Antisthenes Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 copyrights and patents that in many way are human rights violations stand in the way. That is why i am now registered with the Pirate Party Usa, because this is the next major battle beyond equal rights and warding off environmental catastrophe. keep over paying, building excessively big, paying your software licenses, and driving your SUVs, live in excess, while increasing your ecological footprints j/k Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Claudio Branch Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 j/k About which paragraph...or both? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aaron-cds Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 copyrights and patents that in many way are human rights violations stand in the way. That is why i am now registered with the Pirate Party Usa, because this is the next major battle beyond equal rights and warding off environmental catastrophe. keep over paying, building excessively big, paying your software licenses, and driving your SUVs, live in excess, while increasing your ecological footprints j/k Oh will you just shut up about your stupid excuses for stealing software? Even if you are j/k, it's not a very funny joke. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 I don't know much about US real estate.I' d like to say some my experience in China, which maybe you can refer to. Last year, real estate business in China was really crazy. In my city, the average price for apartments raised to about 3000 USD$ per square meter (FYI, it's only about 1000USD$ in 2004). And real estate agencies made a lot of money during the last year. But how about us then? As a CG architecture rendering and animation company, did we get more job from this "great" opportunity? NO, there was not much job for us to do. because it was so easy to sell appartments and houses, developers did not even need to do renderings or animations, they could sell easily with just plans. But this year, because real-estate business starts going down, we start to get more jobs from domestic market. I don't know how long this could last, but things are better than last year so far. So maybe it's not that bad for you in US either. Besides, the summer holiday in Europe is over now, so maybe things will get better soon. Do you think the construction leading up to the Olympics affected OVERALL construction? I hear most or all of the big steel mills were working overtime to turn out the quality of steel needed for the unusual engineering projects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cccj Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 Do you think the construction leading up to the Olympics affected OVERALL construction? I hear most or all of the big steel mills were working overtime to turn out the quality of steel needed for the unusual engineering projects. The real estate price started increase gradually since years ago. Many factors cause the real estate price increase,such as demand pulling,GDP increasing,cost pushing,land price growing,speculative price driving up etc. I think the main reason is the overall economy growth in China, which is quite fast during the past a few years; it attracts a lot of internationl hot money to flow into China real estate market and stock market, and their speculative activities casued the price's crazy growing. Beijing's success in bid for 2008 Olympics might affect, but i don't think it's that much. My city is very far from Beijing, it's closed to Hongkong. An example of how globally linked we are now, China's growing economy, along with others, has not only impacted oil but has affected availability of concrete, steel, and drywall or sheetrock, to mention a few items. We have actually had (not serious) shortages in those building materials and cost increases as producers choose to send their products to China, India or the Middle East. Infact, most products that China imports is for manufacturing products to export. That's why people call China the world factory. That's why you can see in US many things are made in China. Meanwhile I think Chinese people might be the people who like consuming the least in the world. The tradition here is to save money when you're young, so you have enough money to live a good life when you grow old. Talking about Oil, most people in China can not afford the cost owning a car. Most people rely on public transportation, and we turn on aircondition only when necessary, to save power source. I think this is good for the earth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nycL45 Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 ... Meanwhile I think Chinese people might be the people who like consuming the least in the world. The tradition here is to save money when you're young, so you have enough money to live a good life when you grow old. That is a very important point and one that is a double edge sword for the U.S. We are a *consumer* society which creates the demand that domestic and international suppliers manufacture for. We are encouraged to buy, whether good or bad for us, because it makes us an engine for the world economy. We do not save enough and domestic and international business does not want us to slow or stop spending. This economic downturn would have started earlier and been sharper if the American consumer had stopped spending sooner. An upturn will begin once the bad news subsides and the spending resumes. That said, spending and not saving is contributing to an amassing storm which will help reorganize the world of the last sixty years. Like the mortgage lending mess, it is known by economists and like the unsinkable Titanic, the wrong people are setting bad priorities that will inevitably lead to this change. In fact, it has started. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antisthenes Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 Oh will you just shut up about your stupid excuses for stealing software? Even if you are j/k, it's not a very funny joke. nobody stole any software this is a political party that won 6% of the vote in Sweden and soon the EU. it is more about knowledge and ideas than any piece of proprietary software. and no i will not shut up, like i said this is what holds humanity back and keeps entropy in place. speak up i say to you, enough with the palin politics if you want a reasonable political debate on the platform to renegotiate copyrights and abolish patents i would enjoy that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobNJ73 Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 ... this is a political party that won 6% of the vote in Sweden and soon the EU... Politics aside, you might want to check your decimal places there. From what I've read, it was only 0.6% that they received. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted September 9, 2008 Administrators Share Posted September 9, 2008 and no i will not shut up, like i said this is what holds humanity back and keeps entropy in place. If you want to remain a member of these forums you will. After that last fiasco about politics and every other hot topic under the sun, our forum rules were updated. Please take the time to review them. There are to be no political discussions on the forums. If you want to preech about your new political alliances and human rights views, please find a different forum. http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/4587-forum-rules-user-agreement.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 Jonas - Why don't you put your ideas down in a more appropriate venue? If you want to discuss this and you think its important enough to bring it up so often write it up and post it in an off topic area. That would let you say what you want to say instead of injecting political platitudes in these discussions. Then we could all learn a bit more and if we agree with you we could take something away from it and those who don't agree with you would at least have a better idea of where you are coming from. I have looked into the pirate platform and I don't feel I have a good idea of what it stands for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted September 9, 2008 Administrators Share Posted September 9, 2008 If you want to discuss this and you think its important enough to bring it up so often write it up and post it in an off topic area. Nope. Please see the new forum rules. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted September 9, 2008 Administrators Share Posted September 9, 2008 Jeff, Why don't you just drop CGA to set up a 'clueless-fascists-forum' of you own? You know you want to. /Please, no lengthy diatribes about 'how many hours' you work, etc. //Bannination in 3-2-1. If you have a bone to pick with me, let's take it offline. Otherwise I don't see how your comment has anything to do with this thread and in my opinion was completely uncalled for, unprofessional, and downright insulting. If you want to be banned, just say the word and I'll happily oblige. These forums are about Arch Viz, not politics. period. If you have a problem with that then I'm sure you'll find some other sites to your liking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EddieLeon Posted September 9, 2008 Author Share Posted September 9, 2008 Ummm....I hope "Things don't Get Worse" on this thread. If anyone else has comments about the economy and how it is affecting "Arch Viz", now would be a good time to say something Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 If you want to remain a member of these forums you will. After that last fiasco about politics and every other hot topic under the sun, our forum rules were updated. Please take the time to review them. There are to be no political discussions on the forums. If you want to preech about your new political alliances and human rights views, please find a different forum. http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/4587-forum-rules-user-agreement.html AMEN! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted September 9, 2008 Administrators Share Posted September 9, 2008 So back on topic again... I have been thinking about creating an industry "ticker/indicator" kind the NASDAQ, NYSE Composite, NIKKEI etc. The goal being to have an indicator of how our industry is doing and and where its headed. This group would be made up of a cross section of our industry ranging from freelancers to 50+ person studios. This indicator would reflect potential work, ongoing work, current revenues and projections. These figures would be updated monthly and we could start to track global trends. Obviously the difference here is that most if not all are in our industry are not public companies and as such their financial are not public. So if there was a way to guarantee complete anonymity, but also ensure that those that made up the group reflected a true cross section of our industry, do you guys think this would be worthwhile, or is tracking housing, building and general economic trends enough on it's own? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EddieLeon Posted September 9, 2008 Author Share Posted September 9, 2008 I think this is a great idea. We currently don't have any idea of the state of our industry. We might all actually be doing pretty good. But, it would be great to gauge ourselves against real metrics. You can count me in on this. I'm not sure how you would keep the identities confidential. Maybe you create a form that only certain people have access to and they create their profiles randomly so you don't know who is who. But, everyone needs to promise to be truthful in what they submit. By the way, there is a magazine called Boards that gives a monthly report card on the commercial production industry. It seems pretty good. Maybe we can do something like this also and separate the reports by regions (LA, Toronto, New York, London, Dubai, Hong Kong, Beijing, etc). http://www.boardsmag.com/articles/magazine/20080901/bdflow.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 is most of cga made up of right leaning conservatives? republican rubbish? opps - forgot thats not allowed anymore! Yep could be be worthwhile and very interesting if done properly, but im not sure how willing studios would be to participate and the survey would tend to be figures made up of 1 man freelance outfits. I dont think Id be able to, or particulary be bothered getting our finance people to divulge such information unfortunately. Quarterly figures / participation would be more viable as well. Could make for very interesting reading however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antisthenes Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 The thing is things can get better and the politics of yesterday are the problem i feel. stay cool, conserve, be efficient, and try to be happy and make others happy, because it matters to us all. fascism is when the US gov takes over the home mortgage bank? Not when out good host Jeff helps keep things civil and orderly at his own forum. peace Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antisthenes Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 I would say it depends on what area of arch vis you are involved. Say for instance high end sustainable public works and fast turn around retail are doing very well and the other areas are understandably stressed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EddieLeon Posted September 9, 2008 Author Share Posted September 9, 2008 There are many different types of metrics that we can track. Gross sales or revenues is easy. I can't see why anyone would have a problem with that. The tricky part is to track what we are all selling (Renderings vs Animation vs Interactive). We can get even more granular if we track client types and location, but that get's sensitive... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Jeff Mottle Posted September 9, 2008 Administrators Share Posted September 9, 2008 Yeah, I'm not sure how willing people will be to divulge certain info, but I'm sure there is a way to ensure confidentiality. I'm not sure technically how it would work exactly, but there is probably a way to submit without actually ever providing any information that would tie the info to an exact company. Just thinking aloud: Perhaps you register on this applicationwith a an annonymous username. Once you provide a username you are given a random password and private link to a demographics page. On this demographics page you enter in your location, company size, number of employees. Generic info to start. I would then review all of that information and select a group that reflects a good cross section based on location, size and type of company. Each month or quarter these companies would come back to the private link to submit their financial information, which would then be interpreted to provide the indicator. The only drawback is that there is no way to contact people to remind them to submit as there is no email associated with the registration. Perhaps everyone who participates could use a gmail or similar account? Anyway, just thinking outloud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EddieLeon Posted September 9, 2008 Author Share Posted September 9, 2008 The info will need to be reliable and consistent. You just need to pledge an oath of secrecy and we will send the stats to you directly Tracking sales alone should be really easy. Let's pick a year and start tracking some numbers. All we really need to track is an index that tells us whether sales are up or down for a given quarter or by month. If we don't list specific cities then we can't guess which companies are the ones doing good or bad. We'll just average everything. Maybe we can simplify further and ask the volunteers to give us a percentage of sales up or down. You then takes those numbers and get an average for the industry. I think that info alone would be great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EddieLeon Posted September 9, 2008 Author Share Posted September 9, 2008 The CGA Index can then be a graph similar to the one on Architectural Record that tracks billings and inquiries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDillon Posted September 9, 2008 Share Posted September 9, 2008 Jeff, That's a brilliant idea. I don't mean to offend anyone because I make my living in this industry. But a CGA Index (Mottle Index) would make it feel so much more important. When I first entered the industry I felt it was an "icing" on the cake type field. As I mature I realize how vital the entire field is. From a very basic perspective it feels as though there are more small shops around than large firms. Would the Index break down the average by persons in the industry/total billing or company/total billing or just total billing. Thank You, Jason Dillon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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