This is the fourth year that David J. Branson, senior vice president, Compliance Services Group, Inc., and I have provided these sessions. This unique industry venue allows us to present the program free of charge and free of product influence on topics that we hope are of great interest to the industry. The AHR Expo is an extremely well-attended event, and this has allowed us to have excellent attendance with fantastic interactions from the industry attendees.

A Packed Slate

Improving Occupancy Integration With Web Technology

We feel that this is a hot topic as our industry has a limited window of opportunity to achieve successful convergence to Web-based clients.

This session will examine "occupant-integrated" HVAC controls discussing the following concepts:

• The fact that occupants served by our industry's comfort systems are connected to wide area networks, including the Internet, and yet almost none of them can connect in any way to their local comfort system to request changes in thermal or lighting levels in the space they occupy.
• That from a worker performance perspective, it is extremely wasteful that we are not aggressively pursuing such individual comfort control connections.
• That our HVAC controls industry seems unable to replace old technologies, but is inclined to patch newer technologies on to the old layers.
• Building operations and maintenance is becoming Internet-based with fewer operations personnel in individual buildings.
• The birth of the super operator and creating a support network for them.
• The danger facing the industry that if we do not grow rapidly enough to provide this value-added service, there are a host of information systems and information technology (ISITs) types who will. If we do not change, changes will come from outside our industry.

Nurturing the Necessary Network

This session examines some trends surfacing in the area of network sharing of building automation data.

Topics that will be discussed include:

• What to consider in determining which BAS data should be preserved.
• Approaches to capturing and maintaining building automation data sets.
• Methods for sharing data between applications on the network.
• Avoiding clutter and conflicts between network segments.

Update On Proprietary Perspectives On Interoperability

This session examines some of the emerging technologies and industry concerns.

Topics that will be discussed include:

• Self-configuring controls;
• Distributed systems;
• Interoperability within subsystems and between systems;
• Interface gateways; and
• Handling legacy technologies.

Implementing Web-Based Facility Operations

This session will explore implementing the concepts outlined in the AutomatedBuildings.com and Engineered Systems' joint venture, "A Guide to Web-Based Facilities Operation" that was a supplement in the Engineered Systems August 2002 issue, and is available online at www.esmagazine.com/CDA/ArticleInformation/features/BNP__Features__Item/0,2503,81492,00.html or at www.automatedbuildings.com/news/aug02/articles/ksin/ksin.htm>

If you are planning to come to the Chicago AHR Expo, please join us for any or all of these free show-sponsored sessions and voice your thoughts on the future of Web-based operations. Be sure to thank International Exposition Co. for these free show-sponsored sessions. ES