Hi Jason,

I like the format that you are supporting right now. But if you transition
to another platform, I'll get behind it.

I haven't been particularly active on this list for a while, but I have
mined out archives in the last 12 months. Ditto Nick's point. Archive
searching has been very helpful. In this respect, it is useful to access
the archive locally and leverage email metadata. Many web platforms do not
provide this granularity of search.

Cheers

Chris

On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 8:34 AM Nicholas Caton via Bldg-sim <

Hi David,

On the unmethours.com website, when you sign-in and go to your account settings, you have the option of setting up email updates which means that you can have all of unmethours pushed to your email inbox or just certain tags within unmethours. See the screenshot below for the way my settings are configured:

[cid:image001.png at 01D6CD7E.DBF099C0]

Alex Chapin PE, BEMP, LEED AP BD+C, O+M
Energy Engineer | Mason & Hanger
A Day & Zimmermann Company
O 804.521.7072
4880 Sadler Road, Suite 300 | Glen Allen, VA 23060
masonandhanger.com

An ISO 9001 Certified Company

Building a More Secure World ?

CAUTION - THIS EMAIL MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION

This electronic mail transmission and any accompanying documents may contain information belonging to the sender, which may be proprietary, confidential, and/or otherwise subject to restrictions on disclosure beyond the intended recipient. This information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to whom this electronic mail transmission was sent as indicated above. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or action taken in reliance on the contents of the information contained in this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please call 1-703-955-5702 and delete this transmission. Thank you.

And here?s the search on a Discourse forum, which looks more flexible than Unmet Hours.

[cid:image001.png at 01D6CD6E.DE119840]

I was personally involved with that ?wiki? effort, and I am glad you reminded me Anthony. ?Lessons learned? with that experience may be helpful to collect for Jason while considering options for this transition, if anyone else has any memories from that experiment.

I recall (years later, mind) that the wiki was not intended to replace, but rather to augment/supplement the mailing lists. The function of the wiki was to create a better place to archive/publish specific sorts of threads/content involving lots of imagery. Icing on the cake would have been the capability to allow for collaborative contributions/editing/cross-linking/tagging, so that these articles/guides could benefit from many perspectives and grow to become a more useful/accessible archive of information over time.

At that time, I was a little more active in generating step by step guides (that I would later reference and re-send into the lists as topics resurfaced) with lots of deliberate text formatting (color, indents, bullets, etc.) & imagery to help others pick up on a procedure or process/feature. A shortcoming of the mailing list archives (then and now) is that text formatting typically ends up totally stripped, and images would be un-inserted and retained (if at all) as a series of cryptically named attachments instead of in-line with the text, as originally composed. The wiki looked like a worthy experiment to circumvent that set of archival issues, and better capture that sort of material for easier access and retention.

The wiki effort kinda fizzled in large part (I think) because a wiki-based platform requires of the target audience/community: (1) a small but meaningful increase in effort/time to access/search for information, relative to the fully automated mailing list option that brings the content to you, and (2) for contributors, a LOT more time/effort (relative to emails) to contribute and deal with formatting/tagging/etc. A minor contributing factor may have also been ?contributor fragmentation? as around the same time period IBPSA was trying to launch a wiki effort with similar goals (I do not recall exactly what extent these efforts overlapped on a timeline). Either initiative might have seen a lot more immediate growth/success all the involved contributing parties were consolidated into one effort.

I think a wiki may remain an ideal format for something like the doe-2 reference/engineering manual, or similar large bodies of relatively static work that could benefit from infrequent & disparate (but peer-reviewed) edits/additions from time to time.

As it stands, we can all recognize active contribution/participation on the mailings lists remains a high hurdle for the community at large. I think the main hurdles preventing more active contribution from the community include:

* Participation takes time/effort out of the day. It?s hard for most with jobs including energy simulation to justify fitting something like emailing strangers a priority. A new platform should place ease of accessibility (reading and contributions) as a penultimate priority. Access to read/contribute/search should ideally require a few clicks as possible.
* Ego ? I think a lot of engineers suffer a mental hurdle in asking questions or responding in a public forum. It?s a tall order in some work environments/cultures to open up and admit ?I don?t know something,? especially in a public forum where your admission ends up ?on the record.? As a younger engineer especially I would get really hung up on this, until I figured out the people asking the most questions were often the smartest ones in the room. A new platform might pick up a few more questions, especially from new and intermediate modelers, if it?s easy to submit queries in an anonymous fashion?
* Propriety ? It can be hard to ask a question sometimes (and especially attach a model) when the nature of the post/question can result in a clear line of identification to an active project, customer, or company. The same concerns can make it difficult to share a working example/solution when you see someone ask for something at your fingertips. We all want to be good stewards of potentially sensitive information. It would be neat if a new platform could offer solutions to make it easier to ask questions anonymously, perhaps someday including scripts and/or guides to ?anonymize? project files to make it easier to upload with confidence.

~Nick

[cid:image001.jpg at 01D6CECA.75ECD7E0]
Nick Caton, P.E. (US), BEMP
??? ????, P.E. (US), BEMP
Senior Energy Engineer
Energy Manager, Yokota Airbase
ESS - Energy & Sustainability Services
M JP
M US
Email
+81 . 070 . 3366 . 3317
+1 . 785 . 410 . 3317
nicholas.caton at se.com
?????????????
???????????????
ESS - ?????????????

[cid:image002.png at 01D6CECA.75ECD7E0]
[cid:image003.png at 01D6CECA.75ECD7E0]
[cid:image001.jpg at 01D6CECA.75ECD7E0]

Hi all

The "general purpose" nature of this group is very good. We've got
specialists in weather, M&V, and many of us are touching on other subjects
such as CFD, daylight and thermal bridging, or have interests in
Passivhaus. There are commercial users, academics and specialists. Software
users are represented from DOE2 through the full range of commercial
software. I definitely believe in the vast wealth of experience in this
group and in its continuing ability to inform - both one another and a new
generation of modelers. It would be easy to throw out the baby with the
bathwater, so let's deliberate on this as much as we need to and try to
gain a concensus.

I actually feel that the move to unmet hours has diluted this group. It
gave some benefits but it's divided our efforts. Perhaps any move should be
combined with efforts to re-consolidate our community and "woo back" those
separatists on unmet hours!

We could use google groups perhaps. In many ways, it gives similar
functionality to a list-server (you're so 90's Jason!). You get messages
relayed on email and you can answer on the forum or just by replying to
email. You can choose to receive all messages or a digest. Subscriber
emails are in the public domain. The search tools on the forum are google,
so you know they're good.

LBNL THERM has a group set up on there already:
https://groups.google.com/g/lbnl-therm

Ready to give a bit more of our souls to Larry and Sergey?

Chris

On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 9:40 AM Karen Walkerman via Bldg-sim <

Some thoughts/history on the IBPSA-USA BEMBook Wiki, one of the wikis...

As Nick noted, this Wiki was not intended to replace email lists. The
thinking was that there could be a 3-level hierarchy of 1) email
lists/Unmethours, 2) the Wiki, and 3) BEM Library. Issues that were
frequently discussed on the email lists could be captured in the
crowd-sourced Wiki, and then some of those topics could be formalized in a
curated library (https://www.bemlibrary.com/)

Here's the link to the Wiki: bembook.ibpsa.us. It has not been maintained
for several years now. At the time, there was an editorial committee of
IBPSA-USA members who reviewed contributions. Prior to setting up the wiki,
the IBPSA-USA Education Committee developed an outline called the BEMBook
Body of Knowledge, which was a list of topics they thought energy modelers
should know about. That list forms the contents page of the wiki:
https://bembook.ibpsa.us/index.php?title=Knowledge_Area_Table_of_Contents#practitionersbemoverview
.

I think there were a few problems with the idea and implementation of the
wiki, but one of the main problems was the idea of publishing an outline in
which most of the topics had no content. There is some useful content, but
most of the links lead to empty pages, making navigation frustrating.

It was also tough to get good contributions. Some of the current content
was written by people provided with modest honorariums to kick-start the
process. Other pages were written by students as a condition of receiving
an IBPSA conference travel scholarship.

There was also a bit of a learning curve to creating pages in the Wiki,
which was a barrier to people adding content.

Regarding the future, I think that a Wiki could be useful as a place for
commonly used reference information to reside. A few things that come to
mind are tables of material thermal data, performance curves for generic
HVAC equipment, and typical operation schedules. Each of us may have our
own go-to reference sources that we've identified over time. Perhaps we can
share via a Wiki. Perhaps folks have better ideas?

-Erik

*Erik Kolderup, PE, LEED AP*
erik at kolderupconsulting.com | 415.531.5198 | www.kolderupconsulting.com

From: Nicholas Caton

Hi Karen ? I for one smiled to see you pop up over the last week ? it has been some time!

There were certainly years I would have personally benefited from attending something like an ?energy modelers anonymous? support group. A little time to hold the baton, vent about my day, gather a little outside perspective/mentorship from others who have walked a similar path, and listen in on others doing the same would have been very good medicine in times of particular stress/difficulty.

I was very fortunate in my earlier career years to work alongside some very skilled and impactful mentors in Architectural and MEP design/specification engineering. It was however many years into my career before I shifted into a role/environment with direct mentorship of others who had made a career centered around energy analysis, willing and able to provide me actionable constructive feedback to relieve me from some of the pains/inefficiencies I developed ?on an island? and I wasn?t even aware of. Those inefficiencies stemmed from a mixture of both technical and non-technical lessons yet unlearned. There is so much to learn and develop through practice/execution that can make the job of energy analysis and building energy simulation so much easier. For known unknowns: A lot of it cannot be found in a book, classroom, or google search. A lot of it was ?unknown unknowns? for me personally.

Karen, if you?re up for organizing a single discussion or a recurrence around these themes, please add me to the invite list! I expect these mailing lists are a fully appropriate venue to advertise such a meeting, as well.

On the aside ? ?working on an island? sounds like a GREAT idea (and timely, given the global shift towards working at home) for a non-technical panel discussion, if anyone is actively brainstorming for a future conference or similar.

Best wishes,

~Nick

[cid:image001.jpg at 01D6CFF7.D0255E70]
Nick Caton, P.E. (US), BEMP
??? ????, P.E. (US), BEMP
Senior Energy Engineer
Energy Manager, Yokota Airbase
ESS - Energy & Sustainability Services
M JP
M US
Email
+81 . 070 . 3366 . 3317
+1 . 785 . 410 . 3317
nicholas.caton at se.com
?????????????
???????????????
ESS - ?????????????

[cid:image002.png at 01D6CFF7.D0255E70]
[cid:image003.png at 01D6CFF7.D0255E70]
[cid:image001.jpg at 01D6CFF7.D0255E70]

Hi David,

On the unmethours.com website, when you sign-in and go to your account settings, you have the option of setting up email updates which means that you can have all of unmethours pushed to your email inbox or just certain tags within unmethours. See the screenshot below for the way my settings are configured:

[cid:image001.png at 01D6CD7E.DBF099C0]

Alex Chapin PE, BEMP, LEED AP BD+C, O+M
Energy Engineer | Mason & Hanger
A Day & Zimmermann Company
O 804.521.7072
4880 Sadler Road, Suite 300 | Glen Allen, VA 23060
masonandhanger.com

An ISO 9001 Certified Company

Building a More Secure World ?

CAUTION - THIS EMAIL MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION

This electronic mail transmission and any accompanying documents may contain information belonging to the sender, which may be proprietary, confidential, and/or otherwise subject to restrictions on disclosure beyond the intended recipient. This information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to whom this electronic mail transmission was sent as indicated above. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or action taken in reliance on the contents of the information contained in this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please call 1-703-955-5702 and delete this transmission. Thank you.

I love the idea of transitioning to a more modern platform. I like the job board idea Nick mentioned. Search & attachment functionality is a big deal and I would also hope that the archives could get transferred, but even if they can?t, I wouldn?t consider it a reason to stick with status quo. I?ve found the existing search functionality to be clunky at best as I often can?t find threads that I know to exist, which has forced me to save the ones I deem important directly to my own outlook (not ideal).

I recall an energy simulation ?wiki? idea gaining some traction years ago which I think is less preferable than a modern forum. If we?re comparing resources, I think unmethours has the best platform and functionality from a user perspective, followed by energy-models.com.

Having said all that, I also love the community here and am tremendously grateful for all the work and effort behind the onebuilding lists.

Anthony Hardman, PE, BEAP, LEED AP BD+C
Senior Building Performance Analyst, Owner
The Green Engineer
Sustainable Design Consulting
23 Bradford Street, 1st Floor, Concord, MA 01742
Direct: 978.341.5459 | Office: 978.369.8978
E: anthony at greenengineer.com