This has to be one of the great, liveable cities of the 21st century. Not only does it have a vast public transportation system, but it’s the easiest system I’ve ever encountered. It assumes that the public is honest and isn’t clogged with turnstiles and checkpoints that we see in every other transportation system. The streets, subways and parks are immaculate.

One of my first stops was Potsdamer Platz. Back in 1993, this was a barren wasteland. Today it is unrecognizable with all the new buildings: Hans Kollhoff”s Potsamder Platz #1 and Helmut Jahn’s Sony Center, Renzo Piano’s Daimler Benz building and Debis Tower are the star attractions.

Peter Eisenman’s Holocaust Memorial is another important site. At first glance,  is a one-liner. But one has to walk in and amongst the slabs to really get the feeling of it’s power. There was a certain similarity between the memorial and The Garden of Exile at Daniel Liebeskind’s Jewish Museum. I can’t say I really enjoyed the Jewish Museum. The permanent exhibition was fairly extensive but the museum is a labyrinth and there is no-way out (until you get to the end). Perhaps this was the point. Anyway, the best part of the architecture was the void spaces which were marked as black walls within the building. If you looked into the small windows in these spaces - you finally got to appreciate the design. But the exhibitions don’t do anything to promote the experience that I suspect Liebeskind had in mind.

The last time we visited Berlin was in 1995 to see Christo’s wrapping of the Reichstang. While that was an amazing project, Norman Foster really put the “wow” factor into this otherwise, dreary and clumsy building. Alongside the Reichstag are all the new government buildings and parks. A boat trip along the Spree river was a great way to see them and we were fortunate enough to have a perfect day for photography. The Federal Chancellery by Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank was the most disappointing. A bad dream where Lou Kahn flirts with Post Modernism. You heard it hear first.

So much more to say, but hey - this is a blog - not a book. 

It’s now official. I’m all grown up! And not just another “adult,” but a part of that dubiously distinguished organization known as the American Association of Retired Persons.

What I’m mostly struggling with is the word “retired.” It’s something I could never imagine being - so how could I possibly join a group about which retirement is a de facto component? Sure, my (much), older cousin tells me that the magazine is wonderful. Great, just what I need, yet another glossy magazine to not get around to reading every month. And sure, they claim to have wonderful savings on travel services - and that’s one thing I spend a lot of time doing - traveling. But could they really be much better than the deals I get on-line with Expedia and Priceline? They also claim to provide health-related benefits. It should be interesting to see if these compare to the magnificent savings I receive through our PEO organization!

After I received the traumatic mailing, I called my sister who’s been a proud member for 3 years and asked her what she thought? She told me that I should “celebrate,” being a member of AARP and share this with everyone. So, thanks to Bonnie, I’m going to take her suggestion and say here that anyone who is a member of AARP and would like a 10% discount (in addition to any other discount we offer), on purchases of ArchiOffice software - please call our sales department and tell them you read my blog and would like the special AARP discount. Since my 50th birthday is actually March 3rd (no condolences please), this offer will expire on March 31st, 2008.

My apologies for having any sort of commercial flavor on the blog site - but any complaints should be directed to my sister Bonnie who suggested this celebration. And while I’m now a proud member of AARP, I have no intentions of retiring. Instead, I’ll just pretend the “R” stands for Responsible.

It seems that a lot of people read the  online magazine because we had a record number of visits to our website the following day!

If you read the article carefully, you’ll learn that we’re hard at work on some major changes and improvements to ArchiOffice. I can’t wait until May 15, 2008 when we’ll be able to share these fabulous new tools with you at the AIA National Convention in Boston.

Perhaps it’s a reaction from my own experiences as a practicing Architect in Chicago, but I am fascinated by Architects like Ross Chapin who have found a way to design small, sophisticated homes that respect the environment and context - while giving the occupants a quality living experience that is neither indulgent nor restricting.

A living concept Ross Chapin has been perfecting is something they call a “Pocket Neighborhood.” These quaint communities are much more than a simple collection of well designed and detailed houses surrounding a common park. Chapin has spent a career refining his concept on how people and communities are formed and has developed a structure which enables both to strive. Indeed, these projects do more than just take the concepts that the more famous Sarah Susanka has been promoting with her “Not so Big House” books and lectures. They extend the concepts of simple, flexible, well designed and crafted homes to the entire community.

I’m thrilled with the work Ross Chapin Architects has been doing. They not only are responsible Architects, but having fun making peoples lives and their communities better places. Ross and team - thanks for allowing ArchiOffice to be a part of your firms success. 

Principals, Joseph Tanney and Robert Luntz were extremely generous with their time. I know they are incredibly busy but they had a keen interest in discussing ArchiOffice and having me work with John Kim who had spent considerable time tweaking ArchiOffice for their firm. Not only did Joe and Robert effectively share with me their specific business needs, but they allowed me the time to demonstrate to their entire office how they could use ArchiOffice to work the way they do. As most of you must know by now, one of my top priorities is to make sure that our users don’t have to change their working methods to use our software - but understand how to modify ArchiOffice to work for them.

Joe and Frank, thanks for all your time last Friday. I also appreciate the time you took to share with me your history and experiences in developing the modular and panellized structures that you are brilliantly designing and building. Kudos to you for not only having the dream, but for swimming upstream in spite of all the naysayers who think modern prefabricated housing isn’t a viable business model. From what I’ve seen, you’ve made it work!

A couple of great large and bright conference rooms, a full kitchen and every square inch packed with details make this firm just about the most interesting firm using ArchiOffice I’ve come across. If you think you can top it - please call me at 312-415-4718 and invite me over. I dare you.

Olle Lundberg gets “Class-Act” of the Month Award. Not only was he able to get my wife and I a reservation at The Slanted Door restaurant (which we were unable to do ourselves), but he picked up the tab! Olle, not only did you design a great restaurant - but, as my grandmother would have said, “you’re quite a mensch”.

Lundberg Design has had ArchiOffice for about 3 years and never really got into using it properly. Once again, I’m realizing how important it is for us to make sure that when firms install ArchiOffice - they are given serious training with the software to learn “best-practices” and make sure it’s tweaked to suit the way they run their office.

From now on - we’re including these services as part of our quotes with new customers. If - you’re in the midst of purchasing ArchiOffice - or have recently implemented it - please take advantage of our training services! Call (847) 719-2600 to set it up - or email support@archioffice.com

The Gruskin Group is a fabulous Architectural Firm. They have over 20 licenses of ArchiOffice and have been using it since 2005. The firm produces about 400 invoices/month using ArchiOffice but never got around to figuring out how to link ArchiOffice to their accounting software. For the life of me, I can’t understand why they didn’t bother our tech support group to help solve their problem, but in minutes, I was able to show them how to set it up - and off they went.

Lesson - if you want to be able to do something in ArchiOffice - it’s probably already possible. Not always. But if you don’t ask, you won’t find out.

I also visited Garrett Singer Architects who has been using ArchiOffice since 2005 as well. He’s one of the ArchiOffice evangelists who seems to love showing ArchiOffice off to anyone who comes to his office. I love people like Garrett who really spend time digging deeply into ArchiOffice to find out not just how it works, but why. One of the things Garrett was having problems with was synching his emails, contacts and calendar with ArchiOffice. In a few minutes I was able to help him understand how ArchiOffice handled synching. We also spent time talking about some of the “back of house” feature of ArchiOffice so that they can really tweak the software to work and think the way they do. ArchiOffice isn’t about making you adapt to the software - but about allowing you to modify it to suit your needs.

I spent more than a full day in the office of Robert Siegel Architects. They do some really beautiful work and have an office administrator, Heather Pfister, who has spent considerable time working to understand all she can about ArchiOffice. I’ve never been so impressed with how quickly she’s picked up the software and able to figure out ways to make it work for her. Their office brought up a problem with ArchiOffice that we’ve been hearing a lot lately. People need a better way to manage consultants fees. Robert’s ideas led to the concept of having ArchiOffice allow us to “drill-down” into phases. This way, we can assign multiple items to a phase. For example, you can have inside of Schematic Design, a sub phase called Architectural Fees, another called Structural Engineering, and as many more as you need. This would allow us to track our outside consultants fees (whether direct or indirect expenses), apart from our own services. There’s too much to elaborate on here - but suffice it to say that we’re hard at work right now trying to get this feature implemented in a future update of ArchiOffice.

In two weeks, I’m headed to San Francisco where I’ll be spending 2 weeks visiting 11 firms working with ArchiOffice.I’ll keep you posted on what I learn there. 

So, like any good “Southern boy,” Jeff offers not only to take care of my travel expenses, but recommends I have my wife come so we can use his condo in Myrtle Beach over the weekend. Having never been anywhere in South Carolina, I did the only responsible thing - and accepted his generous offer. It doesn’t stop there. Jeff and his colleague, Kathy Taylor are waiting for me at the airport. My own wife doesn’t even pick my up at the ariport! I was expecting to get right to work. But no-no. That’s not how it’s done down South. First: drinks (my usual - iced tea), at a tavern near the hotel, and dinner at the wonderful Garibaldi Cafe - where I had the famous Crispy Flounder (glazed with an apricot-shallot sauce), it’s not just a unique dish - but totally memorable! Thanks again, Jeff.

Between the fabulous lunches and dinners, I even snuck in a few hours to work with his office today. And what a great office it is. Good Architects understand the importance of the quality of our environment and LTC’s office, both in its design and atmosphere - is a place anyone would be happy to work. “What? It’s 5pm already. Do I have to go home?”

Tomorrow, I’ll spend another day working with some folks from the office to help them really understand the integration of ArchiOffice with their accounting software, how to set up the document notebook/tab system and templates to match the way their firm does business. You don’t have to change your business to work like ArchiOffice. It’s the other way around.

Bottom line: if your firm, is like Jeff’s, and you know that ArchiOffice isn’t really being put to its full potential in your firm, please contact me. I’d like nothing more than to visit your office, learn about how your firm operates and help you tweak ArchiOffice to work for you.

Furthermore, it is so fulfilling to see our customers - people we regularly speak with on the phone or on the web forums, who stopped by the booth just to say thanks. Thank-you right back ArchiOffice family. As I hope you can see by what we’ve got going on at the booth - we really are family - and we’re looking out for you. Keep those ideas coming - and we’ll keep working to make sure your Architectural firm is as profitable as it can be - and your team is having as much fun practicing Architecture as you always hoped.

For those of you who missed our May Newsletter, please check it out (click the red text link). The big treat here is our Technical Tip of the month which addresses a concern so many firms have with regard to how they should handle Consultants in ArchiOffice. In fact - two separate people asked me today what I thought was the best way to do this. My own personal advice - DO NOT do option 3 of this tip.

I’ll try and get a photo of our booth tomorrow (with my camera phone), so you can see what we’ve done this year to keep our booth as “green” as possible.

In the Library – we created a system to log every brochure, catalog and material sample in our office and categorize it by CSI index number. It was a great way for our office manager to search materials that the Architects were requesting and also to properly file away new materials. The system also had an automatic label system so that when a product arrived – she could print out the label to stick on it (CSI index number and name), as well as cover and end sheets for our own 3-ring binders.

To achieve this now, we could modify the Projects>General layout to add another component. Admin Users would be able to name this button whatever they want. I called it “Warehouse” but I could also call it “Storage” or “Library,”  or even “Junkyard” (if I had a sense of humor). Inside this component is where the users can access items. The Admin can create a “Flat File” type, and a “Drawing Archive” type and a “Samples Archive” type.. .

Similar to the way the new Notes/Submittal layout works (click thumbnail), we can allow users to decide which type they want to look at. If the user selected “Flat File” it would display the rows for any flat file drawer that project was using – and a description of the contents, (Permit Drawings, CD Redlines…). There would also be a location field so you can describe which Flat file it is – “3rd Floor – West” ( A print button could be on each line and it would print out a label (pre-set label type by the company admin), automatically with the Project name/number in bold and the contents of the drawer below it.

If a user selected Drawing Archive – it would display a list of each roll with the description of the contents. For example – Roll #SD-1 could be described as “Schematic Design Drawings”. Then there would be a Location field so users can enter the physical location. A print button would allow users to print out the labels to go on the face and ends of the roll.

Obsessed AO users could push this system to create a Type called “Specifiction” or “CDI Index” and store project information using the CSI system. At the company level - inside the company’s project - would be the area to store the company’s library of materials and catalogues.