Show notes
Featuring Jonathan Spooner, Co-Founder and CTO, Stacks + Joules Jonathan brings a trove of experience in technology, innovation and marketing to the Stacks + Joules team. Having led innovation teams at Intersection (a division of Alphabet) and launching multiple high-tech businesses he has a wide breadth of knowledge. His entrepreneurial passion has led him to plan, budget, oversee and lead all sizes of businesses across the span of his career. A lifelong DJ having played multiple gigs around the globe he also co-founded the internet’s first DJ mix site. Jonathan speaks frequently on emerging technology innovation, and his insight has been featured in the New York Times, Ad Age, Fast Company, The Motley Fool and the Wall Street Journal, among others. As technology in the built environment increases, the workforce demand for those who can properly operate these buildings also grows. On today’s episode, Kelly talks with Jonathan Spooner from Stacks + Joules, a nonprofit learning program in computer programming and wireless network management. Stacks + Joules helps train and employ young people to have careers in building automation and energy management systems. Kelly and Jon discuss a common gap in the industry – job training and workforce development, particularly for building operators. They consider how we can “leverage the genius that exists” in urban schools, lift out the digital gurus who know about networking and technology, and help transition them into the building industry where they can thrive. Episode Information & Resources Website: Stacks + Joules Article: Smart companies must tap the widest pool of talent We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez Episode Transcript Kelly (00:05):Welcome to buildings and beyond Robb (00:08):The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly (00:12):By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Robb (00:17):I’m Robb Aldrich. Kelly (00:18):and I’m Kelly Westby. Kelly (00:22):When we came up with the idea for a workforce development episode last year, the world was in a very different place, especially in terms of unemployment levels. But the main gap that we discussed in this episode remains – the gap between all of the technology that we are and want to put into buildings and the people available to connect, start up, commission, operate and maintain those devices and systems. On this episode, we have Jon Spooner, Jon’s entrepreneurial passion has led him to plan budget oversee and lead all sorts of high tech businesses across the span of his career. In John’s latest endeavor, he has taken his technology background in a slightly different direction. He and Mike Conway co-founded stacks plus joules, which is a nonprofit project based learning program in computer programming and wireless network management. Their specialized curriculum engages young people and gets them the valuable skills they need to Excel in the building automation and energy management sector. Dylan (01:19):Hey guys, this is Dylan Martello from the passive house team at Steven winter associates. Before we dive into the episode, I wanted to let you know that the 2020 North American passive house network conference will now be hosted virtually with sessions airing every Wednesday afternoon from June 24th through July 29th. This year, I will be talking about how passive house can help buildings comply with the increasing carbon mandates enacted by cities across the U S be sure to tune in online and see my session and others by registering at naphn.dot com. That’s N A P H N conference.com. Enjoy the show. Kelly (02:03):Jon, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Jon (02:05):Thank you for having me. Kelly (02:07):Great. And I so I got introduced to stacks + joules by a friend of mine, Robin, give her a little shout out on here. And I just was able to have a discussion with you and you were so passionate about what you do that I was thinking we have to get you on the podcast. So so kind of with that framework, what was the issue that you saw in the industry that you thought, “Oh, man, we really got to tackle this one.” Jon (02:36):Yeah. I mean, it, it really came from came from actually two separate separate sources. So I, myself and my co founder, Mike, we each we’re actually best friends from second grade. So we we’ve known each other for a long time. And, and he’s been in the education realm for 25 years and I’ve been more in the technology realm. And so we’ve been, you know, over the years, staying in touch and trying to bump our heads together, to find some way to bring, you know, the technology piece and the educational piece closer together. And, you know, we we’d stayed in touch and, and gone back and forth. And then I started really working with the Link NYC project in New York city which was basically bringing free wifi to the streets of New York. And this project was really, really amazing, huge scale, wonderful opportunity. But what we realized while we were working on that project is we had one of those link, you know, there these nine foot tall totems that are on the sidewalks in New York. And all of a sudden we got a call from a New York city police department. And they were like, Oh, Hey, we have a taxi backed over one of your link things. Can you come get it? And we were like, what, wait a minute. What? And all of a sudden, like our support center, people were having to like pull out their mom’s AAA card to get a tow truck, to go up to Harlem, to pull a taxi off of our, off of our tower. And what we would came really to the forefront of this is we might have all these amazing engineers who can build the incredible thing. But what we were missing was the second layer, the maintaining and upkeep of that technology, because one of the big things that I’ve learned in my career in technology is technology on its own is great, but technology in the wild requires tons and tons of iterative updates and maintenance and so on and so forth. And so we were really starting to see the, you know, kind of the second wave of the techno boom, as being this opportunity for, for technical specialists to come in. And as we were looking for these kinds of technical specialist roles, whether it be in, you know, in all of any of the kind of technical disciplines, Mike’s brother actually works in the BAS field and he had gone to Mass maritime and he was very, very steeped in the building automation world. And so that all of a sudden struck us as this really interesting intersection point between the growth of IOT and the internet of things and how tech is really coming in and starting to influence a lot of industrial processes. And then also the, the energy and sustainability elements to to building on a mission as well. And we saw that as two really, really vibrant kind of through lines for this industry. And the last piece of the puzzle is we were like, okay, we see this industry. It has a lot of demand and it has a lot of need for, because a lot of the workforce is graying out and how do we replace that workforce? We go to the high schools. And, and that, that really is where I think the master stroke of this whole thing came together is we went to an unexpected source of talent. And that’s really the big change that we did to this whole thing is, you know, currently there are massive energy companies that are still trying to run their own training programs. They’re trying to hire, they’re trying to build in and workforce. And, you know, they’re, they’re focused on one segment of the market, but then, you know, looking at high school students who are coming out they’re digital natives. So all of this IOT technology is really second nature to them, and they are incredibly motivated by having an impact on their community and having an impact on the energy and climate future. So having those two motivations, as well as a very good job and career growth trajectory to this industry, those three things kind of added up to be an excellent opportunity to take in and train high school students in, and also meet the challenge that the industry is facing in terms of making up that workforce gap. Kelly (07:18):Great. So you found a problem where the technology meets the built environment, which it sounds like your link problem was a similar sort of technology meeting, the built environment issue and then, and solve that as a, as kind of an educational issue with your partner there. Jon (07:37):Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, and that, that is, I mean, that’s one of the things that we’ve really started to see as we’ve gotten into this world and really seen the breadth of the industry is that, you know, when people are looking at, at LEED and all these ways that are prescribed about how to build a building and then do it in a sustainable factor. And then, you know, I was actually, I started to learn more about LEED recently, and I learned about the fact that LEED not only requires for the building of a building, but also once you take that building apart and throw it away, how do those materials go back into the system and how are they dealt with? And I thought it was fascinating because I really see workforce as part of that design equation as well. If you’re going to look at the sustainability of a building as being, what are the materials I’m bringing in and what are the materials at the end of the life cycle of the building, you also have to look at like, okay, we’ve built this amazing energy efficient building. Now, do we have the workforce to maintain that efficiency? Because that’s one of the big challenges that we find across this industry is, you know, much like our, our plight with the link is we had the high level engineers who could come up with the amazing design system. It was getting the people to go through and reset the preferences, or update the software and be able to do the work that, you know, presently is available and needs to be done. Kelly (09:07):Absolutely. And I think maybe I relate so much to that because I think commissioning exists in that space between, my background is, is commissioning. And we did an episode on that for this podcast as well, but it’s sort of living within the space between where the design happens and where implementation and then turnover and then operation. And so how do you actually get the value from, you know, we can propose a value from technology, but if it’s not being used or it’s not being maintained, then there is no value to it. And so you actually, you know, have to figure out a way to make sure that the industry is prepared to maintain, to get any value out of all of the products that we’re sort of all the sensors and things that we’re throwing into buildings. Jon (09:54):Yeah, a hundred percent because I mean, all the sensors and all the technology and all the AI in the world can be put into a building, but if it doesn’t have the person who can actually keep things going and keep the system running, you know, that that’s what’s necessary, is there still needs to be a human piece. And I mean, this kind of segues right into this the current situation we’re in with COVID and with social distancing and all of these things is, you know, the way that the world is headed right now, automation and action at a distance, and being able to control things remotely and such, that’s going to become everything that is going to become the major part of industry’s adjustment to this whole episode. So while we’re definitely training these students and in understanding the built environment and how that, that can exist, you know, we were training them pre COVID. Now all of a sudden this has taken on a whole new level of importance because now there’s no attention to air handling inside of hospitals. There’s attention to all of these other automated systems and automated processes that the built environment needs in order to maintain safety and so forth. Those are all going to be in demand once again, and having, you know, building this workforce to address that demand in the future. I know things are going to be uncertain for the near term, but once we do, and we will get out of this, there is going to be such a backlog of work of buildings that haven’t been dealt with during this period of time, but then also companies that are going to want to automate and move things to nonhuman touch type interactions. And so that, that’s where I really see a lot of the opportunity coming is from from lots and lots of companies looking to automate a lot of processes that took a human before. Kelly (11:52):Right. Potentially moving from A kind of, you know, nice to have a sort of fancy upgrade to a, you know, method of resiliency during a catastrophic event. And I would say we talk a lot about it in terms of future proofing especially, you know, for folks who are in, in New York city and Washington DC that are looking at, you know performance based existing building energy or carbon or energy caps for buildings. it’s too late, if you only have kind of a once a month bill for your energy consumption, that’s way too late for you to make any response to it. And so having an integrated system that you can control remotely, or at least monitor remotely the energy consumption over time, and you can kind of make tweaks to your building to ensure that you’re well within these caps, I think is going to be even more critical critical now. Jon (12:53):Well, and I mean, the other thing that may be forthcoming, and I don’t really know, but if, if the pause in New York extends into summer you know, heat, HVAC and such is going to be such a very, very loaded issue and having buildings that can react to peak demand and things along those lines, that’s going to be another massive, massive differentiator. Cause if your building can be tuned to actually turn on when, when there’s, you know, peak demand is past, It really does change the whole economics of the building and work within the constraints of, of the energy companies. So yeah, that’s, what I really see is, is especially with the summer, I know New York city has already started to talk about stockpiling air conditioners. I just think that we need to be ready to address the huge need of workers in the HVAC field as well. So yeah, and once again, having automation brought to that, that industry will be we’ll be helping them make, make their way through COVID as well. Kelly (14:01):Absolutely. And super interestingly, I know a lot of our clients have talked about the demand in commercial buildings, really not reducing very much, even though they’ve gone from, you know, thousands of people being at the building to, you know, 10 people being in these, you know 500 to a million square foot buildings in New York after, after people vacate it. So I think it’s a call to action, certainly for, for, you know, what are we doing in the buildings right now and what can we do to be more grid responsive in the future. You focus in on high school students specifically. Can you tell tell us a little bit more about, you know, why that is? Why is that the prime market that you’ve kind of gone after? Jon (14:49):Yeah actually, I would label it as market because honestly we are looking at this as a, a business positive move, because I mean, the one thing to know is stacks and joules is actually, we’re a nonprofit workforce program. So we do have a nonprofit…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
