Get A Grip On Lighting Podcast

Don’t let his young age fool you. Doug is the Vice President of Marketing at Light Efficient Design. Doug, who’s on the Board of NAILD, talks about the need for education in the industry to bring more awareness to the dark sky issue. From prison yards to parks - can we move the needle with best practices, comprehensive ordinances, thorough education, public awareness and a tiered accreditation by...

The three brains behind Lightserve, Kevin, Bill, and Jason have grown Lightserve into a 100 million dollar company in just 10 years. You can get some tips from how they treat their employees, contractors and customers. Maybe you can learn a thing or two from their acquisition strategies. These guys are the perfect business storm!

Dr. George Schaaf is a veterinary pathologist working in the Comparative Medicine department at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Dr. Schaaf studies the effects of light on animals and transfers the learnings to human physiology. You’ll hear about the effects of light and glare on deer, chickens and Syrian hamsters - as well as your beloved pets. He tells us why night matters for animals...

Ian Ashdown is a consultant with over forty years’ experience in lighting design, research and development, and software engineering (He built the original version of AGI32). He holds more than 160 patents and patents pending. Listening to Ian, deploying advanced lighting into practical tools and software seems like a side project, something he does for fun! Right now, Ian’s passion is horticultur...

Dajana is a teaching assistant and PhD student at the Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management at the Faculty of Sciences in Novi Sad, Serbia. She is passionate about preserving the night sky and “bringing back the stars to our kids!”. Hear about her creativity in teaching about the night sky using animals, astro hikes, jazz and shared gratitude. You’ll be inspired.

Tony Lawrence is an entrepreneur, technologist, and prophet of quantum possibilities through his current role as CEO of Light Rider. Yeah, you’ve heard physicists on TV talking about the quantum world and thought, “I have no idea what they’re talking about!” Well, review your notes because you are going to be selling this stuff in light bulbs soon. Tony tells you how the light bulbs you will be se...

Ruth Taylor currently serves as a program manager on the Advanced Lighting Team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where she currently manages the Next Generation Lighting Systems (NGLS) Program. Ruth is your first line of defense against crappy products and design. Get an inside look at how products you sell are tested at the PNNL.

Ryan Andreasen is the founder of Night Sky Science (https://nightskyscience.com/). Astrophotography and Night Sky Preservation is Ryan’s main mission along with getting folks to look up at night. In this episode you’ll hear about the wonder of “touching” the Orion Nebula and about how the night sky can induce powerful emotions. When advocating for dark skies, avoiding words like “dark” or “polluti...

Taisha Bezzo is the National Sales Director for Evluma. She’s been with the company since 2014. Taisha has an MBA from Harvard, a pilot’s license, and she does Ironman Triathlons in her spare time. She’s going to tell you about LED’s, controls, and thermal management. Taisha is very smart, so listen up!

Justin Wendt has served as Rohinni’s Chief Technology Officer for over five years where he leads and directs Rohinni’s global teams in Research and Development of next generation die placement equipment and the products the technology is used to create. You won’t believe the mind-blowing technology being created - mini and micro-LED’s that are as small as 30 microns thick. The applications are jus...

Mark Clipsham - Architect, builder, consultant, master planner. While battling through his allergies, Mark has a thing or two to say about the growth economy, the constant drive for profit and what drives him nuts about the current state of lighting. Mark offers some ideas on sustaining the environment and bringing back the dark skies.

Deborah Burnett, ASID, AASM, is an internationally recognized registered design professional, Subject Matter Expert (SME) in the field of Light + Health, and member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Deborah is going to let you in on some fascinating facts about the “spring surge,” proper lighting in horse stalls, the moon’s importance in photosynthesis, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and ho...

This week we are joined by Kelly Roberts and Laura McDonald Stewart of the advisory board for the ARCHLight Summit at the Dallas Market Center this fall. We discussed the value of cross-professional networking events; there’s value in designers and architects meeting other professionals in this field. As well this year's programming being more broad than just lighting concerns. Of course any in-pe...

Check out Frank’s Night Sky Resource Center (www.nightskyresourcecenter.org) for some awesome astrophotography. Frank advocates seeing the night sky as a resource just like water and air. He tells us about his personal sense of “awe” in seeing the night sky and how you too can lose your self awareness in experiencing the sublime. It’s better than Ayahuasca tea!

Brian Amundson of Pacific Lamp Wholesale and president-elect of NAILD is with us to discuss his experience working in dark sky lighting projects. As distributors we sell what customers ask for; and even if we wanted to pursue dark sky instals we are not always clear on what really is compliant versus just “friendly.” Brian shares his experience working on coastal projects with turtle- and bird-cen...

Steve Perry is the product trainer for the current sales staff at 1000Bulbs and works as liaison officer for its legendary CEO Kim Pedersen which includes among other things, new product lines, marketing strategies and vendor relations. Steve talks about sales strategies and techniques, incandescent lighting, Zoom, Amazon and learning from disagreeable people. If you want to learn, you might as we...

Jim is one of the world’s top authorities on lighting design and applied illuminating engineering. He invented the BUG system that directly affects dark skies. Jim tells us how many birds are killed by the Twin Towers light columns and how vertical light is better than horizontal light. Listen to what happened when Jim joined the board of IES, or when WELL inspectors asked him to close the blinds,...

If you have crappy sleep or like wearing sunglasses you should probably listen to this. Dr. Rosenthal talks about sleep apnea and electric blue light, hormones and electric blue light, melatonin, proteins, cancer and well, electric blue light...you see where we’re going with this. You need to give this one a listen!

Where does it cost $1500 bucks to change a light bulb? Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are one of the most useful chemicals ever invented. Big surprise LED manufacturers make ridiculous claims about lamp life; what else is new. And we talk to Marty about the limits of LED's in hazardous locations along with the challenges of sourcing parts and materials for existing legacy lamps and ballasts whic...

Astrophysicist Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel has been involved in light pollution issues since the mid-1990s and has contributed to over 100 articles, many related to light pollution. He is the leader of “Cities at Night,” a citizen-supported project coordinated with NASA and other space agencies that use ISS night imagery to raise light pollution awareness. Alejandro discusses his personal experien...

From red tape to blue LED’s to Red China. We talk about entrepreneurship in the time of cheap China and Google Ventures. Chuck also touches on environmental problems and how to get the customer to care.

Is LEDucation going forward? It sure is! Craig and Wendy tell us how in this time of Covid. The March virtual show was a success. Now they’re going live in New York in August. Is it 100% a go? As Craig says, “100% unsure!” But you know Craig and Wendy and the rest of the committee will pull it off. How? Listen up!

Harun Mehmedinovic is an astrophotographer, speaker, documentary filmmaker and dark sky advocate. He finds his deepest connections to nature while looking up at night and is doing his best to spread the word and save it for everyone. In our conversation we discussed his status as a ‘hack’ compared with night-time photographers from the scientific community, the pale imitation of daytime we’re crea...

Edward Bartholomew - lighting designer, educator, advocate - is the owner of Bartholomew Lighting in Massachusetts. In this episode we talk about improving student scores, better worker productivity, reducing crime, fixing public utilities and of course, improving profitability - all through better lighting. We might have just solved everything in this episode!

What do GU24s and email marketing have in common? Not much, but this week we have the inventor of the GU24, David Shiller on the line to discuss his current career in marketing and product development. Beyond online engagement, we also delve into policy problems, socketed vs fixed fixtures, DC wiring and where standards need to change.