My wife, Jane, and I were very pleased to be honored with last year's Vision award at BuilConn 2005 in Dallas. This award, chosen by more than 400 of our peers, was given to us as the folks who best support the vision of networked building systems. As BuilConn Europe 2005 in Amsterdam has passed and BuilConn 2006 in Palm Springs, CA in May 2006 rapidly approaches, we feel compelled to dig out our future vision glasses and peer into our IT-centric future to try and restore the faith of those who called us visionaries.
All my visions for 2006 include a new ingredient I like to call virtual value. I think we all know what the word value means, but adding the word virtual requires some clarification. There are a lot of definitions for the word virtual but the one I like is "existing only in software." It is a simple definition and lets me drive home my vision of virtual value.