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This edition of the Nexus Newsletter is brought to you by SkySpark and Jaros, Baum & Bolles.
Hey friends,
Last year, with Nexus Lore, we defined the future state we’re working towards. We united around the concept of a horizontal architecture—which will give building owners flexibility, control, cybersecurity, and the robust technology infrastructure required to enable the business outcomes they need.
But that view is missing the ecosystem required to reach that future state. Buildings (and the industry supporting them) are transformed by humans and organizations of humans.
Today’s newsletter is part 2 in a series about the humans we wrap around the tech stack to form the smart buildings ecosystem. Here’s a summary of the series:
---
In the intro above, I said “building owners”. This phrase is rampant in the smart buildings lexicon—and for a good reason, right? They’re the buyer. They’re the end user.
But think about that phrase for a second… a “building owner” doesn’t actually exist. Yes, the business entity, the organization itself, exists. But organizations don’t decide on, buy, and use technology. Humans do.
“Building owners” are actually specific humans who work inside of a team of teams. Each human inside the organization sees the building differently according to their job description, professional skills, background, compensation, incentives, and more.
Take a lighting system in an office building for example.
The tenant simply wants to get work done and feel good while doing it. He wants the building to enable him to do that and not get in his way. He doesn’t really care about the lighting system. And actually, some natural light would be amazing.
The maintenance technician sees the lighting system differently—he, understandably, wants to minimize the trips to the ceiling to change out the lamps. Then there’s the electrical contractor—he’s only here to get the final sign-off on the job he did installing the lights. Then he can move on to the next job.
Finally, there’s the energy manager. She thanks Mr. Contractor but also tells him, politely of course, that this installation sucks because he should have installed a more efficient type of lighting controls. The contractor, of course, responds that it was the engineer who specified the lighting control system.
Whew, that got complicated quickly, didn’t it? And that’s just a simple light bulb. This silly little exercise illustrates that when we’re communicating the value of technology and changing the status quo, we MUST talk to exact humans. So let’s get specific.
The exact humans we’re talking to here at Nexus Labs sit in the Facility Management, Information Technology, and Sustainability departments. And the exact humans are facility managers, HVAC technicians, service vendors, CTOs, IT network engineers, sustainability managers, and data analysts. Larger building owners even have smart buildings groups that support all of these departments. We’re talking to them too.
Because each human’s lens on technology is different, how we speak to them needs to be different too. As illustrated above, each of them speaks differently with a different vocabulary. Each of them has different values. Each has different, but sometimes overlapping (see below) jobs to be done.
Each of them needs varying levels of detail on each topic. Whereas the facility manager needs to be a strategist and practitioner of maintenance best practices, the sustainability manager only needs to be aware of how maintenance is done and how that supports decarbonization, for example. This is how we plan to structure our editorial calendar and educational curriculum moving forward.
Crucially, we need to talk to these folks without reinforcing the organizational silos they’re sitting within. Building owners can’t have 3 or more different technology strategies. This new era requires holistic thinking. Consider just a few examples:
This is the challenge we’re setting out to solve at Nexus Labs. We want to engage, educate, and communicate with exact humans while helping them think about how their role fits into a holistic technology strategy and program.
And as we launch our Partner Program, we’re selecting partners that think this way too.
—James Dice, Founder and CEO of Nexus Labs
P.S. The Nexus Pro Community is chock full of humans from each of these departments. Members can check out a few of our recent meeting recordings to understand what they're working on right now:
☁️ A message from our sponsor, SkySpark ☁️
SkySpark is a comprehensive software platform for connecting, storing, analyzing and visualizing data from smart devices and equipment systems. SkySpark’s automated analytics, KPIs, Energy and GhG Apps, turn your data into actionable intelligence providing improved performance, reduced downtime, and operational savings.
Head over to SkyFoundry.com for insightful white papers, case studies, and blog posts, as well as a link to sign up for a free demo.
Here’s everything worth sharing from Nexus HQ this week:
---
★ PODCAST: 🎧 #136: Innovation and case studies of grid-interactive efficient buildings—Episode 136 is a conversation with Cindy Zhu, Director of Grid Services at Prescriptive Data.
We primarily cover grid-interactive efficient buildings, or GEB, my second least favorite acronym in our industry (behind SPOG of course).
GEB implies a connection between the electric utility and the building, or more specifically, the ability for a building to be a resource to the grid and provide demand flexibility. This is important so we can tailor our buildings’ load profiles to closely match when the grid is cleanest and help it become more resilient.
---
★ MEMBERS-ONLY EVENTS THIS MONTH:
Join Nexus Pro now to get the invites and access to the recordings.
---
★ ON LINKEDIN: Where are all the case studies? No, not those fluffy, pie-in-the-sky marketing materials...
---
🏢 A message from our sponsor, Jaros, Baum & Bolles 🏢
Building intelligence engineering allows OT and IT systems to seamlessly and securely integrate with each other and onto common platforms. Creating a successful building intelligence strategy entails translating the owner’s goals to outcomes, use cases, intelligent building technologies, and enhanced MEP systems.
To learn more about what JB&B is calling “MEP 3.0” and the value of building intelligence design, as well as the difference between smart and intelligent buildings, listen to JB&B’s Division Lead’s conversation with the global certification company WiredScore.
👋 That's all for this week. See you next Tuesday!
Whenever you're ready, there are 4 ways Nexus Labs can help you:
1. Take our shortcut to learning the Smart Buildings industry here (300 students and counting)
2. Join our community of smart buildings nerds and gamechangers here (400 members and counting)
3. (NEW) Join the Nexus Labs Syndicate for opportunities to invest in the best smart buildings startups that cross my desk each month.
4. (NEW) Our Partner Hub is launching soon. This is an opportunity to be featured on our website, get original content, and tap into the Nexus community. Email us at partners@nexuslabs.online
This edition of the Nexus Newsletter is brought to you by SkySpark and Jaros, Baum & Bolles.
Hey friends,
Last year, with Nexus Lore, we defined the future state we’re working towards. We united around the concept of a horizontal architecture—which will give building owners flexibility, control, cybersecurity, and the robust technology infrastructure required to enable the business outcomes they need.
But that view is missing the ecosystem required to reach that future state. Buildings (and the industry supporting them) are transformed by humans and organizations of humans.
Today’s newsletter is part 2 in a series about the humans we wrap around the tech stack to form the smart buildings ecosystem. Here’s a summary of the series:
---
In the intro above, I said “building owners”. This phrase is rampant in the smart buildings lexicon—and for a good reason, right? They’re the buyer. They’re the end user.
But think about that phrase for a second… a “building owner” doesn’t actually exist. Yes, the business entity, the organization itself, exists. But organizations don’t decide on, buy, and use technology. Humans do.
“Building owners” are actually specific humans who work inside of a team of teams. Each human inside the organization sees the building differently according to their job description, professional skills, background, compensation, incentives, and more.
Take a lighting system in an office building for example.
The tenant simply wants to get work done and feel good while doing it. He wants the building to enable him to do that and not get in his way. He doesn’t really care about the lighting system. And actually, some natural light would be amazing.
The maintenance technician sees the lighting system differently—he, understandably, wants to minimize the trips to the ceiling to change out the lamps. Then there’s the electrical contractor—he’s only here to get the final sign-off on the job he did installing the lights. Then he can move on to the next job.
Finally, there’s the energy manager. She thanks Mr. Contractor but also tells him, politely of course, that this installation sucks because he should have installed a more efficient type of lighting controls. The contractor, of course, responds that it was the engineer who specified the lighting control system.
Whew, that got complicated quickly, didn’t it? And that’s just a simple light bulb. This silly little exercise illustrates that when we’re communicating the value of technology and changing the status quo, we MUST talk to exact humans. So let’s get specific.
The exact humans we’re talking to here at Nexus Labs sit in the Facility Management, Information Technology, and Sustainability departments. And the exact humans are facility managers, HVAC technicians, service vendors, CTOs, IT network engineers, sustainability managers, and data analysts. Larger building owners even have smart buildings groups that support all of these departments. We’re talking to them too.
Because each human’s lens on technology is different, how we speak to them needs to be different too. As illustrated above, each of them speaks differently with a different vocabulary. Each of them has different values. Each has different, but sometimes overlapping (see below) jobs to be done.
Each of them needs varying levels of detail on each topic. Whereas the facility manager needs to be a strategist and practitioner of maintenance best practices, the sustainability manager only needs to be aware of how maintenance is done and how that supports decarbonization, for example. This is how we plan to structure our editorial calendar and educational curriculum moving forward.
Crucially, we need to talk to these folks without reinforcing the organizational silos they’re sitting within. Building owners can’t have 3 or more different technology strategies. This new era requires holistic thinking. Consider just a few examples:
This is the challenge we’re setting out to solve at Nexus Labs. We want to engage, educate, and communicate with exact humans while helping them think about how their role fits into a holistic technology strategy and program.
And as we launch our Partner Program, we’re selecting partners that think this way too.
—James Dice, Founder and CEO of Nexus Labs
P.S. The Nexus Pro Community is chock full of humans from each of these departments. Members can check out a few of our recent meeting recordings to understand what they're working on right now:
☁️ A message from our sponsor, SkySpark ☁️
SkySpark is a comprehensive software platform for connecting, storing, analyzing and visualizing data from smart devices and equipment systems. SkySpark’s automated analytics, KPIs, Energy and GhG Apps, turn your data into actionable intelligence providing improved performance, reduced downtime, and operational savings.
Head over to SkyFoundry.com for insightful white papers, case studies, and blog posts, as well as a link to sign up for a free demo.
Here’s everything worth sharing from Nexus HQ this week:
---
★ PODCAST: 🎧 #136: Innovation and case studies of grid-interactive efficient buildings—Episode 136 is a conversation with Cindy Zhu, Director of Grid Services at Prescriptive Data.
We primarily cover grid-interactive efficient buildings, or GEB, my second least favorite acronym in our industry (behind SPOG of course).
GEB implies a connection between the electric utility and the building, or more specifically, the ability for a building to be a resource to the grid and provide demand flexibility. This is important so we can tailor our buildings’ load profiles to closely match when the grid is cleanest and help it become more resilient.
---
★ MEMBERS-ONLY EVENTS THIS MONTH:
Join Nexus Pro now to get the invites and access to the recordings.
---
★ ON LINKEDIN: Where are all the case studies? No, not those fluffy, pie-in-the-sky marketing materials...
---
🏢 A message from our sponsor, Jaros, Baum & Bolles 🏢
Building intelligence engineering allows OT and IT systems to seamlessly and securely integrate with each other and onto common platforms. Creating a successful building intelligence strategy entails translating the owner’s goals to outcomes, use cases, intelligent building technologies, and enhanced MEP systems.
To learn more about what JB&B is calling “MEP 3.0” and the value of building intelligence design, as well as the difference between smart and intelligent buildings, listen to JB&B’s Division Lead’s conversation with the global certification company WiredScore.
👋 That's all for this week. See you next Tuesday!
Whenever you're ready, there are 4 ways Nexus Labs can help you:
1. Take our shortcut to learning the Smart Buildings industry here (300 students and counting)
2. Join our community of smart buildings nerds and gamechangers here (400 members and counting)
3. (NEW) Join the Nexus Labs Syndicate for opportunities to invest in the best smart buildings startups that cross my desk each month.
4. (NEW) Our Partner Hub is launching soon. This is an opportunity to be featured on our website, get original content, and tap into the Nexus community. Email us at partners@nexuslabs.online
Head over to Nexus Connect and see what’s new in the community. Don’t forget to check out the latest member-only events.
Go to Nexus ConnectJoin Nexus Pro and get full access including invite-only member gatherings, access to the community chatroom Nexus Connect, networking opportunities, and deep dive essays.
Sign Up
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On Wednesday, we send out the renowned (and free) Nexus Newsletter.