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A quick guide to the day's sessions, plus an interview with Jack McGowan, president of Energy Control Inc.

Transcript

Denis DuBois: Good morning, it's Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007; here are the highlights for the middle day of ConnectivityWeek. This morning we have a keynote presentation by Bob Galvin entitled Connectivity in a Green Sustainable World. Following that, there's a mega panel to discuss connecting buildings, energy, wireless and security. Then after lunch, there are three tracks including a Roadmap to Buildings 2.0. In the Insight podcast this morning I'll interview one of those speakers. With me now is one of the panelists from the mega panel coming up this morning; Jack McGowan is President and CEO of Energy Control, Inc. in Albuquerque New Mexico.

Denis DuBois: You're here not only for BuilConn but for some GridWise meetings that are going on here; there is a GridWise expo as well. BuilConn is primarily about building, which is one side of the meter. GridWise is primarily about the other side of the meter. What is the common ground that brings these two events together?

Jack McGowan: In many ways I think interoperability is the common ground; it’s technology and systems. Several years ago when BuilConn first came into being, we were very much focused on the technology, buildings and on a lot of topics around efficiency and comfort, and value propositions that brought technology to the buildings space. What’s happening now with GridWise is that the technology that we have put into place in buildings now has a very real application in the utility arena because there is a great need to deal with the increase in electric demand that’s projected over the next 20 years; a 40% increase in electric demand.

That’s a huge increase, and utilities just aren’t prepared to deal with that doing business as usual. So technology and the idea of having systems work together to save energy, but also give the utilities a way to shift load into other parts of the day than their peak demand period, is a whole new exciting way to blend all this technology we’ve been working with in buildings into the energy space.

Denis DuBois: Your business, Energy Control, is fairly territorial; serving a territory out of Albuquerque, NM, yet you’re involved in so many of these national-scale programs each year; the GridWise Architectural Council, you speak at events like this, that are national events, you write a lot of articles and national publications. What compels you to invest so much time and effort at that level?

Jack McGowan: That's a good question. From a business point of view, you have to stay fresh. My business is very territorial in terms of one state, it’s a large state, but it’s large geographically and small in terms of population. At the same time this whole notion of technology provides a springboard in many respects for our business to grow.

We are in what many people might argue against; we’re in a dying industry from a building automation point of view. It’s not dying in the sense that technology is going away, it’s dying in the sense that it’s evolving into a commodity industry. It’s evolving into an industry that’s driven totally by price. I come from a background that looks for value and looks for ways to create value for owners through technology. So the opportunity to participate on a broader scale gives me two real benefits. One is that it gives me new technologies, products and services that I can offer to my local customers. The other is that it gives me a platform from which I can grow both regionally and nationally, and expand my business to a broader customer base.

Denis DuBois: After the Bob Galvin keynote this morning, you’re on a "mega panel" about buildings, energy, wireless and security. What are some of the major themes you expect to come out of that panel?

Jack McGowan: Well, again, I think interoperability; the idea of connecting together all these systems becomes very real. My company’s name is Energy Control. I often tell people that Energy is our first name. What’s interesting is I’ve gone around the country talking to various audiences in the buildings space; I have opened a number of speeches by asking the question, “Do you remember when we used to call direct digital control energy management systems and when DDC was EMS?”

I think in that mega panel there is going to be a lot of discussion around how energy has become a much more poignant and significant topic as the cost of energy in general has risen. In that panel I see technology certainly being a thread that’s woven through it; I also see the potential to talk about how we use that technology to create value that goes beyond the silo of buildings, security or wireless, and start looking at ways we can have each of the various different system components work together to create new value, to offer new applications, to offer new ways for building owners to make their buildings work better and deliver more value to their customers, whatever that may be: the quality of a learning environment in a school or the quality of productivity of a work environment for an office building, etc.

Denis DuBois: You have meetings here, and you’re on panels. Will you have time to take in some of the other sessions, and who are you looking forward to hearing while you’re here?

Jack McGowan: I was really fascinated to have the opportunity to hear Bob Galvin speak in Washington a few weeks ago. The story he told (that I thought was very telling) was the story about his father who started Motorola. At the time his dream was to put a radio in an automobile; his peers told him he was crazy and that he’d never be able to make a radio work reliably in an automobile. Bob said that framed his career going forward because his father said he would put a radio in an automobile and was successful at doing that. It made him rethink how he approached problems that he encountered through the course of his career. I’m looking forward to hearing what Bob has to say.

7:00 Dan Sharpland from Site Controls has a really exciting model and I want to hear more from him.

We’ve got an exciting series of sessions on Thursday in the GridWise track. GridWise Architecture Council members have put together really exciting panels; there are going to be a number of speakers on each of those that I really want to hear as well. There is more to hear in Chicago than there is time to hear it.

Denis DuBois: Enjoy BuilConn and thank you very much for joining us this morning.

Jack McGowan: You're welcome. Thanks for having me be here.