Last week we saw yet another rough batch of results from the AIA’s Architectural Billings Index featuring the third straight underwhelming month. The fear now is the experts felt that when you start to string 3 months together that can constitute a trend. However, looking at the positive side, at this time last year, the ABI was just as bad, yet current business levels (which would be right in the time frame where the ABI has its effect on our industry) have been solid to very good. A majority of the industry is busy right now, so possibly the attention paid to the ABI is not what it’s cracked up to be and maybe it’s not that accurate of a metric. No matter how you slice it, we all know there’s holes in our economic world right now and that even with increased business levels taking place right now, I don’t think anyone is confident of long term sustainment of such. The fundamentals have to come back and hopefully that happens sooner than later. Until then we’ll track everything and anything we can to get a vision of what is still to come.
Elsewhere…
-- Congrats to my friend Dr. Helen Sanders of Sage. All in one week she appears in front of congress and is featured in a story in the Wall Street Journal. Excellent. Just remember us little people Helen… and remember the sad little blogger that did one of the first Q&A’s with you…. I guess though that is the rightful path… Glass Magazine to Congress to WSJ. I love it!
-- GlassBuild America is coming up and when I went to make my travel arrangements I was VERY pleasantly surprised at how inexpensive the flights to Atlanta are. Trust me I know how tight everyone’s budgets are (mine basically doesn’t exist!) so seeing the deals for Atlanta was pretty awesome. So if you are on the fence, go check the rates and book- for those prices you can’t afford NOT to be there!
-- Speaking of GBA, one of the seminars I am looking forward to is the BIPV one. Solar is something so many people are curious about in our world, and the line up for this piece is very good, moderated by the esteemed Richard Voreis. If you have any curiosity at all about this emerging technology- this seminar will be a huge help.
-- Flying as much as I have in my past I thought I had seen it all, but this week I saw something new… I watched as a flight attendant had a serious verbal altercation with what had be an 80+year old lady. They went at it for at least 10 minutes and the flight attendant almost walked off the plane! The argument was as we were loading and no clue what started it but talk about watching a wreck happen. Luckily cooler heads prevailed. You had to be there…
-- Looks like we’ll have football on time this year… so why am I so unenthusiastic about it?
-- Last this week, how about a hand for all of the folks who are working in the field or in the plants right now during this massive heat wave. Those folks are the real heroes of our business anyway, but especially during conditions like this. Stay cool and safe folks!
LINKS of the WEEK
-- I have gone easy on China recently (heck I go easy on EVERYONE now! LOL) but this story about their athletic set up and the wrath on the folks put away by it is worth reading and sad indeed.
-- I already noted above that football coming back isn’t thrilling me. And neither is this new rule for the NFL adding a possibility of more replay and longer games. Ugh.
-- Uh oh… there’s now an “App” for compressing words for your text messages. As a good friend noted to me on this “it makes my head hurt”- yep it sure does. Are we becoming so much of a rush rush short attention span culture that even the text messages have to be compressed?
VIDEO of the WEEK
We are year away but the trailer for the next in the series of Batman movies is out. “The Dark Knight Rises” is the name and it looks pretty strong…. Here it is…
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