Jarring Your Senses

This week I've been talking a lot about connectivity; about how everyone finds themselves placing everything they encounter into its own little jar and slapping a label on it. And how, as we start to organize our cupboards, we begin to realize that it's not as easy as it seems.

Here we've been distilling and dividing, separating and sifting, only to find that there were no jars.

Because we finally realize that everything is connected.

And it sounds very Woodstocky, doesn’t it? But I don’t mean connected just in the Avatar Na’vi , kumbaya sense, but in the real, actual trying-to-divide-water kind of sense.

Take technology, for instance.

Years ago, sending something between a Mac and a Windows machine was next to impossible. The “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” ads want you to believe that it’s still a hassle, but, while some incompatibility still exists, there has been one great equalizer: the Internet.

Windows would love it if the only browser you used was Internet Explorer, and Apple would want you to search the web with Safari. But users are trending towards catch-all browsers like Firefox and Chrome for their 'Net fix.

Likewise, it used to be that you needed a Walkman for your music, a printer to view documents, and your Zack Morris, Gordon Gecko mobile phone to talk while on the go. Once again, the Internet - and the smart phones that were borne of it - made all of these disparate technologies obsolete. The Internet not only connected people, it also connected the technologies people used.

Even the Internet itself can't keep its own websites divorced: Facebook is connected with Twitter, which is connected to YouTube, which is linked to your own blog. And soon, even your computer's hard drive will be impossible to separate from the ether.

Technology is starting to mirror biology - everything feeds off of everything else.

Of course, here at DotLoop, we understand this connection, and by bringing a holistic approach to online transaction management, we are able to seamlessly blend together online forms, electronic signatures, and a custom CRM tool into one secure domain. Everything works together, no jars or cupboards needed.

What Are YOU doing Saturday?

On Tuesday, I had an opportunity to listen to Brad Nix speak on blogtalkradio.com and he had this to say about my personal favorite day of the week: “Nothing defines your local community better than what people do on Saturday.”

He continued:

“Saturday’s the only day where you don’t have to work, and you don’t have to work the next day. Whether it’s going to little league or grilling out with your friends, or taking your wife or girlfriend out on a date, that’s what really goes on in your community.”

My Saturday includes volunteering at InkTank, a local no-profit and attending a friend's birthday party. Taking a look at what is going on here in Cincinnati in a few days – music, parades, art, food, and wine – I have to smile. Looks like I live in a pretty eclectic and cool community. So, to paraphrase Mr. Nix, what are you doing Saturday?

Limestone Lane

I had planned on writing a bit more on connectivity today, but I found this video created last summer and thought it was amazing enough of an idea to share. Luckily, it deals with the connectivity between nature and cities, so it seems appropriate. I think this is riveting, although maybe I'm just a sucker for English accents. If you haven't been to ted.com, I'd recommend taking a look - there are some brilliant ideas out there. Of course, I'd like to think that DotLoop is just one of them.

Separation Anxiety

DotLoop is growing and, with growth comes departments and teams. We have the forms team and the sales team and the marketing team. Each has its own function, of course, but we all work together quite seamlessly, kind of like DotLoop itself.

It's working great here at DotLoop, but I've been thinking a lot lately about how erroneously compartmentalized we have made our world. As a news junkie, I stop by all kinds of news sites and see the same separating tabs: politics, business, entertainment, science and technology, health. Of course lately, everyone - even those not within the industry - are clicking on that other tab: real estate.

But after reading about the TARPs and the DOWs and the NASDAQS, I'm starting to see how silly all of these little categories are. After all, it only took one tab - real estate - to affect every other tab in one way or another.

And now that the housing bubble has burst, it seems more and more clear how interconnected everything really is. The effects of one thing collapsing can and do resonate throughout the rest of the economy not only here in America, but all over the world. A defaulted mortgage in Iowa can cause a farmer in Taiwan to lose his job. Not only are you and your neighbor Jim feeling the effects of this crash, but so are Otto in Germany and Kim-Ly in Vietnam.

If we have learned anything from this financial crisis we've all been trudging through, I hope it's this. Everything is connected. Your loss is your neighbor's loss is the world's loss.

While I understand that this need to categorize and separate is a natural thing to do, I feel that we've gone overboard. We're suffering from separation anxiety, that is, our need to separate and categorize is making us crazy.

So I am calling an end to all of this distilling and dividing. Get rid of the marker that draws lines around us. Pop those barrier bubbles faster than that housing bubble. After all, most times, it's not about black and white, wrong and right, or day and night. It's about the dusk that connects all of us.

Can I get a little kumbaya, here?

Time Is On My Side

As it turns out, not only are humans hardwired to run on a 25-hour day, but with last week's earthquake, we lost even more time. It seems the Chilean earthquake threw off the earth's axis just enough to shorten our day by 0.00000126 seconds. Granted, it will take approximately 2100 years before a one-second delay kicks in, but if you're feeling more harried than usual this week, at least now you know why.



Of course, by using DotLoop instead of running around town gathering signatures and idling in traffic, you could more than easily make up that lost time.

Razing the Roots

Here in DotLoop's home city of Cincinnati, we're having a bit of our own housing crisis. Last week, it was announced that the Gamble House, so named because it was owned by the co-founder of Proctor & Gamble, is about to be razed, because it's cheaper to get rid of it than spend money on repairs and restoration. The house is a local landmark, with gorgeous 19th-Century architecture. As the old adage says, "they don't make 'em like that anymore." But it is in disrepair and is in desperate need of a doctor for Gamble.

But is it really cheaper to raze it than to restore it? Yes and no.

In the short-run, it probably is cheaper to raze than restore. It's the easy and convenient way to do things. In the long-run, though, it will cost more to raze the property than to restore it, and not just financially.

Keeping and restoring an old home as opposed to just destroying it also benefits the community, many of whom have fond memories of it from their childhood. It also helps preserve a piece of history for the city, allowing us to have a benchmark to show where what we once were so that we can see how far we've come (or haven't, so that we can adjust our sails).

Luckily, the community here can see this and are trying to prevent the house from becoming just another empty lot. They see the value of this house beyond the cost of new shingles and elbow grease. I hope that their efforts pay off.

As I've touched upon before, a building - whether it be a home or a commercial property - is more than just an ATM, it's a part of a community. Place matters and buildings most certainly affect how we feel about a place. That's the beauty of architecture.

The owners have every right to raze the house if they want to, but I hope they reconsider. Costs other than financial are at stake. Restoring and re-purposing the Gamble House is one gamble that will pay off for the entire community.

Photo courtesy of cincinnati.com.

I Can't Drive (After 85?)

Exactly one month ago, I wrote about designing communities for the elderly. Just last Friday, I read about a local elderly couple who went to the store and got lost coming home. They spent the next 30 hours driving around trying to find their home, sparking a statewide senior alert that included a helicopter search and some 14,000 phone calls by the police looking for leads.

Luckily, the couple were found safely about 125 miles way, in another state. But others have not fared so well and the question of when should a senior's license should be revoked can provoke heated debate. Indeed, there have been times when my own grandmother has come back from an errand with no recollection on how the dents and scratches on her car's bumper got there.

Of course, like all age groups, there are always good and bad drivers, and there are many very capable senior citizens who drive better than those half their age. This post is in no way designed to poke fun at elderly drivers, but rather, to bring to light some of the implications of aging drivers.

In a country where cars symbolize freedom, we often forget that driving is a privilege and not a right. The question is further exacerbated when you factor in the fact that most communities in America are not pedestrian-friendly and require a car to get around. As the driver in the opening story said, "If they're going to take my license away from me, they might as well put me in an institution."

From a housing perspective, the notion of zoning, with dedicated residential and commercial sectors of a town distinctly separated, may not be the best solution in the long run. It's one thing to pack up the kids and take the minivan to the grocery store across town once a week when you're younger and mobile, but it's quite another to get in your car and make that same trek when you're in your eighties and suffer from glaucoma. You're not only risking your own safety, but the safety of other drivers as well. During the 1950s, when the nation's interstate and suburb systems were designed, the average life expectancy was around 68 years old. The current rate tacks on an additional ten years, and future generations may live even longer. Viable transportation options are needed to allow seniors to keep their freedom without sacrificing their (or others') safety, especially when you consider that after age 85, driver fatality rates are nearly four times higher than that of teens.

I live in a pretty eclectic neighborhood, where there's a good mix between young and old, and I joke about how every driver is frustrated when getting around the neighborhood - the young drivers think the old drivers drive too slow, and the old drivers think the young drivers need to slow down. And, while it's easy to jest about how slow grandpa drives, it's a lot harder to tell him that he can no longer drive. Especially when his neighborhood is paved with roads and driving is the only way he knows how to get around town.

So, what's the solution? Public transportation and walkable communities are a good place to start. Mix-use development, where the grocery store is a part of a neighborhood instead of placed on the outskirts of a sub-division is also a viable option.

Either way, with the aging population reaching its peak soon, we'll eventually have to have a conversation about when people should give up their car keys.