startup, every investor, the whole ind

Hey friends, Quick announcement before we get to this week's goodies: Tomorrow is our third Live Broadcast! As a reminder, each month we're bringing

> “The grid is starting to look a lot like the internet. These IOT devices are distributed, digital, user owned and operated nodes. They can buy from

Hey friends, We have lots to share "At the Nexus" below, so let's keep this section short and sweet this week! Did you know our Nexus Pro members ha

Hey friends, Back in April, I interviewed [__GHOST_URL__/-046-wiredscore/] WiredScore founder and CEO Arie Barendrecht about how to evaluate a buildi

> “The issue with energy efficiency is that while it may be civilization's largest collective problem, for any individual business it's like their 12t

Hey gamechangers! Welcome to The Lens, a monthly-ish recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news in as few bullet points

Hey friends, I've been feeling like a broken record lately with how often I've been uttering the engineer's favorite phrase: "it depends". So much a

> “I see of lot of people buying apps before they bought the smart phone. So our smart building strategy is to first build the smartphone foundation."

> “You built a building 25 years ago, and the stuff you put in there, it’s still there.” -Keith Berkoben of Google "For consumer facing technology,

How can software help decarbonize existing buildings?

"There's this real opportunity, with the technology available today, to hear directly from tenants on what they want." —Jacinda Lofland

A client once asked me to explain the competitive landscape for energy management and efficiency software. I decided to frame the conversation from t

Hey friends, A client once asked me to explain the competitive landscape for energy management and efficiency software. I decided to frame the conve

> “If you get utility rate payers to act together like a symphony and reduce their energy a little bit at these key times, that net effect is actually

"Thanks for Nexus and helping me elevate my game and gain a broader perspective on the issues we face and the solutions that may be coming, keep it up

> “So you start seeing this cross pollination, worlds colliding, the traditional digital workplace applications with the traditional smart building so

Hey friends, Last week was the most delightfully social week of work I've had since the pandemic began. I had dinner with a Nexus Foundations alum.

Hey there gamechangers, happy Friday. Welcome to another digest… a collection of highlights from June 2021 that you shouldn’t miss. This is designed

> “We take that value creation reframe and we look at it through two ROI lenses. The traditional finance lens, which is return on investment, to under

Hey friends, I've received a ton of great feedback on last week's podcast episode with Sabine Lam of Google. If you haven't given it a listen, defini

> "You feel like you're tackling an impossible problem because you're looking at such a broad set of solutions or in our case, now we're looking at su

Hey gamechangers, Welcome to The Lens, a recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news in as few bullet points as possible

Hey friends, Let's start this week with a quick announcement before we move onto the goodies: 👉 A week from today, we're delivering our first 1-day

> “So you live or die by the data at the end of the day, not the sticker on the front door.” —Ruairí Barnwell Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter and podca

Hey friends, This might seem like it’s off-topic for us, but bear with me: are you familiar with the celebrity gossip magazine TMZ? If so, do you kno

> “So that's how we got here... we were focused on enabling this massive energy retrofit opportunity or enabling people to implement this zero costs d

> “The point of Nirvana  is to have a self-tuning, self-commissioning building that is completely adapting itself (based on) the outside conditions an

Hey friends, Exciting announcement: June marks the beginning of the (free) Nexus Live Broadcast series. Once per month, we’ll be bringing the deep, i

Watch the recording of our June SME Workshop with Joe Gaspardone.

When I was growing up, I loved road trips. Jumping in my mom’s navy blue minivan meant we were going to one of two places I loved to be: my grandparents’ house or a soccer tournament.Early in my career, I found a third flavor of road trip I grew to love: 1-on-1 time with one of my mentors. “Windshield time” meant we were hitting the road to visit a building or campus in Arkansas or Kansas City or rural Illinois.To my surprise, I learned to love these trips just as much as family trips from childhood. Why? Because the windshield time between St. Louis and our destination meant I got to ask any question I wanted.My mentors, who were normally jumping from meeting to meeting all day, were suddenly captive… for hours.

Hey friends, happy Friday! Welcome to another digest… a collection of highlights from May 2021 that you shouldn’t miss. This is designed to save you

> “The sun is setting on building management systems as we know it and change is coming through building operating systems and packaged equipment cont

Hey friends, Let's start this week's newsletter with a public service announcement: If you've overridden your building's ventilation control sequenc

> The digital readiness score is our way of quickly highlighting whether the building is ready (for new technology). We’re looking at network commun

Hey friends, As a follow-up to recent newsletters Where are the API-first companies? [https://www.nexuslabs.online/where-are-the-api-first-companies/

Hey friends, You can understand a lot about today’s API-second [https://www.nexuslabs.online/where-are-the-api-first-companies/] smart building softw

> “The fact that other industries were being solved with an API, it really made sense to create this single layer that takes on all the historic compl

> “What’s incredible to me about (API-first companies) is that each represents something that a company would have had to build on its own previously,

> “I used to chase kilowatt hours and now I'm chasing renewable energy.” —Rob Brimblecombe Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter and podcast for smart peopl

Hey friends, Our recent podcast episode [__GHOST_URL__/-046-wiredscore/] with the WiredScore team aired just before they launched SmartScore, their s

Hey friends, happy Friday! Welcome to another digest… a collection of highlights from April 2021 that you shouldn’t miss. This is designed to save yo

> “I talk about market transformation forces. I think Volttron has that potential, not necessarily that everyone's going to adopt Volttron, but the fa

> “First, I would argue that we don’t have smart buildings… We’re in the first or second inning of that journey.” —Jim Whalen Good morning! Welcome

> “I don't have a single one-liner, 25-words-or-less elevator pitch about what a smart building is. Every building is going to be different. What va

> “It's this once-in-a-lifetime moment where this flight to quality (office buildings) will happen and there's going to be a huge disparity between wi

> “Future readiness… this isn't about guessing that 5G is the future on this particular frequency, and I'm going to put that in my building and put al

Hey gamechangers! Welcome to The Lens, a monthly recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news in as few bullet points as

> “At the end of the day the only way to start truly decarbonizing is to decarbonize the underlying businesses and buildings. You can’t get there with

> “I think where the industry needs to get to is… looking at how best to service a portfolio, rather than the kind of one-to-one [management team to b

> …And they're just part of the reality of the built environment. I think we'd be better off instead of wishing that some magic technology will make i

> “So I know that's your favorite question and you want me to answer it, but I I'd reword it: Why is the adoption of technology behind? I won't go to

Hey friends, happy hump day! Welcome to another monthly digest… a collection of member updates and ideas I’ve been thinking about and working on this

Watch the recording of our March Pro Member Gathering with Terry Herr, Shaun Cooley, Andy Frank, Nick Gayeski, Brian Turner, Stephen Dawson-Haggerty.

> “This sector, you know, built world and building tech, I think really demands: yes, disrupt; but also respect certain things. And the respect is jus

> “This framework is incredible for understanding the difference between technologies.” —Nexus Foundations student In Module 4 of the Nexus Foundatio

> “There's a mentality, at least in Silicon Valley that says, ‘Hey, we're just going to run in like a bull in a China shop and disrupt… Disrupt, disru

> “OT is not concrete. There's care and feeding that needs to go into it." —Aaron Lapsley on the Nexus Podcast Good morning! Welcome to Nexus, a new

Plus COVID-19 and building tech, PassiveLogic on disruption, and more

> “Buildings are not bonds… The key difference that I think a huge amount of the real estate industry does not appreciate is that a building is a prod

> “This is not about theory, this is about getting your feet wet" —Anand Mecheri Good morning! Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter, podcast, membership c

> “I was very quickly disappointed once I realized there was a huge gap between the promise and the reality of BIM… The reality was that BIM was, is s

> “The more time we spend going to answer a hot/cold call, the less time we spend taking care of key issues and making sure the facilities really runs

> “Many of the solutions deployed as part of a broader iDER platform — including VPPs, DERMS, and microgrids — are multipurpose, offering benefits to

Hey friends, happy Sunday! Welcome to another monthly digest… a collection of member updates and ideas I’ve been thinking about and working on this m

> “We've solved so many things where the engineering staff has been like, ‘I bet you this was going on for 10 years.’ It's been happening forever… whe

> “Nexus Labs offers a great way for new hires in the building tech space to get up to speed on the trends and terminology as well as the challenges f

> “Because that large scale technology transformation hasn’t happened, that’s probably the cause of outdated business models, lack of IT skillsets, la

Hey changemakers! Welcome to The Lens, a monthly recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news in as few bullet points as

> “Crossing the first chasm is great, but if analytics are not integrated into the day-to-day operations of internal teams, it’ll remain a niche tool

“It’s not first to market that wins, it’s the first to cross the chasm.” —Geoffrey Moore Do you ever feel like the Universe is speaking directly to

> “Every building owner is on their own path and it’s our job as an industry to meet them where they are on that path, not to yell at them from the en

> “If I’ve learned anything from the ten years of my love/hate relationship with smart buildings, it’s that many of the reasons these projects fail ar

> “I think that leveraging both is incredibly important. You need the software to be modular enough to merge everything together. But you need a willi

Hey everyone, James here from Nexus Labs. Instead of our normal Tuesday newsletter, today I want to tell you a quick story about my career. That wil

> “This is like the moral compass to our industry, right? We're totally fixated on customer benefits and savings; and in order to pivot so we are also

Hey friends, happy Wednesday! Welcome to another monthly digest… a collection of member updates and ideas I’ve been thinking about and working on thi

> “The real estate developers are starting to realize that if they make a real smart building, the building will have a higher value and they can rent

> “We can’t try to bring them all [ontologies] together. We can’t make them all one. What we need to do is really focus on delivering the outcomes and

> “I think the Foundations course’s holistic approach is super valuable. Smart building offerings, integrated systems, and potential roadblocks are qu

Hey! Welcome to Nexus. I’m glad you made it. Let me introduce you to the site. If you just want to get the gist, here’s the TL;DR: * Nexus exists t

> "It's not a technology question. It's not a performance problem. It's a people problem. If a new building is being built… and the owner says, “I wan

> “There's nothing that is stopping you. All the technology's there. The knowledge is there. It's a matter of time and money and guts. I mean, Elon Mu

> "If there’s one thing that makes the success of a smart building, it is the combination of real estate, facilities, IT, hospitality, all those peopl

Hey friends! Welcome to The Lens, a (new) monthly recurring series where I unpack the strategy behind the news in as few bullet points as possible.

> “The struggles of today have inspired the digital tools of tomorrow as the world finds new ways to strive for the same progressive goals. Our societ

Psst… There are two days left to get early bird pricing [https://courses.nexuslabs.online/p/nexus-foundations/?product_id=2714036&coupon_code=EARLYBIR

> “Show that designing a building that is healthy and safe doesn't have to be a counter to your sustainability plan and can actually be more sustainab

> “As the capabilities of technology have advanced and expectations have risen, a large gap has grown between what O&M teams need and what their curre

Hey friends, happy Friday! Welcome to another monthly digest… a collection of member updates and ideas I’ve been working on this month. Enjoy. ---

> “You built a building 25 years ago, and the stuff you put in there, it’s still there.” -Keith Berkoben of Google "For consumer facing technology,

Good morning! Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter, podcast, and membership community for smart people applying smart building technology—written by James