The First Class Edge

The Smart Building conference in Amsterdam was worth attending. Essentially every speaker was reconfirming the smart buildings trends we've been aligned with and pushing at Silvair. Ger Baron (the CTO at the City of Amsterdam) nicely illustrated the evolution of networked systems: from centralized to decentralized and ultimately to distributed peer-to-peer mesh. Bruce Schneier was quoted saying "a luminaire is a connected computer that emits light" (I remember people laughing at me when I was telling them we had 70 developers writing software for light bulbs...). Larry Heisler noted the IoT had not taken off because things lacked interoperability. Music to my ears.

One disappointing theme was, unfortunately, The Edge. The world's most famous, most intelligent, most sustainable (the list continues) building. Wonderful. But I herd the same stories back in 2016. So is The Edge still the only one?

Why don't we have more smart buildings we could present, study, pitch, experience? What is wrong with The Edge, so there are no more replicas of the ultimate smart building experience?

I think the answer is simple - there is no payback. The Edge is a luxury. Like a first class seat on a plane.

An average intercontinental flight costs $500 (in economy class). The first class price for the same flight is in the range of $15000. 30x. I have a feeling the case of The Edge is similar. It is - no doubt - the first class of smart buildings. And came with a first class price tag. While some developers may fancy erecting a building like that, most seek a decent return on the investment. And with the technologies implemented in The Edge, there simply is no payback.

But that will change over time. New technologies and standards, such as Bluetooth mesh, promise to bring economy prices to the smart buildings industry. I strongly believe that within two years we will have many comparable case studies to present. Developing an advanced technology is a challenge. Making that technology affordable is even a bigger one. This challenge was accepted when we started working on the Bluetooth mesh specifications. No other technology has such potential of bringing smart buildings to masses.