IES Annual Conference:  Attendance up 15%

IES was an excellent Annual Conference, and Boston proved to be a great venue. Congratulations to Chair Megan Carroll, who, with the help of staff and many volunteers put on a great conference.  Each year, we are seeing steady improvements and the AC is a wonderful metric validating the strength of our Society is as it continues to evolve and improve.

Congratulations to Rita Harrold who received the coveted IES Marks Award and Dr. Jennifer Veitch who received the Medal Award.

Ready Reference Guide App

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the conference, your humble editor downloaded the new Ready Reference Guide to my iPhone and it is one of the best tools the Society has produced in a decade—and it took half that time to produce it.

      • The app is free at the AppStore and Google Play and you do not need to be an IES member. Simply search for Ready Reference Guide and it pops up.
        • Illuminance Tables
        • The Principals of Quality Lighting
        • Definitions (RP16)
        • Light and Vision
        • The Principals of Color
        • Glare
        • Daylight
        • Electric Light Soures and Peripheral Equipment
        • Luminaire Optics
        • Lighting Controls
        • Luminaire Classifications
        • Exterior Lighting Zones
        • The Lighting Design Process
        • Energy Efficiency, Codes, Sustainability
        • Lighting System Maintenance
        • Light Loss Factors
        • Lighting EconomicsBelow are the key sections:
  • There is a calculator button for: Room Cavity Ratio ROI, Payback, Average Maintained Illuminance, Total Energy Costs, and Yearly Energy Savings.
  • There is a wonderful search feature. For example one simply types “illuminance” in the search bar and every article with illuminance populates.
  • Also, we Americans use periods to depict decimals, yet Canada and Europe use a comma. The app recognizes both!  Remember IES is converting everything to LUX and the metric system.  The app is available in English today and will be in Spanish and French soon.
  • Congrats to IES Board member, François-Xavier Morin, who is the “father” of the app. He began discussing it at board meetings five years ago and shepherded it to fruition. Tom Butters was the staff person who managed the day-to-day development.  X. emphasized that this is the app’s very first version and that this tool will get improvements on future release. Also, the IES has created a dedicated email address for constructive improvement comments, [email protected]

Progress Report

We love the IES Progress Report as it is the best humor in our industry and this year was no exception.  Leslie Davis gave the introduction and announced that the report was dedicated to the late Bill Hanley, IES Executive Vice President.  She went on to say, “Bill always loved the Progress Report.” I had to chuckle and almost expected to see an asterisk on the slide.  With 500 people in the audience and with one or two skits that could be a bit risqué, historically there were always a few critics that were offended and Bill had to deal with their wrath.   Because the report has been published since 1911, it is also a reflection of the Society’s (and society’s) shared values at that time and there have been many off-color comments over the years.  Bill would get the phone calls.  But I do agree with Leslie overall, he did love the Progress Report.

While the humor is always appreciated and mostly well received, the Progress Report is a tremendously valuable tool as it reflects the state of our industry.  Mark Lien made a few important points to the audience:

  • There were 104 products recognized by the Progress Report. Eaton had seven products recognized.  Acuity, Hubbell and Signify had five. Current, Powered by GE had three. We remember one Progress Report where GE, before they Powered Current, had 0 products accepted.
  • There were eight companies having product accepted for the first time, which I thought was a significant number, until Lien explained that the prior year had 20 products from new companies and in 2016, there were 26 products by first-time companies. This validates what we are seeing as there are fewer new companies in our industry.  While Lighting has always been a mature industry, LED has transformed us. And now our industry is once again maturing. Fewer new players and fewer older players.
  • Lien emphasized that only 13 accepted products were based on efficiency—a sign that our terrible metric, lumens per watt, is finally beginning to wane. Many accepted products were based on smaller size (nano) and communications with Bluetooth really taking the lead.

Dr. Craig Bernecker and R. Taylor gave a talk entitled, “Surprises from Connected Lighting Installations.”  They presented videos of installers trying to commission controls via their smart phone.  The laborers fumbled as the tried their best to follow the instructions in the app.   Bernecker used humor to make a very valid point, which is that manufacturers easy-to-follow instructions are anything but.

During the IES Awards Luncheon, Dr. Steven Lockley of the Sleep Division at Harvard Medical School gave an informative presentation on spectral sensitivities and the best possible spectrum for both sleep and alertness.  His discussion contrasted some of the other discussions and thinking regarding the effects of spectrum on sleep. This talk received very positive feedback.

 

 

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