The Demise of Lofts
I fell in love with the idea of living in a loft in the early 80’s. I was just about to graduate from college and Jennifer Beals was dancing across the screen in Flashdance in a beautiful, industrial-strength loft. It was a beautiful living space — about 2,000 square feet with no walls and no rooms. Ever since then I have dreamed of living in a completely open floor plan. Bed at one end, kitchen at the other, living and dining and working in between.
We are in the process of relocating to North Carolina and have entertained the idea of living in a loft. Unfortunately, today’s brain-dead developers have co-opted the term “loft” in their attempt to be hip. The marketing people have not been talking to the architects and builders.
For example, consider the Lofts at Lakeview in Durham. Download their brochure. Take a look at the floor plans. Granted the living room is open all the way to the kitchen. But the bedrooms and closets are crammed behind ugly and unnecessary walls.
These are not lofts by any definition of the word. They are urban apartments with an over abundance of LCD TVs in the common areas. Some day I will live in a loft. But it looks like it will not be offered by any of today’s urban developers.
Contracts, Contracts, Everywhere
Long term contracts and petty fees are everwhere.
When we moved to Princeton last year we signed up for Poland Springs water delivery. (Poland Springs is owned by that bottled water juggernaut, Nestle Waters.) They offered an inflexible monthly service plan of 4 bottles per month for $32.96, which was the best deal in their array of undesirable options. You can skip a delivery, but not a payment.
When the first bill arrived I was surprised to find a $2.00 fee for an Oil Surcharge. What? This is nothing more than a price hike disguised as a fee, hiding behind rising fuel prices. They are in the delivery business. Fuel charges are integral to their cost of doing business and should therefore be integrated into the price.
My biggest disappointment came when I set out to cancel the service due to a pending move to North Carolina. I knew I had signed a contract for their flat rate service but I remembered it as being a one year commitment. Imagine my surprise to discover that I had, in fact, signed a two-year contract and was now facing a $50 cancellation fee. With our move date rapidly approaching, I paid the fee . . . and said goodbye to Nestle Waters.
The cell phone industry introduced us to contracts with the rationalization that they were subsidizing the price of the phone. Our “commitment” helped them ensure that they recovered the cost of the phone. Now that we let them in the door, the industry is charging contracts everywhere. AT&T requires a two year contract with the iPhone despite the fact that there is no subsidy for the hardware. T-Mobile required a one-year contract extensions just to upgrade my handset to a Blackberry. No thank you.
Contracts have a modicum of acceptability if the company incurs set-up costs, such as when the cable guy has to come out to your house to set up your cable box. But Poland Springs had no startup costs with my service plan. They delivered four bottles of water to my house once a month for a cost of $8.74 a bottle (or $1.75 / gallon). The entire delivery too mere minutes each month. It seems to me that they should be able to make a profit on each delivery, beginning with the first one.
I guess I have learned my lesson with bottled water. There has been a lot of buzz in the news lately about the potential hazards of plastic bottles leaching their chemicals into their contents. (Check out the great Smart Plastics pdf at the The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy). Time to get a water filter.
What, me crazy?
Answer me this: If I’m so “crazy,” then why did they choose me to be their spokesperson to the people of Earth? — Jim Rosenberg
Club Ruminations
Networking: Active Links
In the past four years I have lived in San Francisco, London, Princeton (New Jersey), and I am about to move to Raleigh / Durham, North Carolina. This mobility has forced me to up my game as a professional networker to the point that I now offer seminars and workshops on the topic. As a recovering introvert I have come a long way in my ability to connect with people and build a network.
I owe a great deal to Keith Ferrazzi and his wonderful book, Never Eat Alone. His clear and straightforward style helped me understand that powerful networking is not natural. It must learned. Keith is a master and his book is an invaluable primer.
As I distilled and digested Keith’s ideas, I concluded that good networking comes down to three basic principals: active links, mutually beneficial introductions, and taking the call.
Today we will explore the first principal, which hinges on the idea that my network is not the contacts themselves but the active link between us. A network is not the nodes. My network is not the number of people in my database, nor my list of contacts on LinkedIn, nor my friends list on FaceBook, nor any other static list of people.
No, a network is the active links between the nodes. My network is the active relationship I have with everyone I know. These relationships create links that are activated, rejuvenated, and strengthened each time we connect. Their strength depends on a myriad of factors that depend on the relationship.
But one thing is certain: regardless of the strength of the link, it diminishes over time. In the same way that radioactive elements have a half-life in which the element decays, networking relationships fade with time. Hence, the key to maintaining a powerful network is to constantly be rejuvenating the links. This recharge happens most intensely face-to-face but can also be accomplished with a telephone call, an email exchange or even a profile update on your favorite networking site.
Your “network”, then, is the sum total of all the active links between all of your contacts. And “networking” is the never-ending process of keeping those links fresh and alive.
Tomorrow we will look at the second principal: mutually beneficial introductions.
Growth
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
— Edward Abbey