The Life of Light – E04- March 2019

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The Life of Light – E04- March 2019

Perth – Singapore, Weekend 2-3 March 2019

This fourth blog edition of the year is becoming more undisciplined…Doing it weekly is still sort of a discipline, doing it every two weeks like I am attempting to do, seems much more of a challenge. Ok…I have an excuse…it was Alex 50th birthday last weekend and we decided to escape busy Singapore to celebrate with a short weekend away in a luxury resort…while it will be listed as referencing last weekend it is actually written in the days after…😊

LDoT
After my week in our Perth office with Ingmar the development of our LDoT process continued with more conference calls and meetings to further detail our collaborations with some new partners. Our pilot projects are requiring quite some attention. We are learning a lot about what system and IoT components producers are claiming they can do and what it turns out to be in reality! This is probably one of the biggest challenges we are facing (and we can just imagine what potential clients are facing), making sense of what sales people are promoting they can do and what the reality is.

At this point in time developers, property owners and facilities managers that are trying to get some head start with smart installations are left to believe what suppliers and manufacturers tell them (generally only the positive things), which of course is biased, limited and with sole intent to sell. They end up with individual systems most of the time over or under specified, that generally do not “talk” to each other. LDoT offers our clients, as one of the very first consultancies in the world, an unbiased, independent and professional advise and selection platform. Through our Menu of Things™ which we are developing in finer details as we progress with our projects and grow our partner collaborations, we are able to determine and provide our clients with more objective choices, considerate options that result in a value for money, dedicated project data design brief. As we are going through our proof of concept it is important to listen to the feedback and learn from the challenges we face along the way…for now we are enjoying the ride…

Ceilings
Ceilings are becoming the new battle grounds. There always was a “fight” for the best locations in the ceiling with lighting, air-conditioning, sprinklers, speakers, smoke detectors, WiFi boosters and access panels crowding and clashing with each other in the ceiling (coordinated ceiling plans…!). Now the smart sensors and cameras are adding a whole new dimension to this “fight”. By just looking up when you walk in a shopping mall or enter a corporate building for instance, you will discover just how many are already in the ceiling! The question is of course who takes precedence over what and who controls the process of integration…?

Singapore
Ingmar, on his way to Bangkok for some business development and attending a lighting manufacturers workshop, spend some time in our Singapore office during which we had discussions with a potential new partner for LDoT and chatted further with a partner about the potential use of blockchain technology in smart lighting. We are slowly getting our heads around it but it will take a while before this will be applicable in projects or system management processes…we will keep you posted!

IALD 50 years
This year IALD celebrates its 50th anniversary and IALD’s president, Mr David Ghatan, made a stop in Singapore en route to the Enlighten Asia event in Tokio, Japan. Invited by Toh Yah Li, who is IALD SEA local representative, David was welcomed to a dinner and drinks on arrival before heading the main IALD event the next day. About 70 from the lighting industry, designers, suppliers and manufacturers joined for the event at Habitat by Honestbee, Singapore’s version of Amazon Go, a brick and mortar shop that only allows you to enter and pay through an app on your mobile device. In a “market” environment you can buy food and products or simply order food (and drinks) for immediate consumption from the many food stations.

Before we indulged in the Habitat experienced David recalled a bit of the 50-year old history of IALD, its current organisation structure and provided a look into the future. There are only a handful IALD members in Singapore/ Asia so there is certainly scope for more to join! A strong organisation is good for the profession.

I took the opportunity to interview David for my Light Talk conversations chatting about his views on lighting, our profession, the evolving technologies, the cultural differences and education in general. Once the interview has been edited it will be made available on my new Light Talk Youtube channel soon to be launched…

Thanks to sponsors Endo and Helvar for supporting the night!

Enjoy the time ahead…