Automated Buildings Ken Sinclair #452

Speaker A: Hi, and welcome to episode 452 of Control Talk now, your smart buildings videocast and podcast, where we talk about just about everything. H vac and smart building controls, including sales and marketing. So glad you're here. Got a really good show. Good friend of ours has a birthday, and he's going to have a big birthday bash in Chicago at ahr. Our guest this week is Ken Sinclair, and he will be celebrating 25 years of automated buildings dot com. So, without further ado, let's bring Ken on the show. We've been doing it for a while. Hey. My guest this week is the one and only Ken Otto Sinclair. We were just talking a few minutes off air about he and I've been doing this for a while. He goes, we don't have any idea what we're going to say, do we? And I go, ken, we never do, but we always figure it out. So, Ken, thanks, man.

Speaker B: Welcome, welcome. Good to have you back interviewing me. It's been a while.

Speaker A: It has been a while.

Speaker B: It has been.

Speaker A: Well, look, you've got all kinds of cool things going on, brother. Uh, you've got a big celebration coming up in Chicago, so why don't we start with that?

Speaker B: Okay. It's been 25 years already. This is our retirement project. And, uh, we're looking to try and retire from our retirement project. But. But actually, I don't want to retire. I'm, um, I still have fun poking at social media and trying to keep the new library open. And we're selling bricks in our library wall and, uh, and getting great support from the industry. And I think it's going well. We started about, uh, a year ago, and we came to the conclusion that if we didn't do something with automated buildings, that we would, it would disappear because it was all on one laptop and, um, a couple of servers, and if somebody lost the link, that would be the end of it. So we needed to make it into a industry library. And when I went to the industry, I asked them, I said, what do you want me to do with automated buildings? I'm gonna slow down a bit here. And they said, turn it over to your people. And I looked around.

Speaker A: Jane goes, I'm not your people. I'm, um, your wife. Right.

Speaker B: Actually, Jane retired a couple of years ago. That really hurt. Uh, my people was really down. But when I thought about it, my people are the industry, and they always have been. They're the people who supported automated buildings for the 25 years. The answer was right. Reach out to your people. And we did that. And so about a year ago we reinvented the site, got rid of our old kludgy site, basically picked up a, some open software and started to give it a little bit of a face over and we came up with this idea of having it ran by the, by the sponsors to sell sponsorship. The other thing we found annoying is when you're trying to read an article and there's little ads flying across it in the middle and it gets divided and you're trying to, you're looking at a graphic on one side of the advertisement and the words on the other side and you can't really figure it all out. We felt that everybody needed a clean page to do with what they want. So what we did is we gave them a sign on and we gave them a clean page. And the new software allowed us to do that easily and it allowed us to administer all of that because that was all built in.

Speaker A: Hang on Ken, you're saying a whole lot here. I want to unpack a little bit of it. First of all, I love the concept of a library. Tell me about that. Why a library? It's a great analogy, but uh, speak about that.

Speaker B: My oldest daughter got involved in this as well and she's an entrepreneur in Australia and she's on the board of directors of several large companies. And this automated buildings is like a joke to her, but it's a, another company that she's helping out with because she has a vested interest. It will fall on top of her when I leave. So that's, that's a, another reason. But anyway, she got chit chatting with us and we talked about our reinvention and what we needed to do and uh, we were into it, uh, in the early stages and she announced that what we really were is a community library. And I'd never had it said that way, uh, so easily. And so we said those words and we thought about it and then we said if we were a community library, if we followed that model, how would we do it? And the issue is we wouldn't have people putting their ads on there. We would let people sponsor the library and they would basically buy a brick at the front door and put their name on it to acknowledge them, uh, supporting our library. And then what we would do is we'd also give them a bulletin board in the library where they can post anything they want and in their own words. The other thing that's happening is social media is evolving rapidly. The, the idea of the move we used to joke that you used to do the videos and I used to do the words, now they've come together clunk in real time, quick video, uh, Snapchats or whatever, all kinds of various quick video media stuff.

Speaker A: So 60 seconds has become the new one hour video.

Speaker B: That's right. You cannot grab attention for longer than that. But the issue is we needed a platform that could handle those as easy as they did Word files and videos of the past. And of course the other thing you've probably found more than anybody, all the video formats have changed. Uh, the idea of recording uh, with cameras has gone. The people are recording with phones, there's all kinds of apps. The whole structure had changed. So we needed a quick way of allowing people to do that. The other thing that evolved is everybody had moved to electronic advertising. We were probably one of the early folks, especially 25 years ago. We were definitely into the days of eye candy and basically trying to have animated ads and floating them across our screens and annoying people. That technology had changed and the whole medium had switched over to social media. People having a big vest interest, folks having people full time positions. I called them HTML wranglers. They like to be called brand managers. And so they would manage the brand for a company. And these are very talented people and the, in addition to their talent, the resource they have for us as an industry is they are connected to the company. And so basically whatever the executive of the company is saying, they basically sit down and they portray how they want that presented to their brand managers. Typically automated buildings. The new model. The brand managers have a sign on and they basically sign on and post in their own words and their own graphics and their own videos and their own online, the uh, equivalent of online PowerPoints, all of these new electronic medias. And they are very skilled in that. And that's all they needed was a sign on. So you sign them on, they push the button. They, the production comes to me and I look at it and say wow. And I go click. And then it gets published on the site. So that all works out extremely well and it allows us to build content. It allows them to basically present their story without any ads in it. If they can add ads, they can do anything they want on their page. They can add ads to their page, but they can add ads that particular uh, that are particularly related to whatever what they're talking about. And we found them to be extremely respectful and they all try to come up with a piece um, of content that they want people to read. And they're so, they're used to doing that in Social media, because they're used to competing with everybody else. And you've got to have a beautiful feature graphic. You can't get anybody to read anything if it doesn't have a beautiful graphic. So you got to start there. And then what you want to do is you want to have a clear page where you can actually explain what it is you want. Have a couple of embedded videos, have a couple of links, take them off to the website, invite them into a demo. All of this, everything they're doing is electronic. So there has to be like a seamless transition between all of that stuff. And I have no idea how to do that. So all we do is we give them a blank sign on and they do that and push the button and send it to me and I click it. And again, it makes us look a whole lot smarter than we really are.

Speaker A: Congratulations. You have the site looks great. Um, very proud of you, man. Well done. The rest of us, everybody else is getting older and it's. Man, you're like becoming this like 20 year old TikToker. It's amazing, man. So social media is the new fountain of youth. I'm guessing what you're saying.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think you've heard me. M heard my rant about, uh, connecting to younger mentors. And uh, I've always been a big advocate of that. And the fun thing is now my younger mentors are actually, are getting, I call them, uh, millennium elders young mentors. But the common message that comes back from all is it you should see what the kids are doing. So my younger mentors are now seeing the same thing. And it's just because we're in an exponential curve. Uh, you cannot even imagine what's coming down the pike. What you really need to do is you have to just start laying a path of how this might unroll. And I'm not convinced I'm we've got that path anywhere close to where it needs to be. Somebody asked me the other day, when will a reinvention be done? And that was a clear answer.

Speaker A: Never. Ken. You know, that's really exciting news and congratulations to you. So you got a big event coming up at AHR, a 25th anniversary celebration. Tell our audience about that and if you feel like it, maybe extend them an invitation very much.

Speaker B: Okay. Chicago is actually the only. Would it be our 25th year of putting on free education sessions at AHR had not Covid canceled the Chicago show? That's the one we're short. So we're actually have only done 24 shows for AHR, but we've been in business for 25 years and our show was Dallas and uh, I think in 2000. And it's. We've had that relationship with them and we're really thankful for it. We're a good fit, I think, with them because we provide free education, they provide us a venue and bring the folks. We've gone through a whole bunch of different iterations of how we've done that, but we've always done it. So it seemed very fitting that our, uh, 25th happened to land in Chicago because Chicago is always one of the biggest shows of ahr. And of course the other neat thing is that it's recovery after Covid. And um, it's so neat to actually have heading towards an event where there's going to be a lot of folks and we're thankful for that. We're looking forward to catching up with a bunch of folks. We're going to make some announcements as to how we see automated buildings moving ahead in the future. We've hoped what we've done is we've created a system, a community library that can be supported beyond my control. And I will be relinquishing some control at that. At that celebration that we'll let you know the details of if you come. You'll see what's happening.

Speaker A: Well, very cool. So what day is that celebration on? What day and time?

Speaker B: It's on the Monday and we're turning it into a double event. We're starting at 11 o' clock and we're going through to 1 o' clock and we're going to have some refreshments. And we're still fighting with the venue to try and figure out what that might be. Uh, we had different ideas, but it's as when you're in one of the. When you're in McCormick Place, you behave by their rules. So we're trying to figure that out. But yeah, we'll chitter chatter about where we came from in the last 25 years. We've got some great videos, we've got some, what we're calling them blurs, where we actually have overviews of all of the articles for the last 25 years. You can sit there and you can watch all of these people in the industry get old.

Speaker A: Oh my gosh. Yeah, the younger folks are probably going to like that, but the older folks might not.

Speaker B: I got some of you. You've made a few changes from when you start. We actually have the start of control trends and Eric and Ken, that's great. And we Have a lot of. A lot of documentation of Control Trends Awards. And also anybody noticed, we just posted a fun one with Hans, um, and the BACNET folks. So some kudos to you. Some of the great stuff that you and Ken did is just amazing. And I don't think we want to lose that as an industry. So anything you can do to make that go so you got. You actually, I think have the same problem I do is you've got to figure out how you're going to reconfigure this for the future.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. But I want to thank you right off the bat. I think you were probably. You were always supportive of me and Kenny. Always. You never, anytime we needed a guest or asked you to come on, you were always very gracious with us. And back then we were young whippersnappers and you always helped with the Control Trends Awards. Loved it. And you actually inducted Hans into the hall of Fame M that year, if memory serves me correct.

Speaker B: Yep. I think one of the things. So one of the things I remember that I think it was useful as you started out with the idea that you were going to fight AHR and that. Yeah, I don't think you want to do that. I think you want to coexist with ahr, and we learned how to do that. Actually, it took us a while to bump and grind, but. And in fact, at this year's in the organization Kim asked that question is, okay, so where's the Control Trends events and how can we help it?

Speaker A: That's great.

Speaker B: Made an impression. So, yeah, you are a part of M. You're basically Sunday. You were Sunday night.

Speaker A: Yeah. I tell you, I miss those days because that was a lot of fun

Speaker B: and a lot of fun.

Speaker A: Oh my gosh. Yeah. And it was because I think you and I have something in common which we. We both dearly love and respect the people in this industry. And that was the impetus behind the Control Trends Awards. We looked at all these great people and man, they just awesome people. They worked 40 years in the industry and if they were lucky, they got to go watch. But mainly they just. That was it. You're done. Where's Tom? Where's Bill? Where's. Oh, they retired. You, like me, have always thought that people were rock stars. And so that was our Hollywood fluid moment.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: We come together and walk the red carpet and cut up and have fun and, uh, celebrate each other and celebrate the industry and then go back out that next Monday and we got back in town and start competing again. Right?

Speaker B: Mhm. Actually, that.

Speaker A: So that was a way.

Speaker B: One I just posted with, with hands. Mike Newman was there as well. And of course Mike. And Mike no longer with us, again, capturing some of that. And Mike was just extremely pleased that he was acknowledged, because in all of our professional organizations, we do not have a good method of acknowledging people. Typically they give you an award for being there for a hundred years or something like that, but it, it doesn't acknowledge the person and the kind of the effect they had on the industry. And, uh, you guys did a good job of that. And, uh, yeah, it was a neat service that was required for the industry, and I think it's still required. So, uh, anything we can all do as an industry to make that come back, let's do it.

Speaker A: Thank you, Ken. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Uh, your education. We talked about the education part. We obviously got the celebration and sort of the, uh, if you will, the telling people about the new direction and getting to connect with people to celebrate your 25 years. What. Are there any other education seminars going on that you and Scott Cochran and the crew are working on?

Speaker B: Well, we're opening up with just trying to get people in the industry because that's still the greatest challenge for everybody, is to just try to get talent. And how would we do that? The good news is the new folks are coming with incredible IT skills and they're bringing with them, um, AI and all of these things that we're having to make changes. So that's the good news. The bad news is just trying to find them and trying to entice them into our industry. I don't know. We, you and I, Eric, we haven't been good at convincing people that we have fun, but we haven't, uh, convinced them to come into the industry and have fun like Ken and Eric. But we need to do more of that. Somehow we need to do that. So anyway, our first session is about that. We are getting quite a bit of traction. We've got a bunch of organizations like Jules and Stack that's reaching out to the younger folks. We've got the apprenticeship thing that Melissa's, uh, pushing and working in D.C. to make that a reality. There's just a whole bunch of things. Actually, Brad White, in his own company, they found that just changing the title of the person they were hiring. They were looking for engineers, and they put the name out for engineers or struggling to get folks, and they called them decarbonization engineers and immediately got a whole bunch of people responding because they were interested in saving the world and they responded more to a title like that than they did. So it's lots of. It's just in a name. But, uh, anyway, that's what their first session is about. Discussing that.

Speaker A: Very cool, Ken. Very cool. All right, what else? What else we got?

Speaker B: As you're aware, uh, everything is becoming cloud native. And I'm not sure I even knew what that was six, uh, months ago. But it. The basic. I have to boil everything down to real simple terms because I can't understand what all these guys are talking about. But generally speaking, it's the idea that you can actually create, uh, an application in the cloud without any hardware, because you basically just skip from one cloud to the other. And if you need this kind of processing, you go over to that cloud and get it done. Or if you need that kind of data, you go over there and get it. So you can actually put together a, uh, formidable in simple terms app. And we see it done all the time. We often latch into stuff on our phone that is like, amazing, the capabilities of it, and we say, how did it do that? What computer did it connect to? And the answer is it connected to no computers. It connected to a whole bunch of cloud services. And, um, cloud, cloud native. Once you get your mind around that, then you start saying, this is a different kettle of fish. So we need to figure out how cloud native apps are going to change the world. And then to answer that, our last three, four advertisers are basically selling products that I would classify as cloud native. And, um, one of them that's been in the business for three or four years told me that when he started, he was not allowed to call it cloud native or even cloud. They called it some other. Basically, back in three and four years ago, if things were in the cloud, we thought, we were skeptical. And now everything's in the cloud and we are comfortable because the apps that we use are, uh, pulling information out. We order an Uber car, it flips over, goes to Google Maps, it goes to some kind of an accounting system, it goes here, it goes there, and we see all that information. It's an amazing app, but it's. There's no real devices. We're also seeing that potentially this has the potential of reaching over silos, which we've always struggled with. And yeah, uh, so just a lot of stuff going on. So that's a very interesting session. I'm, uh, interested to see where that goes. We've got one on AI, of course, there's just a whole bunch going on and that we've Tried to keep focused on real applications in AI because there's so many, so many applications that are being promoted that are going to happen in the future and we can see that they're right, but we're more interested in what can we use today. So we're focused on that. And there are some amazing things going on in the industry today where people are using AI, uh, just even in the common house thermostat. Uh, AI is starting to uh, have an entry level. We're also seeing that the, somewhere between AI and cloud native, that whole control thing is starting to move into the, all those middle buildings. Uh, we've all worked in the big buildings all our lives and the house, the residential market's been way over there and but all of those 10,000, 15,000 square foot buildings that do not have any kind of automation, got a couple of rooftops or something like that. We're starting to see not just a smart thermostat, but potentially a thermostat with AI, uh, relationships or basically it can reach out to a cloud native application and do some stuff. But yeah, it's a long way for pneumatics for an old guy.

Speaker A: Uh, nothing changes but the changes. It's exciting. Time to be in the industry, Ken, and applaud you again for the educational sessions that you put together at uh ahr for our audience out there. Encourage you if you're going to be in Chicago. Okay, well, the system just crashed and completely crashed my computer and everything else so, so sorry about that. But needless to say, Chicago will be the place to be. Check out Ken's education program and his bash. I'll put a uh, video, uh, link that Ken put together about the bash in the show notes as well. So with that, remember, be bold, stay in control, stay relevant. As Hunter Thompson used to say, buy the ticket, take the ride. And as Kenny Smyers used to say, indeed.

Speaker B: I love to wake up in the morning but keep dreaming without worrying the day is gone and sometimes I take a walk Then I forget about the clock I can slow down My past are sitting laughing But I just keep on laughing Then I can down slow.