Haystack Connect 2023 Recap

Last week the Project Haystack community celebrated 10 years of Haystack Connect in Nashville, Tennessee. It was also the first time back in person since Covid. It was energizing for our team to reconnect, engage, and collaborate with other professionals.  

Kicking off the event was the main plenary session, presented by the co-executive board: Richard McElhinney, Nick Gayeski, and Alex Rohweder. Haystack is more than just a data model. It is a data standard, an open source connectivity framework, and most importantly a community. Simply said, Project Haystack is a complete data standard (that includes tagging and models) that can be implemented as a connectivity framework to seamlessly integrate building automation (the OT) with community products and services providing data and value (the IT). 

Roger Quesnel, Executive Board Member, provided an update on the multi-year Buildings Energy Efficiency Frontiers & Innovation Technologies (BENEFIT) project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Building Technologies Office (BTO). The project just hit its first milestone and is going well, with the initial creation of Xeto technology. 

The most exciting announcement at Haystack Connect was details about Xeto (eXtendable, Explicitly Typed Objects), presented by Brian Frank, Technical Lead, Project Haystack and Jason Briggs. Project Xeto brings together three important aspects that make the adoption of the data standard more accessible to everyone. First is the ability to define a "spec," a collection of points that make up standard equipment and their associated tags. Then, create tools that can validate projects using these standard specs. Finally, a simple query of project data using these specs. This project is going to transform the way we use the Haystack Standard, and we are looking forward to seeing how it takes shape. Stay tuned! 

Other compelling presentations during the event were:

• Andy Frank's talk on Ontologies and Independent Data Layers, "What an IDL is not." (We did a blog post about IDLs recently). 
• Jessica Granderson from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory did a great job explaining "this technology is core to the future of buildings."
• Joseph Bohm, CEO of Dual Fuel Corp took us on a journey of how data analysis of boilers in New York City has made a successful business and company culture for his organization.
• Jeremy Wolfe, VP Sales Americas at J2 Innovations walked us through the multiple stakeholders that contribute to specifying and implementing Haystack.

Here are some photos from the event. Can't wait for the next one!