JOHN J. "JACK" McGOWAN, C.E.M., is an author and vice president of Energy Control, Inc. (ECI), an energy service company and system integrator. ECI specializes in projects that combine performance contracting with automatation and realtime energy services. Author of five books, Mr. McGowan sits on the technical advisory board of Energy User News, and is a contributing editor for the energy e-zine AutomatedBuildings.com. He was named "International Energy Professional of the Year" in 1997 by the Association of Energy Engineers. He is also listed in the millennium edition of Who's Who in Science and Engineering, published by Marquis Press. He has authored several books, including Direct Digital Control: A Guide to Distributed Building Automation and Networking for Building Automation and Control Systems.