Un-Marketing: Scott Stratton

Here at FEDA listening to a presentation by Scott Stratton. This gentleman is non conformist, loud, un kept... But great listening/viewing. Social media is the topic and the message is "Awesome"! We've heard this message before. It's got to be cool, awesome, viral. Share the content that is cool. Blog, tweet, Facebook, Digg, but only when you have something to say. Don't just do it every Wednesday or weekly or monthly. Do it when you have something to say.

How about search engine optimization? Don't do it until you have something to show. Develop your product into something that gives your potential client value. No half filled product bins, no links to 'under construction'. Social Media is an amplifier that markets what you have. If you don't have anything then don't tweet about it or you'll be tweeting about what you don't have. Don't do it. Not until you have something to talk about. Always talk to the people that talk to you. Respond to your tweeters.

RevEquip Walkthrough Custom Catering Kitchen!

http://on.fb.me/hsLJLv

Native Revit Families for Designers

True Specification Series 2 - Door Reachin: Native Revit Families for Foodservice: RevEquip: http://www.rev-equip.com/

It's Foodservice Paloosa at FEDA

Okay I guess I'm going to bite the bullet and make the big run down to Phoenix Arizona from March 30 to April 2 for the 92nd annual FEDA convention. It's really a food service Paloosa in the grandest fashion. You have all your largest food service equipment manufactures all at one place for the dealers to back slap, poke at, make jokes with, get drunk with, and a variety of other things we shouldn't even talk about. I'm really looking forward to it I think that FEDA is a great organization and it's been supporting food service in a very broad sense for design and standards. 

My friend Rick Ellingson (of Bargreen Ellingson fame) was telling me about how the FEDA standards for Foodservice were developed.  FEDA has always been in the forefront for setting design standards for our industry and it wouldn't surprize me that they would be working to set the standards for the newly emerging dealer Revit conversion.  I will find out soon what they are up to at the conference in Phoenix. 

And with that... Happy Reviting Reviteers! 

Who Cares if I have Revit

The smell of the ammonia printers, the joy of updating elevations, sections, floorplans, titleblocks...

Yeah those were the glory days.  A place for hand draftsmen too.  2D world was a place for the old guard of trimming, pasting, copying over, and tools like templates, french curves, mechanical pencils.  Standing by the water cooler in the morning and talking about those new fangled CAD machines.  Wow 2D on a black screen like the twilight zone. 

Mastering dos...

Yeah I was there I have to admit it.  I'm proud of it in fact.  But I was one of those early CAD addicts that actually had 4 megs of RAM in my machine.  I can't even remember what the first program I used was.  Eventually early versions of AutoCAD.  The first blush of parametrics I ran into was with a program called Autocad Designer.  You started with a sketch, assigned global parameters.  It was so slowwww....  Great concept by not yet ready for prime time. 

However things started to pickup steam.  Eventually the guy with the tri-square and sliderule retired to the Moose lodge leaving his legacy of D, E1, and E sized velum's for future archaeologists to discover faded and yellow. 

Standards were set, software was developed, and the 2d world of electronic drafting flourished. 

Who needs Revit?  Bah...  well off to the water cooler.  :)  No.... I better demo the new BIM addon for Revit Architecture 2011 instead.  I'll pick up a latte later. 

Nausea and Revit

I've always wondered about people that write about blogs. As they are blogging about blogs they put it on their blog or even as I speak I'm blogging about people that blog about blogs. Just think about it. What if somebody were to write something about me they would be blogging about people that blog about bloggers that blog about blogs and so on ad nauseaum. I remember the big universal mistake people made when they were talking about the Internet in the early days they said when we were all going to be interconnected and our heads were going to be joined at the top what a wonderful world it would be. We would be able to cure cancer and send three men to Mars but did that happen? It didn't. So anyway what it turned out to be is just a bunch of people who say anything that's on their mind just opening their mouths and whatever pours out of their tiny little brains goes on to the blogosphere or on the Internet or webpage or some personal social thing.

Well this blog is about Revit. Specifically about Revit and Foodservice. The latest thing there. Things are slow to change in the arena. I still remember the smell of ammonia from the copy machines from my first drafting jobs. The sound of the pens as they scrapped merrily along the pen plotters. Architects are also notoriously slow when it comes to change. It took their industry 15 years to do what the Aircraft and Automotive industry had been doing as soon as the technology was available.

Revit Tools and Watermarks

GUID's and shared parameters files have always been a bit of a mystery to me.  Downloaded the Revit Family Tools from CTC and it looks helpful.  Have done some simple pasting and combining.  Looks like it can be helpful.  http://bit.ly/gkwVlQ

My Philippines crew has been asking about protection for Revit Families.  Remember seeing something out there that would protect the file like a watermark.  Can't remember where.  Most of these products go for a pretty penny.

Producing a video a day using Camtasia Studio 7.  Nice little app makes it easy to do demo's for potential clients.