Get A Grip On Lighting Podcast

Aleddra’s VP of Sales and Marketing, Dr. Matthew Maa is here to talk about being different in the Disinfection technology business right now. He tells us what separates PECO tech from UV-based options. Aleddra uses PECO and UV-A and UV-C in different cases because not all applications are the same. We discuss the current market for disinfection, different types of applications and what we really n...

In the second part of our special dark sky series we are joined by Paul Bogard, author of The End of Night and What if Night. Our discussion opened with our sense of safety - it’s easy to think that more light makes us safer, but glare makes it harder to see and without other meaningful changes related to security increasing light levels is more about having done something than done something effe...

Christina Calaway of Spark Media is a real old school lighting dork, which means our conversation begins with pulsed-start metal halides and other semi-forgotten lamp and fixture features. Before this turns into another scrub session, we transition to her current job in the industry: freelance marketing specifically catering to the lighting industry. The marketing departments of lighting vendors a...

The IDA and NAILD have not only signed a memorandum of joint understanding, but will be working together for the next five years on joint efforts for darker, better nights. LS Evolve will have a module on the technical aspects and best practices of dark sky-friendly outlighting, but for now Michael Colligan and Jane Slade will be hosting a series of special releases on the moral, psychological, an...

Alp Durmus is a Lighting scientist and assistant professor of architectural engineering at Penn State. He came on the show to discuss his research in optimization of lamp color; reducing light use by aiming for the most reflectivity of the object you’re lighting. We care more about seeing things than we care about energy use, the idea of saving power and making things look better is an appealing o...

Dr Jacob Liberman is here to explain the nature of light and consciousness to Michael and Greg. He starts with the idea that seeing is more than just vision before explaining his background overcoming his astigmatism, his work as an optometrist, and growth in spiritual self-reflection. The conversation stray fairly far from the nuts and bolts of lighting and more into the relationship between huma...

Nigel Harvey is the Chief Executive at Recolight, a lamp recycler in the UK. We wanted to know how effective extended producer responsibility programs really are and whether or not they’ve hit a limit on the number of compliant operators. We weigh the pros and cons of enforcement and persuasion when it comes to recycling, and the strategies that come into play on both sides. Aside from the busines...

Adrià Huguet-Ferran is CTO of Kumux, a software company that allows you to optimize almost any LED lightsource for color-tuning. The goal is for more human-centric or circadian-friendly systems, but Michael and Greg think his company’s process needs to be reduced to a one-button solution. That may not be so simple as we bring cultural and geographical biases and individual preferences to lighting...

Tom Boyle, of GE Current, a Daintree Company joins Michael and Greg for this week’s episode. After clarifying what a Chief Technical Officer is responsible for, he shares his perspective on twenty years of change in the lighting industry, and Daintree’s renewed focus on LED and controls he gets into his company’s entry into UV-C Disinfection. We discussed the various options that are emerging for...

Human-centric light is a selfish idea. Jane Slade is an expert in how anthropogenic light at night is harming all wildlife to some degree. In this rebroadcast of our live stream from last year’s IES Annual Conference she shares her work with Michael and Greg. We keep learning new things about the damage ALAN does, whether that’s sending dung beetles walking in circles or slowing down the motion of...

Bryan Colligan founded Atlas Lighting in his basement in 1977, it didn’t leave that basement until 1999 when host Michael joined the company. Greg takes the lead asking questions about forty years worth of changes to the lighting industry, founding his own company, working by hand, being a frequent flyer on Air Chicken, and training salespeople. Beyond his career Bryan shares his insights into bus...

This week we have a crossover episode with Sam Koerbel of Lytei. Before he was an architectural engineer he was a mascot for his college football team, and that sense of building character and expressing enthusiasm is what drives his podcasts and video series. Embodying excitement to encourage others is fun in it’s own right, but it can also be very valuable. Michael and Greg spoke with him about...

Tom Ciurczak, industry veteran and president of BLC America has dropped an album. He’s been a singer and songwriter his whole life, and his daughter nudged him to actually releasing an album. Call me Ishmael is a mix of work from his whole life showcasing a number of styles and moods. Michael and Greg have heard the album, liked it, and asked him on the show to discuss songwriting, the pros and co...

Ellis Yan is back to finish telling the story of his career, starting back in 1979 as the Chinese government begins to emphasize quality of life for its citizens Ellis was in school to become an accountant and working in a computer lab (this was in the punch-card era of computing, just in case you thought Ellis was ever behind the cutting edge). He tells the story of how he met his wife, made frie...

Last week Michael tested positive for COVID-19, Spencer Miles has had employees come up positive, and Greg’s been lucky so far. We’ve spoken about doing business during the lockdown, but now we can speak to more immediate damage control experiences. Spencer and Michael share how they resumed business, worked around downed employees, and their experiences running the order desk again. Procedures an...

This week, we reversed roles and let our guest ask us questions. New lighting and energy consultant, Ryan Krueger, has a list of questions for us. Listen in to find out: ● What makes distribution unique ● How we learned all this before starting the podcast ● What catalogues and courses looked like in the pre-LED era ● Approaches to fieldwork when we started out ● Greg’s easy choice to get his LC c...

“The current pandemic has created a tipping point for networked controls in lighting.” That’s what Peter Brown sent us in an email earlier this month, rather than reply we got him on the line to talk this out for the show. Our assumptions about lighting have been inverted; the cost rule of 3 dollars for utilities, 30 for rent, and 300 for personnel is out the window and we need to spend more on ne...

Ellis Yan returns to continue his life story for us. Picking back up on the farm in the mountains, he shares how the experience built up his resilience and made him more open to new experiences, but the plot takes a small turn when his family living in the US try to arrange for a visa for him - something that wouldn’t pay off until he was attending University in Shanghai and his application got re...

Bernie Erickson of Facilities Solutions Group is in the middle of expanding his company's offerings in UV disinfection options, so we had to ask him on the show to share what he’s been working on. He breaks down the differences between surface and air disinfection as he sells it, as well pointing out secondary gains from adding air purification. What he has noticed is that his customers seem to ha...

Al Uszynski returns as a podcast guest to speak about his perspective on and his personal history in the lighting industry. Launching Inside. Lighting to keep track of rep agencies, but ended up writing news to keep the site relevant. Once agents are up for discussion we have to dig into the friction points between distributors and rep agents, and how our modes and models of business are changing...

The LRC has put together a very cool web-based tool for designing a space for healthier living (https://www.lrc.rpi.edu/healthyliving/), after playing around with it ourselves, we asked the minds behind it for an interview. Allison Thayer and Dr. Mariana Figueiro joined us to share how they created this site and how they plan to expand it. We discussed how hard it is to improve productivity in hum...

We’ve always known that Ellis Yan has a story to tell. We take a break from lighting technology and delve into history, as Ellis explains his life under The Cultural Revolution under Mao. It starts with the day he was sent to school without lessons, moves through years of bullying teachers, and attacks on capitalists and intellectuals before being shipped out to the mountains. He lived with nine o...

Henrik Clausen has thirty years of experience as an electrical engineer, educator, and a consultant. And when he wrote for LED Professional calling for brighter, more personalized light at work (read it here: https://www.led-professional.com/resources-1/articles/personal-lighting-profiles-might-be-the-key-to-creating-a-natural-work-light-balance), we knew we had to ask him about it. While it’s tru...

Al Uszynski has trained salespeople at the university level and he joined us to share his insights on selling right now. He shares some adaptations to current restrictions as well as creative ideas for selling online that will be even more useful when we can get face-to-face. But the real question that comes out of this conversation is: Should we be asking sales staff to be marketers? Can we reall...

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is moving past energy efficiency research and into researching better life indoors. One of their projects was looking into ‘realistic’ lighting in an Neonatal ICU. Andrea Wilkerson, senior lighting researcher, shared her findings for sun-like colour and brightness automation. Beyond what happened during the test we explore some of the broader implications...