September 2012 TALQ Consortium meeting

Published on 2012-10-03

During the last week of September TALQ Consortium members met in Normanton, West Yorkshire, UK. For 3 consecutive days Harvard Engineering kindly hosted the technical and promotion work group meetings, as well as the steering committee meeting.

For the first time the promotion work group met face to face, and used the opportunity to work on the promotion plan. The scope of the consortium is limited to outdoor lighting; therefore we need to consider carefully which stakeholders to address when and which opportunities to use to present the consortium and its objective most effectively. The draft plan compiled during this meeting will be discussed further during the work group’s bi-weekly telephone conference, and will be used to guide the consortium’s promotion efforts well into 2013.

The steering committee gathered for its regular meeting, and discussed e.g. the work group reports as well as some strategic issues that will influence the success rate of TALQ specification adoption. Being able to roll out a good certification program is considered essential, as this will determine the level of trust in implementations and secure interoperability.

Having decided on the basic architecture and data model in previous meetings, the technical work group discussed security, scheduling and priority handling this time. According to Oscar Deurloo, the technical work group chair, good progress was made, “Though it will come as no surprise that after the rapid agreements reached earlier, the more detailed topics under discussion now require more time to find the solutions all agree with.”

Asked for his first impression, Tim Jackson, representing Telensa, which joined the TALQ Consortium only recently, said “I’m happy with the open, co-operative atmosphere. Clearly, as a new member, it takes some time for us to get to grips with what has already been achieved. But even so, already during this first meeting, I feel we had ample opportunity to provide input“. He continued to state that the scope of the TALQ specification was well pitched at the interface between Central Management System and Outdoor Lighting Network, enabling municipalities to select from various suppliers, while maintaining the possibility for vendor specific differentiation.

The next face to face TALQ meeting will be end of October, hosted by Kingsun in Dongguan, China. In the meantime the work groups continue to discuss by teleconference and email.