Campbell Yule - Architecture + Business + Software...

Where have I been? Undertaking a Company Merger!

Today I got an email pointing out that I didn’t post a single article in October or November!

The last date I posted was actually the 27th September when I talked about how impressed I was with Air New Zealand getting me (eventually) down to Christchurch.

The reason I mention this again is that what took place on the 27th September is largely responsible for my lack of posts in the last two months.

On 27th September 2011, Tracey and I (as directors of Cadimage Group) along with Andrew and Marion Ecker of Cadconsult signed an agreement that saw our businesses merge on 1st October 2011.

Andrew Ecker has essentially been part of the team since 1991 when we first started distributing ArchiCAD. Andrew operated as our South Island ArchiCAD reseller for 20 years. In 1999 Andrew established Cadconsult Limited as a great kiwi owner-operator business. Andrew has had enormous success with ArchiCAD in the South Island. Cadconsult was also the New Zealand distributor for Solid Edge – a mechanical design product from Siemens PLM.

As Cadimage Group has developed the board decided to approach Andrew about merging our businesses. We saw that as essentially a solo operator Andrew was having to deal with significant administration which was preventing him from doing what he loves best – interacting with customers and potential customers.

Over a four month period we discussed options with Andrew and initially signed a Heads of Agreement in mid-August working towards the official merger from 1st October 2011. The merger saw Cadimage GroupÂ acquireÂ Cadconsult and in return Andrew received a shareholding in Cadimage Group.

Over the last two months I have put in considerable work merging our businesses which also included establishing a new business to continue the Solid Edge related operations – Cadconsult PLM.

While we have extensive systems and processes in our business, merging customer databases with over 20 years of history still takes time. Also getting systems in place helps provide a platform for us to build and grow Cadconsult PLM as a key part of the Cadimage Group has taken time, with yesterday seeing the third iteration of our website launched in 2 months!Â This coming week sees Cadconsult PLM’s first official events with the launch of Solid Edge ST4 in Christchurch and Auckland.

Two months in we are still excited about the opportunities the merger will give us and are looking forward to a strong 2012.

Along with the merger – though not directly as a result of it – we have also recently employed two more people taking our team to 17. It is great to be growing even after another challenging year.Â For an overview of the Cadimage Group you can refer to our website.

Impressed with Air NZ – mostly

This morning I caught the 6:10am flight to Christchurch or should that be Auckland!

After two missed landings due to fog we ‘diverted’ to Auckland and landed two and half hours after leaving!

Anyway, having landed I proceeded to a check-in kiosk and scanned the barcode for my original flight and found I had already been rebooked on the 10:05 flight!

Within 5 minutes of landing I was rebooked and back through security – impressive.

The only down side to the morning (apart from being late to Christchurch) was the lack of accurate information on the ground regarding the flight.

Munich’s Standing Wave

In the last 60 hours I have ‘visited’ 6 countries. I started on Friday morning in Malmo, Sweden where I caught the train to Copenhagen, Denmark. The train crosses the incredible 7.8km long Oresund Bridge.

From Copenhagen I flew to Munich, Germany to visit our Munich-based German Sales-rep Tobias – more on that below.

The next morning I flew to Ostrava in the Czech Republic to visit our Web Developer Radomir – Radomir did a couple of years overseas experience in New Zealand where he first started work for us. He has since returned to the Czech Republic to Karvina where he continues to work developing all the Cadimage websites.

Today I found out from Radomir the fastest way to get on the motorway back to Ostrava airport was to go through Poland – Radomir’s house is about 300 m from the Polish border, something that suits him well as petrol is 15% cheaper in Poland – though you can see why as the roads are pretty bad!

From Ostrava I flew to Budapest, Hungary making it my sixth country in 6 hours. Incidentally, on the flight reading the inflight magazine I discovered that Ostrava was home to the great Ivan Lendl.

I stay in Budapest for a couple of nights and catch up with everyone at Graphisoft HQ before heading to the UK later it the week.

Anyway getting back to Munich, I have visited Munich on a number ofÂ occasions, but I had never heard of the English Garden a park larger than New York’s Central Park. The park is huge and stretches from the city centre well out to the north eastern extents of the city.

Two of the impressive featrues of the English Garden are the Chinesischer Turm – a large Chinese Tower with a nearby beer garden! And the second is the Munich Standing Wave on the a small man-made river called theÂ Eisbach that runs through the English Garden. Apparently the wave was discovered by an Australian surfer. The spot is extremely popular with both surfers andÂ touristsÂ and is quite an incredible sight: (I did take my own video but found it easier to link to someone elses!)

Calatrava in Malmo

I am currently in Malmo visiting BIMobject and Graphisoft Sweden.

I was here briefly in 2008 and saw the Turning Torso by Calatrava but didn’t have time to get up close!

The tower is 190 metres high and has 54 stories. It is the tallest building in Sweden and when completed in 2005 it was the 2nd tallest residential building in Europe.

Santiago Calatrava is a spanish sculptor, architect and engineer and the building was based on a sculpture of Calatrava’s known as the Twisting Torso – a white marble piece based on the form of a twisting human being.

The building is constructed in nine segments of five-story pentagons that twist as it rises; the topmost segment is twisted ninety degrees clockwise with respect to the ground floor. Each floor consists of an irregular pentagonal shape rotating around the vertical core, which is supported by an exterior steel framework. The two bottom segments are intended as office space. Segments three to nine house 147 luxury apartments.

BIM in the Cloud

The cloud is receiving a huge amount of hype and many industries are latching on to the benefits and having huge success (my favorite,Â for example, being Xero)

Building Information Modelling (BIM) with it’s large file size, high end graphic requirements and team collaboration approach presents a number of hurdles in regard to adopting a cloud solution.

The topic for this post has been on my list for a long time now so I was quietly stoked to see that Viktor the CEO of GRAPHISOFT has saved me the time and written “Debunking the Myths About BIM in the Cloud”

For further reading you may also want to check out:

The Cloud: Hope or Hype

BIM and the Cloud

BIM and the Cloud, Part 2: The Economics of Private Cloud Computing

Jason Fried – Get Real – Inc.com

I have written before about the bookÂ Rework and also Getting Real by the same authors.

One of the authors,Â Jason Fried, also has a column on Inc that is well worth a review.

Articles I really enjoyed include:

Don’t Exaggerate Your Size

Why I Run a Flat Company

Go Ahead, Raise Your Business’s Prices

I find the way Jason writes is very straight forward and to the point – much like the software his company 37Signals creates!

Ikea and Augmented Reality

I’ve talked a little about Augmented Reality over the last couple of years and have seen many use cases, though many have seemed a little tooÂ gimmickyÂ to me and not very practical.

Although this news is over a year old not I have only just come across it and I think Ikea have done a great job in showing a really practical use for AR and also have taken a step at revolutionising their product catalog.

Using their application you can actually place Ikea furniture in your house / office / room and see how it will look. The app uses your phones camera to show the room and places the required objects, which then can be photographed even though they don’t exist!

This is especially good for any New Zealander’s who want to take photos of their house with Ikea furniture – which is still not available in NZ!

Here is a video showcasing the IKEA iPhone application:

Email Overload

I just returned from 4 days leave in New Caledonia (yes it was very hot and relaxing!)

However, today I decided to get on top of my email before I head back to the office tomorrow. Once Outlook sync’d up I had 329 emails.

While sometimes I average over 200 emails/day, 80/day while on leave was quite a surprise!

I read once that email generates email, and I have had first hand experience that the more I send the more I receive – and fortunately the less I sent also resulted in less received.

All in all, not too sure how I received 80+ emails/day when I wasn’t sending any.

Anyway this reminded me of a post I recently read discussing the idea of an email charter:

Houston, we have a problem.

We all love the power of email connecting people across continents. But… we’re drowning in it.

Every year it gets a little worse. To the point where we can get trapped spending most of our working week simply handling the contents of our in-boxes.

And in doing so, we’re making the problem worse. Every reply, every cc, creates new work for our friends and colleagues.

We need to figure out a better way.

But how?

Here is the key cause of this problem:

The total time taken to respond to an email is often MORE than the time it took to create it.

The full post is definitely worth a read and to date there have been over 200 responses.

The overall result of the post has been the creation of http://emailcharter.org/

Christchurch CBD Captured

I was stoked to see tonight’s close up article about capturing as much of Christchurch before the demolition crews move in.

Jason Mill a Christchurch architect is currently capturing HD images of buildings throughout the Christchurch CBD and with the help of Google Sketch Up (I think) he is creating a virtual model of the city. From what I understand Jason has been working on this for a number of years not just since the earthquake and the concept is awesome.

Taking the work that Jason has done Mark Billinghurst from HitLabNZ provides the ability to walk down the virtual street and see whatÂ ChristchurchÂ was like before the quake.

I have posted about Mark before regarding his work with augmented reality and it was great to see how Mark is combining Jason’s work to allow the imagery to be delivered to a mobile phone that is location aware so you can see exactly what was previously on the empty site in front of you.

While it is great to see this virtual record being created it is also good to see its potential for communication during the rebuilding phase with the ability for proposed buildings to be ‘dropped’ into the site for the public to see and experience prior to the actual construction.

Beyond using 3d models for visual communication for the general public, the rebuilding of Christchurch also offers architects, engineers, planners and the council a unique opportunity to build an accurate BIM representation of the new built environment – more on that in a future post.

Buildmedia

In October 2003, Murray Pearson and I- as the then directors of Cadimage Solutions – divested our Architectural Visualisation business and along with Gareth Ross established Buildmedia Limited.

For the initial 15 months I was involved as a director until Cadimage Solutions sold it’s majority stake to Murray. At that time I became Managing Director of Cadimage and my focus was on both ArchiCAD and our Cadimage Tools. Ironically when I was first employed by Murray in 1997, it was to re-establish the visualisation part of Cadimage that had been in gradual decline as the popularity of ArchiCAD increased.

Cadimage, Buildmedia, Murray, Gareth and myself have remained in close contact since 2003 – we shared offices until 2007 – and as of a few days ago I am now once again a director of Buildmedia. My involvement has come at a time where Buildmedia is ready for a new phase of growth with Murray having sold his shareholding to Gareth, giving Gareth the opportunity to stamp his mark on the company.

Buildmedia do some amazing work across Architecture, Product and VisualÂ SimulationsÂ and I am excited to be involved again.