As a founding member of Project Haystack, J2 Innovations has been supporting the open data standards organization for over a decade. This year, we participated in the eighth bi-annual Haystack Connect through sponsorship and a variety of contributions from our team members.
The energy of the day was one of excitement for the future of the standard. Here's our recap of all the great activities and some insights from those who attended.
Julio Londono kicked off the Haystack Business Track with lots of examples of data standard success stories from J2 Innovations OEMs. It was amazing to see the wide range of use cases for tagging and data modeling represented in products and services based on the FIN Framework. From typical BAS and energy management to plant optimization to building IoT, the OEM success stories covered examples from EllisDon, City of Toronto, Blackstone, and SageGlass.
In addition, Julio shared a video case study from Brock University that leverages Haystack to unify and interpret data across their campus, using dashboards to promote sustainability through community engagement. Overall, his presentation illustrated how Haystack’s data standardization fosters interoperability, energy optimization, and actionable insights across diverse building environments.
Scott Muench curated a panel of industry pros from a variety of backgrounds to share their successes, challenges, and hopes for the future. On the panel were representatives from across the ecosystem — OEMs, system integrators, end users, developers, and other experts — all offering unique perspectives on how Project Haystack is being used in real-world applications.
Panelists discussed how Haystack tagging and modeling help streamline deployments, enable data interoperability, and unlock portfolio-wide analysis. They shared lessons learned, including the value of consistent tagging and the hurdles of standardization and onboarding. Looking ahead, the group expressed optimism about Haystack’s role in advancing digital twins and continued community-driven innovation. The conversation underscored Haystack’s growing impact and the collaborative effort needed to shape its future.
A crowd favorite at Haystack Connect is the Pitchefest, a rapid-fire format that allows participants 10 minutes to pitch "products and services" from the Haystack community. Our Managing Director, Matteo Pierone, pitched FIN Intelligence, our bold vision that brings Haystack tagging together with AI to power next-gen building automation. The presentation showcased three core pillars—Intelligent Tagging, Intelligent Assistant, and Intelligent Optimization—demonstrating how FIN Intelligence leverages semantic modeling, generative AI, and user-centric design to deliver prompts using natural language.
From helping engineers streamline tagging to giving energy managers and maintenance teams actionable insights to offering an AI-powered assistant (with a touch of personality), FIN Intelligence is built for flexibility, security, and scalability.
Gerard Huff, our Director of Training, presented in the Technical Track. He has been teaching the power of tagging and data modeling for almost 20 years. In his session, he set out to help share his insights on what works and what some of the challenges associated with implementing data modeling for projects.
Throughout the years, we have relied on documentation and best practices to determine the appropriate tags to use. The ongoing challenge is achieving greater consistency and completeness in tag implementation. Project Haystack has aided in standardization through Protos (prototypes). Now, Xeto assists in defining the tags used for points and equipment.
Gerard demonstrated how FIN has helped solve this through the use of equipment and point libraries in FIN DB Builder.
J2 Innovations, through our FIN Framework, has demonstrated that the use of Haystack tagging and data modeling has added a lot of value to our OEM partners' products and services. As the number of successful projects grows, so does the use of the Haystack Standard, making it more pervasive in the industry. Each of these projects and solutions, through the use of the data standard, is also now AI-ready and can easily leverage future technology developments such as FIN Intelligence.
As the industry has faced challenges in implementing tagging and data standards, J2 Innovations has been the leader in developing technology and workflows to streamline the implementation and deployment of modeled smart building data. Project Haystack continues to evolve in parallel with the introduction of Haystack 5 and Xeto. We see both continued support and alignment with FIN technology and Project Haystack Standard as an active participant in the growing ecosystem.
Topics from this blog: J2 News & Events Project Haystack OEM Smart Buildings Company Life Industry FIN Intelligence
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