The week before Christmas, I was interviewed by Phil Windley of itconversations.org. The conversation started out about schedules for the internet of things, but was published under the title Open Source Smart Energy. I was coming off a cold, and sounded like a frog croaking, but I enjoyed it, especially because the interview also let me meet Udell, whose work I have long admired. The conversation covered many of the high points of smart energy, including enterprise interaction, demand response, microgrids, and transactive energy.
Jon is a noted blogger and podcaster himself; known for both his own Interviews with Innovators Friday Podcasts as well as his own work with IT Conversations. Jon is known for his work with Calendars, especially the Elm City Project. Elm City look to turn computers calendars on their heads, from the collections of specially formatted emails most of us use now, to shared resources that one subscribes to. Jon advocates that the calendars published on the web, for community organizations, businesses, schools, clubs, museums, et al., be machine readable. Once they are machine readable, other web sites can aggregate and publish then in combined formats.
Elm City calendars are always up-to-date and do not rely on local copies of schedules published long ago. Elm City sources take control of their own public presence and schedules. These schedules can be aggregated, re-published, and re-purposed. Jon’s vision of the social use of calendars influenced my own views on schedules for the internet of things and smart energy.
For the impatient, here is a quick guide to the podcast:
- First 40 minutes, WS-Calendar and VCards and developing notions in the open source world about directories for services.
- 32 minutes: VCards for Services and Directories.
- 45 Minutes: On-Line appliance communication models.
- 48 Minutes: ASHRAE SPC201 and Minimal Knowledge for smart energy
- 49:50 to 1 hour: Demand Response, Consumer Choice, Decomposition or Energy, and the Open ADR Alliance
- 60 to 65 minutes: Microgrids
- 64 Minutes: Transactive Energy
For me, the most interesting focus was on building a community of open source using the interactions based on minimal knowledge that are at the heart of smart energy.