The Most Awkward Meeting: The Office Elevator - WSJ.com

Katherine Rosman explains why elevators are getting much more sophisticated and can now choose who they carry and what floors they stop at based on an employee's rank. Photo from Getty Images.

The "elevator pitch" is a staple of office lore: a go-getter's well-prepared catchy idea that is ready for any chance meeting with the top boss. Well played, it impresses fast and sends an employee's career rocketing. Fumbled, the elevator ride is an excruciating 90 seconds.

New elevator systems and technology are making the pitch harder than ever—and upending the delicate rules of elevator etiquette.

Elevators now route employees, sometimes according to rank. They can help corporations keep track of who is in the office and who isn't. They can be programmed so that a germophobe can simply wave an ID card in front of a reader and be shuttled to the proper floor without actually touching a button. They can redirect an unsuspecting employee to a different floor at the request of the boss.

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Lisa Haney

The Juggle

• Why You Need an Elevator Pitch

Behind the changes is an increasingly common dispatch system that the two companies that dominate the industry, Otis Elevator Co. and smaller rival Schindler Elevator Corp. have installed in about 200 mid-to-high-rise buildings around the country. Employees select their floor on a keypad in the lobby and are sent to board a specific elevator. The dispatch systems result in fewer people per car and fewer stops, and can be configured to suit a company's particular needs.

A dispatch system leaves Rudy Loo, a New York financial industry employee, riding mostly with the people who sit near him, and with no reason to dream up elevator pitches. He can talk to fellow riders any time. "And most people are on their BlackBerry in the elevator anyway," he says.

In downtown Denver at 1999 Broadway, a 43-story building, a law firm requested that the elevator have the capability to keep its attorneys away from employees of an office of the Internal Revenue Service with which it shares an elevator bank, says Jeff Blain, a Schindler sales manager who worked on the project.

At the 55-story Bank of America Building, at One Bryant Park in New York City, elevators can let bank VIPs ride separately from rank-and-file staff, says Michael Landis, Schindler vice president of marketing. Many of the bank's senior executives work on the 50th floor and are typically directed to their own elevator anyway, making the technology unnecessary. "But it's one of the features that they particularly liked and its one of the key features that won us the contract," Mr. Landis says.

A Bank of America spokesman says the bank isn't utilizing the feature. "There is an executive floor but there is no executive elevator. The ride up or down can be shared by company leaders and people making deliveries," says T.J. Crawford, the spokesman.

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Elevator etiquette is it rude to fix your gaze on your BlackBerry? Will your colleagues smirk if you pitch the boss? Should you ride up extra floors to maximize face time?

By the Numbers

• 13 seconds: The average wait time for the elevator in a typical 16-floor building, with a dispatch system.
• 138 seconds: The average wait time for the elevator in a typical 16-floor building, with a conventional system.
• 50 seconds: The average trip time in a dispatch elevator, down from 89 seconds in a standard elevator.

The elevators at the 13-story Curtis Center in downtown Philadelphia, are built so the most senior executives can punch into the computer that they would like to see certain employees upon arrival. When employees swipe their ID cards to call the elevator in the lobby, they can be rerouted to the boss's floor.

"We are able to group passenger so it's more like a limousine," Mr. Landis says.

That doesn't help social anxiety: In the elevator, is it rude to fix your gaze on your BlackBerry? Will your colleagues smirk if you pitch the boss? Should you ride up extra floors to maximize face time?

Andy Dunn, chief executive of New York-based clothing company Bonobos.com, recently was chatting with a colleague on his office elevator. When he noticed other people were buried in their iPhones, he quieted down. "I felt like 'Gosh, we're distracting all these people who are looking at their phones,' " he says.

The centralized dispatch systems—which Schindler calls Destination Dispatch and Otis calls Compass Destination Management System—represent the most fundamental upgrade in commercial elevator travel since the late 1950s when automation began to replace manual elevators operated by men in brass-button uniforms. Building managers have been seeking more efficient ways of moving employees to help combat what are known as "underelevatored" buildings or buildings that have seen a sharp increase in the number of occupants. New buildings benefit from the efficiency of a dispatch system because in some cases it lets less space to be dedicated to elevators.

When new systems aren't available, buildings can also try diversionary tactics to distract people waiting for the elevator. They put mirrors inside elevator cabs and around lobby elevator banks in the hope that people would be distracted by analyzing their appearance. In the past, they also mounted televisions on lobby walls.

In many elevators, the Door Close button works only when switched to a special mode used by firefighters during a rescue. "It's only there to keep you occupied," explained Schindler's Mr. Blain, while walking through its elevator operations at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in midtown Manhattan earlier this week.

For anyone who works in a building with dispatch systems but lives in a building with a conventional set-up, there is potential for embarrassment. "At home, oftentimes I get into the elevator and don't push a button," says Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the Durst Organization Inc., which co-owns and manages the Bank of America building.

The tech industry—built on the idea that anyone with a good idea can rise—is shy of elevator moments. Many venture capital firms are in low-rise areas such as Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, Calif., and in Manhattan's Union Square/Flatiron District—neighborhoods short on skyscrapers. Tim Chang, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners in Palo Alto, Calif., says he has never been pitched in an elevator. But he has been pitched in his dentist's office. And in the restroom. "Awkward," he says.

Harvard Business School has an "Elevator Pitch Builder" for alumni on its website. Christine Sullivan, the school's director of alumni, career and professional development, says that in a "new 140-character world where everything is reduced to a sound bite it's more important than ever to be able to deliver a clear and concise message."

Next week, at a conference in Atlanta, Black Enterprise, a media company, will present the winner of its Elevator Pitch Competition. Finalists (including the maker of a martini-glass cover that prevents spillage while dancing and a creator of African-American-themed stationery) produced videos of less than two minutes explaining their business vision and why they deserve the $10,000 investment prize.

Not that an elevator is necessarily the best place to give your elevator pitch. Charlie O'Donnell, a principal with a seed stage venture capital fund, First Round Capital, says you never know who you're riding with and have little time to waste.

So, he advises, "Stay in the lobby in front of the elevator door. That's your optimal pitch place."

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Yes.

New Home Prices Up in Most China Cities - WSJ.com

SHANGHAI—More Chinese cities saw new home prices rise in April compared with the previous month, and price growth has risen a tad in some major cities despite a fall in transactions, underscoring challenges the central government faces in curbing prices.

Faced with public anger over unaffordable housing prices, China's authorities have progressively implemented a series of measures to rein in speculation in the property market, including restrictions on property sales, stepped-up monitoring of prices and tighter monetary policies.

Analysts reckon the government will likely be unsatisfied with the price growth in certain cities but note that some property developers have started to cut home prices this month.

Prices of newly built homes in 56 of the 70 large and medium-sized Chinese cities covered in a government survey rose in April from the previous month, up from 49 cities in March, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement Wednesday, indicating that prices are still holding up despite a fall in transaction volume.

On a year-to-year basis, growth in housing prices has shown a clearer trend of moderating. Prices of newly built homes in Beijing rose 2.8% in April, slower than the 4.9% and 6.8% rise recorded in March and February, respectively. In Shanghai, prices of newly built homes rose 1.3% last month, decelerating from the 1.7% and 2.3% recorded in March and February respectively.

Prices of newly built homes in 67 of the 70 cities covered by the survey rose in April from a year earlier, unchanged from the 67 recorded in March and lower than the 68 recorded in both January and February, the statement said.

"It could be embarrassing for the [Chinese] government if they cannot soften prices. Prices are high due to ample liquidity stemming from the country's macroeconomic policies, and I wouldn't rule out further administrative measures, such as an expansion of home purchase limits to more cities from the current 40 cities," said Oscar Choi, a property analyst from Citigroup.

Mr. Choi noted that some property developers, such as China Overseas Land & Investment, Country Garden Holdings Co. and Shimao Property Holdings, started to offer discounts to boost sales and cash flow this month.

Among the major cities, Beijing's prices of newly built homes rose 0.1% in April from March, when prices were unchanged from February, and slower than February's 0.4% month-to-month increase. Prices of new homes in Shanghai rose 0.3% in April from a month earlier, faster than March's 0.2% increase but slower than February's 0.9% month-to-month gain.

Prices of newly built homes in Shenzhen rose 0.7% in April from March, when prices were unchanged from February and slower than February's 1.0% month-to-month rise.

The price growth is still below the headline rate of inflation, said Danny Bao, an analyst at Daiwa Capital Markets, adding that he expects to see continued softening in home prices and transaction volume in the next two months.

China's inflation rate eased to 5.3% in April, from 5.4% in March.

"We're not going to see sharp price cuts. There's going to be gradual price declines in coastal cities, and for the inland cities, there could be more inflationary pressure on prices, perhaps 4%-5% on an annual basis," said Mr. Bao. "I don't think further tightening measures are imminent though, it has only been two to three months since the home purchase restrictions were implemented."

April is the fourth month for which China has released house price data for individual cities, after scrapping a monthly index of average property prices in 70 large and medium-sized cities.

China's April property sales registered their first decline since September in terms of floor space sold, falling 9.9% from a year earlier and 23.6% on-month, according to data from the bureau last week, following government tightening measures such as bans on second-home buying in some cities early this year.

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Aha.

Luxury Real Estate: Sarah and Ethan Wessel's Phoenix Residence - WSJ.com

In a city known for its strip malls and "acre-an-hour" developments of swiftly erected spec homes, Sarah and Ethan Wessel have devoted their careers to championing carefully thought-out, custom architecture. To illustrate their position, the couple spent more than 10 years creating their own home, using it as a test site for new building techniques and as a model for their clients.

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Bill Timmerman

The living room features a seven-foot-long fireplace and furniture designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Situated on a wide street in a dusty suburban neighborhood, the newly built, 4,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath house initially doesn't look that different from the other houses on the block, midcentury moderns with low-slung façades, dirt cactus gardens and carports. But a closer look reveals the exterior is neither wood nor stucco, but a thick, rough, gray concrete with horizontal ridges and fossil-like knotholes. The mostly flat roof widely overhangs the sides of the house as much as eight feet in some places.

Inside, the exposed-wood-beam ceilings are 10 feet tall in some places and floor-to-ceiling glass windows open with pocket doors to the outside. Interior walls are left unpainted, with just the white plaster on the surface, trowel marks visible. The floors are limestone and the furniture is modern, some of it classic pieces designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and some of it designed by the couple. Out back is a patio with views of Camelback Mountain, an outdoor living room and a homemade skateboard park built by Mr. Wessel for his two sons, ages 7 and 11.

Architects Sarah and Ethan Wessel spent 10 years building their home in a Phoenix suburb, using materials and techniques that make the most of the light and the landscape. WSJ's Nancy Keates reports.

"It was really important to us when you drive down the street that it feel right," said Ms. Wessel, 38, at home with her husband, Mr. Wessel, 39. The couple, founders of design and construction firm Tennen Studio, bought the house in 1998 for $225,000, mainly for the lot. They spent about $375 a square foot rebuilding it, only earlier this year finishing the 800-square-foot master-bedroom suite with a sunken tub and its own sitting room and a partially shaded outdoor patio. A four-bedroom, 2,600-square-foot house less than a quarter mile away is on the market for $650,000.

"So much architecture now is based on appearance—it's an attempt to create an iconic image. Theirs isn't like that at all. It's more like background. It is slow architecture because it takes a while to let it all sink in," said Max Underwood, a professor of architecture at Arizona State University. He added the Wessels' house fits into a movement by architects to create designs that are understated, modern and attuned to the harsh desert climate, aiming for "deeper relationships" to the environment.

As they built their house, the couple used it as an in-progress model to show clients the effects of techniques that are hard to visualize. Their exterior walls are made of poured-in-place concrete, meaning molds are set up on site and concrete is poured around wood boards, allowing the walls to be thicker and thereby keep the house cooler during the day and warmer at night. "We'd point to something and say, 'I like that. What is it? I want that,' " said Mike Sparaco, who owns a printing shop business in Tempe. He and his partner had the Wessels design and build a 4,900-square-foot house that he describes as "a bigger version of theirs."

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Sarah, Addison, Elliot and Ethan Wessel

The Wessels met in 1991 at Arizona State University's architecture school. She was from a small town in Washington state; he was from a small town in Connecticut. Neither thought they would ever stay in Arizona: Their plan was to hit New York. But Mr. Wessel graduated two years ahead of Ms. Wessel and he started a job with a contracting firm, waiting for her to finish.

Little by little, the couple started to love the sun, the light, the climate and the landscapes of Phoenix. In 2001 they founded Tennen, which designs and manages the construction of residential projects, including customized finishes, cabinetry and hardware, that range from $1 million to $20 million.

But there's one thing that practically dominates the Wessels' house that isn't intended as a model for clients: a large, custom wood-and-glass cabinet off the main living room that holds several hundred squat, colorful vinyl rabbits. Called Dunny dolls, the $50 dolls were first spied by the Wessels at New York's FAO Schwarz; since then the couple have become enthusiastic collectors, even attending local Dunny trading parties.

"We call them designer Dunny cabinets," Mr. Wessel said.

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Neat.

Off Duty 50 Summer Apps - WSJ.com

Keep Track of Your Clothes

For tastemakers with more madras than memory, the Stylebook app is a great way to keep a wardrobe indexed. Photograph your items or save images from the web, and neatly group them into categories—unlike your mess of a closet. Then, arrange them into as many combinations as the laws of mathematics and good taste will allow. There's also a photo bank for storing images of your sartorial inspirations, and for serious neurotics there's a calendar for planning weeks in advance. Perfect if you've caught yourself daydreaming about tomorrow's outfit with nowhere to jot it down. $4, available foriPhone

Be Your Own Bike Mechanic

The app Bike Repair, a pet project of one man extremely dedicated to, well, bike repair, teaches you exactly that. Tutorials for problems and routine maintenance are sorted by bike part—each one comes with detailed hi-res photos, ensuring you don't accidentally turn your bicycle into a fixie. And just to show you how much he cares, there's also a messages section, where users can get frequent news and updates, as well as send their own comments or questions straight to him. Despite some notably semi-pro production values, this program is a great example of one enthusiastic developer going the extra mile, and it shows. $3, available for iPhone and Android

The Loo-cator App

Most map apps can search for a variety of things nearby, except for the pone thing you really need when you're in a n unfamiliar city: a public loo. For that, there is "Sit or Squat," an app that lets you sift through its database of over 100,000 johns, complete with photos and user reviews. It even filters them by facility type, opening hours and tons of special features, from changing tables to high-speed hand dryers to wheelchair accessibility. Great for those with small bladders—or discerning bottoms. Free, available for iPhone and Blackberry

The Must-Have Decorating App

For designing your home while away from home, the Remodelista app offers a wealth of resources to help take your vision on the go. For starters, there's a mobile-friendly version of the Remodelista website and all its thousands of product picks and design inspirations. When you find what you like, you can save your clips to personal project folders—useful, say, while working on multiple rooms—and in addition there's the huge repository of Remodelista-approved furniture and decor, searchable and purchasable through the app. If you have room for one app and one website to guide you through the home decorating process, it should be this. $3, available for iPhone

Follow That Food Truck

Die-hard urbanites know that food trucks are a cheap and easy way to satisfy the munchies without the hassle of going indoors. From artisan ice cream to incomparable arepas, street food is growing in both popularity and its gourmet aspirations. The handy app Eat St. helps you decipher the often-obscure world of street grub, sorting trucks by distance, cuisine, and popularity. From there, you can view your selection's menu and hours, and even its Twitter mentions, which is important for finding the more mobile ones. And the beauty of Eat St. is that it offers a more focused view than many restaurant apps, which have a dizzying array of places to eat. Free, available for iPhone

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Cool.

Shocking Excerpts Read at Tucson School Board Meeting From A Book In The Ethic Studies

Make Organizing Your Photos a Snap - WSJ.com

It's easy to post your photos on Facebook. What's not so easy is managing them—organizing all your digital files so that you can find individual pictures without scrolling through hundreds.

Bradly Treadaway, digital media coordinator and faculty member at the International Center of Photography in New York, knows how overwhelming the task can be. He recently digitized about 5,000 printed photos and slides from his family, some of which date back 180 years. Developing a system for managing your photos is "like learning a new language," he says.

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Brian Harkin for the Wall Street Journal

International Center of Photography's Bradly Treadaway.

The key to staying organized is doing a lot of work up front to sort and label the photos when you first transfer them from camera to computer. Mr. Treadaway keeps his main collection on a hard drive, rather than in a Web-based archive, because he feels that photo-management programs for computers offer more choices for how to edit, share and retain the photos.

Mr. Treadaway uses Adobe Photoshop Lightroom; for nonprofessionals, he suggests programs like iPhoto or the desktop version of Google's Picasa.

He starts by importing files from his camera into "albums," or computer folders, that are titled by date and event, for instance, "Thanksgiving 2010." On days when he just takes several snapshots, he files them in a more generic album such as "Springtime 2011," where recent photographs of friends hanging out at Central Park wound up. Eventually, groups of albums are collected in a folder for the year.

Each time he imports new photos, Mr. Treadaway labels them with important terms, such as the name of an event or date. Then he adds as many as 10 more keywords to specific photos. For the birth of his nephew, for instance, he tagged photos with his nephew's name, the birth date, the hospital location and the names of family members holding his nephew. These data help him search for photographs later.

Typically, he transfers photos from his camera to his computer at least once a month or just after an event. His photos also get backed up on an external hard drive on a regular basis.

After labeling, Mr. Treadaway uses the software's star rating system to signify which shots he likes the best. Most software has stars or color labels to help users pinpoint favorites.

"If I have 10 photographs of the same thing, one would be the superior, with the best expression and the best composition," he says.

Once he finds the best shots, he creates edited collections of his initial uploads. Collections, which are somewhat like "playlists" on iTunes, can range from the best pictures of an event to his favorite photos from all of the travel he's done that year.

Mr. Treadaway reassesses his photo collections annually and selects his favorite shots for the year, which he then edits and shares. Mr. Treadaway recommends that everyone spend a few minutes editing their images. If nothing else, "most of this software also has a one-button autocorrect," he says.

To help him visualize how prints will look on paper, Mr. Treadaway prints out a contact sheet with small images from each annual collection. Afterwards, he'll make prints or share online links with friends. Usually, he uploads snapshots he wants to share to the Flickr website.

Sometimes Mr. Treadaway will create photo books, such as those available on Shutterfly or Snapfish, to give as presents. By this time, he's winnowed down his shots to only the best.

"The editing process is about chiseling away the excess," he says

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Yes.

Apple Surpasses Google as World’s Most Valuable Brand | The Blaze

Reuters reports:

Apple has overtaken Google as the world’s most valuable brand, ending a four-year reign by the Internet search leader, according to a new study by global brands agency Millward Brown.

The iPhone and iPad maker’s brand is now worth $153 billion, almost half Apple’s market capitalization, says the annual BrandZ study of the world’s top 100 brands.

Apple‘s portfolio of coveted consumer goods propelled it past Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable technology company last year

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How interesting.