26 Cross-Pollinating AutomatedBuildings

26 Cross-Pollinating AutomatedBuildings

Cross-Pollinating AutomatedBuildings: Mentorship & Bumblebees

After more than five decades in the building automation industry, Ken Sinclair has seen it all, from brass pneumatic thermostats and refrigerator-sized computers to cloud platforms, digital twins, and AI. As the founder of AutomatedBuildings.com and a fixture at AHR for nearly 30 years, Ken’s real superpower isn’t prediction; it’s connection.

In this Café ZAI conversation, Ken shares his “bumblebee” philosophy: cross-pollinating ideas between people, disciplines, and generations. We explore how mentorship really works, why innovation dies in silos, what’s changed at AHR over the decades, and why trust, not technology, remains the industry’s most valuable currency.

A conversation about history, humility, and why the future of automated buildings depends on sharing the honey.


Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(31)

29 Are We Owners or Renters of Our Intelligence?

29 Are We Owners or Renters of Our Intelligence?

You are currently renting your own intelligence. And Big Tech is making you pay for the privilege.Every time you use a centralized AI, your data is vacuumed up by a few giants, accelerating a dangerou...

20 Maalis 21min

28-The $20 Million Legal Dispute That Changed Construction's Daily Report

28-The $20 Million Legal Dispute That Changed Construction's Daily Report

A lack of documentation almost cost Peter Lasensky, founder of Command Post, $20 million. His response? He invented a simple, contemporaneous documentation tool using a Nextel walkie-talkie in 2001. H...

16 Maalis 21min

27 Got sensors? Got IoT? Got “smart buildings”?

27 Got sensors? Got IoT? Got “smart buildings”?

Then why can’t you keep ice cream at the right temperature?Everyone imagines ice cream melting , but the real operational killer is often the opposite: the freezer goes too cold, product gets freezer ...

1 Helmi 10min

25 Stop Protecting the Hill

25 Stop Protecting the Hill

Data Sharing, IP, and the Future of BuildingsJohn Turner brings decades of hard-earned experience across major global organizations, working from the owner side, leading digital transformation, and pu...

25 Tammi 20min

24 Are we living in a simulation? In building AI: yes!

24 Are we living in a simulation? In building AI: yes!

Because the real world hasn’t fully come to the table yet.At NeurIPS Urban AI, I spoke with Fabian Raisch (TU Rosenheim/TU Munich), whose research targets scalable AI-based building control with signi...

22 Tammi 9min

23 NVIDIA Urban AI

23 NVIDIA Urban AI

In this Café ZAi conversation, Kimon Onuma speaks with Zheng (Thomas) Tang from NVIDIA about how synthetic data, computer vision, and digital twins are teaching AI to understand buildings, warehouses,...

15 Joulu 202512min

22 Teaching an AI How to Learn About HVAC

22 Teaching an AI How to Learn About HVAC

Donna Vakalis, a postdoc researcher at Mila, Quebec AI Institute, focuses on reducing climate emissions from buildings using AI. Her work involves optimizing HVAC systems without extensive data, emplo...

10 Joulu 202512min