AutomatedBuildings.com has scheduled four educational sessions for this year’s AHR Expo. The 2017 AHR Expo will be held Jan. 22-24 at McCormick Place in Chicago.

On Monday, Jan. 22, 9:30 a.m., AutomatedBuildings.com will present “The Future of Building Automation — Data at the Open Intelligent Edge.” The session will ask, “How does the building automation industry make the transformation that it needs to undergo?” Discussion will focus on the shift in thinking and action that will be needed in order to deal with rapid changes.

Ken Sinclair founder, owner, and publisher of AutomatedBuildings.com will moderate the presentation. Presenters include Brad White, P.E., MASc Principal SES Consulting Inc. and contributing editor of AutomatedBuildings.com, and Scott Cochrane, president and CEO of Cochrane Supply & Engineering MSI. More presenters will be named at a later date.

A panel discussion titled "Growing the Open Intelligent Edge" will be held Monday, Jan. 22 at 1:30 p.m. According to the organizers, intelligent edge computing changes machine learning's location bringing more power with an autonomous personality even closer to the edge while providing the foundation for a decentralized architecture creating machine distributed collaboration. The panel will provide their opinions and insights on growing and connecting edge data services with the goal of self-driving buildings with greater occupant interaction.

Presenters include White, Therese Sullivan, principal of BuildingContext Ltd. and contributing editor at AutomatedBuildings.com; and Anto Budiardjo of Fractional Entrepreneur.

On Tuesday, Jan 23 at 9:30 a.m. a panel discussion will be held titled "Are Master System Integrators Becoming the New Building Data Architects?" Speakers will provide their thoughts on this concept and will then continue the discussion based on audience questions and open conversation. Topics will include: defining an MSI and their role as service providers, how MSIs can maximize the evolving intelligent edge, unlocking the power of people to generate new data, strategies to accomplish working data designs, embracing online convergence to achieve valuable end results, and more.

Cochrane, White, and others will act as presenters for this session with Sinclair moderating.

On Tuesday Jan. 23 at 1:30 p.m. a panel discussion will be held called "How will we create value from our new found edge data and bring it back to the hive to discover new ways of providing comfort, health, satisfaction in our buildings?"

Presenters for this discussion include Andy McMillan, strategy consultant and president of BACnet International; Troy Davis, sales director at EnOcean Inc.; John Petze of Project Haystack and executive director principal of SkyFoundry; Trevor Palmer, vice president of controls product management for Acuity Brands Lighting Inc.; and Marc Petock, chief communications officer and vice president of marketing for Lynxspring.

The presenters will provide their thoughts on productivity, occupant engagement, and comfort.

For more information, visit www.AutomatedBuildings.com.