Unlocking the Power of PoE: Insights, Innovation, and the Future of Infrastructure

The podcast features an enlightening conversation with David Robinson, president of the POE Consortium, discussing the advancements and challenges in Power over Ethernet technology. Key topics include the evolution of PoE standards, growing industry adoption, the importance of collaboration, and future educational initiatives aimed at increasing awareness and implementation of PoE solutions.

• Overview of the POE Consortium and its mission 
• Evolution of PoE technology and protocols 
• Growing adoption across various industries and sectors 
• Importance of educational initiatives in overcoming technology hesitance 
• Collaboration between designers, manufacturers, and installers for better outcomes 
• Future goals for standardization and training within the industry

Chapters

• 0:00 The Power of Ethernet Consortium Influence
• 11:19 Innovations in Low Voltage Marketing Strategy
• 19:14 Collaborating for PoE Standardization

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey Wiremonkeys, welcome to another episode of let's Talk Cabling. We're checking in with the newly elected David Robinson of the POE Consortium. You better stay tuned.

Speaker 2: 0:10

Welcome to let's Talk Cabling, the award-winning podcast where knowledge is power and the low voltage industry connects. Hosted by Chuck Bowser, rcdd. We're here to empower installers, designers and industry pros with the tips, stories and best practices you need to stay ahead. From copper to fiber, standards to innovation, this is the show that keeps you plugged into success. So grab your tools, turn up the volume and let's talk cabling.

Speaker 1: 0:46

Welcome to the show where we tackle the tough questions submitted by installers, technicians, project managers, estimators, even customers. We're connecting at the human level so that we can connect the world. If you're watching this show on YouTube, would you mind hitting the subscribe button and that bell button to be notified when new content is being produced. Hitting the subscribe button and that bell button to be notified when new content is being produced. If you're following us on one of the audio podcast platforms, would you leave us a five-star rating? Those simple little steps helps us take on the algorithm so we can educate, encourage and enrich the lives of people in the ICT industry.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Wednesday night, 6 pm, eastern Standard Time. What are you doing? You know we do a live stream on TikTok, instagram, linkedin, facebook, anywhere that'll let me live stream to. We get to ask your favorite RCDD and you know that's me your favorite RCDD questions about installation, design, certification, project management, estimation and even do career path questions. But I can hear you now, but, chuck, I'm driving my truck at Wednesday, wednesday night's at 6 pm. I don't want to crash. I record them and you can watch them at your convenience.

Speaker 1: 1:51

And finally, while this show is free and will always remain free. Would you click on that QR code right there? You can buy me a cup of coffee, you can schedule a 15-minute one-on-one call with me after hours, of course, or you can even go in there and buy some t-shirts from Amazon. Yes, I do sell t-shirts on Amazon. So, as I was saying, the POE Consortium the leading organization which is trying to wrangle this thing we call POE Well, they just had their elections and I said you know what? It's a good time to get caught up with them, because I know a lot of people over the POE Consortium and the guest I have on today actually last time I recorded him, we actually were live, and so now we're doing it virtually because I'm still in Florida here. So, welcome to the show, david Robinson. How are you doing, my friend?

Speaker 3: 2:34

Yeah, chuck, thanks very much. I'm doing very well. Thanks, and yourself.

Speaker 1: 2:38

I'm doing good man. Funny thing is, you know it's a Monday. I usually try to record my podcast at noon and so I get in this work log on this morning and I send an email to one of my peers at my day job and I got back the out of office notification because it's a holiday. I'm like what?

Speaker 3: 2:54

it's a holiday, oops yeah, that, that doesn't resonate at all yeah, yeah, I didn't even catch it, I'm working. No problem, I'm working, yeah, yeah, I didn't even catch, it was a'm working.

Speaker 1: 3:03

No problem, I'm working. Yeah, I didn't even catch it, it was a holiday. So there you go. Life goes on right. So tell us a little bit about you, your experience, and share a little bit about the POE Consortium.

Speaker 3: 3:14

Yeah, thanks, chuck. Well, I've been in the lighting industry for more years than I want to remember I'm probably close to 35 years now and close to 35 years now and in that time I've covered various aspects of lighting, lighting design, but it was been on the technical side, always trying to push the boundaries, been in consulting, been in sales. But I think the area that we're most interested in now is pushing the boundary with technology, and I think it was about three years ago. I was contacted by a couple of industry-leading manufacturers who were wanting to put together a group of people, a group of common-minded people wanting to further the PoE industry and power over Ethernet that is. I still am the director of automation for Mecco and we were a little entity, not in the POE lighting industry at the time but more in the POE shading industry, and we were trying to push the boundaries with regards to what we could do in doing conventional or moving away from conventional line voltage shading installations with POE. So I thought it was a great opportunity. I aligned with people like Tyler Andrews and AK from MHT and we started talking about how we can all come together and, in essence, further the technology so that people become a little bit more comfortable with it, because the technology is not new's been around for decades.

Speaker 3: 4:45

But the application of utilizing it in in all the industries that we're all involved in and at the time it was predominantly lighting and shading we wanted to grow that, that acceptance, and almost do away with that fear factor, because it always comes back to that saying if nobody ever got fired for specifying IBM, so it's the fear factor.

Speaker 3: 5:08

And a lot of engineers, a lot of architects, they risk adverse, they are scared of adopting new technology and they just want to go with a tried and proven solution. So they'll typically take a specification off the shelf, dust off the dust and put it back on the street. The shelf, dust off the dust and put it back on the street. So at the time we started considering whether we should do white papers, whether we should do case studies, and then it came about. Well, let's rather form a group where we can all cohesively put forward the same front.

Speaker 3: 5:40

I mean, we're all manufacturers, we're all competitors, but we are friendly competitors with a single goal in mind and that is to actually further the adoption and the education of Power over Ethernet. As you recall, last year down in Orlando I was elected president of the POE consortium, taking over from Kim Johnson, who's big shoes to fill, but I had the support of a great board and the support of a lot of people that were active in POE. And here we are, a year later. They've put the trust back in me and we are really starting to push the boundaries now. We've been able to achieve a good few milestones during the course of my first year, but we've got bigger things to come.

Speaker 1: 6:32

We'll talk about those in just a minute. But you must have been doing a good job if they invited you to come back to be president again.

Speaker 3: 6:39

Yeah, I think I did. I bring a bit of a different element to the leadership, just in terms of I'm involved in lighting, but I'm not involved in lighting in terms of how we typically play. We typically control shades, which is controlling the largest light source out there, which is the sun. So I want to make sure that everybody else in that space can use the technology and promote the technology, and that's been my approach. So I'm a sort of I wouldn't say agnostic, but I'm an independent provider of information to the consortium.

Speaker 1: 7:19

See, that's why I think your background is going to be super helpful, even for another year, because one of the biggest things that I run into when I talk to people about POE either they've never heard of it or they think it's some kind of like magic. You know pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, you know that kind of a thing or they only think about POE for, like, cameras or wireless access points and POE is much larger than that and I think, with your experience, I think that's going to help drive the awareness for that as well. So you mentioned you finished 2024, right? What has evolved with PoE over just that last year?

Speaker 3: 7:58

I think what has evolved in the technology is the opening up of various protocols. We have found that we're starting to see a lot more companies interact with one another on a PoE platform and I think it's been advocated by the implementation of various interactive APIs giving the capability of two different systems being able to speak to one another, and I think that has seen adoption starting to grow. Yes, we do have headwinds. I'm not going to sit here and say it's all plain sailing for us and that was one of the objectives of what rocks did we have to turn over in 2024 to actually get to the root cause of the sluggishness of adoption of PoE and that we did actually successfully complete Right.

Speaker 1: 8:56

So you did actually have a couple of PoE people at Bixie this year. I saw Tyler and I actually kind of peeked my head in, said hi to the guys and stuff like that. What industries do you think are quickly adopting POE technology?

Speaker 3: 9:12

Look, it's still being spearheaded by the telecommunications side the POE cameras, but more now so on the sensing capability. Poe lighting is still one of the forerunners. However, we have identified that there are certain issues with regards to how POE was deployed in certain lighting installations. That has left a bit of a bitter taste in certain people's mouths. So we are now trying to ensure that those people can be brought back on board to facilitate the adoption of it. But we're just trying to gain members from various sectors of the industry that actually utilize PoE, and we've seen multiple new members join.

Speaker 3: 10:15

People from point of sale, believe it or not, Every time you go to a McDonald's or to Burger King, all those communications between devices, between where you order and the kitchen, that's all being fed over PoE. People are blissfully unaware of it. They just think it all, as you say, happens behind the curtain. So we are trying to ensure that these people in industries that are not well known for PoE are going to start getting publicity, and that's through the publication of case studies. We're really emphasizing that whenever anybody in the PoE industry has a success story, publish it as a case study, Because nothing more drives the message home where you've got potentially an owner on board supporting the technology that has been deployed in his installation and actually saying yes, PoE works for me, it's great. It saved me X, Y and Z. So that's what we're trying to do and we've had participation from a couple of people, which we're going to be publishing case studies later this year about that.

Speaker 4: 11:19

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Speaker 1: 12:02

Here's just a suggestion, and again I'm a lowly outsider. White papers are fantastic. Videos and shorts are better If you want to get quickly to the people. I mean, I love reading white papers, but I function in the worlds of technicians, installers and project managers and estimators. Their time is extremely valuable. They're going to say, oh yeah, there's a white paper. They're only going to read that white paper if somebody forces them to. But they will easily consume videos.

Speaker 1: 12:32

So maybe something you might want to kind of roll in with your plans for 2025 is maybe doing some shorts or videos to help maybe summarize a tech paper and say, look, if you want the more details, hey, go to the white paper published at whatever site.

Speaker 3: 12:49

Yeah, we're actually. Our marketing committee is actually actively on that and we're going to be using LinkedIn quite extensively, because it's an inexpensive and sometimes free platform where you can have a 20-second snippet and it then can take you to a-fold, 15-fold number of viewerships, and we've seen that with regards to our current publications. We get the statistics on what is actually being replicated out there in the industry and it's becoming one of those things that you need. Shorter is better. It's just that quick little message out there, people, it acts as a bit of bait when you're fishing and as soon as you hook it, you've got them.

Speaker 1: 13:40

I love that analogy because you're exactly right on. I mean, when I first started doing the whole podcast thing, the podcast is anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour, depending on who am I talking to and what the subject matter is but when I started doing the shorts, I tell you that the podcast really took off after that. It's not because people have just got to the point where they don't have attention spans, it's just we have so much stuff on our plates. I can think of everybody I know in this industry wears more than one hat, wears more than one hat, and we have very little time sometimes, so short snippets, like you were just saying on LinkedIn. By the way, you don't have to limit to 20 seconds. By the way, I've popped up to an hour of video on LinkedIn before, but a lot of people are not going to watch for the whole entire hour unless it's something that's specific. But the shorts are perfect for driving them to, like you said, the white papers to get more information, because you can't put everything all in a short video.

Speaker 3: 14:39

Yeah, I mean one of the things we were looking at doing, following our success at Bixie, as well as Nika, in terms of the masterclasses that we have presented and multiple of our, as you say, members presented this year in terms of the guide to POE, lighting and automation, we want to do shorter snippets that people can actually, instead of attending an eight-hour course spread over two days. We want to make sure that people can get the main sound bites over a 20-minute to 30-minute video, and this can be almost one of our sessions, condensed down in terms of really just picking up the highlights and making sure that people get that message.

Speaker 1: 15:23

Let's shift our conversation to talking about the future of PoE standards and innovation. So with the advancement of technology, it seems like there's always something new and better and bigger and faster coming out. Where do you see PoE heading in the next five years?

Speaker 3: 15:38

I see it staying within the current standard which the PoE Consortium has adopted to pursue, which is IEEE 802.3. There are technologies pushing beyond that boundary in terms of wattages being supported, but we are more aligned with utilizing what we've got, but also aligning with DC grids. Dc grids are going to become the way in which buildings are going to be designed. There's no two ways about that and if people can take those to POE as well as DC grids, I think they're on a successful design strategy in terms of how they can design future-proof buildings, the scope up to material that you can use. You are complying with a standard which is really accepted and adopted by multiple engineers and, as I said, a lot of engineers. If they haven't got a standard to fall back on, they don't want to specify it. So if they've got something that they can adhere to in terms of a national standard, we believe that is by far going to be the most accepted standard moving forward.

Speaker 1: 16:55

Well, you mentioned IEEE, right, they're very well known, especially in engineering circles. Any standards development maybe looking at to either create new or add to existing to cover PoE?

Speaker 3: 17:09

maybe it's going to need a lot of work and a lot of pushing from from our side because there, as I said, there are people going outside the scope of of IEEE standards currently and we we don't necessarily want to go there. We we have all built our devices, our technology, around the standard that that has been accepted, but that that doesn't mean that we know we wouldn't form alliances with other institutions and other bodies the FMP, for argument's sake, the fault-managed power side of it. Very interesting technology and by far that is again going to aid what people are doing on DC microgrids in terms of how they are designing spaces of the future.

Speaker 4: 17:58

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Speaker 1: 18:57

I'm really anxious to see how that kind of really all develops. My dad always used to say you know, in challenges there's opportunities. And I'll tell you, the old man was smarter than I ever gave him credit for when he was alive. I really wish he was alive today so I could tell him that. So you've mentioned some of the biggest challenges already with PoE implementation and needs to be addressed. How can the industries come together to overcome these challenges?

Speaker 3: 19:25

I think the way in which we can actually come together is, firstly, have a unified front in terms of how we approach this.

Speaker 3: 19:36

The only way we're going to achieve that is adhering to the same design ethic.

Speaker 3: 19:44

So within the POE Consortium, we've actually put a considerable amount of money behind this and we're actually engaging with independent consultants, design consultants, and we're coming up with a design library whereby we are standardizing symbols to be put on drawings, nomenclature as to what's going to be used Is it a node, is it a driver, is it a hub, is it whatever?

Speaker 3: 20:08

Same attributes to be used in Revit models. Let's all align with what needs to be included in that, with what needs to be included in that. If you can give specifiers confidence that they're not only looking at a single supplier or a single brand, that they've got multiple options in terms of how they can come up with a POE solution, I think the adoption of it will increase tenfold, because designers are not willing to put their neck out if there's a sole source of supply. You want to make sure that there are multiple people that can actually achieve the design intent and ultimately we stand for within the peer consortium, we stand for deployment of power over Ethernet technology and it can be from one of many manufacturers, but it's coming to a standardization of what people are putting forward.

Speaker 1: 21:03

That's actually smart because if you standardize the symbols on prints, the first person is going to see that's going to be the estimator, the second person is going to see it's the project manager, the third person is going to see it is the installer, and that's going to drive them to ask questions hey, what does this symbol mean? And then, where do I find the information on how to do this? Where do I get this certification? Where do I get educated to put in this kind of device? Because there's a lot of companies out there doing low voltage now who are looking maybe to expand their roles in PUE. And I know last year you guys were working on some education things for designers and end users. How is that moving along?

Speaker 3: 21:44

The training side of it. We are constantly evolving in terms of developing the material, but, as you know, we're all volunteers in this organization and we've all got our daytime jobs, as they say. So it hasn't been as quick as what we all would have liked it to have been. Um, I think there's there's a lot of progress has been made. I think we can. We've still got a long ways to go, but, um, I think the design library is going to come and it's it's going to be the the, the foundations for how we can start developing specifications with regards to a common specification, to say, this is what a product should adhere to, without naming that particular product. It's more of a performance specification, so that devices can speak to one another, irrespective of what type of device they are. If they're all on the same network, they can speak to one another, and that comes through open protocols and just utilizing PoE as a standard. So I think we have come a long way and, with the help of the Standards Committee that we've got, we've still got a long way to go, and that's where I'll do my first plug. We're constantly looking for new members in the PoE Consortium.

Speaker 3: 23:00

That was my next question. Sorry, I read this how would somebody get?

Speaker 1: 23:04

involved in a POE Consortium. Good job.

Speaker 3: 23:07

I mean one of the areas where we've actually had significant success, and I urge everybody to do it. Go have a look at our new website, poeconsortiumcom or POEConsortium it depends which side of the pond you come from. We've just relaunched the new POE website, the POEConsortium, and there's a lot of really good content in there, but we're constantly looking for more content and we're looking for people to join from various aspects, and there's a whole membership join page on there. Currently three levels of membership you can either be a patron member or a standard member or an observer, and all the benefits of each memory grade are defined in the membership section. So it's poeconsortiumcom forward slash membership.

Speaker 1: 23:57

I'll have that link in the description below, and I probably should ask this question right out of the gate. I don't know why I didn't just think of it right now, but what do you hope to accomplish? Give me maybe one or two specific things you'd like to accomplish this year, this tenure as being the president.

Speaker 3: 24:15

I think the most important thing I want to do is training, training, training. We actually held a symposium and I know you were part of the installer symposium a couple of years ago. This past November we held a separate symposium in New York City. We identified New York City because we felt that that was the area where we were starting to get a lot of pushback for PoE. A lot of the big developers, a lot of the big specifiers are based in New York City and a lot of them were starting to say, well, we don't know if we want to go PoE. So we pulled everybody together we had end users, we had designers, we had architects, we had installers and we had consultants installers and we had consultants Put them around the table and started to try and thrash out what are the main obstacles in the deployment of PoE. And we came up with a number of great initiatives which we're going to be pursuing this year.

Speaker 3: 25:14

I'm not going to say too much about them because there's going to be a lot of information that's going to be coming out and it's going to be targeted, identifying what people saw as current inefficiencies in the overall process of deploying PoE. I think just one aspect of that which I maybe just want to highlight, and this was one of the things that when PoE, in terms of a technology that was spoken about, was always well, you'll just have one neck to throttle if things go wrong. Unfortunately, that hasn't materialized in the POE industry because people are still holding on to their scope in terms of what they're doing and how they're deploying it and trades are not speaking to one another and how they're deploying it. And trades are not speaking to one another and you're finding that you land up with, instead of the conventional way of maybe three people involved in the installation it would be the electrician, the GC and the owner Now you've got four or five people involved and they're all pointing fingers at one another. So one of the exactly it's not my problem, it must be somebody else, it's not my trade.

Speaker 3: 26:21

So through our initiatives that we have been doing at VIXI and at Nika, we're trying to get people to accept more responsibility with regards to the deployment of these technologies and we have seen a massive uptick in that. A lot of people, if you had spoken to them three years ago, you say POE and they say what they didn't understand, what it was about. It's now through our education every year at Nika and at Big C, chipping away trying to get the technology information out there, we're starting to get people that are going to say, well, that's actually something I can actually take ownership of and I can actually run it from beginning to end, and that's what we see as one of the big areas where we can actually gain acceptance of this without things falling through the cracks and, ultimately, power over Ethernet deployments getting a really bad rap.

Speaker 1: 27:20

So you already mentioned the PoE website. You already mentioned the educational things like and ultimately, power of Ethernet deployments getting a really bad rap. So you already mentioned the PoE website. You already mentioned the educational things like Bixie and Nika and stuff like that. You also mentioned the technical papers. What suggestion would you have for professionals who want to not just know PoE but they want to kind of stay ahead of the learning curve, not just know?

Speaker 3: 27:40

PoE but they want to kind of stay ahead of the learning curve. I think there's a lot of knowledge within the PoE consortium that people are, I wouldn't say, reluctant to come forward with, but they haven't come forward with yet. So we're trying to engage with as many of them as possible to bring them onto the various committees so they can share their knowledge and with that knowledge shared, we can actually start publishing guidelines and even if it's merely just a guideline, telling people what the future holds, Because I can tell you now, if you ask 20 people in the POE consortium independently, currently you may well get 15 different answers and we want to make sure that everybody is singing off the same sheet in terms of giving the right information for what we know at this stage in terms of technology.

Speaker 1: 28:26

Yeah, the POE falls under the same umbrella. We work in the communications industry. It doesn't mean we communicate.

Speaker 3: 28:33

We're not good at that.

Speaker 2: 28:34

We're not good at that.

Speaker 1: 28:37

So if somebody wants to learn more, they just go to the POE Consortium website, which will be in the description below, and, david, I look forward to seeing the impact that you'll bring to the POE Consortium for 2025, my friend.

Speaker 3: 28:51

Thank you. I mean I think it's a continuation and with the great board I've got in place now we've really encouraged them to reach out to their if you can put it in old terms Rolodex of contacts and see how many of their customers actually want to join the PoE Consortium. I know I have and I've actually gained two or three members to the consortium through people that may not have thought this isn't an organization I'd like to belong, to Talk to them about it, get them familiar with the technology and say do you want to be part of this or do you want to be left on the sideline? And most people want to be part of it because five to ten years' time everything's going to be desync, microgrids and it's going to be power over Ethernet.

Speaker 1: 29:35

I couldn't close that out better than that. I appreciate you coming on today, David.

Speaker 3: 29:39

Thanks very much for the opportunity. Thanks, Chuck.

Speaker 2: 29:45

Thanks for listening to let's Talk Cabling, the award-winning podcast where knowledge is power and the low-voltage industry connects. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share it with your crew. Got questions or ideas for the show? Chuck wants to hear from you. Stay connected, stay informed and always aim for excellence. Until next time, keep those cables clean, your standards high and your future bright. Let's Talk Cabling empowering the industry, one connection at a time.