Untitled - Journal of Lighting Engineering

Dorin BEU
One of the fascinating things about
lighting is the sense of the community that
you have in any conference or seminar
concerning this topic. Most of the people I
met in a lighting conference share the same
passion about this subject and it is
impossible to not find a common ground.
Sometimes I feel that we are like a secret
society, but without any special pin, salute
or other exterior sign. After all, we are the
illuminati, in the basic sense of this word.
The feeling of community was very clear
on a regional conference BalkanLight 2012,
which was held in Belgrad in September
this year. When someone hears about
Balkans, man can thing never-ending
disputes (I once had a company who did not
want to sponsor a Balkanlight Conference,
as the marketing director considering being
a dangerous topic). In fact, the common
ground I was talking at the beginning, made
this event a special one. There were 82
peoples from 12 countries, and the
atmosphere was great (many thanks to
Miomir Kostic and Lidija Djokic).
Ingineria Iluminatului 2012; 14, 2: 5-6
LIGHTING EDITORIAL 4.0
Last months I was working for a FP7
proposal with 10 other partners both from
academic and private sector. At the
beginning, communication looked to be
very difficult (some partners were old
friends some not, some with physics, other
with electrical, electronic or architectural
background) but after two weeks the sense
of community was there. Despite the huge
numbers of pages that you have to read
before, language and cultural barriers, busy
weeks, sickness, we managed to submit on
time. Of course, without Internet and EU
Portal, this was mission impossible. The
speed of changes is so high that we tend to
forget that more than ten years ago it was
science fiction.
When you see the evolution of TV from
black and white to smart TV you have to
think to a similar evolution for lighting. I
think we will have in next year’s smart
luminaires and smart windows, both Web
connected. The light distribution of this
smart luminaires will adapt according to
different detectors. Already you can
replace the remote control with your
smartphone, but I think that instead of
presence detector or badge we will soon use
the same device. On your smartphone you
can select your preferences: illuminance
level, color temperature and so on. But
what if you forgot at home your mobile
phone or if you refuse to have it all time?
Speaking of Community and Web; there
are many lighting communities on net. I
enrolled on some of them, and beside