This document discusses using crowdsourcing and open standards to build a comprehensive building product information database. It proposes collecting product data directly from architects, engineers, and other AEC professionals as they do their daily work, rather than relying solely on manufacturers. If professionals spent just a few minutes each day adding and verifying product data, over time it could result in the most complete building product database, organized using open standards and built by the crowd.

1. Hi – I’m Marc Goldman, Director of Strategy for TBBN.
Make some joke about the long title…
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Flashback 300 years - 1714 –
British Board of Longitude, seeking a solution to measure longitude accurately (within 50
miles!), in an effort to reduce the thousands of deaths caused due to near-land shipwrecks
The Board of Longitute launched a Crowd source campaign with an award of 20,000 British
Pounds – roughly 7mil US in today’s dollars.

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John Harrison - a woodworker turned clock-maker designed, built and demonstrated a series
of machines that

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Evolved from the complex device you see here…

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To the M4 Marine Pocket Clock.

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At sea, you can tell the time by looking at the position of the sun.

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If you then knew the time in a distant place with known longitude…
A fixed place in Greenwhich England, –

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You could use the difference in time to calculate your own longitude.

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. Each four minutes of difference translated into one degree difference in longitude.
Crowd and community sourcing led to the invention and creation of the Marine Pocket Clock –
Crowd and community sourcing helped to solve what was considered an almost unsolvable
problem.

10. Many people believe this was the first public crowd or community source project.
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11. More recently, the Toyota Logo Contest – over 27,000 entries were received in 1936 when the
Toyota company held their crowdsource logo contest – the winning design has the three
Japanese katakana letters for “Toyoda”
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12. The Sydney Opera House – One of over 200 entries for the international design competition.
The story goes that during the judging of the competition one of the judges, renowned
American architect, Eero Saarinen, arrived in Sydney after the other three judges had started
assessing the entries. He looked through their rejected entries and stopped at the Utzon
design, declaring it to be outstanding.
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13. Wikipedia – A Crowd source and Open Source example of information and knowledge
collection.
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14. American Idol – The first US entry into crowdsourcing contests that aim to produce an album,
a cook book or a superstar (along with entertainment for 1 billion plus people).
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15. YouTube – By far, the largest collection of video content – searchable, sortable, personalized
and more. Crowd and Community sourced content.
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16. And not long after that, the term “Crowdsourcing” was coined.
All examples of Crowd and Community Sourcing. Coordinating a CROWD to do MICRO-
WORK that solves PROBLEMS.
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Back to Wikipedia - Crowdsourced by the very nature of you or I having permission and rights
to add new content and edit the live content of this amazing source of information and
knowledge. And Wikipedia itself is built on a free open source WIKI platform and various open
source technologies.

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A number of open source solutions you might be familiar include Apache Solr, Sugar, Java and
eXo – these and other open source platforms drive various current and future offerings from
The Blue Book, where we manage, index, deliver, process and curate data for over a million
AEC company listings, 120,000 commercial construction projects annually, with complete
document sets which we privately deliver over 4,000,000 messages per month related to that
stream of projects.
We rely heavily on Open Source to allow us to be innovative and agile as we deliver
technology and information for the AEC industry.

19. We also rely on, and work closely with various Open Standards working towards the goal of
contributing to the definition and implementation of information.
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20. Throughout this conference this stage will be shared by the experts and proponents of AEC
Open Standards. The usage and importance of these Open Standards has grown for our
industry over the years, and the usage and importance will only increase.
In fact, I see great opportunity for The Blue Book Network to embrace these Open Standards
even moreso as we work on solving New and Next business problems – whose solutions, I
believe presents a great opportunity to various AEC stakeholders – including hopefully you.
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With those definitions as background and with that interesting story about a woodcrafter
inventing the pocket watch who was inspired by a crowdsource contest…
• I’ll move onto a business problem & opportunity that serves you, your firm and the industry
we love.
• I’ll get into technology and system architecture related to that opportunity
• We’ll come back around to Crowd sourcing, Open Source and Open Standards
• Give you an opportunity to get involved

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First - Quick show of hands – Who is familiar with The Blue Book Network?
You probably know us for our print and online directory and database of the companies & the
people of Architecture, Engineering and Construction. We’ve been collecting, categorizing,
qualifying, curating and serving this information to the AEC industry for 100 years. Today, our
database is comprised of over 1 and a half million entries with a depth, breadth and richness
of information unequalred.
For more than 15 years we’ve been leveraging this data allowing contractors and owners to
be more productive in various project workflows. Last year we processed over 120,000
commercial construction projects with drawings and specs.
For the past 5 years we’ve applied many of these principles towards the Building Product
Manufacturer industry by indexing the millions and millions of pages and documents from the
15,000 websites of the North American manufacturers and the 10s of thousands distributors,
installers and supply chain related to those manufacturers.

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Currently, I’m leading our Product Information Division,
with the mission and goal of Delivering the most complete and accurate Sales & Marketing
Solutions For Building Product Manufacturers while significantly improving the workflows for
AEC professionals.

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Our mission to deliver information-based and data-rich solutions for Building Product
Manufacturers exists within the context of the building project timeline and workflow. A
workflow that begins at pre-project planning, moves through preliminary and final design and
moves onto contracts, procurement, construction and operations.
OUR MISSION TO DELIVER INFORMATION-BASED AND DATA-RICH SOLUTIONS FOR
BUILDING PRODUCT MANUFACTURERS SERVES THE MANUFACTURE:
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so they can help their stakeholders with estimating, value-engineering, product searching,
pricing, scheduling and ongoing program management.
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so they can help their internal and external sales, marketing and support organizations who
market, consult, aggregate, configure, fulfil and montitor product performance.
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so they advertise their products, deliver technical data (BIM & CAD), fulfil request for
clarificaiton, deliver submittals, shop-drawings and operating manuals & ongoing diagnostic
support information.
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Our mission addresses the challenge of Building Product Information Distribution.

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Nearly every manufacturer we work with, for that matter, every manufacturer whom I’ve
worked with in my 20+ years in the AEC industry struggles with this issue.

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They struggle to keep their brochures, spreadsheets, price-lists, CAD & BIM, and various
other Product Information sources up to date and available in a timely manner to their various
audiences.

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But what if someone with an expertise in information collection & organization could help that
manufacture.

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More specifically, what if that information could be organized and structured as a Building
Product Information Model?

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An information model that exists within a Building Product Information Service.

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And what if we could do this for many, no ALL of the manufacturers in a profitable way,
because there is a great economy of scale with repeatable big-data problems such as this.

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What if we could deliver the attributes, performance characteristics and product artifacts in
tools, websites and digital workflow tools built by The Blue Book AND built by other software
and web services.

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We would be able to connect this data to digital workflows produced and monitored by The
Blue Book Network as well as 3rd parties
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We would be able to support 21st century capabilities, such as Facet-based Search – Amazon-
like search for Building Products.
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We would have a web service that connects product attributes and performance requirements
with Estimating and Take-off
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We would have be able to connect and integrate product information with Facility Management
workflows
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We would have an offering that allows BIM objects to stay light and lean by connecting with a
web-service that hold the attributes and performance information which can be heavy and
varies throughout the project lifecycle.

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Such an offering would allow for data to be collected not only related to the specific product,
but such an offering would allow data to be collected on product usage.
We could help the manufacture to better understand when, where and how their product
information was accessed. And we could convert this information into sales and marketing
solutions for the Manufacturer.

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This “self-fulfilling” information-based and data-rich service, funded by the Manufacturer would
deliver a wide range of End User Benefits, such as Product Search, Comparison, intergration
into Design & Spec tools, help with installation detailing and ongoing maintenance concerns.

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Something about Mfr solutions needs to go here
Business Intelligence
Firm + Project Leads
BI(M) Data Mgmt
Sales & Marketing Solutions

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From the AEC Practitioners point of view will deliver solutions that allow architects,
contractors, engineers and Facility Mgrs to FIND and ACT-ON product information!
• *** CLICK *** Data-driven websites – whether it’s the manufacturer’s websites;
aggregator’s websites like bpmselect.com; or even google, bing, etc. All would benefit from
a connection to a Building Product Info Service
• *** CLICK *** Visual product selection –
• *** CLICK *** Product Comparisons
• *** CLICK *** Specification Builder
• *** CLICK *** Submittal Packet Assistant
• *** CLICK *** Digital Product Library

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We can develop and deliver a much better way for the manufacturer to organize and present
their content & metadata. A solution that lets the Mfr manage and control their data in one
place, accessible in all their information-based services.

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TBBN uses a web services to connect with various databases from mfrs and others. We
aggregate via web-services

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----- Meeting Notes (8/14/14 10:21) -----
remove web services from text twice.

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So, why do we want to apply Open Standards and Crowdsourcing to help solve the problem of
filling our Building Product Information Service?

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47. Provide an accessible, common, language independent, open standard-based structure for
organizing terminology so that access and exchange of information can occur between
applications, databases, processes and standards used across the facility life-cycle
A reference library intended to support improved interoperability in the building and
construction industry, and is one of the core components of the buildingSMART data
standards programme.
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48. And…how does Open Standards apply?
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49. And…how does Open Standards apply?
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50. Recall the many mfrs whose content need to be organized. Most industry sources state
approx. 15,000 mfrs serve the US AEC industry. We work hard to create business relationship
with these company.
However, none of those industry sources, including The Blue Book have customer relations
with more than 10% of those 15,000.
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51. So how does a company get the product info from the remaining 13,500 manufacturers
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52. I believe from the consumers of the information. From the designers, specifiers, installers,
purchasing agents, submittal managers, facility managers, commissioning agents and other
AEC practitioners. From you.
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53. From surveys I’ve conducted and confirmed through independent research, AEC professionals
You spend 30 – 60% of your time seeking, finding, searching retrieving and organizing
Building Product Information. You store for immediate use and in some cases you organize it
and store it for future use. In a few, very few cases across the 100’s of thousands of
consumers of this information – you think about structuring or saving it in a solution that severs
your long-term needs.
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54. What if many of you spent just a few minutes as part of your research
Or, if some of you spent a 30 minutes every day…
Or if just a very very small group, spent ½ your day adding, editing or confirming the settings,
attributes, and performance data for the manufacturers products which you use.
What if you could do this in the context of your daily tasks?
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55. The result would be a the Most Complete and Accurate Building Product Database created
with Open Standards built by you.
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