One of the reasons I decided to start blogging was because I saw how open the tech community had become – with respect to sharing their ideas and experiences – and I thought that the same thing could and should be done in real estate, as well as in city building more broadly.
But in many ways, the real estate industry is the antithesis of the tech industry. We are slow moving and secretive of our ideas. Now, some of this is driven by fundamental differences in terms of how these two sectors operate. It’s a lot easier to test and iterate on your ideas in tech than it is with actual bricks-and-mortar. But I still think about ways in which we, in real estate, could be pushing the envelope.
As one example of what I’m talking about, take Union Square Ventures in New York. They call themselves a “thesis-driven venture capital firm”, which means they come up with a framework and core set of ideas, and then use those to drive their investment decisions.
You would think that these frameworks and ideas would be pretty sensitive. I mean, they are the core drivers of their business. But their entire website is actually set up around sharing and collaborating – with the public – on these ideas. Here’s a screenshot:
Each topic is something they are “thinking about” and something they want to make an investment in (or already have). Fascinating.
Many of you, I’m sure, would argue that there are risks to doing this. But there are also benefits, some of which are driven by collective intelligence. By sharing their ideas and hypotheses with the public, it helps to evolve their thinking. After all, their investment thesis is not a static thing. It grows over time.
But in addition to this, it also makes it abundantly clear to their customers (entrepreneurs) what they believe in and what they look for. And I am sure this helps them with deal flow. More and more customers aren’t just “buying” a product, they are also “buying” a philosophical underpinning and belief system.
Can you imagine a real estate firm doing something like this? I can. But it’s not happening yet, as far as I know.
I often get asked about the methodology behind my blogging. (Though I have written a few posts about it already.)
Most people seem to assume that I sit down on the weekends. Draft a content calendar. Write a bunch of posts. And then queue them up for the coming weeks.
I don’t do any of that (besides sit down).
Instead, I get up every morning and I write something. Sometimes I wake up with an idea that’s been bouncing around in my head and sometimes I wake up with no idea what I’m going to write about.
In the latter case I just start reading the internet over breakfast until something interesting catches my attention. But in both cases, what you are reading about is what I am thinking about at that moment in time.
Because in addition to a blog about cities, this blog is about a discipline and a habit. It is about taking time every day to step away from tasks, sort through my thoughts, and write something. It’s one thing to think about something; it’s another thing to write about it.
And so as much as I hope you all get value out of this blog, it also very much about the personal benefits I receive from doing this same thing over and over and over again.
Now, in terms of the content, the focus is obviously on city building. But I’m more specifically interested in the following 3 areas and their overlap:
If you’re a regular reader you know this.
I didn’t set out to focus in this way, but it just happened over time. This is what I’m passionate about and so I naturally started applying it to our discussion on cities and city building.
And finally, in terms of writing style, I’ve found myself adopting a particular structure.
I often start with a personal note – almost as if this were purely a personal blog. Then I dig into a particular city building issue and try to uncover one particular way of looking at it. And then I end with a decisive position. I’ve seen this format on other blogs and I really like it.
Obviously I don’t always follow this structure. For example, sometimes I haven’t made up my mind on a particular issue. But I try to. I lean towards the belief that a decisive wrong answer is better than a wishy washy right answer. So I push myself to take stances and have an opinion.
But in the end, the goal of every post is simply to present one idea for all of us to think about and then discuss. I’d like to believe that it keeps us all sharp. Hopefully it’s working for you.
I am a big fan of Twitter.
I use it more than any other social network and any other app on my phone (according to my battery usage). In fact, I’m such a fan that I recently started buying shares. I don’t own a lot and the Canadian-US exchange is awful right now, but I do plan to continue buying (I like dollar cost averaging).
Twitter isn’t the darling of Wall Street like Facebook is. And I think the biggest weakness of Twitter is that it’s difficult for new users to really “get it.” Facebook solved this problem early on by recognizing that new users had to connect with X number of friends right away so that they received value immediately and the next time they visited.
But I digress. That’s not the focus of this post.
This morning a friend shared a Medium article with me that was written by the Laboratory for Social Machines at MIT. The article is about a small town in Spain called Jun (pronounced “hoon”) that has transitioned to using Twitter as the dominant platform for communication between government and citizens.
The initiative first launched in 2011 and since then the mayor, José Antonio Rodríguez Salas, has been trying to get every resident onto Twitter. All 3,500 residents are even encouraged to go into the town hall to have their Twitter accounts verified. This way government employees know for sure that they’re dealing with an actual resident of the town.
Here’s a simple example of what this means for government-citizen relations (the folks at MIT translated everything to English):
One of the reasons I decided to start blogging was because I saw how open the tech community had become – with respect to sharing their ideas and experiences – and I thought that the same thing could and should be done in real estate, as well as in city building more broadly.
But in many ways, the real estate industry is the antithesis of the tech industry. We are slow moving and secretive of our ideas. Now, some of this is driven by fundamental differences in terms of how these two sectors operate. It’s a lot easier to test and iterate on your ideas in tech than it is with actual bricks-and-mortar. But I still think about ways in which we, in real estate, could be pushing the envelope.
As one example of what I’m talking about, take Union Square Ventures in New York. They call themselves a “thesis-driven venture capital firm”, which means they come up with a framework and core set of ideas, and then use those to drive their investment decisions.
You would think that these frameworks and ideas would be pretty sensitive. I mean, they are the core drivers of their business. But their entire website is actually set up around sharing and collaborating – with the public – on these ideas. Here’s a screenshot:
Each topic is something they are “thinking about” and something they want to make an investment in (or already have). Fascinating.
Many of you, I’m sure, would argue that there are risks to doing this. But there are also benefits, some of which are driven by collective intelligence. By sharing their ideas and hypotheses with the public, it helps to evolve their thinking. After all, their investment thesis is not a static thing. It grows over time.
But in addition to this, it also makes it abundantly clear to their customers (entrepreneurs) what they believe in and what they look for. And I am sure this helps them with deal flow. More and more customers aren’t just “buying” a product, they are also “buying” a philosophical underpinning and belief system.
Can you imagine a real estate firm doing something like this? I can. But it’s not happening yet, as far as I know.
I often get asked about the methodology behind my blogging. (Though I have written a few posts about it already.)
Most people seem to assume that I sit down on the weekends. Draft a content calendar. Write a bunch of posts. And then queue them up for the coming weeks.
I don’t do any of that (besides sit down).
Instead, I get up every morning and I write something. Sometimes I wake up with an idea that’s been bouncing around in my head and sometimes I wake up with no idea what I’m going to write about.
In the latter case I just start reading the internet over breakfast until something interesting catches my attention. But in both cases, what you are reading about is what I am thinking about at that moment in time.
Because in addition to a blog about cities, this blog is about a discipline and a habit. It is about taking time every day to step away from tasks, sort through my thoughts, and write something. It’s one thing to think about something; it’s another thing to write about it.
And so as much as I hope you all get value out of this blog, it also very much about the personal benefits I receive from doing this same thing over and over and over again.
Now, in terms of the content, the focus is obviously on city building. But I’m more specifically interested in the following 3 areas and their overlap:
If you’re a regular reader you know this.
I didn’t set out to focus in this way, but it just happened over time. This is what I’m passionate about and so I naturally started applying it to our discussion on cities and city building.
And finally, in terms of writing style, I’ve found myself adopting a particular structure.
I often start with a personal note – almost as if this were purely a personal blog. Then I dig into a particular city building issue and try to uncover one particular way of looking at it. And then I end with a decisive position. I’ve seen this format on other blogs and I really like it.
Obviously I don’t always follow this structure. For example, sometimes I haven’t made up my mind on a particular issue. But I try to. I lean towards the belief that a decisive wrong answer is better than a wishy washy right answer. So I push myself to take stances and have an opinion.
But in the end, the goal of every post is simply to present one idea for all of us to think about and then discuss. I’d like to believe that it keeps us all sharp. Hopefully it’s working for you.
I am a big fan of Twitter.
I use it more than any other social network and any other app on my phone (according to my battery usage). In fact, I’m such a fan that I recently started buying shares. I don’t own a lot and the Canadian-US exchange is awful right now, but I do plan to continue buying (I like dollar cost averaging).
Twitter isn’t the darling of Wall Street like Facebook is. And I think the biggest weakness of Twitter is that it’s difficult for new users to really “get it.” Facebook solved this problem early on by recognizing that new users had to connect with X number of friends right away so that they received value immediately and the next time they visited.
But I digress. That’s not the focus of this post.
This morning a friend shared a Medium article with me that was written by the Laboratory for Social Machines at MIT. The article is about a small town in Spain called Jun (pronounced “hoon”) that has transitioned to using Twitter as the dominant platform for communication between government and citizens.
The initiative first launched in 2011 and since then the mayor, José Antonio Rodríguez Salas, has been trying to get every resident onto Twitter. All 3,500 residents are even encouraged to go into the town hall to have their Twitter accounts verified. This way government employees know for sure that they’re dealing with an actual resident of the town.
Here’s a simple example of what this means for government-citizen relations (the folks at MIT translated everything to English):
In the above example, a citizen tweeted the mayor informing him that a street lamp was out. The mayor then responded, tagged an electrician, and said it would be fixed the following day. Sure enough the electrician went and fixed it the following day, and then tweeted out a photo of the lamp.
This is great. And Twitter was made for these kinds of interactions. Facebook was not.
Here in Toronto we have @311Toronto, which I have tweeted many times before with problems and they do respond quickly (far quicker than if you try and call them). But I still think there’s room for us to improve transparency and engagement across the board.
All of this is a perfect example of how technology and cities are colliding in a big way. In today’s world I really think you need to be able to think across disciplines.
In the above example, a citizen tweeted the mayor informing him that a street lamp was out. The mayor then responded, tagged an electrician, and said it would be fixed the following day. Sure enough the electrician went and fixed it the following day, and then tweeted out a photo of the lamp.
This is great. And Twitter was made for these kinds of interactions. Facebook was not.
Here in Toronto we have @311Toronto, which I have tweeted many times before with problems and they do respond quickly (far quicker than if you try and call them). But I still think there’s room for us to improve transparency and engagement across the board.
All of this is a perfect example of how technology and cities are colliding in a big way. In today’s world I really think you need to be able to think across disciplines.
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