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 “pollution” can help bureaucrats accept the message. You’ll even hear Michael read some T.S. Elliot. This is a good one.

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 just beginning to be explored.

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 how the industry selling lighting for your circadian rhythms has become a racket.

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-person event right now has to confront the ongoing pandemic; and we all discussed how the attitudes of the organizers and the policies of the event location are coming together for an engaging, but secure event.

Learn more about the ARCHLight Summit here: https://archlightsummit.com/

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-centric lighting and as well as partnering with a native tribe to fix up a ski hill. From the conversation discussion move from lighting projects as an exercise accounting versus an exercise caring, the tourism value of night times, getting rebates and regulators into dark sky projects, winning over hipsters and influencers to the cause, and pushing back on security concerns.

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 well learn from the biggest. Don’t stop believing! (Sorry Steve!)

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, or what happened when a cheap metal halide bulb exploded. Don’t mess around with Jim!