🎧 #147: Deep Dive: Audio/Visual Systems and The Role They Play

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"If the HVAC system is the heart of the building and the IT network is sort of the circulatory system. The AV are what I call the, the eyes and ears. And mouth in some examples."​
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— Ernie Beck

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Episode 147 is a conversation with Ernie Beck from NV5 Engineering & Technology.

Summary

Deep Dives will be a new series of episodes featuring one on one conversations with various subject matter experts. Episode 147 is our first episode in this format featuring Ernie Beck from NV5 Engineering & Technology, discussing audio/visual systems, and the role they play. Ernie draws parallels from A/V stacks to traditional building stacks, teases out some pretty interesting smart tech from the audio/visual world, and makes a strong case for having a seat at the table when it comes to the smart building tenant and visitor experience.

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Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S441933-15083.

Full transcript

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!

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[00:00:00] Ernie Beck: If the HVAC system is the heart of the building and the IT network is sort of the circulatory system. You know, the AV and, and the video or the audio in the video are what I call the, the eyes and ears, right? Um, and mouth in some examples.

[00:00:15] James Dice: What would you put on a billboard if the whole industry, uh, were to read it?

[00:00:20] Ernie Beck: AV semicolon, the other Control Systems.

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[00:01:10] Hello and welcome to the Nexus Podcast. I have Ernie Beck here with me today. He's associate principal at NV five, Engineering and Technology. We're gonna talk about audio visual or AV systems and why these systems shouldn't be overlooked by our community. The smart buildings community, and as Ernie said, when he wrote to me, there's a ton of attention focused on building management systems, hvac, energy, decarbonization, and rightly so, but AV professionals aren't really at the table in these conversations, so, If there's ever a group of professionals that know about user experiences or networking challenges and smart sensors, it's these guys and gals.

[00:01:50] It's the professionals designing hybrid AV collaboration systems and networks. So welcome, Ernie, and I wanna start with an icebreaker. What would you put [00:02:00] on a billboard if the whole industry were to read it?

[00:02:04] Ernie Beck: Well, first thanks James. Thanks for having me. It's, it's really an honor to be on your show. I would say.

[00:02:10] That's a good question. There's a lot of potential, uh, you know, billboard slogans, but I would say AV. The other, the other control systems. You know, just because, uh, I think as you alluded to in, in the intro, when when people hear building controls, they're typically thinking of BMS and the typical building control systems.

[00:02:28] But when I talk about building controls, I'm looking at it much more from a, from a space and user perspective. So yeah, AV, semicolon, the other control systems.

[00:02:40] James Dice: All right, we're gonna get into that. In quite fine detail in here in a little bit. Let's start with your background, though. Let's talk about your educational background and then sort of how you got into this industry and maybe a little bit about your firm that you currently work for now.

[00:02:53] Ernie Beck: Sure. Yeah, so as I went to trade school actually for recording arts, uh, you know, I was a [00:03:00] musician, you know, I was in rock bands wanted to be a roadie and a live sound guy or, or mix the next platinum record. But this was also at the same time where Max and personal computing and Garage Band and pro tools became, you know, much more available to every average consumer.

[00:03:15] And suddenly I realized I was gonna need to pivot if I wanted a real job. And, uh, so I went from setting up. Live sound systems to setting up installed sound systems and working for systems integrators. So doing projects at, you know, for the government and for universities and and healthcare institutions.

[00:03:35] And, you know, I've been doing this now for about 12, 13 years. I probably spent two thirds of that on the systems integration side. So I started as a technician. You know, pulling cable through ceiling tiles and under floorboards, and then old, old crawl spaces. Uh, and then just kind of worked my way up for into systems design roles and engineering roles and project management roles.

[00:03:56] Uh, in, into my current role, which is for NV five. [00:04:00] Um, and NV five is a, is a large. You know, engineering and technology company. Uh, and I work for the group that does building technologies and acoustics. And so now, you know, I'm, I'm on the consulting side, so we are specifiers and, and design engineers and, you know, owners, project managers.

[00:04:17] And our job is to basically represent the owner and work with the architects and design engineers throughout the process. So, cool. Yeah, so that's kind of at some point in that I came across a, a Smart Buildings project, um, and, you know, the, the rest is history, so to speak.

[00:04:33] James Dice: Awesome, awesome. What, uh, what instrument or instruments did you play or do you play?

[00:04:39] Ernie Beck: Still play guitar, mostly. Anything strange, but I'm a guitar player, so, you know, I've got my, uh, you can't see it here, but on my, on my other wall, I've got classical nylon string, a steel string acoustic, and, uh, My, my trustee defender Stratocaster, so, yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Try and keep it playing when I can.

[00:04:56] James Dice: All right. Let's start at the, what I would think is the [00:05:00] beginning for, uh, a lot of people, I think a lot of people in this audience have. Probably gone to college. Probably used AV systems in college or high school. Sure. They probably, maybe they go to church, maybe they go to, you know, a concert here in Yeah.

[00:05:15] And then obviously they go to offices, most of them. And so they're using AV systems all the time. They probably don't think a lot, a whole lot about them because like you said, when you reached out to me and said, let's do a podcast on this, I think a lot of this audience is thinking about more back of the house systems, right?

[00:05:32] Um, yeah. More optimization of how the building is operated, not necessarily about the systems always that the occupants are engaging with to do conferences and you know, all the, all the things that we're gonna talk about. So will you just start at the beginning for those people? What is an AV system and like what are the components and how do these systems function?

[00:05:54] Ernie Beck: Yeah, so that's a really good question. And um, AV sort of takes on the [00:06:00] role of anything that needs to communicate within the building, right? Or between different buildings. And when I say communicate, it could be communication, typically AV audio, so sound and video, so visuals, but. It is user facing systems.

[00:06:18] So it is those, you know, user facing conferencing and collaboration systems that you see in meeting rooms. It is the digital signage and wayfinding displays that you see, you know, parked in lobbies. It's the branding and environmental media displays that you'll see on the outside of buildings. You know, as you walk through Times Square, you walk through, you know, a, a nice lobby.

[00:06:36] If you think of like the Salesforce lobby in San Francisco, how it's got the, you know, the integrated l e d all throughout it. But it really is also an operational system as well. When you look at things like public address, mass notification, um, you know, things like that, that are, are more integrated into the building that are more sort of seamless and not something you see on a day, day-to-day basis.

[00:06:59] So we [00:07:00] really, there really is kind of an AV system everywhere, right? Mm-hmm. And you're right, it is ubiquitous and a lot of people really don't think about it until you start sort of digging in and going, oh yeah, there's kind of AV in our world everywhere. And the, the more we get into buildings with conversion networks, the more AV is pretty much just becoming an IT endpoint, right?

[00:07:21] Mm-hmm. With an IP address. Um, So, yeah, I'm not sure if that answers your question, but, uh, you know, it's a lot on the hardware side and then on the software side, it's what we're using right now. Right? It's, it's your video collaboration systems. I mean, I remember when Zoom before it was a household name with the pandemic.

[00:07:38] I remember when they were a small startup and we were trying to talk to clients about, hey, you can in, you can lower your carbon footprint and not have to spend X amount of dollars and x amount of emissions getting executives across the country. You could use this, this neat little product called Zoom and people were like, no, I, you know.

[00:07:56] No, I don't think so. And now Zoom is like a, you know, it's just [00:08:00] part of our common lexicon at this point.

[00:08:02] James Dice: Totally. Yeah. Um, when we teach about smart buildings and, and the Nexus Foundations course, we like to start with stakeholders and user personas. Yeah. So can you talk about, so it sounds like the occupant is an obvious user persona, but maybe think about this and, and talk to us about the stakeholders that, you know, install, use, maintain.

[00:08:23] Service, who is the human ecosystem that sort of surrounds the AV system. Yeah. Sounds like you guys are consulting engineers. That would be one role. Sure. Who's the rest of the, the ecosystem?

[00:08:33] Ernie Beck: Absolutely. I, I don't think it's that much different than what you're seeing on the building control side. Right.

[00:08:38] You're gonna have your consultant specifiers, you're gonna have your. Um, systems integrators, right? Which are the people that physically go out and install and commission program, um, the systems you're gonna have. So I would call this, you know, these are the sellers, right? Um, per your, uh, nexus foundations, these are the seller side, and then the manufacturers, right?

[00:08:59] So we [00:09:00] have partnerships or relationships with manufacturers, but as a consultant, we're also very agnostic, right? We don't have allegiances to any particular, You know, product or product line. Whereas on the integration side, they may have more, um, tendencies to spec and install, you know, certain products because they might get, you know, deal breaks for 'em.

[00:09:20] And, and rightfully so, they should be passing that onto the owner. And then I would say on the buy side, We're typically interacting with a couple different groups. One facilities, because facilities is ultimately in charge of kind of like the umbrella of everything in the space. Mm-hmm. And, and they need to know, you know, what's going into their building T.

[00:09:40] Because if we are expected to put anything on their network, then they need to be aware of it. And a lot of times it has now become kind of the defacto, you know, AV, multimedia group. Right. They've sort of just Okay. Sort of just rolled up under them. And then user groups, right? We deal with specific departments, so [00:10:00] a lot of our work at NV five and my, my team.

[00:10:03] Is with higher education institutions and we've done, you know, hundreds, uh, of, of universities and Ivy League schools all around the country. And, you know, they all have the same thing in common, which is you can't just take one system and apply it to each department. Right. So what we do for standard classrooms might be different than what you do for a medical simulation space.

[00:10:26] It's different technology. They're all serving a pedagogical requirement, and at the end of the day, we need to have sort of the facilities and it sort of backbone discussions. And then we need to have the specific, like, how are you going to use this? To accomplish your mission. It's the same when you get into government and you're dealing with command and control and, you know, supporting the, the, the war fighter effort.

[00:10:49] You know, how are the, how's the military using those systems? Mm-hmm. Or situational awareness and pick your industry. There are different conversations and different user groups with each one that we have to sort of focus and [00:11:00] hone in on.

[00:11:01] James Dice: Yeah, totally. Can you talk a little bit about, so when I hear you talk about AV systems mm-hmm.

[00:11:08] It, it strikes me as like a bunch of very, a very diverse set of different types of devices, right? Yeah. So, totally. Can you talk about the stack in that? You mentioned like sometimes it's just a device with an IP address that's sitting on, you know, the converge network. Yep. But can you talk about the stack, and where I want to go with this next is like, let's compare this silo to the other silos in the building.

[00:11:31] Sure. Right. HVAC, light, et cetera. Sure. But can you just talk about how an AV system is put together? And, and maybe I'll talk about how the other silos are put together, right? So that usually there's a device layer, network layer, data layer, and some sort of application layer. And historically, I think where we're coming from since the eighties is that a controls provider, say Johnson Controls, would provide that entire stack, right?

[00:11:59] [00:12:00] Right. And. What we're seeing in the last maybe 10 years is you have smart building startups and, and newer vendors come in and put another stack on top of that. Mm-hmm. Which is, I'm gonna collect data from that and I'm gonna use it to enable cloud-based applications or other, you know, other user experiences with the data that's coming out of those systems.

[00:12:22] So maybe talk about how all of that sort of, does that relate, does that, you know,

[00:12:27] Ernie Beck: Yeah.

[00:12:28] James Dice: Sound familiar?

[00:12:29] Ernie Beck: Oh, oh, totally. It, it's, it's very similar in some ways. You're gonna have a very similar architecture, right? Where you're gonna have the device layer, and those are the, those are the physical components that live, you know, in the room.

[00:12:42] They're the control processors. They're the, they're the cameras, they're the microphones, they're the speakers. Then you're gonna have the, you know, the sort of the transport layer of. How am I getting that signal from point A to point B? And increasingly it's going over the network, right? So it's, you know, it's being ingested, the signal [00:13:00] is being turned into a digital signal stream and it's being shot across the network over a myriad of different, what we call AV over IP protocols.

[00:13:08] Right? So just for quick reference, back in the day, if I had, you know, one microphone and I wanted to send that to a system. It was one microphone, one cable, one channel. And that was it. Yeah. Right. And so to send five, you know, 500 microphone signals or 500 audio streams, uh, through a building, you literally had a copper wire for every single one.

[00:13:32] I mean, huge bundles being pulled through chases. And nowadays all of that's compressed down to cat six. Single Cat six can handle any number of, you know, video and audio streams at high bandwidth resolutions. So device layer, transport layer. There's the controls layer, which, and I might not be mapping it perfectly to what you had said, but you know, there is obviously the controls layer, um, which makes it all work.

[00:13:56] You can't have those devices on the network and no director, no traffic [00:14:00] cop, right, or nothing serving up commands. That layer is also. The, the interface point with third party systems like lighting and BMS and shading, et cetera. And then you're gonna have, you know, the application layer or the, the interface layer, which is the digital interface in the room, the panel on the wall, or the panel on the desk that gives you your zoom layout or gives you your, you know, your Crestron room layout.

[00:14:25] And that is where what you interact with. And I would say that unlike, uh, Johnson Controls, I would say it's not historically been as verticalized. Right. Where, where they own the entire stack. Mm-hmm. They are probably owning more. They, they've certainly tried, um, but they own more the device layer and I would say the, the device, the control and the application layer, but, But as far as transport and some of the other in between parts of that stack could be, could be third parties.

[00:14:59] And I mean, if [00:15:00] we're riding on structured cabling, it's not even, you know, they're not providing any of that. But, you know, again, I think we'll get into this later a little bit is like, what, what that means. And so some of the, some of the benefits, but also like really some of the downside to having that stack be kind of verticalized all in one, one vendor.

[00:15:18] James Dice: What about the data piece? How, how is that layer of the stack currently managed today?

[00:15:24] Ernie Beck: That's, yeah, that's great. And, and I think this is where the AV industry has, has fallen short historically, and I. Has a lot to learn from bms. It's not the safer lack of trying. So there have been platforms. Um, Crestron has one, historically they called it Crestron Fusion, but now it's called XiO.

[00:15:46] Um, Extron another big, you know, you say Big four, but it's like our big three or so. They had a, you know, global viewer, which is an asset management database. And essentially what these are, are, these are. Um, [00:16:00] think of like sky spark, but for av, so it's a software dashboard and the data from each room is being pulled directly off the processor.

[00:16:07] So things like lamp hours for projectors back when they still use lamps. Right? All the way to like, you know, our, our certain H D M I inputs. Not registering a signal to and from, right? Are they not ping or displays not turning on and off, and then that would go to a dashboard, and then the dashboard would, you know, show trouble tickets, et cetera.

[00:16:26] So that exists, but I think why that's struggle to take off is because. Quite frankly, they've been really cumbersome to set up, EV on the network is still, I mean it's, it's, it's maturing, but it's certainly not in, its, you know, most, it's not in its final state, so to speak. And I think companies are just recently with, with a couple exceptions, starting to realize that there's power in that data.

[00:16:54] But it's not like the data you would get from a BMS system where, you know, a trouble ticket could be really [00:17:00] costing a company a lot of money in energy savings. Mm-hmm. This is more like, Hey, a teacher can't plug their laptop in. Like it's, it's inconvenient, but the company, you know, the organization isn't losing tens of thousands of dollars in, you know, in inefficiencies because of it, so to speak.

[00:17:16] So, I think you're seeing more, more of a push to this. You know, one, one of the companies I worked for, um, as a systems integrator, I think was really pushing those boundaries because what they were doing was like giving every device in the entire facility, AV system essentially a profile. And then they were tracking that and they were tracking when things were down.

[00:17:39] You know, generating trouble tickets from that and looking at everything from room occupancy to, um, essentially they would go in each night and exercise the system. So they'd place a test call through the VTC system, they'd place a test call through the audio system. They would recommission the system.

[00:17:58] Every single, it's like, you know, just a [00:18:00] continuous or retrocommissioning. Um, Thing, not, not unlike what we do right now at MV five with our, you know, with our continuous commissioning, but for AV systems. Hmm. And some organizations who, let's say you're a high profile law firm, those system downtimes cost you a lot of money when you have 10 lawyers sitting around a table and they can't call their office in Brazil.

[00:18:24] That's a problem. The the issue is, is that the investment in that was was large. And so while it was really cool and, and really neat and bespoke, the scale of which the adoption was happening, it just wasn't there. But I think it's becoming, to make a long story short, I think it's becoming more, you're seeing more companies offer these AV data managed services more and more.

[00:18:46] So you can look at everything and say, oh, I've got this number of issues, or, Where, where can I find an o and m manual for this particular control part? It used to never be there and now it's all, you know, sort of cloud-based. [00:19:00] Got it. If that makes sense.

[00:19:02] James Dice: Yeah, makes total sense. So you mentioned the big three.

[00:19:05] Uh, And, and that being sort of analogous to, you know, and HVAC controls. There's the big four, maybe five, maybe six. But um, so can you talk about how the sort of supply chain functions, and again, I'll give a sort of analog to HVAC controls. You have your oem, you have your distributor that buys the product from the oem.

[00:19:25] You have the system integrators that purchase the product from the distributors. Um, could be a controls contractor, could be an integrator. Kind of the same thing, right? You have your specifiers that, you know, create drawings mm-hmm. Uh, that those integrators are, are bidding on and they're all coming together in, in ways that I would describe as there's a little bit, there's a few patterns that sort of prevent us making progress in the industry just by the way that supply chain functions.

[00:19:51] Sure. And we talked about it a couple of months ago with Leroy, who was a former systems deni. No one's sitting here saying, I'm gonna screw all this up for [00:20:00] everyone. It's, it's more just how the industry has come together over decades and just how those patterns emerge. So are those same sort of patterns showing up on, you

[00:20:09] know, the AV side? I

[00:20:11] Ernie Beck: yeah, definitely. And, and in fact I think they're probably more, they're exacerbated by the fact that we don't have big four, we probably have a big two. Right? And, and so what happens is, just like on the, the b m S side, you know, we have the manufacturers, we have the, the specifiers, we have the installers, we've got the distributors.

[00:20:32] And really what it comes down to is, is, you know, on one hand, standardization around a, around an architecture and a platform is scalable. It's serviceable, it's repeatable, and it, it just is sort of emotion, right? On the other hand, when we run into these chip shortages, which we are dealing with now, that first part of the supply chain, Gets log jammed and what used to be, you know, we have [00:21:00] a project coming up that needs to be installed by the end of the year as long as we got our orders in by, you know, August, right?

[00:21:10] You allow six weeks, you're good. And that gives them a couple months on site to, to install test, burn in all that stuff. Now we're putting projects out to bid two years in advance and we're saying we used to not do that. Cuz if you put it out two years in advance, what happens to that two years? Skews change, protocols change.

[00:21:28] Mm-hmm. Right? Part numbers change. Things get discontinued. Now we're saying we don't care about that. If those things change, that's the least of our problems. What really isn't good is we've got a. A 3 million AV budget and half of that gear, more than half of that gear is not available for two years. And that's, that's a problem.

[00:21:47] And what's, what's happening is that all those companies that have standardized on one of the big two are finding themselves in this really tough spot. Right? Do we flex [00:22:00] and, and change and go to something maybe more open source? And get the project done on time, or do we continue business as usual and keep the same products and keep the same standards and just kick the can down the road?

[00:22:14] Right? At the end of the day, we're a little bit different, right? BMS can hold up. Certificate of occupancy. AV really can't, you know, is not, is not as critical, right? If the lights turn on, the HVAC is turned on, the fire alarm works. You people can move in, right? They don't say, oh, well, you know that Cisco, uh, room kit isn't functioning.

[00:22:34] No, no certificate of occupancy, no one's signing on. No, they don't do that. So, you know, it, it's something we're dealing with now on a, on a day-to-day basis, and it's, it's really putting a big pinch on the industry. But what I hope comes from that is, is the emergence of some of these. Vendors that have been knocking at the door to get a seat at the table to come in who have a really good value proposition, right?

[00:22:57] They're like, Hey, look like one, for [00:23:00] example, they don't make all of the, all of the entire silo. They don't make the microphones, the speakers, the processors, the touch panels, they make the control modules and they say, you put us everywhere, wherever you need something to turn on, whether it's a light, uh, a shade, a projector, you know, a tv, whatever it is.

[00:23:20] You put us throughout the building, distributed, it's just a, you know, serial control over ip. Mm-hmm. You put us wherever and you can build your template however you want. And that way if you want to use, you know, Product X versus product Y. You're not, you're not locked in.

[00:23:35] James Dice: Yeah, totally. Is that, um, sort of local controller, is that sort of the power position in the AV stack and the other stacks?

[00:23:43] I'd say that there's a supervisory controller and then a user interface. And I'd say that those are sort of the power positions in that you can integrate pretty much anybody's. Unitary controllers into those supervisory controllers, but whoever owns that supervisory layer kind of owns the building in a way, [00:24:00] or owns the system.

[00:24:01] Yeah, in a way

[00:24:02] Ernie Beck: similar. It's been, it's, it's similar. It's been much more. In years past, historically it's been much more on a space by space basis. So your auditorium is gonna have its own supervisory control, which does not necessarily equate to supervisory control for, you know, all of your meeting rooms.

[00:24:21] Interesting. Okay. But that's changing. And one of the unintended or benefits that's coming out of the supply chain issue is that the, the. Control system processing hardware is so hard to come by that now they've moved to a completely virtualized model and some of 'em are rolling out full virtualized models where I'm sure, just like in the b m s industry, the supervisory controller is a virtual machine hosted on a server somewhere, and then out in the field is your, you know, are your, your IP enabled endpoints that serve up the control.

[00:24:53] Yeah. So it is becoming more of a centralized building control rather than sort of space by space.

[00:24:59] James Dice: Makes [00:25:00] sense. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Let's go ahead and talk about that a a little bit. How is that kind of shaping how projects are being laid out in mm-hmm. In the AV world today?

[00:25:10] Ernie Beck: Well, I think we're taking things much more at a buildings level.

[00:25:14] Um, f first off, again, in the past everything was very siloed. Everything was, you know, a system worked by itself unto itself, and, and that was it. Now, We, we are doing much more centralized architecture, and so what that means is instead of every single room having its own system, One floor can be served by a system virtualized in the IDF or the MDF in the building, and that can serve up commands to a multitude of rooms.

[00:25:47] Hmm. And, and what that does is a number of things. One, it allows us to ride the structured cabling network, which saves the, the owner cost on copper. Two, it centralizes management and control. [00:26:00] So instead of having all these little nodes and islands, now we've got one supervisory system to manage, and three, it reduces the space needed in the room for all this AV gear, right?

[00:26:12] It used to like require, you know, Racks in the closet and heat and they were just bulky. And then if something was wrong, then you have to have someone come in during a meeting and, and check on it. And now we size up the MDFs bigger or the, the, you know, the it closets. We size them up bigger. Because just like the IT side where you've got racks and racks of edge switches and patch panels and stuff, it's the same on the AV side.

[00:26:37] We've got racks of patch panels and network switches and AV processors and servers and all that stuff. So the architecture has fundamentally changed. It is now much more of a building-wide system than it is a room by room system.

[00:26:50] James Dice: Cool. Yeah. Let's talk about a few more changes to the stack or changes to this, this silo from a sort of new technology innovation [00:27:00] standpoint.

[00:27:00] Yeah. You, you, you gave me a list of these. I think it'd be fun to just walk through them. Let's start with the, like the AI based camera technology. What's going on in, in that sort of domain?

[00:27:13] Ernie Beck: Yeah. So I mean, this is really neat and, and what's happened is over the years, the ability for cameras to intelligently frame participants and almost direct a meeting has completely changed the effectiveness of those meetings.

[00:27:31] Right. Before it was like, you know, you'd have a pan shot of the whole room. Mm-hmm. And. If you wanted to zoom into somebody, you literally had to go over the touch panel and hit the control pad, just like playing a video game and like zoom the camera in and you know, sometimes you get right up to somebody's looking up somebody's nose, right?

[00:27:48] Or like you're too far back and now there's none of that. You don't touch anything. The cameras are using AI to actually detect objects, to detect faces, and [00:28:00] also using the the microphone triangulation within the system to say, okay. If I'm talking right now, the, the camera's on me. Okay. And James, you pipe in and say, yeah, that's a good idea, but you only talked for a second.

[00:28:13] Well, if the camera is split to you and split back to me and split back to you and split back, you know what I mean? It it, it's gonna just make a jarring experience. So there's, there's algorithms built in that make a seamless production where it's, it's only changing based on the, you know, the amount of seconds you're speaking.

[00:28:26] And then what's really cool about that, when you get into, into the real, you know, the data, which I know is big in smart buildings and something we do all the time here is. What we're always talking about is, is that intelligent video is actually able to pull metrics on room usage from the camera. So you can get occupancy information, a number of ways.

[00:28:48] You could use an IR sensor, you could use wifi pinging. Um, but one way to do it with AV is to just pull the analytics off the camera. They offer up APIs and they say, [00:29:00] Hey, during this meeting you had six people in this room. Now it's all completely anonymized, right? So it's not, it's not saving, like James is in this call and Ernie's in this call, it's just saying this room had six people in it.

[00:29:12] And on an average you can actually aggregate that data and look at usage trends and and see how many people are using rooms, which is helpful. Cuz as we know, the more data we have, the better we can plan those, those spaces.

[00:29:24] James Dice: Totally. I could see it going where like, Counting the number of minutes of the meeting that so-and-so talked, talking about people at the meeting that didn't get to say very much be way up right now.

[00:29:36] Ernie Beck: Um, well, no. You know what's crazy is one of the, uh, an integrator that we worked with, you know, back during Covid, I think everybody was. You know, everyone was just grasping at straws to figure out how to, like, how do we pivot and make things that are useful to bring people back to the office? And one thing that, uh, one of my integrators did is they used the AI object detection of the camera.

[00:29:59] To [00:30:00] talk to the processor in the room, the AV processor, right, to actually lock out the system if the room was above capacity. So if the, if because of covid protocol and social distancing, that room was normally a 10 person occupancy, but then they wanted it down to five. You could set that in the, in the supervisor control and say, This whole bank of rooms limited at five people.

[00:30:23] So if the, if the camera recognizes that a six person walked in, it would literally put up a splash page that says there are too many people in this room. Someone needs to find another space. And so some, you know, people would, someone would leave and it would, it would turn back on. That's a, that's a, a bit of a, you know, extreme example, but that's how, like, you know, that's how granular the data can get.

[00:30:42] Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then, and then same too with, you know, with microphones. Now what's happening is there are intelligent microphones that instead of having one microphone element, they've got 40 built into it. And they look like a ceiling tile or a two by two, looks like a two by two a c t. And they [00:31:00] are actually turning on individual micro microphone nodes based on who's talking and when.

[00:31:05] And so what that can do is, again, it can help. Pull data down from like, you know, how many people are in this space. It can also, it also make sure you're not getting HVAC noise into the mic. You're not getting pa paper rustling. You're not getting people having a sidebar conversation. It's, it's finally tuned for how people actually meet.

[00:31:22] And it's sort of turning on the ears to the system, um, you know, at the right time.

[00:31:27] James Dice: Fascinating. Yeah. Didn't, didn't know any of this. This is, this is awesome. Another area that you said there's been developments in is l e D displays. Can you talk about that one?

[00:31:37] Ernie Beck: If the HVAC system is the heart of the building and the IT network is sort of the circulatory system, you know, the AV and, and the video or the audio in the video are what I call the, the eyes and ears, right?

[00:31:50] Um, and mouth in some examples. And so one of the technologies that's really pushing that is direct view, l e d. So think of light bright. [00:32:00] So light bright is everyone had those growing up. You know, it's a black, you know, black surface, and you take the little colored pegs and you put 'em in and you make whatever shape you want.

[00:32:09] Nowadays, l e d is so advanced. It used to be just for outdoor applications. When you go to a. You know, you go to a Broncos game or a Rocky's game and you see the big L e D scoreboard. Right now, the cost for LEDs has come down so far that people are now putting them indoors everywhere. They're covering entire surfaces.

[00:32:28] And what's great about that is that you can create experiences that draw people back to the office at the same time as you can put information on those that. Pulls directly from the BMS system. So let's say you want to, in your lobby, you put this l e d wall in, it's not confined to a 16 by nine tv. It's, you know, it's long format.

[00:32:49] It, it wraps a curve around the wall or whatever the shape is architecturally, and that can cycle through things like, Nature scenes or branding content to reinforce brand, or it can [00:33:00] pull up things like KPIs from the BMS system or their, your energy management system and say, here's how the building's doing, right?

[00:33:06] Yeah. Or here's a water conservation effort that we've been doing and pulling in data from that. And really all that is, is just, you know, the display is there and it's just serving up content from a, from a small player. So I really see the l e D displays as sort of like the window. Into how the building operates for the user, for the occupant, right?

[00:33:27] Not for the facilities person, not for the facilities manager, but for the average person who's walking through that space. That's sort of the window into how the facility works and operates, and I think that really is a, a good way to tell a story about how a smart building has come to life.

[00:33:41] James Dice: Yeah, totally.

[00:33:42] And you, you said the mouth, so if there needs to be an announcement, there needs to be some sort of message to get out to these people. Yeah. Makes sense.

[00:33:48] Ernie Beck: A hundred percent. And, and what we see too is, you know, the use of microphones. Um, integrated into the space, right? I, we did a project, uh, I did a project at, at Google when I had my own [00:34:00] firm.

[00:34:00] We were sort of one of the outsourced, um, engineering consultants, and one of their initiatives was to actually embed microphones into the experience of the facility into the public employee areas so that Google employees could actually use Google Assistant to say, Hey Google, you know, where is the three o'clock seminar on?

[00:34:22] User experience and the microphone embedded into the ceiling or into the column would pick that up and show it on the l e d display and literally use projection and use display to actually show arrows on the ground to where, you know, to where this was going. So people literally just had to follow a lighted path.

[00:34:38] And so to me that's like, that's the building reaching out, right? That's the building taking all of the, all of the backend smarts and. Putting it to use so people can actually experience the benefits of having a well connected facility.

[00:34:52] James Dice: Absolutely. All right. Final category is, uh, emergency notification systems.

[00:34:59] Ernie Beck: Oh, yeah. [00:35:00]

[00:35:00] James Dice: That whole category.

[00:35:01] Ernie Beck: Yeah. And this is becoming more and more prominent and really kind of a standard. I wouldn't say it's quite code yet, but in some projects we're working on it, it has become a code issue. Okay. Um, where, you know, the, the fire alarm panel, you know, communicates when they're at, at an event.

[00:35:16] The digital signage system all goes to emergency egress maps, right. So there's an event. Emergency notification systems triggered all, you know, all displays, whether you're in a classroom or in a lobby, wherever there's a TV or a screen. That all changes to map of egress so people can exit the facility.

[00:35:33] Any audio that was coming through the building at the time, whether it's background music or a public address through voicelift for a teacher, if they were, uh, speech reinforcement, then that's ducked. So that, you know, emergency notifications can be heard. It's all about communicating with the users. And I think that also goes back to like, you know, communicating things like if you're pursuing well, right?

[00:35:52] And you need to, and you want to, and you want to, um, get points for enhanced indoor air quality metrics. That stuff, [00:36:00] at least when I studied well and got my ap, you need to put that on common area displays, right? You need to show what the I A Q metrics are, and so, I, there's one on here I didn't talk about, and if it's okay that, if I could just riff on that for a second.

[00:36:14] Um, totally. One of the most interesting that's come up and I, I gotta hand it to Cisco because what they're doing with all of their new room endpoints. So these are the speaker bars with the camera microphone built into 'em. They actually have embedded iot sensors, sensors. Directly into the sound bar now.

[00:36:33] So in addition to the AI camera and microphone, you also have temperature, relative humidity. Um, you have indoor air quality sensors built right into it. So what's great about that is planning a, an intelligent. Workspace is way easier, right? Because now instead of specifying data drops for, you know, my camera and my AV rack and my occupancy sensor and my [00:37:00] AQ sensor and all, it's all built into the soundbar, right?

[00:37:03] And so it's all managed there. And then they have their Cisco, um, you know, smart workspaces or DNA spaces that puts that all back on a. Three dimensional floor plan. And so you literally walk into a lobby and see what rooms are available, what their temperature is, what their, what their ambient noise level is, cuz some people are sensitive to sound.

[00:37:23] I, myself, as a former sound guy, I like quiet spaces, you know, some people. Um, I got a buddy who owns a restaurant, loves loud spaces, can't get enough of them. Not for me, but you can see all that data. You can actually drill down to each room and see the metrics of temperature, sound, occupancy, all that. And all you had to do was.

[00:37:44] Put in the right sound, put in the right VTC system that has all that embedded in. So those are some really cool innovations where we are tying in. And then those iot sensors work with third party applications, um, in a, in a marketplace that you can say it, well, maybe I'm already using, [00:38:00] you know, a Schneider product.

[00:38:02] Well maybe I can, then I can tie those in through their, through their third party connector app.

[00:38:07] James Dice: Got it. Yeah, that is fascinating. There's this feeling that I'm having where it's like the, the. There's a lot of, there's still a lot of redundancy, right? You could imagine the, you know, the, the, the neighbor system, whatever it would be, lighting system, they could put, you know, IQ onto those sensors.

[00:38:27] Ernie Beck: Oh yeah.

[00:38:28] James Dice: Hvac, you could put an IQ sensor onto the thermostat. You could even bring an IQ silo and have, you know, a separate iot stack. So there's probably still a lot of buildings that have a lot of redundancy, but we're starting to figure out ways in which to. Not have that redundancy, not have silos. Uh, eventually we'll figure it out. It feels like,

[00:38:49] Ernie Beck: well, and that's why we wanna see you to the table, you know, that's why I'm such a proponent for, you know, ha having AV to be part of that conversation. Because, you know, a lot of times when they say, when a client says, [00:39:00] When I think of a smart space, right, when my, my, the CEO wants his boardroom to be a smart boardroom, whatever that means, right?

[00:39:07] To them, it means everything. Everyone has a different definition. I'm sure you've probably learned teaching the Nexus foundations. Everyone's got a different definition of what is a smart space or smart building. Well, to them, a lot of times it often means I want a single point of control for my av, for my lights, for my shades, for my thermostat.

[00:39:25] Well, To do that, the AV guys need to be involved to make sure that our control system has the appropriate backnet gateway, right, or communication protocol or third party API to, to pull that information and put it up on a dashboard so that the CEO doesn't have to get up and go to the thermostat or can pull that information up from a single point of control.

[00:39:45] So a hundred percent you hit the nail in the head. There are often times where, If, if a smart building is being designed, we're working on a smart buildings project and the owner has these, you know, these smart buildings aspirations. There are times where we're [00:40:00] designing things and then we go meet with the lighting designer and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, we already have that.

[00:40:04] It embedded into the light fixtures. Well, there's a, there's a doubling up of cost there, and our job is to help suss that out and make sure it's being carried in the right package. We don't care as, as the intelligent building consultant, we don't care if it's av. I take off my AV hat and I put on my.

[00:40:20] Smart buildings, let's get this done hat rather than like, let's make sure the AV system has it.

[00:40:25] James Dice: Totally. So do you, you know how we talked about the trends in the AV system stack, right? So going from a bunch of different controllers, maybe a bunch of different types of controllers on one floor, Down to one controller centralized for the whole floor, or maybe even, you know, multiple floors or whatever.

[00:40:44] Ernie Beck: Yeah.

[00:40:45] James Dice: Do you see that then going and, and apply that same logic to all the devices on the, on the network? So can you imagine having one controller and it controls all the lights, all the AV systems, all the, you know, [00:41:00] HVAC controls. You have a bunch of unitary controls that are meant to do their specific job, and then they're coming back to one centralized supervisory controller for the whole system. The whole building really is what I'm, I guess I'm getting at.

[00:41:14] Ernie Beck: Yeah, that's a great question.

[00:41:15] James Dice: I feel like Part B, the question is who owns it then? Uh, is it, is it the AV controller? I know that, you know,

[00:41:23] Ernie Beck: I know. And, and in fact, I, I have a, I have an article on my link on my LinkedIn from like 2015 where I think I asked something similar.

[00:41:32] Maybe not as thoughtful as that, but something similar, like who owns what part of it when it does become, you know, centralized. And I would like to think that it, that it can be, you know, when I did my first Smart buildings project, Back in 2014 or 2015, um, it was a completely different, completely different landscape.

[00:41:55] You know, things were so siloed and what you're talking about with, with [00:42:00] vendors and, and sort of the supply chain. I mean, talk about entrenched, it was, it was still very entrenched. Now, granted it was not even 10 years ago, but still it was, you know, the strides we've made with cloud-based services and, uh, virtualized, you know, architectures and sort of flattening that.

[00:42:18] With, you know, with different prop tech, it's come a long way. You know, I think the more that. AV for, I would say for like custom spaces, the need for a C, the need for a professional who understands the physics of sight and sound never goes away. I can't take an out-of-the-box zoom system and plug it into a 200 person all hands meeting space.

[00:42:42] It's just never gonna work. You, you need to have someone who understands the physics and the ergonomics and the math behind how sound propagates and how visual propagates and sight lines. But for like the, for like the bread and butter, you know, meeting spaces that are predominantly what you're seeing in, in, you know, corporate real estate, [00:43:00] um, where that stuff is becoming more and more just an outta the box, slap a TV on the wall.

[00:43:04] But that's, I a hundred percent could see that becoming, you know, look at Cisco. I could go back to the Cisco, you know, example. You know, they're gonna own, they could potentially own the IT network, the wifi network, the AV network, or the devices. And Cisco has, you know, other third parties, the other third party services they own.

[00:43:24] So absolutely, the question is, who's gonna do it first? Right. Who's gonna, who's gonna make that? Um, yeah. Yeah. Well,

[00:43:31] James Dice: HVAC's kind of the same way. We're never gonna not need someone who understands the physics of error and heat transfer and ventilation and all of that. Right. Especially humidity. We're never gonna get rid of that.

[00:43:43] Yeah. But do we really need. A separate system for schedules and occupancy and IQ data and data storage, and all the stuff that goes into managing the building as a whole. Do we really need separate silos for that? [00:44:00] Can that HVAC specific information live on that unitary controller that's controlling that piece of equipment?

[00:44:07] Great. But I think a lot of people are saying, let's consolidate the supervisory layer across all of our systems, because I see it, those schedules, alarms, you know, set points. Um, occupancy floor plans, all the things that are just the same across all the different supervisory layers. We have to consolidate those at some point.

[00:44:28] We're spending so much time on integration, so much time on just. You know, finger pointing

[00:44:34] Ernie Beck: also. Exactly. And that's where, and that's where, you know, the, the promise of smart buildings hits the reality wall, right? Where, where we have all these aspirations and goals and it, it's very promising and there's a lot of great tech out there.

[00:44:48] But then you get into like the deployment of it. And you start to see where you have these overlaps or you start to see it takes effort that someone doesn't have necessarily, like maybe [00:45:00] the consultant team does, but maybe the owner doesn't have the bandwidth to say, how are we gonna manage all this? So I, I'm 100% with you.

[00:45:07] I think, you know, I'd lo I'd love to see that sort of like the holy grail is to get to that point where there is that sort of flattened supervisory control, um, you know, platform. And I think what's gonna happen is, Over time, you're gonna see a lot more of these siloed companies come to the table with their version of what makes a smart space.

[00:45:28] And it's gonna be how do we make, you know, whose feature do we turn on and off, right? Who becomes the central point of control? Who becomes the source of truth? And so that's why I think it's important that you know what you're doing. I think it's super important that you're bringing, you know, you're educating people, um, and you're shedding a light on.

[00:45:46] Some of those issues and creating a safe space to have those discussions. I think they're super important. I think not having those discussions, I think it's held a lot of people back, quite honestly, or a lot.

[00:45:54] James Dice: Totally. Well, I'm glad you see that because I think it was like two or three years ago, like very, at the very [00:46:00] beginning, um, one of our.

[00:46:01] Most active members and listeners of this show, Joe, he came to me and he said, yeah, this is, this is amazing that you have, you put together this community, but it's all people from the same silos. Right? We need to get all the silos here, and then we can start to then say, okay, how do we all converge our own silo?

[00:46:18] Yeah. Into the rest of them. And so for you to come in as an AV person and come into the community and say, this is awesome. That's kind of like, Extreme validation for me. Uh, cause I've thinking about what you said for years. Yeah.

[00:46:31] Ernie Beck: It's validation for me too, cuz I, again, I've felt kind of like, you know, a again, kinda like a black sheep and, and I'll, and sometimes I'll talk about it and it still just gets kind of like head scratches or like, oh, that's, that's nice.

[00:46:43] Um, But I just believe so strongly that it's the, the importance and the promise of it. But we got a lot of work to do. Yeah. And, and so I thank you for, for l you know, bringing me on the show and, and, and allowing me to say, Hey, you know, I wanna play in the sandbox with everybody [00:47:00] else too. Here's how we do it.

[00:47:01] How can we be part of the same team?

[00:47:03] James Dice: Totally. So what would you say to those people that are out there and they're sitting on the owner side that's putting together this team of professionals? Um, And what they're doing is they're defining their smart building strategy. They're de, they're, you know, mapping out use cases for a new technology.

[00:47:18] Yep. Um, they're deciding what their architecture should be. They're making decisions around, you know, what systems are doing what. Right. Uh, what would you say to those people to sort of make the case that, hey, they have to bring an AV person into the room at this early stage of, of the strategy?

[00:47:36] Ernie Beck: I would say that the case for bringing an AV person is.

[00:47:39] We understand how the occupant experience should work. Mm. And we can represent the end user experience side. From their interaction with technology, I think just as good if not better than anybody else on the team. And the reason is, is that that [00:48:00] is what we do on a day-to-day basis. If a CEO can't come in and use their space or, or the IT manager can't go in and log in and manage a facility or a, or an enterprise AV deployment.

[00:48:14] That's a problem. You know, that's, that's where we excel is that, is creating user experiences within spaces. Our, our industry association is called the avius, so Audiovisual Integrated Experience Association. Right. It's, we're all about creating experiences and so while the av, you know, guys and girls can't speak to like, you know, the decarbonization aspect, the way the BMS people can, we can speak to what happens when I walk into the building Yeah.

[00:48:40] And how do I interact with the space.

[00:48:41] James Dice: Totally. We got a couple more minutes left. I wanted to ask you one glass question that's on my mind. Sure. I, I didn't tell you I was gonna ask you it, but this trend around mobile applications, so you're talking about an experience that's enabled by physical things that are sort of attached to the [00:49:00] building in a way, right?

[00:49:01] Mm-hmm. What about and how does that experience sort of, Unite with the mobile experience that I have when I'm using a mobile application to experience the building in some way. Classic example is wet way finding, or we've, we're seeing a lot more around access control, using your phone to replace a, a key card.

[00:49:21] How do you see those two sort of systems if they're separate, working together and providing that experience together?

[00:49:31] Ernie Beck: Oh, great question. So we've seen an increase in interest in tenant mobile applications or, or tenant companion applications. And where we see the application intersecting with the built environment is, like you said, for one, it's, you know, it's access control and having a, you know, not even having to carry a key fob around any morts right on your phone.

[00:49:50] Um, wayfinding, that's one. Um, Another big one is, uh, so it could be kind of an offshoot of wayfinding, but room reservation, right? So I'm sitting on [00:50:00] the bus and I know I'm going to office. You know, I'm going to Tower 1 41, and I know that I'm gonna need to pop into a hoteling space, right? We've worked out that we're not doing, you know, individual offices.

[00:50:10] What I can do is open up my phone and based on the sensors that are at hoteling desks, I can pull that information in and say, I'm gonna book myself a meeting room, or I'm gonna book myself a desk and I'm gonna book it based on the attributes of that space, right? So if I wanna book a, just a desk with a desk phone and a doc, I know what that looks like.

[00:50:28] If I wanna book a meeting room for six people and I wanna, it needs to host a video call, a Zoom call right there from my app, I should be able to book the room, add participants. Add the call and information. And so when I walk, when I get to the space and I walk into the room, it's touchless. I, I, I walk in, it literally senses that I'm in the space.

[00:50:50] I can hit it from my phone, start meeting, boom. Meetings up and running. Hmm. I didn't have to touch anything. And to me that, that reduction in friction is what it's all about. I go from [00:51:00] having to, like I said, run the production on the touch panel myself from it just operating from my app. Uh, another one is just, you know, sharing directly so, you know, pairing of your mobile device or your, your app, um, with any number of displays in, in the area.

[00:51:15] So if I, Hey, you and I are, we catch each catch up in the hallway and I wanna show you this really cool clip, right. Boom, pair it with, uh, with the, the wireless collaboration unit. It's a little box that's behind the display. You can't see it, but because you're on the same wifi network as it, Hmm. I pulled up, I hit my airplay, I can see it's, I'm in, you know, lobby two hit, tap, hit send, and I'm, I'm casting YouTube to a display that you and I can just, you know, interact with.

[00:51:41] So that's, that's another one.

[00:51:42] James Dice: Um, do you see. This is kind of exactly what I was getting at. Do you see though the procurement of a mobile app like that, and do you see it happening kind of in a, in its own silo versus the, you know, the physical experience that you're creating with the physical devices? I, I would assume it, it's happening that way sometimes.[00:52:00]

[00:52:00] Ernie Beck: Yeah, I, I would say that it's, it again, there have been attempts to make a companion app by the big, you know, the big two or three mm-hmm. In our industry. And they would use little Bluetooth beacons that just plugged right into the, right, into the, you know, wall and you walk in and the room and it, it, you know, as long as you have.

[00:52:18] You know, your Bluetooth enabled, it would sense it, but I feel like it stops so short of what a mobile tenant application can provide all the additional services and all the additional plug-ins, they sort of sunset that. You know, it was a great idea, but it was one piece of the, the equation, it had no security tie-in.

[00:52:35] I couldn't order coffee, I couldn't check. Mm-hmm. Transportation schedules. So I do think it needs to be a separate thing, but like, You know, someone like NV five. One of the things that we do, and this is a shameless plug, but we do control system programming for, you know, for av. But one of the things we've gotten into is that mobile app development for buildings, because, you know, we understand again, how the user interface works, but we also know what we don't [00:53:00] know, which is at what point do we, like, do you want to give users the, the ability to control HVAC from their phone?

[00:53:06] Probably not. You want 'em to be able to turn the lights on and off from their phone? Yeah, probably not. Um, so, no, that's a great question. I think it's a separate thing, but I think there are some, some clear parallels with the physical realm that, that, uh, and I didn't even get into like augmented reality, you know?

[00:53:23] You know, where you could, you know, you've got a display on the wall and everyone can see something different or, you know, I, I, I, I saw recently, uh, read an article about the, um, I forget if it was American or Delta, but they have sort of their augmented reality, you know, um, guest concierge where you walk in and the, and the dig, the, the, uh, the l e d board up in the ceiling.

[00:53:46] Only you can see what's on there. It has your entire flight schedule. It has all of your information, but only you can see it. No one else standing next to you can see what's on that board, but it's huge and it's right in the middle of the lobby. How they did that, I, I, I don't know. [00:54:00] Good question though.

[00:54:02] James Dice: All right, let's close out with little personal touch. So I always ask people what TV show, movie, podcast, et cetera, other media has had a big impact on you lately.

[00:54:12] Ernie Beck: That's a great question. And I would say that I'd like to sort of flip that around a little bit, and this is big, going back to your podcast with, um, Rosie, which is, uh, you know, I'm sort of watching in terms of like media, like, you know, whatever true crime special my wife has on Netflix, I'm just sort of watching that in the background.

[00:54:29] Or I do audio books when I walk my dog in the morning. So like, whatever, you know. Mm-hmm. I'm, yeah, listening to like the Gray Man right now, which is, you know, all about, you know, espionage and, but. I don't think they, those are more just kind of like ways to tune out. What I do to help me, um, is meditation.

[00:54:46] And I, I know you said that you're, you're big into that and mm-hmm. I've been meditating for many years. Um, My dad was big into it when I was a kid, and I don't think I knew it was called meditation when I was younger, but I would, you know, I grew up in the woods and, [00:55:00] and very surrounded by nature. And so, you know, I would find ways to just go be quiet and silent with myself in the woods.

[00:55:07] And, and as I got older I realized, oh, that's, I think that's meditation. And then I started to unpack that and, um, it's a huge part of. Of my life and I haven't done a silent retreat, which I know you had talked about doing. Um, but you know, practicing, you know, presence and breathing and how to quiet the mind and slow that computer down so that I can be my best self is a pretty key.

[00:55:31] James Dice: Totally. The, a story I didn't tell the Rosie on the, on that podcast was that I, after the retreat, I went straight from the retreat to one of my best friend's baby showers, and so I'm like, haven't talked for like a week. Oh my gosh. Haven't spoken to anyone for like a week, haven't thought about speaking to anyone for a week.

[00:55:50] And all of a sudden I drive one hour into Denver and all of a sudden I'm in a kitchen with like, 25 of my friends and it's [00:56:00] all like, talk about like a total panic attack, like just being, oh my God. So overwhelmed. Hearing, hearing every conversation in parallel that was happening around me because I'm like so present and so tuned in.

[00:56:11] It was, it was too much.

[00:56:12] Ernie Beck: I bet that was a lot. As Buddha would say this, the, the full catastrophe right there, the full catastrophe. Um, yeah. That's wild. It's, it, yeah, it's a, it's a blessing ultimately to, to. Have a relationship with, with meditation. And some people will call it prayer too, but I, you know, for me it's, it's meditation.

[00:56:29] And I've suggested to a number of colleagues over the years, or friends and family who I just can tell are just so wound up and mm-hmm. And it's not coming from a place of like, Hey, I'm better than you. It's coming from a place of like, look, I've been there and, and I'm not sure if you like if you do this, but like, I'll go, sometimes I'll go months without a single meditation session.

[00:56:48] Yeah, absolutely. And I'll be like, mm-hmm. I'll be like, oh man, I really need to like, yeah. I need to like sit and be present and uh, and I'll do it and I'll be like, okay, I'll reenter myself and get back to it. And it's, [00:57:00] um, yeah, you just need to check in from time to time, but yeah. Totally. That sounds, that sounds wild.

[00:57:05] James Dice: Mine's more like, and, and this happens, I think after many years of meditating, it probably does it for you too. I can feel myself getting uncentered and I can't necessarily always pull myself. Back. Like that might go hours at a time, but I realize that like it's just, um, it's kind of like I'm off offset point.

[00:57:24] Like for an HVAC control system,

[00:57:27] Ernie Beck: oh man,

[00:57:28] James Dice: I spend a lot of time off. Offset point.

[00:57:29] Ernie Beck: You're off offset point. Oh geez. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your, your IP address is lost in my world. Um, Yeah, but the point, it's like exercise. The point is, is you get back, you, you do it. You don't be hard on yourself.

[00:57:40] James Dice: Exactly.

[00:57:40] Ernie Beck: You know, you just, you do the best you can and, and take it when you can get it and yeah, that's great.

[00:57:45] James Dice: And I will say, you're not the only one that said this, so I've had a lot of, a lot of email replies and a lot of LinkedIn dm and a lot of people reaching out saying, you know, thank you for sharing about meditation. Here's my practice, or here's my journey with it. So, uh, love to hear that. So [00:58:00] thanks for.

[00:58:00] Thanks for saying that and thanks for coming on the show, Ernie. Appreciate it.

[00:58:04] Ernie Beck: Thanks James. This was awesome and, uh, hope your listeners enjoy.

[00:58:11] Rosy Khalife: Okay, friends, as we're trying these new formats. Please let us know what you think in your podcast player right now, or on the episode page on our website. There's a link to a survey for this specific episode. We'd love to hear from you and we wanna hear your feedback. Also, don't forget to sign up for the Nexus newsletter. Or invite your coworkers and friends with a link below.

[00:58:31] Catch you next time.

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