I had the great pleasure of attending and presenting at the first annual Lighting Innovation Symposium hosted by the IES Monterrey Section last week. In today's post I would like to share the highlights and encourage lighting design professionals to put this event on their radar... to support a great chapter and visit an amazing city.
The event had nearly 100 attendees hosted at Fiesta Inn Tecnológico, a hotel and conference center in the area of Tecnológico de Monterrey. I am grateful to Cesar Medrano Juarez, IES Monterrey President, for inviting me to present, to Alberto Hernandez for providing transportation to and from the airport, to the IES Monterrey staff for all their hard work, and (maybe most important to me as I do not speak any Spanish!) the amazing translator to spoke into my earpiece from the back of the room!!!
By the way, I am the chair of an IES committee, do training for professional lighting designers, have presented at Lightfair, teach lighting design to my graduate students at NDSU, and lecture to lighting design minors at the University of Minnesota.
As usual for my recaps, the photos are in chronological order to give a better sense of the experience from my perspective:)
The night before the event, the presenters and organizing committee gathered for an amazing dinner in a beautiful restaurant.
Here is Cesar kicking off the event in the morning.
The diversity and depth of presentations were fantastic.
Fernando Avila gave an absolutely amazing opening presentation titled Responsible Lighting: Light Pollution and Beyond. He works at an observatory and advocates for dark skies!
The production quality of the event was one of the best I've seen. There were cameras pointing at presenters and attendees asking questions, which was being produced in real time as you can see on the giant screen which event had captions like the evening news!
Felipe Rodriguez gave a presentation titled Challenges of healthy lighting in social housing in Mexico, under IES and CEV regulations. Just amazing work being done to improve the lives of many people.
My presentation on the value of BIM in professional lighting design. Learn a little more about my presentation in this previous post: click here. Thanks to Dayana Jimenez Lopez for taking and sharing photos of me presenting:)
Also, it was fun to share some case study projects from my firm, Lake|Flato Architects, based in San Antonio, Texas (just a 45-minute plane ride away).
Lunch! Good food and great company.
In the coveted "after-lunch slot" (kidding) Wilson Dau gave a lively and insightful presentation on the challenges and opportunities for lighting designers and product reps within a typical project workflow with an emphasis on lighting control systems. The session was titled: Cost-benifit in control systems and their applications.
Luis Montes presented on the advancements and research around lighting in the automotive industry. It was exciting to hear the headlights described as a projection where areas (e.g., oncoming cars) could be muted, or pedestrians could be identified and highlighted with a circle of light projected on the ground at their feet. His session was titled Evolution of Light in the Automotive Industry.
There were many products being represented in the exhibit area, from Cooper Lighting to Acuity. I really liked the innovative backlit wall tile system Marisol Perez shared at the Crestron booth. I was given a certificate at the end of my presentation by David Lorente from LAMP (picture above).
Finally, there was a challenge to get stamps from all the booths, and then prizes were awarded. So, lots of great engagement with the product reps.
The day ended with the presenters and organizers going to dinner at a rooftop restaurant on the 30th floor in the San Pedro area!
Students! Some of my favorite people:) It was so cool how many students attended and hung around asking great questions. In the photo below, the student on the far left won one of my Revit textbooks... she even asked me to sign it for her:)
The event was amazing, and every lighting designer should put this event on their radar (and the one in April by IES Mexico City).
Related link:
Previous IES Mexico webinar I presented on: click here.
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