January Digest: Introducing Nexus Connect

Hey friends, happy Wednesday!

Welcome to another monthly digest… a collection of member updates and ideas I’ve been thinking about and working on this month.

Enjoy.

1—Introducing Nexus Connect

As promised last month and announced in the gathering today, we’re launching a new (members only) community software application that will allow all of you beautiful nerds to connect with each other in between our gatherings.

Right now, the Nexus community (all of you) is quite scattered. You’re in my inbox, on LinkedIn, on our monthly Zoom calls, in the comments on the Nexus blog site, on YouTube, etc. For students of the Foundations course, it's on Slack.

This creates unnecessary friction for connecting. I get emails and LinkedIn messages many times per day asking:

• Can I make an announcement to the other members?
• Can you help me find an expert in ___?
• Can you connect me with ___ who I met in the last member gathering?
• Can I get your feedback on my thing?

Nexus Connect can now be our one-stop-shop. The software we're piloting here was designed specifically for this exact use case... for communities like Nexus and courses like Nexus Foundations, so it's a natural fit.

So please check your email… You'll get an invite shortly to join the community. Once you’re inside, you’ll see instructions on what to do next. And here’s a link to the demo I did in today’s Gathering.

See you there!

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2—Member gathering recording

For this first member gathering of 2021, we picked up where we left off last month. But instead of an open-ended discussion, we had 5 panelists who got 5 minutes each to talk about the Ontology efforts they’re involved in (Haystack, ASHRAE 223P, Google’s DBO, RealEstateCore, and the OAP).

Oh, and our breakout room discussion asked each member how they’re contributing to our standardization efforts this year.

This was fun. Enjoy!

*As I said at the end, I’m working on a summary piece called “The Ontology Wars and Where We Go From Here”. So if you have a reaction to today’s chat, please email it to me. Would love to hear from you.

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3—Biden’s Smart Building Impact

I’ve been digging a bit into the potential impact the recent US election results will have on the smart buildings industry. Let’s just say the cleantech wonks are very excited about this potential—and for good reason, I think—but the specifics on what this means for all of you are sparse. Here’s my best crack at a quick summary:

• The big goals:
• Achieving a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035
• Cutting in half the carbon footprint from the country’s built environment by 2035
• The big ratchet: it calls for establishing building performance standards (for both new and existing buildings) throughout the country; reforming building energy codes; and financing state, city and tribal efforts to adopt stronger codes.
• The big retrofit: it calls for “an historic investment in energy upgrades.” Specifically, it describes energy efficiency retrofits and expanded weatherization in four million commercial buildings.¹ ²
• Big innovations: the plan looks to develop “net-zero buildings that are zero net cost,” among a long list of priorities, and “drive dramatic cost reductions in critical clean energy technologies.”
• The big reconciliation: Unfortunately, a big bill mandating all of this is unlikely… Probably the only thing that will pass Congress is what’s called a budget reconciliation bill. The only things allowed in a reconciliation bill are budget-relevant items, i.e., measures that raise or lower government revenue. While that will certainly limit the potential, 20% of US GDP is government spending so putting that to work can certainly cause ripple effects in our supply chain.

If you’re not in the US and don’t care about this, I’d love to hear the similar goals/commitments/regulations that your country is making. These types of big efforts are what needs to happen for the world to meet climate targets.

This is what we, people of the buildings industry, need to come together around. How are we all positioned when the whole world heads this way? Better yet, how can we facilitate this shift?

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4—Fun LinkedIn Discussions

This month, there have also been some fascinating LinkedIn conversations, in case you missed any of them:

• Grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) are all the rage lately
• When some people think of data modeling and the need for standards, they're really thinking of point naming
• The single biggest myth about smart buildings

I love seeing people pop out of the woodwork to give their unique perspectives.³

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5—Members-only posts

Besides this digest, there was one other deep-dive / members-only post this month, in case you missed it:

• The Lens: SkySpark Arc, Facilio+Belimo, and WTF is Efforce—The strategy behind the news in as few bullet points as possible

Now that this Nexus Connect deployment is behind us, I’ll be finalizing my editorial calendar for the year and getting back to essay-writing soon. Let me know if you have topic suggestions!

Thanks for reading and thanks for being a Nexus Pro member. As always, I’d love if you hit reply and let me know how I can improve your membership.

—James

P.S. for all of you new members, here are some handy links:

• Anonymous member feedback form (constructive criticism is always appreciated!)
• Modify your account (E.g. change your email address, modify your plan from monthly to annual, etc)
• Submit your podcast interview idea
• Submit your friendly rant podcast idea
• Add your personal Nexus Pro podcast feed to the player of your choice (so your phone automatically downloads members-only podcasts)
• The Nexus Vendor Landscape
• The Archive (all posts with a 🔒 are for members only)
• Add your project to the Nexus Labs consulting waitlist

Footnotes:

¹ The plan calls for “disadvantaged communities to receive 40% of overall benefits of spending in the areas of clean energy and energy efficiency deployment.” These buildings (and people) are historically neglected by our industry.

² There are roughly 6 million total commercial buildings—that’s a huge percentage!

³ With Nexus Connect, our LinkedIn discussions won’t be going anywhere. But Nexus Connect will be home to our more intimate conversations.