Dear Members and Friends of NIBS,
In Washington on December 11, FEDCon, our annual review of federal agencies' building and spending plans (mostly straight from agency insiders themselves), should again be one of the most valuable events the National Institute of Building Sciences offers.
It's packed with information and takes full advantage of NIBS' long relationship with key agencies like the General Services Administration, the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, State Department, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, to name a few.
Along with extending my personal invitation to
FEDCon, I want to call your attention to two more, new NIBS-sponsored one-day conferences, plus additional NIBS-presented educational programs that will make your trip to Washington especially worthwhile.
On December 12 you can
attend FEDspec, which is cosponsored by NIBS and Specifications Consultants in Independent Practice (SCIP). This is an essential meeting for federal and private sector AEC specifiers who work on federal projects.
And the next day you can take in the first National buildingSMART Conference, cosponsored by NIBS' 
Facility Information Council (FIC) and its National Building Information Model Standard (NBIMS) Committee, and NIBS newest program, the buildingSMART Alliance.
This conference includes one of the three keynotes for the overall Ecobuild Fall/AEC-ST Fall program: a speech by International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) chair Patrick MacLeamy, FAIA, at 1:00 P.M. December 13. Other sessions include an introduction by buildingSMART Alliance executive director Deke Smith, AIA, together with Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate (OSCRE) CEO Andy Fuhrman, and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) president Mark Reichardt. You'll see and hear the latest on BIM, interoperability, and integrated practice.
All three conferences are co-located with Ecobuild Fall - Sustainable, Green and High Performance Solutions for the Built Environment, and AEC-ST Fall - Science and Technology for Architecture, Engineering and Construction. And these two larger programs (plus related exhibits) December 10-13 add even more NIBS-related speakers and topics.
NIBS-presented and -related workshops and seminars 
throughout the four days include programs on using and implementing building information modeling (BIM) and the new National BIM Standard (NBIMS), navigating the Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG), and achieving intelligent and high-performance buildings. Free and open to all attendees are the NIBS Facility Maintenance and Operation Committee (FMOC) meeting on December 10, and the NIBS Facility Information Council annual meeting on December 12.
For information on attending FEDspec, FEDCon, the National buildingSMART Conference, and related events at AEC-ST® Fall and Ecobuild® Fall, please visit www.aecstfall.com or www.ecobuildfall.com.
I look forward to seeing you there.
Sincerely,
David A. Harris, FAIA
President, National Institute of Building Sciences