Podcasts about rxr

In this episode of the Wise Decision Maker Show, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky speaks to Andrew Min, SVP, Strategy & Digital Initiatives at RXR, about how Gen AI helps their staff delight clients.You can learn about RXR at https://rxr.com/

Jonathan Retseck founded RXR Sports to work with athletes, explorers and storytellers in outdoor brands. It didn't take long before RXR amassed what is arguably the dream team of athletes under management. Alex Honnold, Jimmy Chin, Rich Roll and many more are part of their stacked roster of talent. But the story goes well beyond the transactional nature of sponsorship - what RXR does to build deep partnerships with intention has led to some incredible media output, the most well known being films like Free Solo and Meru. In this unfiltered conversation with Jonathan, we talk about the founding of the agency and the challenges of maintaining a roster as heavy as theirs. Show Notes: Jonathan Retseck: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanretseck/ RXR Sports: https://www.rxrsports.com/ Jimmy Chin: https://www.instagram.com/jimmychin/ Meru (Film): https://www.merufilm.com/ Free Solo (Film): https://films.nationalgeographic.com/free-solo Kate Courtney: https://www.instagram.com/kateplusfate She Sends Racing: https://www.shesends.it/ RXR Speakers: https://www.rxrsports.com/live Voicing Change Media: https://www.voicingchange.media/ BPC: Brand, Product, Content Shane Parrish - The Knowledge Project: https://www.youtube.com/@tkppodcast Farnum Street: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Clear Thinking (Book): https://fs.blog/clear/ Small Brand Mentality (Channel): https://smallbrandmentality.substack.com/ Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/second-nature-media Meet us on Slack: https://www.launchpass.com/second-nature Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secondnature.media Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.secondnature.media Subscribe to the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@secondnaturemedia

Willy was joined by one of the most influential minds in real estate, Scott Rechler, CEO and Chairman of multi-billion-dollar private real estate company RXR. They discussed Scott's bullish perspective on the U.S., interest rates and the macroeconomy, markets he's betting on, opportunities his team is actively pursuing, the state of the NYC office sector, RXR's “film vs. digital” strategy, back-to-office trends and predictions, core tenants of RXR, his “stay rich,” “get poor,” and “get rich” asset class of choice, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  You'll hear about getting started, connecting with others, and building a successful career in real estate in this milestone 200th episode. For nearly four years, guests on the show have shared their expertise and insight to help you gain the Insider's Edge. This special episode revisits five memorable conversations with prominent figures in real estate who have appeared on the show.    You'll listen to clips from: 1. Don Peebles, who is the founder, chairman, and CEO of The Peebles Corporation, a privately held national real estate and development company specializing in large-scale residential, hospitality, retail, and mixed-use commercial properties. He discusses his journey from public service to real estate development, with a focus on bringing diverse voices to the industry. You can connect with Don at LinkedIn and his website The Peebles Corporation.    2. MaryAnne Gilmartin, the founder of MAG Partners, has led major real estate development projects and now runs her own female-led development firm. In this episode, she discusses her work in re-zoning and development projects. You can connect with MaryAnne at LinkedIn    and her website MAG Partners      3. Ian Ross, founder and principal at Somera Road, Inc., shares his strategy for evaluating markets across different cities. He highlights his method for quickly understanding the local real estate landscape.   You can connect with Ian at LinkedIn and his website Somera Road.     4. Ryan Serhant is founder and CEO of SERHANT, a multi-dimensional real estate brokerage that sits at the intersection of media, entertainment, education, and technology. He has starred in the series “Million Dollar Listing: New York” and “Owning Manhattan.” He also wrote the foreword to the book “The Insider's Edge to Real Estate Investing.”    You can connect with Ryan through Instagram  and his website SERHANT.     5. Scott Rechler is chairman and CEO of RXR, an innovative investor, developer, and place-maker committed to applying a customer and community-centered approach to building properties, services, and products that create value for all stakeholders.  You can connect with Scott at LinkedIn and his website RXR. 

In a wide-ranging discussion, RXR CEO Scott Rechler opines on everything from the future of cities to leveraging AI in decision-making to office-to-multifamily conversions.Insights to Share: · Commercial real estate investors can find opportunity in a higher-cost environment.· The outlook for office is brightest in areas where talent wants to live, work and play.· RXR uses market intelligence combined with data to inform their strategies. Key data sources include VTS, cell phone activity, AI and predictive analytics.

  You will learn about the value of branding for real estate investments in this conversation with Whitney Arcaro, chief review officer at RXR, a vertically integrated operating and development company based in New York. RXR has expertise in a wide array of value creation activities, including ground up real estate, infrastructure, and industrial development. It oversees 25 billion square feet of property, including commercial and residential.   You'll hear about ways to brand a property so it conveys the right message. Whitney also discusses how your personal brand is often a part of your overall real estate marketing.    You can connect with Whitney through RXR at LinkedIn and Instagram.   You can connect with me at: My website: JamesNelson.com LinkedIn: JamesNelsonNYC Instagram: JamesNelsonNYC Twitter: JamesNelsonNYC My Forbes.com articles: Forbes.com/sites/jamesnelson

In a wide-ranging discussion, RXR CEO Scott Rechler opines on everything from the future of cities to leveraging AI in decision-making to office-to-multifamily conversions.Insights to Share: · Commercial real estate investors can find opportunity in a higher-cost environment.· The outlook for office is brightest in areas where talent wants to live, work and play.· RXR uses market intelligence combined with data to inform their strategies. Key data sources include VTS, cell phone activity, AI and predictive analytics.

Christelle Rohaut is the Founder and CEO of Codi (backed by a16z), where she's building the walk-to-work revolution. Codi offers turnkey, private office spaces with the most flexible terms on the market. In a matter of days, any company can find a space for their team, with full and part-time options, outsourced office management, and flexible leases. Codi has also created a Relief Fund to help businesses impacted by WeWork's struggles. Christelle is an Urban Planner who aspires to achieve positive social and natural impacts for happier livelihoods. She seeks to innovatively rethink urban systems to help cities be a happier place for all.(2:11) - State of Office market(13:58) - Feature: Housing Trust Silicon Valley(15:10) - What's wrong with traditional Coworking(21:43) - Types of buildings partnering with Codi(23:56) - Codi's WeWon't marketing campaign(29:34) - Collaboration Superpower: Brian Chesky (Airbnb CEO & Co-founder) & Conchita Martinez (Spanish tennis champion & coach)

Katharine Lau is the CEO and Co-founder of Stuf, a self storage startup delivering modern, tech-enabled storage to consumers and businesses. Stuf partners with real estate owners to monetize basements, garages, and other spaces in commercial buildings as storage, creating new cash flow opportunities for landlords while providing neighborhoods with a new amenity. Stuf was recognized by Fast Company as one of The World's Most Innovative Companies in 2022. Previously, Kat led the supply-side business of Industrious, the nation's leading premium workplace and coworking provider, where she pioneered an industry shift to asset- and liability-light agreements with property owners.(1:42) - Stuf origin story(5:46) - Target markets and type of buildings suited for conversions(10:00) - Business model & scaling CRE conversions(11:32) - Stuf's tech stack(15:02) - Feature: Housing Trust Silicon Valley(16:14) - Industrious transition from asset-heavy to asset-light(20:44) - WeWork's tumultuous office lease renegotiations(22:34) - Future of office uses(25:44) - Office-to-art space conversion(27:22) - Collaboration Superpower: Marie Kondo

Ryan Simonetti is the CEO and co-founder of Convene, a global hospitality company that owns and manages premium Meeting, Event & Workplace locations around the world. His unique expertise in real estate acquisitions, development, and finance has helped catapult Convene to become a pioneer in the commercial real estate industry. Ryan is also the co-founder & Chairman of Ease Capital, a digital-first commercial lending platform that combines data, technology & world-class customer support to streamline the multifamily financing process from end-to-end. Ryan has been recognized for his transformative achievements on Commercial Observer's inaugural Power PropTech List, Real Estate Forum's 50 Under 40 list, Inc. Magazine's '30 Under 30', a list of America's Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs; was named 'Top Entrepreneur' by Crain's New York, and was a finalist in Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year® New York Awards. (3:00) - WeWork's bankruptcy impact on the Office industry(8:17) - Tech vs Real Estate valuations(11:13) - Feature: Housing Trust Silicon Valley (site)(12:26) - Office Markets comparison(16:44) - Convene's performance & KPI's(18:07) - Innovative experience management(25:11) - Office AR & VR adoption(29:07) - Ease Capital - tech-enabled Multifamily lender(31:52) - Collaboration Superpower: Michael Jordan

Remen Okoruwa is product-minded leader who's working to unlock data for the property management industry. Remen and his co-founders met while they were working at Hubspot, and are now bringing their deep expertise about integrations to streamline Multifamily property management operations for all stakeholders. Propify (YC W23) recently raised $3.3M from VC firm Prudence, with additional funding from Fifth Wall, RXR, PropTech Angel Group, and HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah. This episode is part of the Tangent @ Blueprint series, the most global event of Proptech innovators leading the charge in changing the built world in Las Vegas every September.(0:20) - Propify's origin story(1:34) - Benefits for Multifamily Proptech companies(2:55) - Translating data into insights & action(3:58) - Multifamily use cases(6:01) - Propify's unique business model(7:56) - Hubspot lessons for Proptech(9:21) - Where will Propify be in the next 12-24 months(10:16) - Key growth metrics

US commercial real estate has been hit by the surge in interest rates and a pullback in lending from regional banks. Scott Rechler, chairman and CEO of real estate investment firm RXR, and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, professor of real estate and finance at Columbia Business School, break down the risks in the commercial real estate crisis that were the topic of the recent Top of Mind report, Commercial real estate risks.

This week, Realcomm Live welcomes Josh Panknin, Director, Real Estate AI Research & Innovation at Columbia University, and Yoann Poirier, Lead Data Scientist with RXR, to explore how AI will impact the built environment and the importance of having a solid data infrastructure to take advantage of this powerful and disruptive technology.

While the Fed hopes for a soft landing for the economy, “no landing” may not be acceptable and could require additional rate hikes. CNBC's Steve Liesman reports on the latest economic data and what it signals for Federal Reserve policy.  Former Kansas City Fed President Esther George weighs in on what the Fed is watching in the economy.  Commercial real estate CEO Scott Rechler of RXR says that some office buildings have what it takes to lure remote workers in and some just won't make the cut. Plus, Home Depot's sales slide, Tesla's launches cheaper versions of Model X and Model S and young climate activists in Montana get a big win in court.  Esther George: 19:37Scott Rechler: 30:59 In this episode: Courtney Reagan, @courtreaganScott Rechler, @scottrechlerSteve Liesman, @steveliesmanMichael Santoli, @michaelsantoliJoe Kernen, @JoeSquawkAndrew Ross Sorkin, @andrewrsorkinKatie Kramer, @Kramer_Katie

The Washington Post recently shared evidence that US employees have gotten dramatically less productive. The Wall Street Journal reported that companies like Ford are giving severance packages to underproductive employees. And pretty much every media outlet has told us that employees are “quiet quitting” in astounding numbers. Today we are joined by Corinne Murray, an employee experience thought leader who has worked at companies like WeWork, American Express, RXR, Gensler, and CBRE. We look at what's really driving our collective malaise, the influence and lasting impact of distributed and hybrid workforces, and how companies can create authentic and lasting employee engagement. Spoiler alert: they use the same strategies companies use to create lasting customer engagement. You don't want to miss this episode!   Key takeaways: “Your people are your workplace” -Corinne Murray Engagement isn't about where we work, but how we work. The most successful employee experience strategies are powered by employee purpose. Instead of one size fits all, over-corrections that revert to familiar and comfortable formats, they talk to employees about what matters to them, and design balanced strategies to support those.  Most companies are too focused on bringing employees back into the workplace rather than understanding what works best for the type of work the employee is doing. Check out this framework from Gartner for an example: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/4-modes-of-collaboration-are-key-to-success-in-hybrid-work The best way to keep employees engaged and productive is to create policies that help them feel like the way they work is time well spent.

Marcus Moufarrige, CEO of ility, joins Tech Nest to discuss all things no-code, frameworks, and building tools for those who run complex real estate businesses. Marcus' experience in the office flex-space gives him a unique advantage in understanding the needs for a flexible platform that is able to be molded to meet the unique needs of each operator's needs. ility is that platform. Being that ility is a no-code platform, built in a way to meet a large array of use cases, it may be one of the most versatile middle-wares on the market. More about ility and Marcusility is a no-code platform for operators to streamline their now complex business.Connecting new and legacy digital systems, ility's middleware gives companies like RXR, Legal & General and EQ complete control over their technology, operations and offer. ility also has a strategic partnership with Microsoft.By using physical rights management, operators have a simple framework for digitising their property, to increase NOI, improve efficiency and decrease operating expenses.Marcus is effectively leading property into the world of 'composability'. He's also the ex-COO of Australian property giant, ServCorp, alongside fighting with Justin Bieber (Google it!). Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn Check out ility

Hot on the heels of our talent management discussion with Gen Eric Smith, we were excited to welcome guests to the #BruteCast who not only have front row seats to Force Design 2030 but are helping to drive the bus. We talked with Major General Frank Donovan, commanding general of the 2d Marine Division, and Command Master Chief Scottie Cox, who serves as the senior enlisted Navy advisor to the division. For those who've been tracking Force Design 2030, you'll know that the 2d Marine Division recently returned from their mission under Task Force 61/2 in the 6th Fleet Area of Operations, and working with the US Navy and partners and allies from the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea. The Task Force also conducted real-world experimentation on several of the concepts highlighted in Force Design 2030, such as the Stand-In Force and multi-domain reconnaissance and counter reconnaissance (RXR). General Donovan and Command Master Chief Cox covered this and more in our conversation. MajGen Donovan's biography can be found here (https://www.2ndmardiv.marines.mil/Leaders/Biography/Article/516073/major-general-francis-l-donovan/) and CMC Cox's biography can be found here (https://www.2ndmardiv.marines.mil/Leaders/Biography/Article/516102/command-master-chief-scwexw-scottie-l-cox/). Task Force 61/2 operations are also discussed in this article in Defense News (https://www.defensenews.com/interviews/2022/08/03/how-us-marines-put-force-design-2030-to-work-in-europe-against-russian-naval-forces/#:~:text=%2C%E2%80%9D%20said%20Maj.-,Gen.,to%20an%20array%20of%20crises.) and a recent podcast episode with Ryan Evans at War on the Rocks (https://warontherocks.com/2022/08/the-task-force-at-the-bleeding-edge-of-the-marine-corps/) Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Scott Rechler, the chairman and CEO of RXR, a leading real estate owner, investor, operator, and developer committed to building socially, economically, and environmentally responsible communities. In this conversation, Rechler draws on his extensive business and civic leadership experience to assess the state of New York's recovery from the pandemic. In addition to running one of the region's largest real estate development and infrastructure firms, he also serves or has served on the boards of the Port Authority, the MTA, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Regional Plan Association, and played various roles in helping to rebuild lower Manhattan in the wake of the September 11 attacks. These different vantage points inform Rechler's view that we have entered a “great recalibration.” Our recovery, he notes, has occurred faster than we would have expected in the depths of the pandemic: “the most important barometer of the health of our city is the talent, the people,” he says, “and we've seen an incredible rebound.” At the same time, he cautions that the public, private, and nonprofit sectors still need to adjust to the significant structural changes that have occurred in how and where people live and work — and what this means for our commercial corridors, residential communities, the infrastructure that connects and supports them, and “sustainable, equitable growth” going forward. We also discuss what responsible business looks like in the context of real estate. Rechler explains that his firm's motto, “doing good and doing well means doing better,” is about building more sustainable, socially responsible, and equitable communities. In addition to a focus on clean energy and decarbonization goals, RXR forges partnerships with local government, civic, religious, and labor organizations, and small businesses as part of every business plan and project. We end with a discussion of New York's future. Gone are the days of “winners and losers” and “city versus suburb,” Rechler says. New York's status as a “superstar city,” depends on a healthy and symbiotic relationship with a “superstar region.”  Thanks for listening! Subscribe to Capital for Good on Apple, Amazon, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Drop us a line at socialenterprise@gsb.columbia.edu. Mentioned in this Episode RXR ESG Report “Signs of Progress: NYC's Economic Recovery,” (Partnership for New York City, 2022) Recalibrate Reality With Scott Rechler

　ワンメイクの電動オフロード選手権、エクストリームEで初代王者に輝いたロズベルグXレーシング（RXR）は、地元ドイツで実施したプライベートテストにおいて、ついに2016年F1ワールドチャンピオンのドライブを実現させた。文字どおりチーム創設者兼CEOを務めるニコ・ロズベルグがシリーズ専用ワンメイク車両の『オデッセイ21』のシートに収まり、F1引退以来初となる電動オフロード車両のテストドライブを堪能した。　2016年のF1タイトル獲得を経て、レースからの引退を宣言したロズベルグは、持続可能性をテーマに掲げた業態の起業家兼投資家としてのキャリアに乗り出していた。それ以来、現在36歳を迎えるロズベルグは、F1ファンに対し自身のシミュレーター上でトラック攻略の技を披露することはあったものの、レースカーのステアリングホイールを握る機会は滅多にないままとなっていた。

Summary: Louisa is joined by Jessica Beck, Co-Founder and COO of Alfred and Marcela Sapone, CEO and Co-Founder of Alfred for the 5th episode of season 9. During this episode, they discuss how building management platforms are changing the way we live. Taking a deeper dive into how Alfred came about and in which city it all began, they also touch on what the product is, what trends they are seeing, and why Alfred acquired a property management company. They wrap up this riveting chat by talking about their journey as female founders and what is next for Alfred. The value bomb from this episode is, “Once you build an asset, you need someone to manage that asset.” Resources: LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy LMRE YouTube Interviews Companies Mentioned: The Peloton Brookfield Properties Hines Related  RXR  Jamestown Greystar  Shout Outs:   John Fagan, Co-founder & CEO at doorkee   Key Insights From This Episode:  The people who were able to make it all work had one thing in common: they got really comfortable with asking for help as well as comfortable with the idea of a team backing them up. - Marcela  ​Once you build an asset, you need someone to manage that asset. - Marcela   Real estate has been very resistant towards tech enablement. - Marcela My advice to founders would be; it does take time but if you build a relationship and you go building by building, one building to ten buildings, you not only build a great relationship, but you actually get to build a great product and you get to learn and work with your customers to bring something to market. - Jessica We learned that in this space, there's so much fragmentation; there's fragmentation on the technology side, on the services side and on the operator side. - Jessica About Our Guests: Jessica Beck, Co-Founder and COO at Alfred  Jessica Beck is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Alfred. Beck leads Alfred's day-to-day operations and under her direction, Alfred has grown to be a leader in hospitality, successfully rolling out a national resident experience and building management platform with hundreds of thousands of units managed.  In an effort to expand Alfred's footprint, Beck has negotiated and developed partnerships with some of the country's largest real estate developers, expanding Alfred to 44 major cities across the country.  Along with Alfred's Co-Founder, Marcela Sapone, Beck supports founders who want to live more consciously through WHITESPACE Ventures, a seed investment firm focused on design-led tech for better business.  From SXSW to the Sante Fe Institute's Annual Business Network & Board of Trustees Symposium, Jess speaks regularly on entrepreneurship and building scalable solutions in the sharing economy. Beck holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in economics from Williams College, where she was captain of the women's rugby team and graduated cum laude. Marcela Sapone, Co-Founder and CEO of Alfred  Marcela Sapone is the CEO and Co-Founder of Alfred. Sapone launched Alfred with a mission to make help a universal utility in every home. Since 2014, under Sapone's leadership, Alfred has expanded to serve more than 135,000 residents in 44 cities across the United States and Canada, and has been named as Fast Company's Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2018, 2019, and 2020.  As one of the first leaders in the sharing economy to advocate for fair compensation of service workers, Sapone adopted the company-wide policy of hiring all Alfred staff as W2 employees. Sapone has worked with the U.S. Department of Labor and the White House under the administration of President Barack Obama, as well as The Brookings Institute and The Aspen Institute's Economic Opportunities and Financial Security Program, to advance these efforts of economic security for the future of employment. Along with Alfred's Co-Founder, Jess Beck, Sapone supports founders who want to live more consciously through WHITESPACE Ventures, a seed investment firm focused on design-led tech for better business.  Named one of Goldman Sachs's “most intriguing entrepreneurs,” Sapone writes and speaks frequently on principled leadership, human-centered technology, and her commitment to being a steward of good jobs and meaningful change. Her writing has appeared in Forbes, Quartz, and Recode, among other highly reputable publications. She has been included in Fast Company's Most Creative People list, featured as the face of Consumer Tech in Forbes 30 Under 30, and was also a winner of Connect Media's Women in Real Estate Award in 2021. Sapone serves on the Norwalk Zoning Commission, where she supports initiatives and creates opportunities for urban development and growth. Sapone earned her BA from Boston University and holds an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.  Alfred  Operating at the intersection of real estate and technology, Alfred is the leading resident experience building management platform that is changing the way we live. Founded in 2014 by Marcela Sapone and Jessica Beck, Alfred's mission is clear: to create an industry shift in real estate, transforming renters into residents and apartment properties into neighbourhoods. Named by Fast Company as one of the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World, Alfred has been recognized as a leader in the on-demand and in-home economy, investing in the local ecosystems and neighbourhood businesses that give meaning to our communities. Alfred to date operates in over 135,000 residential units in 44 markets across the U.S. and Canada through strategic partnerships with international real-estate operators, such as Brookfield, Hines, Related, RXR, Greystar and Jamestown. To learn more, visit www.helloalfred.com. About Our Host Louisa Dickins Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific. To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast ‘The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation. About LMRE LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management. From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting. At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. Timestamps: [02:10] Marcela: How did Alfred come about and how did you meet?  I went to Harvard Business School and ended up sitting next to Jessica, we were both working 90-100 hour weeks.  Our objective, both as individuals and personally, was to figure out if it would be possible to start our own adventure, build our own business and to find a co-founder.  Our question was, “How can we enable women to stay in the workforce longer?”  Our solution was, “Could we create a business that would put groceries in your fridge, dry-cleaning your closet, packages on your counter and have everything you ever needed at the tap of the button. And could that be included in our rent?”  [05:40] Jessica: In which city did this all begin?  We were one of the few consumer companies that originated in Boston as we were still students.  We opened our next market in New York. We have scaled to Canada and now we are in 52 cities.  [07:25] Marcela: Can you tell us more about the product?  We focus on the largest category and asset class in the world, which is housing and we are making it digital.  We take technology and we take a resident first, very consumer perspective and we are disrupting the way that traditional property management happens in multifamily and single family build-to-rent communities. At your fingertips is an application that allows you to buy services, to pay your rent, to book amenities, to book the Peloton, to book the workspace, to complain about something going wrong in your apartment and to request your packages to be delivered to your front door. [10:05] Jessica: How did you go about bringing on your first massive client? Our approach in working with the industry and gaining our first customers was really one of partnering. Our first big customer was Related Rentals.  My advice to founders would be; it does take time but if you build a relationship and you go building by building one building to ten buildings, you not only build a great relationship, but you actually get to build a great product and you get to learn and work with your customers to bring something to market. We always took a partnership oriented, consultative approach.  [12:05] Marcela: What are the major trends you have seen between Boston or New York in terms of what a resident is looking for. In Boston and New York, one of our biggest categories in the service marketplace in terms of time-saving service, was dry cleaning. But in San Francisco, you have absolutely no dry cleaning, and in Texas pet care was our largest category. In the last three to five years while we've been building the business, there's been a tremendous amount of change in the industry. [15:10] Jessica: What was the reasoning behind acquiring a property management company?  One of the things that we learned along the journey is if you really want to change how people live and you want to do it past the front door of their home, you need to be much more connected than you would guess. We realised in order to really deliver the product, we had to become much more integrated into building operations to create an end to end user experience and to deliver on top of that platform, you need to have a consolidation. We learned that in this space, there's so much fragmentation.  [21:15] Jessica: How long on average does a resident stay in an apartment? The average in the US, for annual churn in a property is about 45 - 50% a year and as a consumer business that means there is a lot of opportunity. What we've found is when you put a community in a building and residents start to participate and their lifestyle starts to get automated they end up staying longer.  In properties where we've been operating for some time, we've increased the  renewal rates for our partners by 5-10%.  [24:25] Marcela: Any advice you can give to other female founders? We try to ignore the fact that we're female founders, we would never do female only panels or raise and go out and say, “Female led companies raising X amount.” Focus on the business and the fundamentals of the business.  Have an extreme level of patience and a level of acceptance. Jessica: Being a founder is hard so find a good support system.  [27:55] Marcela/Jessica: How do you support your growing team as well as retain employees?  All of us on the planet are at a point where we're taking a big step back to evaluate our choices. There's been a reshuffling of where people are putting their energy and the careers they want to be in. One thing that is extremely clear is that connecting back to your mission and having an incredibly clear set of values as well as being as radically transparent.  Being empathetic and personal with each member of your team and understanding their goals.  [31:40] Marcela: What is next for Alfred?  Slowly and steadily continually leading the category forward to become the leading brand in residential real estate as well as work with our stakeholders to move the industry forward.  Continuing to add value to all of our customers [34:15] The ‘LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about;  L – Touch on the main lessons you have learnt throughout your career. Marcela: First things first and one line to do lists.  Jessica:  When you're a founder, you're kind of the captain of a ship and you see calm seas and stormy seas but you are always in both.  M - Please give a mention to anyone / product / service. Marcela: John Fagan, Co-founder & CEO at doorkee. Jessica: Our whole team. R – What has been the most rewarding aspect of working in PropTech? Marcela:  We're taking things from a piece of paper and turning them into something that you can engage with and interact with.  Jessica: Echo what Marcela said.  E - What are you excited about in the future of PropTech? Marcela:  Getting through 2022 and 2023 and being able to reflect back and be proud of making it through a pretty challenging market with lots of ups and downs and twists. Jessica: Keep pushing the envelope in the industry.  [36:05] Jessica: Are there any plans to come to Europe?  100% Yes Sponsors Launch Your Own Podcast Kopus.com is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, and guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch jason@kopus.com

Jarrod Whitaker is the Senior Vice President of Residential Operations at RXR. He oversees all Multifamily Residential Operations for their $22 Billion dollar portfolio and is helping them deliver innovative projects across the country. Prior to joining RXR, Jarrod served as Vice President at Bozzuto Management Company and also served as both Director of Maintenance Operations/Resident Experience for the Durst Organization. He has successfully executed ground up construction projects and lease ups of luxury residential projects in excess of $3 Billion. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies and Political Science from Columbia University and Master's in Real Estate Development from NYU's Schack Institute of Real Estate.

And here we are with another ended championship. Extreme E this weekend, with a very close match between RXR and X44 teams. Really wrong year for Hamilton, takenk the second spot also with his team! F1 is still under noise with Mercedes complaints and Ferrare working hard to be competitive. Last but not least, the new toy for Ken Block by Audi.. the Audi S1 E-tron Quattro Hoonitron!

　2021年創設の電動ワンメイクSUVによるオフロード選手権『Extreme E（エクストリームE）』が、12月18～19日にイギリス・ドーセット周辺の陸軍基地施設をベースに開催された『the Jurassic X Prix（ジュラシック-Xプリ）』で初年度シーズンフィナーレを迎え、7度のF1王者ルイス・ハミルトン創設のX44から参戦するセバスチャン・ローブ／クリスティーナ・グティエレス組が念願のシリーズ初優勝を達成した。同時にチャンピオンシップも決着を迎え、開幕からの連勝を含む年間3勝を記録したニコ・ ロズベルグ率いるロズベルグ・Xレーシング（RXR）のヨハン・クリストファーソン／モリー・テイラー組が栄光の初代王者に輝いている。　初年度から新型コロナウイルス（COVID-19）感染症蔓延による渡航制限などの影響を受け、後半戦に予定された南半球ラウンドのキャンセルを決断したエクストリームEは、イタリア・サルディニア島での1戦に続き、ふたたびヨーロッパ・ラウンドでタイトル天王山を実施する運びとなった。

What is the function of the vitamin D receptor (VDR)? How does it interplay with the retinoid receptor (RXR)? What happens to your thyroid function when you supplement D3 and drive up your 1,25D levels? Can supplementing D3 drive the development of osteoporosis? Why does the half-life of 25D and 1,25D matter? Why do you never hear the word "heterodimerization" in vitamin D smurf talk? What is a dimer?  Vitamin D researcher Jim Stephenson Jr shares his research and dot connections about hormone D supplementing and the effects that it has to cause imbalance in our body. He challenges listeners to dig deeper beyond two or three molecules and to realize the complexity of secosteroid hormone D. We go down the list point-by-point of a popular pro vitamin D3 article written by researcher Danny Roddy with the goal of bringing clarity to the discussion. We cover oral versus topical administration of D3 and explore the question: how would a substrate lower one of the potentials that it can become?  Jim's Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/517807781731760 The pro D3 supplement article: https://dannyroddy.substack.com/p/vitamin-d-bioenergetic-wunderkind The Man Who Sold America On Vitamin D — And Profited In The Process https://khn.org/news/how-michael-holick-sold-america-on-vitamin-d-and-profited/ Dr Hollick's Vitamin D supplement: https://shopee.ph/FERN-D❤%EF%B8%8F-Your-DAILY-SUNSHINE-VITAMINS-i.110227573.2088103398 The renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system and calcium-regulatory hormones  https://www.nature.com/articles/jhh2014125.pdf?origin=ppub Low vitamin D levels do not aggravate COVID-19 risk or death, and vitamin D supplementation does not improve outcomes in hospitalized patients with COVID-19: a meta-analysis and GRADE assessment of cohort studies and RCTs https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-021-00744-y?fbclid=IwAR0iC-NWzVOXsX3PQfqpa-zXYuQqvUZwUmwP-ymNwhT4XLU46ovYimbU_VA Characterization of a new pathway that activates lumisterol in vivo to biologically active hydroxylumisterols https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5595834/?fbclid=IwAR3vuqTiEt7LlGDA4JKBWNiy84vUQH1kMrjZR7bkragBW_j9NYDfZ-lQv5M Vitamin D4 in Mushrooms https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3411670/?fbclid=IwAR3VA9RAwSVm5eLT_Vh1PSZBgf1sqOWb-TyZ-hRWELNEaokTh6aRRkOhs98 Photobiology of Vitamin D in mushrooms and its bioavailability in humans https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24494050/ Trevor Marshall PhD published research: https://www.trevormarshall.com/papers.htm Steroid Hormone Vitamin D: Implications for Cardiovascular Disease https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29798901/ 25-Hydroxylation of vitamin D3: relation to circulating vitamin D3 under various input conditions https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18541563/ Vitamin D in Mushrooms https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400525/Articles/AICR09_Mushroom_VitD.pdf Absence of Seasonal Variation in Serum Concentrations of 1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D Despite a Rise in 25-Hydroxyvitamin D in Summer https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/53/1/139/2677695?redirectedFrom=fulltext&fbclid=IwAR2zY9zb43zc66cLY6b50zbhtbCOThYN-CRw2K8YK5LwSm8xeGm5mqM7zdQ Vitamin D: the alternative hypothesis http://autoimmunityresearch.org/transcripts/AR-Albert-VitD.pdf My website: www.matt-blackburn.com Mitolife products: www.mitolife.co  

In this episode The Propcast talks to Vik Venkatraman, founder of Blueprint, real estate's premier event for tech startups, VCs, and industry players to connect. Blueprint is hosting an in-person live event this autumn in Las Vegas! They are joined on the podcast by Matthew Boras, from RXR Realty and Nima Wedlake, from Thomvest, both of whom are speakers at the Blueprint 2021 to find out what to expect from Blueprint 2021, who is attending, and some top tips for PropTech pitching to investors. Get your ticket for Blueprint here!   Key Insights From This Episode   (Blueprint ‘21) is going to be a gathering not to miss - Vik Venkatraman We are bringing together what we believe is the very best, the very brightest, the most active, the most prolific collection of folks who are on the technology side, the investor side, and the industry side of real estate – Vik Venkatraman We are focused on and excited to meet entrepreneurs that are building companies which ultimately serve as the backbone of the industry – Matt Boras This has been a very interesting time for the built environment, but we have also seen a lot of amazing advancement, adoption, and strength from the technology community – Vik Venkatraman At events like this, the density of connections you can make is really valuable – Nima Wedlake  We are excited about the opportunity that tech is unlocking across all aspects of the industry – Matt Boras There's always stuff to learn and that's one of the pleasures of this role is that I get to learn from talented entrepreneurs on a daily basis – Nima Wedlake One-to-one networking is a really important part of Blueprint – Vik Venkatraman My recommendation for folks is, be proactive about reaching out and making connections – Nima Wedlake Knowing your metrics as a founder and knowing where to invest your resources as a company in order to achieve your goals for growth is pretty important (when pitching) – Matt Boras There's no replacement for tenacity. I think in this game, just sticking with it can take you a really long way – Vik Venkatraman By almost any metric there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur – Matt Boras   About Our Guests Vik Venkatraman  https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikvenkat/  Vik is a strategy and innovation management consultant, and a seasoned general manager. He currently serves as the general manager for Blueprint - the preeminent platform at the intersection of tech, venture, and real estate. At Bionic, he worked with a team of serial entrepreneurs to create and go after huge opportunities with F500 c-suites. He has lead multiple teams through the deployment of dozens of ecommerce sites, built multiple B2B sales & outreach machines, designed 2 hardware IOT products, and evaluated models ranging from SaaS to Marketplace. Vik has played a key role in building the $50MM Business Insights unit at American Express, and engineered the savings or growth of over $50MM in value for clients at Deloitte Consulting. Additionally, he built a beverage company, Star Power, to a business with over 500 accounts on no outside financing, and even published a book, Inspired! (Wiley, 2008). He graduated with honors from Columbia University with a degree in Biomedical Engineering.   Nima Wedlake https://www.linkedin.com/in/nimawedlake/  Nima Wedlake is a Principal at Thomvest Ventures, focusing on investment opportunities across the real estate & financial technology verticals. He currently serves as a Board Observer at LoanSnap, a mortgage technology company, Wholesail, a B2B payments network, and Singular, a marketing attribution provider. He also spearheaded Thomvest's investments in Ribbon, Tala, Blend, Mynd, Obie and PeerStreet. Nima was previously a Board Observer at Vungle (acquired by Blackstone in 2019) and DataXu (acquired by Roku in 2019). In 2020, Nima was recognized as one of 25 Rising Stars of Fintech VC by Business Insider. Prior to joining Thomvest, Nima worked as a management consultant advising technology clients on issues related to go-to-market strategy with the firm ZS Associates. He was also on the founding team at Sponge, a venture-backed customer engagement platform, where he led product development efforts. Nima is originally from the Bay Area and graduated from UC Berkeley, where he studied Business Administration and Operations Research.   Matt Boras https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattboras/ Matt serves as Senior Vice President on the Investment team at RXR Realty and leads the RXR digital ventures investment strategy. RXR offers a dynamic array of innovative investment products across the risk spectrum for its investors. Coupled with a rich history of office and industrial development, our funds benefit from our strategic increase in the construction of residential, storage, telehealth and transportation facilities across the US. Prior to this Matt was Vice President a Colony Capital, VP at NorthStar Asset Management Group, and Associate at Five Mile Capital.    About Our Host Louisa Dickins https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/?originalSubdomain=uk  Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA). About LMRE www.lmre.tech  LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community.   Resources Mentioned LMRE website www.lmre.tech  Blueprit website www.blueprint.connectiv.com Blueprint October 4-6 2021 event - get your ticket HERE Blueprint list of event speakers www.blueprint.connectiv.com/#speakers  RXR website www.rxrrealty.com  Thomvest www.thomvest.com  For full episode transcript head to www.lmre.tech/blog 

Tune in for our recaps of the Indy 500, Extreme E Ocean X-Prix, and MotoGP from last weekend. Helio Castroneves won his fourth and made strawberry milk, RXR won their second, and MotoGP was somber. We also discuss plenty of quotes from Valtteri Bottas and Toto Wolff and get into what enemy every driver on the Formula 1 grid would have a photo of for motivation. Finally, we prixview the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku by discussing Carlos Sainz's pick to win, how much attrition we expect to see in the race, and who may sneak onto the podium! Get your Formula Brunch and F1 Fantasy teams prepped for this weekend's race. SUBSCRIBE to Purple Sector wherever you get your podcasts FOLLOW @PurpleSectorPod on Instagram and Twitter CALL/TEXT Purple Sector at +1 904-8-PURPLE

In this episode, Christian sits down with Lance Amato of Canoa. As head of compliance and part of the founding team of Canoa, his experience is diverse within the areas of interior design and architecture, practicing throughout the nation. Most recently, he spent 13 years at Vocon's New York office, where he acted as principal and managed a team of 60 architects and designers working with corporate clients such as Hines, RXR, Compass, and WeWork. https://www.canoa.supply/ https://theantiarchitect.com/

#413 Car Pubs & Extreme E. As pubs reopen we list our favourite car connected watering holes. Did the first Extreme E-Prix in Saudi Arabia deliver on its entertainment and green promises? Plus Mitsubishi leave the UK and Tesla strike a deal with Toyota.

Jay Cactus Convos Podcast - E11 - RXR RXR is a UK-based Producer who's gone 4x Silver, 1x Gold and worked with the biggest artists in the UK such as Stormzy, D-Block Europe, Wretch 32, Nines & Potter Payper. In this episode, RXR tells his come-up story, how Producers should be networking, the importance of handling the business side correctly, the future of UK Rap & Drill and much more.

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Remco Ploeg of Altius discusses the challenges and opportunities of creating carbon neutral homes powered by Azure. Download Transcript Here Episode: 00:00 Pete:  Welcome to the IoT unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft. And this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started. Thank you, Remco, I appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us here. So you're actually based in the Netherlands, and I'm here in Bellevue, Washington, and through the magic of... I'm actually using the Squadcast platform right now to connect and record this, but... Welcome to the IoT Unicorn.   00:16 Remco: Thank you, Pete, for having me.   00:18 Pete: Great, so you're based in the Netherlands, and I've been there a bunch of times. I used to go there actually, when I would go to Barcelona for NWC, there was always like a flight at the crack of dawn from Barcelona, and I would transfer in the Netherlands to get back to Seattle. And then one year, I kinda got smart and I said, you know, I'm gonna go to Amsterdam the night before, get a good night's sleep, and then I'll take the 10 AM Direct to Seattle. So I've spent a bunch of those kind of layover nights in Amsterdam, so it's an awesome, awesome place, but... Are you from there originally?   00:52 Remco: Yes, I'm from Rotterdam, so that's the other big city in the Netherlands so that's south of Amsterdam.   00:58 Pete: I see.   01:00 Remco: And I was a lot I think also on the same plane as yourself, so I had to do a lot... To Seattle with the direct flight in the morning. So... And also coming back with the flight early in the morning in Amsterdam again.   01:12 Pete: Yeah, yeah.   01:14 Remco: So I'm based at the moment in Utrecht, in the middle of the country.   01:18 Pete: Okay. So you've been at Altius for about a year or two, a couple of years?   01:25 Remco: Yeah, a little bit, a little bit more than a year. And the beginning of this year, there was an acquisition of Altius by Avanade...   01:34 Pete: Yes.   01:34 Remco: So, I'm joining formally Avanade from the first of January, the coming year 2021. But already, I think for 6 months, I'm working side by side with my Avanade colleagues.   01:45 Pete: And so I know you've been... I know another thing, I did a little research is you were... Altius was named Microsoft's AI Partner of the Year, so that's a big deal. So tell me more about that. What is Altius in AI? What is the... Do you consider Altius an AI company or more of an IoT company that's using AI or how would you describe it?   02:08 Remco: Yeah, so if you look at Altius, we are at the moment, with 400 people in the UK, Netherlands, and India. We've got a full focus on data and AI, so that's also our focus. So IoT is more or less, no side-job but we saw that...   02:21 Pete: A means to an end.   02:23 Remco: A means to an end, exactly. And then started when I joined Altius so that's one and a half years ago with also combining AI with IoT, 'cause I think that that's a great combination that we have there.   02:36 Pete: Yeah, for sure. A lot of times that we've had folks from Qualcomm and other... More telecom-related, I think we had BT on here recently, and it was like the 5G plus AI plus IoT or pick your network that certainly becomes kind of a game-changer for what you can do with a little bit of data, over a large number of sensors or a lot of data... [02:58] ____.   02:58 Remco: I think, already at the moment, even without 5G, 5G is of course already rolling out, we can already do a lot with IoT.   03:11 Pete: Yeah, so actually interesting on that topic. You talk about IoT, so how much do you think with AI and IoT are you seeing on the Cloud versus the Edge, and how much experience are you getting now, are you seeing in a more of an emergence of Edge AI in addition to the cloud AI or what are you seeing there?   03:31 Remco: Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know, 10 years ago, we were moving everything to the clouds, but now we see some of our clouds going back again, so I do a lot of projects around connected buildings. I think that's a great example with Edge computing, is the amount of sensors, especially in new buildings and smart buildings, it's so enormous that moving every data point to the cloud, it's sometimes technical, not possible, and the second, it's too expensive.   04:00 Pete: Right.   04:01 Remco: So we see there are movement back putting Edge devices in the building itself again, and also doing AI on the Edge device itself because of course what you don't want to do in a building is controlling lights in the cloud, for example, you want to control locally, if the internet connection is out there you want to still put on your lights on. And since a couple of years, we are also doing AI on the Edge and AI on the cloud, of course already a little bit longer, and we are controlling, for example, Edge Tech Systems with AI depending on the expected usage of the building and certain conditions. We put certain settings into the building when running those... Yeah, AI is now on Edge device that help us and our clients a lot to control those devices.   04:54 Pete: Yeah, also I had understood talking to some other customers too about Edge AI, especially in AI Vision, it's something where you want to actually process locally, just from a privacy perspective too. I mean there's a transport, obviously, you can't keep streams of data going up into Azure and doing live video analytics, I guess you could and some people do, but for a lot of maybe smaller implementations or other implementations, you wanna kinda do things locally, act locally and then keep the data on-prem basically, right?   05:24 Remco: Yeah, exactly. So we felt also again the smart, to smart build solutions, things like security with cameras, where we can analyze the data off the camera, to see, okay, is somebody trying to breach into the building or do something else. And we all use Edge AI for it.   05:42 Pete: Right, yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. Tell me a little bit, I heard about some of the carbon-neutral housing efforts that you were doing, so tell me more about that. That sounds intriguing.   05:54 Remco: Yeah. So for one of our clients in the Netherlands, it's a company called TBI, and it's a local company with around six or seven [06:02] ____, and one of their main goals is to be the most sustainable builder in the Netherlands, and for that they are building carbon-neutral houses. So that means that the houses are totally carbon-neutral from a building perspective, but also from a usage perspective. So the people that are going to live in that home, on normal conditions, don't need to pay any energy bill every year, so they are really zero... We call it zero-net houses in the Netherlands but carbon-neutral is a better naming for that.   06:35 Pete: So, they're generating power on-site as well, so they're generating their own power...   06:39 Remco: Exactly.   06:39 Pete: And then also all the building is smart enough and efficient enough where it's only consuming the power that's generated on-site. Is that basically?   06:47 Remco: Exactly, so they put solar panels on it to be extracted data from the solar panels. We've got all kind of meters in the home, smart meters, smart edge meters, all kind of temperature, humidity, CO2 sensors in the home. We extract all the data into the clouds, to do the analytics and to prove that the house is also carbon neutral.   07:07 Pete: And so do those exist? [chuckle] It seems like... That's a tough one, isn't it? I guess it depends on the size of your house and what you're doing in your house, but is that feasible?   07:17 Remco: Yeah. So in the Netherlands, we don't have big houses like in the US.   07:20 Pete: Right, right. No McMansions.   07:23 Remco: So it's more, yeah, so it's more [07:26] ____ houses. And yeah, we have around, also normal houses, and I think 120, 130 meters, square meters, so that's not huge.   07:36 Pete: No, no. The square footage of the house also limits maybe the amount of energy you can create, right? You've got limited space for solar panels.   07:41 Remco: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one of the other things that is of course very important is, of course, the energy with the solar panels. Second of all, of course, if in the winter, for example, if the homeowner put the window open, the whole day, that house will never be carbon neutral because heating will...   08:05 Pete: Yeah.   08:05 Remco: Go the whole day and all night.   08:07 Pete: Can't solve for bad behaviour.   08:08 Pete: And that's why we need to...   [laughter]   08:10 Remco: Exactly, yeah. So we also try to help the homeowner to get insight in that usage and that energy.   08:18 Pete: I see.   08:18 Remco: To reduce energy.   08:20 Pete: Is the power generated primarily through solar or is there any kind of wind or other geothermal or...   08:25 Remco: No, at the moment, in the houses, it's really solar panels and of course the extra energy that they bring into the home is from green energy. So in the Netherlands, most of the homes use green energy.   08:37 Pete: Ah, see, I see.   08:39 Remco: Or other solar panels...   08:39 Pete: So they're getting a power feed from the grid, from the government grid, that's green energy, that's probably wind-powered, right? And then they're augmenting that with local solar, and then the energy they're consuming...   08:50 Remco: Exactly.   08:50 Pete: Is kind of net neutral, I guess.   08:53 Remco: Net neutral, yeah. Exactly.   08:55 Pete: Fantastic.   08:56 Remco: Yeah. Because in the winter, of course, you don't have enough sun. We don't have enough sun in the Netherlands.   09:00 Pete: Right. Same here, I mean you know...   09:01 Remco: At the end of winter [09:02] ____.   09:02 Pete: Yeah, Northwest, we don't have... There's no sun here.   [laughter]   09:06 Remco: No. A lot of rain.   09:08 Pete: Interesting, wow. So has that solution been deployed then? I mean, your solution with...   09:13 Remco: Yeah. We have now around, I think 700 houses deployed.   09:18 Pete: Wow, fantastic.   09:19 Remco: And depending of the speed, of course, of building extra houses will be added every month. Something like that.   09:25 Pete: So basically what you're doing is you're instrumenting. 'Cause I know in the US and maybe in the Netherlands too, there are ways to instrument your patch panel, your incoming electrical panel, to look at loads on a per circuit basis. And then what you're doing is then you're doing that kind of analysis, you're doing the HVAC kind of heating cooling analysis. Are you doing anything about the appliances themselves in the house? Are there appliances that are kind of determining being smart about their energy usage or is that all just happening sort of asynchronously from the rest of the system?   09:58 Remco: Yeah, so we put some, let's call them Smart Energy power adaptors in the home... To see, okay, the refrigerator, how much energy is that costing, etcetera, etcetera. So we're also getting that data. In the future, there are plans to also put in a small panel in the home to give direct feedback to the... To the homeowner itself. So at the moment, it's more or less... It's more information behind for the homeowners, so they can watch later on how the house is performing. TBI can see it directly, but the homeowner sees it later. So they want to bring that information already directly in the home, so the homeowner can react on it directly.   10:44 Pete: Right, right. So you're measuring current draw from different outlets, for lack of a better term, right? It's... Giving them a heads-up and...   10:52 Remco: Yeah.   10:53 Pete: But in the future, then hopefully these things that are plugged into the wall will get smarter and smarter about... Everyone needs to sort of get a message to sort of go into a low power mode because somebody's running the dryer maybe... I don't know. Like is there intra-appliance communication going on here, or is it just sort of every appliance for themselves?   11:14 Remco: Yeah, we see that already with load balancing. So in the Netherlands, we've got a big amount of electric cars that we are charging at home. And so we've got a lot of solutions also in this case with load balancing. So depending on the usage of the home, the car will load more or less energy. So I expect much more solutions also in the more smaller devices that can do more or less the load balancing and talking to each other what's happening.   11:47 Pete: Yeah, exactly. I think that's kind of key. We actually just installed a level two charger here in the US, 'cause we have a Chevy Bolt, our newest car. It's great, and you know the 110-volt charge here, that doesn't really... That only works for emergencies. It takes like an hour to get five miles of charge, so the level two we had installed and run off a 40-amp breaker in the panel and... Yeah, I could see that the inter sort of communication between devices, that will be sort of maybe the next step.   12:16 Remco: Yeah, we see that already here sometimes with more [12:19] ____ systems that try to connect all the kind of devices to each other. But that's still, in my opinion, more for tech guys like us, because it doesn't work always, and... You need some pack of expertise.   12:33 Pete: And a bunch of logos on the box, it's supposed to work with the other thing, it never does. So, yeah, been there. [laughter]   12:38 Remco: Exactly, yeah. It never does.   12:39 Pete: So what are you using Azure for in this case? I'm curious. What are your... There's obvious things, I can name them, but I'm just curious. How are you leveraging Azure in this particular solution?   12:50 Remco: Yeah. So in the start, we've built our own device, our hardware partner did that in the home. And the device is managed by the Azure IT app, where we get the data from the device into that. But we can also control the device now. So it's...   13:05 Pete: And is that sort of a monitoring device that's kind of like a power monitoring?   13:09 Remco: No, it's more, let's call it a gateway. I think that's the best naming convention for this device. So it's really the center of the device in the home. It'll extract the data from the solar panels, from the heating, from...   13:22 Pete: Okay. Right, right, right.   13:23 Remco: Etcetera, etcetera. And the data is directly feed into the systems. Of course, we've got also some devices that we cannot connect in the home itself, and we extract the data from APIs of those suppliers.   13:36 Pete: Right, right.   13:37 Remco: Those are more or less the two options for data ingestion into the platform.   13:40 Pete: Okay.   13:43 Remco: We're using Azure Digital Twins version two to make a replication of the home itself, so we get data from Outerdesk. Outerdesk is a piece of software where they design the homes with, the data from the Outerdesk we import into Outerdesk... Into the... Sorry, Azure Digital Twins. And we combine that data with the sensor data in the home. And that combination reflects into a digital twin of every home of TBI.   14:10 Pete: Wow. That's cool.   14:10 Remco: And next the data flow into the digital twin, we analyze the data with applications like Timeshare with Insights, where we can do simple Timeshare risk analytics. And of course, this data is all time-based data, solar data, panel data, with consumption and data, and energy data, etcetera, etcetera, so that they can do the fast analytics by themselves. And the other one is we use Azure Stream Analytics, where we can analyze the data for anomaly detection. So we know, for example, one of the biggest dealings with TBIS, it's a really simple one but it's water pressure. So in older homes in the Netherlands, we've got gas boilers, or sometimes electric boilers, and they need a certain water pressure in them. If you don't have enough water pressure, you cannot shower, and you don't have heat. And it's an easy solution because you just put extra water into the boiler system and it works.   15:15 Pete: Right.   15:16 Remco: But yeah, if you are in the morning, and you want to go to the shower and it doesn't work, most people will call, in distress, TBI... And say, "Okay, my boiler doesn't work." So then the mechanic will go to the house and fix the problem, and it gets quite expensive.   15:30 Pete: Right, they're very expensive. So you have... So there's sensors for water pressure in the pipes? Is that...   15:36 Remco: Yeah, no, it's a sensor for water pressure in the boiler.   15:41 Pete: Down in the boiler. Okay.   15:44 Remco: So it's indirect in the pipe of course. And that data we get in, and we see a certain pattern that it's declining every time, and then, of course, we can... Or call the homeowner at first, so they're now calling the homeowner, and ask them "Can you fill it by yourself?" And if not, they will come to you and fill it for you of course. But yeah, it's more... Let's say proactive maintenance. Instead of predictive maintenance, it's more proactive.   16:07 Pete: Right.   16:09 Remco: So that's one of the options they are doing. We're using Azure Machine Learning, also how to calculate optimized boiler temperature, to reduce energy in your boiler systems you can set a certain boiler temperature. And of course, how high the boiler temperature, or how more energy you will consume and you need to find per home the optimized boiler temperature, so we use machine learning for that, Azure Machine Learning. And of course, we use Power BI to present all the data to the stakeholders of TBI.   16:44 Pete: Wow, that's cool. So you're getting your money's worth then, on Azure. [chuckle]   16:48 Remco: Yeah, sorry, yeah.   16:50 Pete: That's cool. Are you doing any Edge AI, speaking of Edge AI, on the gateway itself, or is it really more of a data collector sender?   16:58 Remco: Yeah, so at the moment, it's really in Data Collector and of course we can send commons back. Based on this platform, we are also building out now also for the same customer a connected buildings platform, so same architecture but different use case, and therefore we use Edge devices of course.   17:16 Pete: Yeah, I can imagine. Actually, I had someone from RXR realty on the show about a month ago, I don't know if you've heard that one, but that was interesting 'cause they're focused more on the commercial... They're one of the largest real estate companies in New York City. And so they focus on commercial real estate, and in fact, they're using Azure for a lot of work, safe at work scenarios around social distancing, and mask-wearing, and occupancy, and other things. So I can imagine once you move into a commercial space, there's obviously the energy usage and the efficiency, which you guys are focusing on here for the personal home, but then there's all these other scenarios, and when you get into smart buildings, obviously that's kind of a whole lot more complex.   18:01 Remco: Yep. Yeah, and the other issue where, of course, we checked if we could do something with Edge devices, especially from a machinery perspective in the future that can be in a good solution, but if you look at the moment for the pricing model, between Edge device and then [18:18] ____ device, it's more or less almost 50% cheaper to put you and then, yeah, [18:23] ____ more stupid device in the home.   18:24 Pete: Yeah, no, that's true. That's true.   18:27 Remco: Yeah, and it's getting better also. On the simple devices, you can also already do some simple machine learning or smart analytics stuff, as a Microsoft... They put also a lot of energy, and with Edge [18:43] ____, for example, that can do really simple machine learning on a really simple device... You have a lot of CPU power.   18:52 Pete: So if your had your wish list of, "I really wish this technology existed to help me with these solutions, and it doesn't exist yet," is there anything that's kind of top of mind for you that you could snap your fingers and say, "Kinda wish we had that."   19:05 Remco: That is a really good question. Yeah, so for this use case is more or less for the device in the home. So as TBI, to get a bit of hardware power, maybe build some... Piece of hardware. And it's of course school, and I like that, but if you... As a construction company, do you want also to be in a hardware builder of those devices in the home? So I'm looking forward also, if you look at Microsoft, and what they are doing with things like Surface Laptops, etcetera, will they come ever with a cheap, really good more and less Edge or [19:47] ____ Autos device, Microsoft branded working really good... That's one of the things that...   19:53 Pete: I see. So sort of a Microsoft Edge AI sort of platform or something that...   20:01 Remco: And of course, yeah, there are some... Yeah, so there are, of course, already some development kits for that... With the fusion Kit and, etcetera, but that is more or less for the, yeah... For playing around with AI... It's really cool device. But from a production perspective, you need of course something else.   20:18 Pete: Interesting. Yeah, no, that would be good. That would be good. I think there's a lot of... Just a lot of work ahead of us in terms of... When you talked about Edge AI and just a lot of the things that Altius is doing is certainly on the cutting edge. You said you have about 700 homes, so obviously lots more to go with that. Do you know of any other overseas... I'm wondering if there's any equivalent sort of efforts going on in the US. I know that there's a lot around efficiency, but not necessarily around marrying efficiency with the kind of intelligence... I don't know if there's anything else.   20:52 Remco: No, we see in Europe a good interest now in this solution. We also try to more resell this solution. They say it's Avanade's. And of course, you can use the same concept in a building. I think in the US also, to save energy in a big building, you can save a lot of money.   21:14 Pete: Sure, sure.   21:15 Remco: I think these guys can also help with that.   21:20 Pete: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Fantastic. How's the pandemic been affecting your business over the past... I guess... Year, almost, God forbid.   21:30 Remco: Yeah. I have to say, in the Netherlands, it's quite good. So they are still building houses. There's a big need for houses in the Netherlands, especially cheaper houses. So we see a lot of attention, and I think if you look at the pandemic and data and AI, I think companies need more and more data and AI also during pandemic and also afterwards. From that perspective, I see a good future around this topic. If you look at IoT, a lot of companies are now investing... Okay, how can I do the same without the people, and IoT, of course, can help with that, with more automatic... Think about connect the factories.   22:16 Pete: I think actually it's interesting...   22:18 Remco: [22:19] ____ etcetera, etcetera.   22:19 Pete: One of the things I've heard in a constant theme is the pandemic, obviously, it's been pretty horrific, but the... We are getting a lot more data-savvy as a population, we're learning to understand data, and the importance of data and data can mean life and death in many cases, so just the sort of data savviness of the population, it's a positive thing and like you said, I think people are trying to just now use technology to be safer, to be more efficient, remote and automated. That's kind of fast-forwarded a lot of investment in technology over the past nine months or so. And I guess part of it is doing more with less, in many cases. We're trying to be more efficient and more effective. I think once we can get the pandemic under control, we get the... Climate change comes back into the front page, as you would say, and so the work that you guys are doing in terms of really being smart with energy, energy is such a finite resource and... Although I guess it's infinite, if you consider like the sun and the solar system, but anyway...   23:28 Remco: And the wind.   23:29 Pete: And the wind. I guess it's infinite. No. But that's kind of the next thing is we need to get smart and take some of the technology investments we've made and really apply them into our everyday life and... Yeah, yeah, 20, 30 years from now, this will just be commonplace, not having this kind of smarts in your home, in your building and not having a renewable energy, not being carbon-neutral itself will probably seem very odd a decade from now.   23:58 Remco: If you look at the IoT... IoT is already... They're frightened about... 20 or 25 years...   24:03 Pete: Yes, yes. We had that discussion the other day. I've been involved in it for that long. We used to call it embedded systems, and now it's called IoT. Now, but actually now they're gonna change it, it's gonna be called Edge, so Edge computing is now the cool... Even cooler than IoT. [chuckle] Get ready for another name change, but... Yeah, no, it's fascinating. Well, it's great, I really appreciate you taking the time and explaining what you guys are doing. Any kind of closing thoughts or other things you wanna communicate out to the audience around where this stuff is heading.   24:40 Remco: Yeah, I think what you just mentioned, if you look at sustainability of the epidemic, I think that should be one of the main topics for us in the world, and I think IoT can really help with that, creating that achievement with sustainability. And of course, in your home, it's all small what you're doing, but if everybody's doing it, it's really big for the world.   25:03 Pete: Right, right.   25:05 Remco: So we should use these kind of technologies in our homes, and our buildings. That will really help a lot saving energy and reducing a lot of, yeah, bad air, in the air, in the world.   25:18 Remco: Yeah, you know, I hear you. I think there's a phrase, I think it's like, "I can't solve the problems of the world by myself but I can solve the problems that are here locally, on the ground that I stand". And I guess if everyone is doing that and you kind of using technology in the right way to be sustainable, then it does add up. That's gonna be an important one. Perfect. Great, well, Remco, I really appreciate the time. It's been nice meeting you and I appreciate all the support of the Microsoft community, and hopefully our paths will physically cross at some point, maybe some future Mobile World Congress, I don't know, Barcelona or Netherlands or something in the future.   25:58 Remco: Or maybe on the airport of Amsterdam, man.   26:00 Pete: Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure we've actually probably passed each other in the airport at some point.   26:03 Remco: Exactly, yeah.   26:04 Pete: Cool, alright. Appreciate...   26:05 Remco: Nice to meet you, Pete.   26:06 Pete: Thanks, Remco. Take care.   26:07 Remco: Thank you.   26:07 Pete: Bye-bye.

Welcome to Episode 19 of Chat With Betty The Podcast! I'm beyond thrilled to bring you someone whom has been inspiring me now for over 10 years - Charlie Harary. I know you've heard of him, seen his videos, or even heard in speak in person - and now with a new book out, you can get your daily inspo in any form! Mr. Charlie Harary, Esq. is a prolific speaker who has traveled all over the country and abroad speaking for organizations, schools, universities and institutions on a variety of topics and to audiences of various sizes and affiliations. He has created dozens of videos that have received worldwide attention reaching hundreds of thousands of people in over 15 countries. Mr. Harary is the CEO of H3 Capital LLC, a private equity company based in New York. Prior to H3 Capital, Mr. Harary was the First Vice President of Residential Operations and Legal Counsel of RXR Realty, a multi-billion dollar Real Estate Company based in New York. Prior to RXR, Mr. Harary was an associate in Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Davis Polk & Wardwell. He received his J.D. from Columbia Law School where he was awarded the James Kent Scholar and the Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Mr. Harary is an Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the Syms School of Business in Yeshiva University. He is also a Senior Lecturer for the Orthodox Union, Aish Hatorah and NCSY. In addition, he is an active community leader. He is the founder and president of Milvado Inc., an organization that develops innovative methods to teach spirituality in relevant and modern ways. He is a member of the Executive Board of the OU as well as the Founding Chairman of its Young Leadership Cabinet. He is also a member of the Conference of Young Jewish Presidents. Charlie is driven by the belief that the potential for greatness resides within every person. By integrating wisdom found in science, psychology and spirituality, each person can live a more fulfilling life and, in turn, impact the world. The principles Charlie shares are not simply theory. They are the same principles he has used to successfully pursue his own impact in the world. As Charlie has expanded his message of personal success to radio, television, web, and print media, his one goal remains the same: to reinvigorate his audience with a bold vision of their potential and lay out a clear path to achieve it. With his rare blend of passion, professional expertise, academic rigor, and spiritual wisdom, Charlie has a proven track record of inspiring people from every background and now even the more so with his newest book : UNLOCK YOUR GREATNESS. - www.charlieharary.com - @charlieharary -#TheAskCharlieShow - Podcast - Tune in now to get the tools You need to unlock YOUR greatness! Episode 19 on apple podcast/spotify podcast or anywhere else! *** REMEMBER TO LIKE/FOLLOW/SUBSCRIBE/GIVE A REVIEW - @chatwithbettypodcast @bettygulko - chatwithbettypodcast@gmail.com *** --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/betty-gulko/support

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.10.21.333849v1?rss=1 Authors: Yang, Z., Muccio, D. D., Melo, N., Atigadda, V. R., Renfrow, M. B. Abstract: Differential scanning calorimetry and differential scanning fluorimetry were used to measure the thermal stability of human retinoid X receptor-alpha ligand binding domain (RXR LBD) homodimer in the absence or presence of rexinoid and coactivator peptide, GRIP-1. The apo-RXR LBD homodimer displayed a single thermal unfolding transition with a Tm of 58.7 {degrees}C and an unfolding enthalpy ({Delta}H) of 673 kJ/mol (12.5 J/g), much lower than average value (35 J/g) of small globular proteins. Using a heat capacity change ({Delta}Cp) of 15 kJ/(mol K) determined by measurements at different pH values, the free energy of unfolding ({Delta}G) of the native state was 33 kJ/mol at 37 {degrees}C. Rexinoid binding to the apo-homodimer increased Tm by 5 to 9 {degrees}C, and increased the {Delta}G of the native homodimer by 12 to 20 kJ/mol at 37 {degrees}C, consistent with the nanomolar dissociation constant (Kd) of the rexinoids. The increase in {Delta}G was the result of a more favorable entropic change due to interactions between the rexinoid and hydrophobic residues in the binding pocket, with the larger increases caused by rexinoids containing larger hydrophobic end groups. GRIP-1 binding to holo-homodimers containing rexinoid resulted in additional increases in {Delta}G of 14 kJ/mol, a value same for all three rexinoids. Binding of rexinoid and GRIP-1 resulted in a combined 50% increase in unfolding enthalpy, consistent with reduced structural fluidity and more compact folding observed in other published structural studies. Thermodynamic analysis thus provided a quantitative evaluation of the interactions between RXR and its agonist and coactivator. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Sarah Maston, Senior Solution Architect at Microsoft, discusses the development of the animal conservation initiative, Project 15. Download Transcript Here 00:00 Pete Bernard: Welcome to the IoT Unicorn podcast. This is Pete Bernard from Microsoft, and this podcast is for anyone interested in the long-term technology trends in the IoT space and the journey from here to there. So let's get started.   [music]   00:21 PB: On this episode of the IoT unicorn, we talk to a very interesting person doing very interesting things, and that's Sarah Maston of Microsoft. We talk about Boston University where we both went to school, a little bit about nutrition and nutrition technology, but we spend quite a bit of time talking about Project 15, which is an open platform effort that her and her colleagues have been championing. It's an anti-poaching platform that's been adopted by a number of NGOs around the world, and we talk about that and the technology behind it. So please join us.   [music]   00:58 PB: Sarah, thanks for joining us. We've had a lot of different guests on the show from silicon partners to telecom, internal Microsoft, I think you kind of fall into the category of very interesting Microsoft people that are doing very interesting things, so I'm gonna tee that up. Maybe you can give us a little bit of an intro yourself and sort of some background.   01:18 Sarah Maston: Sure, it's funny, when I look at my cats, I don't know that I'm that, they think I'm that interesting, but thank you. [chuckle] I'm really happy to be here. Where did I come from? So I actually have a really long history in the database space. I started out making data warehouses before that was a thing, that kinda grew, and so I started out as a medical programmer, actually, at a company called Meditech in Massachusetts.   01:56 PB: I see. Oh, where in Massachusetts, by the way?   02:00 SM: Ah, they were in Natick, but I lived in Arlington, I went to BU.   02:04 PB: So interesting, interesting... Oh, you went to BU? Oh, I went to BU also.   02:08 SM: I did, once upon a time. Oh, yay!   02:10 PB: I was a BA/MA BU grad, isn't that weird?   02:12 SM: Go Terriers!   02:12 PB: No, I was gonna say... Yeah, go Terriers. I was gonna say I had, my first job out of college was in West Natick.   02:19 SM: Oh, interesting.   02:19 PB: There was a little shop called The Bit Bucket computer store, and my professor from BU, my assembly language professor actually ran the company, The Bit Bucket, and we built computers, branded computers, and I was his first engineering hire, and it was in West Natick. I didn't stay there that long, 'cause it was kind of like a weird job, but yeah, The Bit Bucket, I remember West Natick... Yeah, Natick's a nice area. That's cool.   02:49 SM: So I was gonna say did they have a lot of Twinkies, 'cause I believe that the Twinkie fact... I don't know. I think it's in Natick...   02:57 PB: Oh, the Twinkie was there?   02:58 SM: I'm unclear.   03:00 PB: I think that was it, I know there's Necco Wafers too was out there.   03:01 SM: Oh, delicious, delicious.   03:01 PB: I'm not sure where that is, yeah.   03:03 SM: Yeah, no, I actually have a degree in psychology and women's studies from BU.   03:08 PB: Fantastic.   03:09 SM: So, a little bit...   03:10 PB: Fantastic, okay. Go Terriers, yeah. Okay.   03:13 SM: Okay.   03:14 PB: There you go.   03:15 SM: Back to this.   03:15 PB: We should have cleared that up in the pre, in the preamble before we started recording, but that's okay, now we know, so that's good.   03:21 SM: Thank you. Yeah, so I did a lot of data warehouses, and I put myself actually in Harvard's night school to kind of get out of data and start learning more Java-ey, getting into more programming stuff, because I had a really weird side hobby then as well, where I had been really sick in my late 20s, and I started studying nutrition, and I ended up creating what was a graph database of food, and I wanted to go and put myself in Harvard 'cause it was easier to learn how to code it than to sort of explain it. And so that journey led me to... I actually invented that over at IBM a couple of years ago and working at IBM, I met a colleague there that had come to Microsoft and so how did you come to Microsoft? Well, I had a friend, and then I met the IoT group and they... It was funny because I hadn't, I was kind of the first person in the group that hadn't built a computer to be.   04:44 PB: Right, right.   04:45 SM: Wasn't a hardware person, and but when they brought me in to start talking about that bigger data conversation, so that's how I got here.   04:57 PB: Interesting. Yeah, cool, so obviously you've been here, I think a couple of years or two years or...   05:01 SM: I have.   05:02 PB: Just about that. That's exciting. Yeah, so that's an interesting path, I think a lot of people get to Microsoft through professional connections, personal connections, there's all sorts of different ways and so you were involved in nutrition and...   05:16 SM: I was.   05:16 PB: And kind of analyzing that. Is that still a big kind of passion of yours, personal nutrition and things?   05:22 SM: I, well yes, personal. Once I designed the graph with the team there, which was the connection of food to disease through phyto-chemicals and the reactions in your bios, kind of like a Facebook of food. I had spent so much... Honestly, I had spent so much time on that in my life that the IoT space and starting to learn more formally about that was so exciting, and a lot of my data colleagues in my circle, same thing, because sometimes you can be doing the same thing and database, database... What's new? And so this was actually really fun, and it was in the beginning of when I got here, my job was a lot of enablement. We were gonna teach people how to use Azure and how to use Azure IoT and etcetera. And that's my fault that I'm having a notification 'cause clearly I...   06:25 PB: That's okay.   06:26 SM: I could have turned that off.   [chuckle]   06:30 SM: But what's interesting is that I... This, it's kind of a strange story in the sense that I... It's not that strange, but I was outside and of my apartment and I saw a lot of smoke and I freaked out, and I ran into my building to save my cats and long story, very short, lots of stress, but the next day, I ended up designing a safety platform that could use IoT to speak differently in a crisis, and so that's really something that whenever I talk about my journey to Microsoft and learning something new is that it was so great to have the space to be like, "Hey, I have an idea." But anyway, that's another story. [chuckle]   07:26 PB: Fascinating. Yeah, I do actually, I use the... I'm kind of a Fitbit fan, and I use the food logging on Fitbit, and it gives me a macro-nutrient breakdown and stuff, and so I've been kind of on my own health journey in the past year or so and feeling good, feeling fit. And part of it is kind of analyzing what I ingest, and I feel like we're just sort of at the beginning of a lot of that science like I would love for the data I'm putting into the Fitbit system, which I guess is now Google, just to get even more analysis of that over time. So it's fascinating kind of measuring what you put into your body and how your body is working, and we had a Dr. David Rhew from Microsoft's chief medical officer on a few weeks ago, and talking about COVID of course, but also just more of the intersection of health and technology and very early stages of really taking advantage of that kind of combination, so...   08:24 SM: No, that's true. It's my work, it was... My work pretty much focused on just taking stuff we do with process, architecture and analysis, and then data, of course, but if I think back when my hair was much browner, I just thought what's breaking when it came to metabolic syndrome, and it was... Well, what happens when I do this and then how does your... And what does your intestinal villi do? And so basically connecting those dots to go through the process architecture of digestion and then to make sort of the data model of that. And to say, "Oh, when you eat oatmeal, the pectin and beta-glucan, pectin from apples and pears comes in, it absorbs bile salts." Basically, all those different processes and then how those can combine and really... Back in the day, I created what's called a food program, and that's also known as a diet, but a food program that would layer what foods to eat, how to change your internals to do what it needed to do. And I guess my own doctor took notice because I lowered my cholesterol 90 points in under three months, so...   09:48 PB: Wow.   09:49 SM: Then I made a system that did it, and so that was really... And I met a lot of really cool people in that journey. Then unfortunately, I got sick from stress, but when I came out of that, here I was, and then I invented some new stuff.   10:12 PB: Good, so let's talk about some new stuff. You've been sort of very, very busy, not only being a new... Fairly new Microsoft employee, but also building up something that is referred to as Project 15 for probably some of our listeners are probably familiar, but why don't you give us a little bit of a recap of the origin story around Project 15 and where that's at?   10:40 SM: Sure, I'd love to. I do a little project in the... Although it's a little bigger now, in my spare nights and in weekend hours with a few friends of mine here at Microsoft and... Alright, so the origin story, once upon a time, it really speaks back to that incident with the cat, and essentially, I made a safety system that could use IoT devices to speak to a community within an emergency. So if you thought about some of the stuff that was going on, you have to go to Twitter to find hashtag, you have to go... You don't really know what's going on. There are so many systems getting good data to first responders, but for us, we don't really know what's going on. So that project became known as Project Edison. And so it went for about a year, we built that with a partner, Insight, and we went on the IoT in Action global event tour and talked about it, and I talked about safety in every context you could imagine.   11:55 SM: I talked about safe retail, I talked about safe cities, I talked about safe schools, safe workplaces, safe buildings. And then, actually, I met a guy who does anti-poaching and his name was Eric and... Eric Dinerstein, and I realized in one of these very stereotypical, I was at the cafe with my colleague Daisuke, and I started drawing, and I said, "Anti-poaching, it's the same use case as a Project Edison safety case," and he looked at me and I said, "Well, it's a population that can't defend itself, and it's someone that you wanna stop or making it less impactful, using devices, and then people you need to talk to to get help. So maybe we can get other people that were like us to have this aha moment that scientists are remaking these wheels that we've already made in the commercial space." And so, that's how Project 15 started, which was like, what do we have in our world that we just don't know the use cases of the scientific world. And the second person I met was another professor, Wasser, Dr. Sam Wasser, and he was at U-Dub, and he also was involved with trying to prevent animal... The tracking of tusks and things, illegal trafficking, and I learned about a pangolin from one of his research fellows, which is a tiny, cute, little, scaly animal, and...   13:42 PB: Okay.   13:43 SM: I had never heard of a pangolin, so cute. And they're slow. And the problem is, is that their defense mechanism is that if you scare them, they turn into a ball.   13:55 PB: Okay.   13:56 SM: And if you are...   13:57 PB: Sounds fair.   13:58 SM: Right, I do the same thing.   14:00 PB: Yeah, I can relate to that.   14:01 SM: I'm just gonna be a little ball over here, but and that works for lions and tigers who are like, "Oh, that's a sharp little ball," but it doesn't work for, poachers will just make a noise, it curls up into a ball, they pick it up, they put it in a bag so.   14:21 PB: I see.   14:22 SM: That's our most poached animal on the planet, actually.   14:25 PB: Oh no.   14:26 SM: Anyway, but I thought, "Well, what's the difference between shoplifting a sweater at a store and shoplifting an animal?" And so that was really where this started was, can we just think about this?   14:44 PB: Right, right. Fantastic. And I think, and I did see you had a segment on a recent video, it was like a United Nations gathering of interested parties around the equator initiative, and I guess I was labeled on YouTube. But can you talk a little bit about that. I mean you're getting some pretty good NGO type of engagement off of project 15.   15:13 SM: Yes. So that was super exciting. I would be... I'll just, full disclosure, I was very nervous, but... And I was a little frustrated with the pandemic because I think I could have gone to the United Nations in another reality.   15:32 PB: Yeah I know.   15:33 SM: But virtually, was very fun and so what happened was, is so we put up a video because we had support from my CVP and my management tree, and pretty much everyone in the group that I was in was very supportive of Project 15 right in the beginning. And so we put up a little web page, and I used to call it the bat phone, because we wondered if anyone would call from the scientific realm, and we actually started meeting NGOs. We had... People used our web page to get in touch with us and two of the people, one of them is... That we started working with, is Red Panda Network, which is a fascinating, wonderful organization. Another one is called the Zambezi project, and the third was a woman who runs the small grants program at... The United Nations Development Program has different sections and small grants is a department that funds scientific projects and that are all very, very much sustainability focused.   16:55 SM: I could give a whole talk about... They're so fascinating. And I met her because she actually knew... Her husband was friends with Daisuke so it was like one of these things where somebody hears about what's... And, "Hey, that's really interesting. Let's see if that would work." And then six months later, I'm speaking at their conference. But what happened was, is that we kind of paired up together to see if we could bring our commercial processes that we do normally with my day job, IoT engagements, we're gonna do an architectural design session, we're gonna get to know those processes. And then she gave us... We piloted with three grantees and started to try to figure out, we have different worlds, but we do the same things, it's just different words to describe them.   18:01 SM: And so we had a few epiphanies during this process, and so the thing is, is that she... Her group funds thousands of NGO companies and projects, scientists that range from urban sustainability, so like smart city type stuff, all the way to biodiversity, which is where we kinda focused, and so how do you scale? And so we've been working with her and her group on scaling up and digitally transforming this area through not only Azure IoT, but how does that work with the research part, there's a lot of machine learning, there's a lot of CAMS, so connecting that into something like Teams, so it's bigger than Azure IoT specifically, as all IoT solutions are, and so...   19:05 PB: Exactly.   19:06 SM: So that... Yeah, so that I got invited to speak about our work.   19:09 PB: Yeah it's interesting. Who do we have on recently... Oh, we were talking to Cory Clarke from RXR, and he was talking about the smart building solutions that they're rolling out for office space and office space post-COVID, and how do you use AI and sensors to detect occupancy and distance from each other and a lot of the core tech around using AI, vision and other things and processing that data, it's all very similar. The core tech is similar, but now we have all these other ways of applying it, whether it's in healthcare or bio-diversity or whatever. And so that's an exciting thing about Microsoft, is a lot of the platform tech that we're doing here gets used in all these different directions. And so you've found a particular slice where obviously there's a super high need and folks should look up and learn more about the poaching problems that are happening in the world, but it's pretty significant.   20:11 PB: And to take some of the tech that has been used for more of the, I don't know, traditional digital transformation that we talk about, but actually using that tech in a really smart way out in the field and the real world to help a problem. That must be pretty satisfying for you as a Microsoft employee. And I guess one of my questions is, that must take up a pretty good chunk of your time, as it should. And so you're doing that and you're also working at Microsoft. And so how do you end up balancing all these things? Is this a... Is that... Give us a little more insight. How do you do that? [laughter]   20:49 SM: Well, I have a very supportive wife who feeds me and makes sure that I eat and...   20:56 PB: Yeah.   20:58 SM: So good question. So when we started to scale, and I clearly... Daisuke and I cannot meet with every NGO to do an... Etcetera. So COVID, in the beginning of this, we did have a very big partnering model. And so we have all these great IoT partners, they've got platforms and just connect these projects to them like we would a startup, a retail startup or something. Unfortunately, the pandemic happened, and of course, as we know, it's all hands on deck to start landing our... Like you just mentioned, the return to work and employees safe. So Daisuke and I had another coffee talk, though virtual, and I said, "You know what? Why don't we use the company Hackathon and make an 80% solution for these folks?"   22:10 SM: That's an easier way. And so we actually got reached out to by a couple of colleagues, one of them was Pamela Cortez and Anders in my group. And they both said, "We'd love to join this because we know what you're doing and we need to figure out how to do the least amount of stuff to have a big impact. And to do that, we need to rely on existing enablement motions and partnerships within other groups. And if we could just build that, then we can roll that out, and off it goes just like anything else."   22:58 PB: Yeah. Well, Microsoft has a great partner network too. So that's the good thing, when we have developers, we have channel partners, we have solution providers, this huge force multiplying engine. It's one of the cool things also about Microsoft is just to get that great idea out there, partners picking it up and amplifying it and landing it locally. So it was good that you took advantage of it. I do wanna make sure people know the... So the aka.ms/project15, is that the go-to place to get the latest?   23:31 SM: That is the place. And then if it can... Down at the bottom there, we have a new link on that page that brings you to the open platform, if you wanna check that out.   23:41 PB: Wow, fantastic. So yeah, let me ask you too, another question. You mentioned COVID-19 and obviously we're all working through that in so many ways. And how has that affected some of your efforts around Project 15 in terms of... Has it been some acceleration in the adoption of technology? Has it slowed down some of these NGOs? Has it...   24:09 SM: This is a multi-faceted answer, so let me think about my words. Okay. So what happened, because now, in the past year, in my private time, and I'm just learning and meeting new people and learning about this space, 'cause I didn't know anything. So if you're somebody who's like me who always wanted to help but didn't think you could, so you just watched, that is not true. All of our skills are welcome and wanted, and a lot of these organizations are non-profits.   24:47 PB: Sure.   24:47 SM: And there's a lot of tech developer groups that you can code for good and get involved on the device level and the software side. So I just wanna put that out there. But what happened was, is that the places where these things are happening, you'll read news articles that poaching accelerated or the lack of tourism has caused some problems. So this space seems to be having the same problems that every other part of the world is having when it comes to learning to adapt to a pandemic world. We weren't exactly affected in terms of getting on the phone at 7 o'clock at night, Pacific Time, to meet with Sonam, who runs the Red Panda network, who's in Nepal, because we were always virtual. And actually, I would... The lack of social life [chuckle] being quarantined probably helped myself, and Daisuke, and Pamela, and Anders when we were cranking out the code and the plan for scale. And so the answer is no.   26:08 SM: One thing that's been... Is a little bit challenging is that I was used to meeting up with our partner architect friends, and we would draw on pieces of paper and we'd talk about smart factories, and then we'd talk about this. And so those kind of conversations got harder, but I did get involved with a Hackathon that came out of Hack-Star and where they were hacking on the OpenCollar project to build the smartest elephant. That's the goal, is to build the smartest elephant collar for Smart Parks. So I just wanted to mention that, is the partner ecosystem is out there, they're doing stuff in this area as well as all the areas. But so it didn't... I don't think it stopped. It's just, at least not...   27:03 PB: Yeah, changed it a little bit.   27:03 SM: For us sitting at the desk, yeah.   27:06 PB: Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. I've definitely missed some of the more serendipitous conversations I've had. Sometimes you... That's where you have the serendipitous meetings and conversations that connect things, and it's been a little more planful maybe in terms of conversations and time. But I know also that there's been a lot of tech acceleration by a lot of companies too, and the whole notion of remote and leveraging the cloud a lot more. So hopefully that does work in your favor. I was gonna mention the... We haven't talked about the tech behind Project 15 too much. You mentioned AI is obviously like big data sets. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention I think this sounds like a really exciting potential for 5G/LPWA tech in some form. I know that the... I don't think they've rolled out 5G yet in Nepal, but the idea of some sort of low frequency or low spectrum cellular connections that can blanket those areas is exciting. So that's a follow-on for me. I will actually take that as an action to circle back and see what we can do to help there.   28:20 SM: That's actually one of the... So when it comes to the spectrum of silicon to cloud, I fall squarely into process architecture and designing how you're gonna get this to there, and what are we gonna do and strategy on that. I also fall squarely on data because of my background. When it comes to connectivity, Pamela and Daisuke on the Project 15 meta team, they're really interested in that. But something I noticed is that my assumption that some place like the Himalayas wouldn't have any connectivity or something, that was just my own... I don't know if that's a pre-conception or just like a, "That's the woods and the mountains." However, when we looked into it, and we've been working with some groups in the Caribbean as well that go out into the ocean, it's all got coverage. It may be 2G. There's always a satellite, which then you're gonna bring in some edge, let's compute as much as possible over here at the camera or the gateway. But that was really surprising. So I'm really, I'm interested in... We'll loop back on your response because...   29:45 PB: Yeah, yeah. We'll have to loop back. There's some really interesting things happening, especially if you wanna have... You're designing for very low-bandwidth networks, like low-cost low-bandwidth networks. You actually need to do more processing on the edge, and then it's more of a metadata that's going to the cloud as opposed to the actual streams of video or camera images. So some really fascinating things going on there that I think would be really exciting, not only to land in low-bandwidth networks, but also that also enables some very low power endpoints. So imagine you wanna stick some sensors onto a tree out there somewhere, if you want it solar-powered, you need to keep that power profile really low. So projects like these, not only are they inherently just good, but they are also pushing the tech maybe more-so than the more business-oriented deployments that we have that maybe are a little "easier." These are hard deployments because of some of the different environmental factors. So it's always exciting to see the tech being pushed in that direction.   30:51 SM: I was gonna say, just to jump in. You actually raise... This is a really big deal. There's what we're doing with Project 15, but there's the bigger Microsoft sustainability mission. And so this year if you go out to the Microsoft sustainability web page, we just made a recent announcement about water. There was a really interesting announcement about the circular economy and waste. And so when you start to think about devices... So let's say you come from the more device side of the spectrum of our solutioning. I met a scientist who said something really that stuck with me. "We're trying to save the oceans from plastic using plastic." And so when you start to think about how we make devices. How do we make better batteries? How do we use solar? Like you said...   31:54 PB: Yeah, solar.   31:54 SM: That's when we just kind of was like... We also as a technical community should be thinking about that because it really wasn't purview a year ago. But oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense, I never really thought about that.   32:10 PB: Yeah. No. That's fascinating. I was gonna ask you about that before we... I don't know where we're at on time here, I have to check my clock. But I know we're not traveling any more, but I still stay in touch with BU through their various alumni programs and things. Do you stay in touch with any BU alums or any Boston related things these days? Or...   32:32 SM: Well, I do. I do.   32:33 PB: 'Cause we're pretty far from Boston. People don't know, we're actually in Redmond Washington. It's like the polar opposite of Boston.   32:40 SM: Three thousand miles away. I do, I have friends that I went there with, and I get the magazine. And I get...   32:49 PB: Oh yeah, the magazine.   32:50 SM: I was very proud of, what was it? One of the alums, she was in the Orange is the New Black and I was like, "Whoa, BU!" And of course on LinkedIn I see different things. Actually, speaking of COVID, I saw a really cool video that I thought was very edgy and he did a video about everybody wearing their masks and I was like, "Yes!" But yeah, no, I keep an eye on what's going on there.   33:24 PB: Good.   33:25 SM: So yeah.   33:27 PB: Yeah, no, it's fascinating to see all this stuff, how it's evolving and how we're all sort of connected, right? So now you and I are connected through Boston University, and we didn't even know that so that's fantastic.   33:36 SM: Who knew? T. Anthony's pizza.   33:36 PB: Who knew? T. Anthony's, yeah, I love that place, yeah. Although I don't eat cheese anymore but I still love pizza so... [chuckle] Cool. So any final thoughts Sarah? We... You kind of said that the URL people should go to. What's the call to action here? Where do you want people to go do now they've been sort of educated here?   34:00 SM: We love... When you think about it, if you go out and you get to the Project 15 open platform, for those of us who are very familiar, when you see the architecture you'll say, "Oh, this looks like everything else that is the components of an IoT solution." That is true. I've actually been using it with, met some startups and I said, "Well hey," doing my usual day job, which is, "How do I learn Azure IoT?" And, "Oh, go here, go here. Ask me questions if you have them." So people who are on the coding side of our world, feel free to bug bash that, and any feedback is absolutely welcome. It's really a passion project when you get down to it, which we hope is really useful, and if you do have people who are technical on the scientific side and it's interesting to them and we are building it through Pamela's work with community so that people will be able to get enabled on it. This speaks to the, "How do you do all of this?" Well, I have smart friends. And so yeah, so that really it's out there for you to use. Any feedback is welcome. And yeah, we hope it helps.   35:26 PB: Yeah, I encourage people to go to that website and learn more about it. And Sarah, I really appreciate the time today. I know you're really busy, so carving out a little time here, much appreciated. So hopefully we can actually meet each other in person at some point in the near future. So that'd be great.   35:47 SM: Soon. Soon.   35:48 PB: Soon.   35:48 SM: Wear your masks everybody.   35:51 PB: Exactly.   35:51 SM: Alright. Yeah, no, thank you so much. This has been fun.   35:53 PB: Sure. Okay, cool. Alright, thanks Sarah.   35:57 SM: Thank you.   35:57 PB: Bye bye.   36:00 SM: Bye.   36:00 PB: This is Pete Bernard. You've been listening to the IoT Unicorn Podcast, and thanks for joining us. Stay tuned for the next episode, and feel free to give us some feedback at TheIoTUnicorn@Microsoft.com. Thank you.   [music]  

Reduced COVID-19 risk in the workplace with AI and IoT on the Edge, RXR Realty, New York based real estate company shows the full implementation. Cory Clarke, Product Management VP at RXR, joins Jeremy Chapman to share how they’re tackling an issue that many of us (whether as an employee or an organization) are trying to figure out— how to operate during the pandemic while keeping people safe. See how they are leveraging Azure AI and IoT for automated health checks, air quality control, social distancing, mask compliance and much more. For those of you who are new to RXR Realty, they're one of the largest real estate companies in New York with over 27 million square feet of real estate. Normally, around 75,000 office workers occupy their building spaces. While New York was the epicenter of COVID-19 early on, it's positive recovery provides an interesting model for how to safely go back to normal life in the middle of a pandemic. RXR is offering its own unique perspective by implementing its RX Well platform, an IoT and AI based solution that supports safe return of people back to the office. The core advantage of Azure IoT Hub is it's end-to-end device management, massive scale, and seamless integration with other Azure services. Walkthrough some of the user experiences: • Office workers who need to feel safe in their return back to the office • Property managers’ comprehensive view of building data in real-time, so they can dynamically adjust policies and procedures • Facility managers that are actually tenants in the spaces who can see if more needs to be done to improve compliance to public health measures ► QUICK LINKS: 00:00 - Introduction 02:43 - Walk through the user experiences 06:48 - Behind the scenes tech 09:50 - Security 11:22 - How to report on both employee and property manager apps 14:19 - Device management ► Link References: Find out more about Azure Spatial Analysis at https://aka.ms/SpatialAnalysis. Get our RxWell solution in the Azure Marketplace at https://aka.ms/RXWellSolution. Learn more about RXR's example at https://aka.ms/RXWell. For more on Azure IoT and AI, check out https://www.azure.com. Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? We are Microsoft’s official video series for IT. You can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries?sub_confirmation=1 Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ Follow us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/microsoftmechanics/

In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Cory Clarke, VP of Product Management and Strategic Partnerships at RXR Realty, discusses some of the IoT solutions his company is using to facilitate a safer return to the workplace during COVID-19. Download Transcript Here   00:00 Pete Bernard: Cory, thanks for joining us, appreciate you taking the time. And I've done a little bit of looking at your LinkedIn profile and kind of understanding where RXR is at, but maybe you can kinda give us a little introduction about who you are and what your story is, and then we can talk a little bit about what you're doing.   00:19 Cory Clarke: Sure. I'm Cory Clarke. I lead product at RXR's digital labs. RXR is a New York real estate company, we own around 26 million square feet, 20 or 30 buildings, many really iconic ones like the stair at Lee High or the Helmsley Building. And yeah. Before RXR, I worked at WeWork for a couple of years, leading their Powered by We Group and Powered by We Technology. That was the technology they were building for enterprise clients to improve the experience of the workplace. And always kind of been interested in the overall workplace experience, actually I trained as an architect.   01:03 S1: Yeah, I see that.   01:05 CC: Seven years of architecture school, and then got entranced by technology and started working in software development and never really looked back. I did a lot of work for companies doing intranets and a lot of employee enablement, and really got interested in how technology can transform the employee experience, and that's what led me to WeWork and ultimately to RXR.   01:29 S1: Yeah. Well, it's interesting, you mentioned that... I talk to a lot of folks, and it seems every company is turning into some kind of technology company, or every company needs to have an element of software technology as part of its strategy. There's no such thing as a kind of a pure play, non-tech company anymore.   01:47 CC: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Every financial company is a technology company, I think every real estate company is eventually gonna be a technology company.   01:55 S1: Yeah. I was actually... A kind of a side bar, but I was futzing around with these bluetooth connected water systems over my long weekend made by Orbit. And Orbit makes all these little sprinkler googahs. And... So now they have these Bluetooth connected googahs, and they have an app that you download, and it's pretty cool, but you can tell at Orbit at some point the switch went off to say, "We're not just a sprinkler company, now we need to be a tech company with sprinklers and we need to write apps and we need to do stuff." So I suspect realtors like RXR and other folks are like, "Yeah, we're doing this thing, but now we really need the tech to take it to the next level." And...   02:37 CC: Yeah. I think the real estate world's kind of where I feel like where retail was maybe in the late 90s, early aughts, where like the... Brick-and-mortar was making this huge transition to online and real estate really in the last five, 10 years has gotten a ton of investment in PropTech and trying to make that same transition into a more... Like... Technology enabled services.   03:02 S1: Yeah. No, I can imagine. I asked you this before we started recording, but... You're kind of... You said you were a East Coast, you're an East Coast transplant.   03:14 CC: Yes.   03:15 S1: Or you're a... You've acclimated to become an East Coaster. I'm from New Jersey myself, that's why when I saw the background in New York, I thought maybe you were East Coast-y. You consider yourself now the East Coast person.   03:28 CC: Yeah, I am naturalized... Naturalized.   03:31 S1: Naturalized, yes excellent.   03:32 CC: Yeah. I've been in New York City... There's definitely people that were born and bred here, but there's a lot of people that come here and never leave. And yeah...   03:43 S1: Awesome. Yeah, it's an incredible area. I was actually in Long Island this summer for a little bit and got the New York vibe there, so that was good.   03:52 CC: Yeah, it's definitely been interesting during this time. [chuckle]   03:56 S1: Yeah. Yeah, clearly. And speaking of crazy times... You guys are kind of right in the middle of a lot of big transformations going on, not only technologically from your business transforming, but obviously the world is transforming in the way we are being much more remote in what we're doing. And maybe you can share with us where does RXR see offices and office work sort of transforming and moving post-COVID?   04:29 CC: Yeah, and I think the... The phrase is, the reports of the office demise are greatly exaggerated. I don't see the office going away, but I do think it is gonna fundamentally change whereas... Prior to COVID, people worked in the office and regardless of the type of work there was, with most industries, like an expectation you were gonna come to the office to work. And now, this mass experiment in work from home has proven out that people can do work from home, and particularly do focused work. If I'm gonna sit down and work on a spreadsheet for eight hours, I can do that anywhere. I can do it at home, cafe, co-working, it doesn't matter. And I think companies are now comfortable letting their employees do that. There's trust there that they can get their work done and do it effectively, but the collaboration and teamwork is not as effective remotely.   05:35 CC: And definitely from all of our surveys and research, there are gaps there and that's where I think the office is gonna be... It's gonna be focused on the teamwork. It's gonna move from focused work to teamwork. And I think it's gonna change the nature of the office where it isn't so much that you have a desk and you come into your desk every day, it's your team has a space, you may come in to meet with your team when you need to. It might be that you have a... Team norms and you come in Monday, Wednesday, Friday or it might be that you have tools that you can collaborate across the team and decide, "Hey, we're all coming to work tomorrow for a meeting." But I think it's gonna be focused on that collaboration and move away from individual... Individual...   06:25 S1: Yeah. Well, Microsoft have been on that journey as well in terms of shifting their office layouts from the individual office to more team rooms or team-oriented spaces. And so I think what you're saying is more flexibility around dedicated spaces and more team-oriented spaces and the idea of working from home is gonna be sort of baked into people's protocols, but obviously the personal collaboration still needs to be there at some point.   07:00 CC: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's gonna be an interesting challenge in terms of managing capacity. I think prior to this, most companies kind of allocated a certain amount per person, and it was...   07:11 S1: Sure.   07:12 CC: A couple hundred square feet with the assumption that most people would probably be in and most people would probably need somewhere to work and a desk.   07:19 S1: Sure, yeah.   07:20 CC: But I think all of those standards in terms of allowable square foot per person and overall density are going out the window because, if only half your workforce is gonna come in, or maybe it's a quarter, I don't know, but like, what... Being able to plan for that capacity, make sure you have enough room... You can flex when there's... Times happen when... It's the beginning of the quarter, and everybody wants to get together to collaborate...   07:48 S1: Right, right. Yeah.   07:48 CC: And you're planning, like, "How do you allow for 100%?"   07:51 S1: Right, exactly. Huh, yeah, no, it's interesting. One of the things I like about this kind of remote collaboration is that it tends to normalize the meetings in terms of who's in the room versus who's not. I mean, it used to be where if you were "dialed in", and not in the room, you were sort of in the... You were in the cheap seats.   08:10 CC: Yeah.   08:11 S1: In terms of the conversation. And now everyone's sort of in the same cheap seats, I guess, at the table. And so it'll be interesting to see how some of those norms transfer back into the physical office, you know? And the meeting protocols and things.   08:27 CC: Yeah, it has been interesting. So we've actually come back to our office, full time. Most of the people... I mean, there's still some people that are either higher risk or have... School hasn't opened yet... There's definitely a lot of extenuating circumstances. So it's probably like, 60% have actually come back full time. But it has already created some interesting challenges from like the collaboration standpoint where, yeah, there's... Again like, haves and have nots with like, "Are you in the room? Are you on the screen?" There's definitely more effort to include people on the screen now. Whereas I think beforehand, it was like you... Maybe you forgot to dial them in 'cause it was that one person. Or they're like...   09:08 S1: Exactly. Yeah, how many times does that happen? You start a meeting then half way through it's like, "Oh. We forgot to turn on the thing," you know?   09:10 CC: You can only come one the phone... Yeah. Where now there's much more conscious effort to include people on the line, but it is still hard to include them in the casual ad hoc conversations where you bump into somebody in the hallway or the... Standing six feet away from them in the kitchen, you know?   09:34 S1: Yeah, yeah. We used to have a thing, one of our... We had a, one of our satellite offices down in Palo Alto, and we had a kind of a live feed at the coffee machine, where we had a monitor and a camera, and it was sort of like permanently on and connected to the coffee machine, like the coffee area down in Palo Alto. And so anyone who went in to get a cup of coffee in the kitchen was sort of connected in real-time to the folks in Palo Alto, if they happen to bump into them and they're getting a cup of coffee there. So that was kind of a cool way of connecting spaces. But yeah, no, I'm sure I mean that's... Obviously, this has kind of been a crazy time and in so many ways, but in a lot of discussions I have with folks like yourselves, it's like, "Well, what are some of the things that'll stick? Or how do we... What are we gonna get out of this that will improve long-term the ability to collaborate and connect with other folks?" So that's interesting to hear. I know you guys are doing this thing called RxWell, and maybe you can talk a little bit about that. 'Cause one of the things that I understand about RXR is that you're a realty company and a big one, but also you're becoming more of a technology enabler, or a technology platform for other companies. So maybe you can tell me a little bit about what's the RxWell thinking approach.   10:56 CC: Sure. Yeah, so I think... Actually, before COVID, in the... Those wonderful days before COVID, [chuckle] we'd actually started developing our own technology to do two things. Like, one to perform... Like, improve the operational performance of our spaces and use technology just to have more insights on how the buildings are being run, how our energy's being used, whether we're meeting sustainability goals and have kind of a unified view on all of our buildings in terms of how they perform. And then the other was really changing our relationship to occupants. Most real estate companies are focused on the tenant, which is the person that signs the lease.   11:43 S1: Uh-huh. I see.   11:44 CC: And... So that might be a head of real estate, that might be somebody that's... Never even comes to the building 'cause they might be making these decisions from afar. And then there's the actual occupants, you know? Their employees that come in every day. And we're trying to pivot towards a more user-centric focus and serve those individuals. So making tools and technology to improve the experience for our occupants. So, we kind of started that journey, as I said, pre-COVID, then around February, March did a major pivot. The technology and the underpinnings are the same but focusing a lot more on safety and wellness. So using the same kind of data pipeline and IoT infrastructure to get information about the building and air quality, occupancy, the same stuff we were gonna use for managing operational excellence, now we're able to use that data to make sure that we're managing our humidity to stay within 40% to 60%. Because that reduces transmission of COVID.   12:52 S1: I see.   12:54 CC: And make sure our occupancy is below 50%, because that's been mandated by New York State. We've built a suite of tools that really help us manage the performance of the buildings, and around COVID related factors and give those insights to our property managers as well as our tenants. But then the tools we're working on for the end employees, we've also launched those. And there are features to improve their experience. There's news about the building, and we're able to push alerts to them, there's food and beverage ordering, but a lot of that stuff has become much more critical during COVID, so that...   13:34 S1: Sure.   13:34 CC: Food and beverage, we've made relationships with a lot of different caterers so our... People in our buildings can get food.   13:40 S1: Right. Of course.   13:41 CC: They get it delivered in a touch-less way. We're rolling out touch-less access, but more importantly, taking the data that we're using to manage them and providing that to the end users too. So I can open up my app today and know how many people are in the building right now, but also even what the foot traffic is in the lobby and when the next peak foot traffic is, so that if I wanna go out to lunch, I can avoid the crowd.   14:08 S1: Right, right. Well that makes sense. So like traffic management, that's interesting. So there's kind of the lobby traffic, and this is also interesting, because I think people's attitudes toward data around themselves are also changing in this pandemic and they're more willing to give data about themselves, or have themselves more "monitored." I'm using air quotes here. But so in terms of traffic management, like people counting, do you foresee things like being able to understand occupancy in rooms and things too in terms of monitoring that, or how does that... Does that fit in there somehow?   14:46 CC: Yeah, so we've started at the building level to make sure that we're opening our buildings and managing in the safest way possible, but we've also been developing the tech at the space level and piloting it in our own spaces. So we're able to, with the overhead sensors we've installed, understand how many people are in every single conference room, at every single desk, and it's been invaluable to us in bringing back our own employees, 'cause we know exactly the density levels we have, and we've invited everyone back to the office, but we know only a certain percentage are showing up. We know that it's still safe from a density standpoint. The sensors that we have in place, they use imaging device and computer vision. It's not a camera, it doesn't provide enough resolution to recognize anybody, but...   15:44 S1: Image sensor as opposed to camera, which is different.   15:47 CC: Yeah. But it does provide enough information to know whether everyone's social distancing, and the average social distance in our space has been over seven feet just... By just bringing back 60% of the office. So it's been really helpful in managing towards our goals relative to COVID and managing behavior, but then also is gonna be useful as we re-plan for however we're gonna be managing space going forward, we know...   16:17 S1: That's fascinating. Well, 'cause you're talking about forecasting for capacity and now you're actually building up data to say, "Well, if you have this many employees and they're coming in this often, we can show the data that says, "This is how much space you really need." Especially when... Now, when you're talking about distancing and other density issues, right?   16:35 CC: Yeah, and a lot of the conference rooms that we had for eight, 12, 20 person meetings, or even two-person meetings, a lot of those are happening partially online, so maybe we don't need a two-person meeting room anymore and we need a one person phone booth.   16:51 S1: Right. Yeah, yeah, the phone rooms. We have some cool phone... Well, back when I used to spend time on campus, we had, in the newer buildings, phone rooms, focus rooms, team rooms... They were sort of like Russian nesting dolls of space that you could put yourself into, which I think makes sense. The old school buildings we had were, yeah, you've got the 24-person conference room or the 18-person conference room, and you'd have two people sitting in there which made no sense, but... So that's interesting. And I wonder also, are you doing things around... 'cause I know when I go to the local health club now, which has re-opened, I'm talking about tennis, but I walk up and it does a little temperature scan of me, and... Is that another part of the building access that you guys are thinking about, or is that...   17:39 CC: Yeah, so the RxWell platform, it's a full solution for the building. So it has the hardware and software, so we have installed thermal temperature scanners or elevated body temperature scanners at every single entrance. So that when people walk in, the ones we've deployed, scan fast enough that they catch you at pace so you don't have to pause.   18:03 S1: Wow! Cool.   18:04 CC: You can just walk right past. And then the data from those, we actually, again, push it into our platform, so we are able to watch trends of elevated body temperatures throughout the day. So we don't let you in if you have a fever, but...   18:17 S1: Sure.   18:18 CC: If the number of people trying to enter with a fever keeps going up, it probably means something's going on in the building. And we can also just view average body temperature of the entire population of our buildings, again.   18:34 S1: Wow!   18:35 CC: So that's been interesting, and then the app itself that we've rolled out for the employees also has the New York State's mandated... Basically that we ask three questions of every person...   18:44 S1: Right, you're self attestation... [18:48] ____ and everything there...   18:48 CC: So we get analytics on that as well, and interestingly, we've also made a partnership with a local health provider for telemedicine, because we found as people were taking that questionnaire... The second question we have is, "Do you have any symptoms of COVID? Do you have a headache? Do you have a dry cough?" And you start to read those questions and you're like, "I kinda do have a headache, and [19:15] ____ it's linked to having COVID"   19:16 S1: Yeah. Who doesn't have a headache? [laughter]   19:18 S1: Yeah, so you can actually call a medical professional during that flow, and they'll talk you through it and help you with a diagnosis and even get you testing if you think you have it, 'cause it's... Yeah, it's just... From a user experience standpoint, it's a little daunting the first couple times you take one of those questionnaires and you really...   19:39 S1: Yeah, sure.   19:40 CC: Think about it.   19:42 S1: Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I think that's fascinating. That's gonna become kind of the standard, I think of the kind of stuff that you're looking at, which is cool, especially how it works together. And then... Then you get data, you get history, you get real analysis over time of a real population of people and how they're behaving. You've mentioned actually, the shift from the...   20:04 S1: The rent payer versus the actual occupier, does that also apply in this world where people are gonna be working from home or other places? Does the platform sort of follow the person too? Would that apply maybe to some home use as well? Do you foresee a world where an employer is like, "Hey, we have this platform that's going to help you maintain distance and temperature and health when you're at the office... " but your home office is also technically, it's sort of like, can we consider that a part of the office as well? Does it extend to the person at home, maybe?   20:41 CC: It does in that... The questionnaire, we've definitely had some tenants that require it regardless of whether you're coming to the office or not, 'cause they just wanna use it to understand the overall health of their workforce. And then we have been particularly thinking of the post-COVID use cases, like building and functionality so people can express intent as to whether they're coming in today. 'Cause if we're on the same team, I'm gonna come into the office but I'm not gonna come in unless you're coming in because what's the point in coming in to do team work if my team's not there? So [21:17] ____ ways...   21:18 S1: Right, right.   21:18 CC: For people to know when they should or shouldn't come in or when's the best time to come in? But it's been more focused at the hybrid, the fact that people are gonna be both remote and in the office versus just servicing that kind of remote user... Yeah.   21:40 S1: Yeah, no, that's...   21:41 CC: We're also coming at it from the real estate owner perspective, so... [chuckle]   21:46 S1: Right. Yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah, and it's kind of a big question mark, we'll see. Even... When things open up, I think there'll be this hybrid experience for people and it also depends on the industry, obviously. So we'll see how people do that. I actually just finished my long weekend. I actually just remodelled this room here in my house to be a more, I would say, semi-permanent work from home office where it was very transitory previously. But it looks like it's gonna be a long haul work from home space. Even though I only live like two blocks from Microsoft campus, I figure I'm gonna probably be... A pretty big chunk of the time.   22:27 S1: But then it's like, how do I extend my work space into this room even though I have another office a few blocks away? And extend the Microsoft work experience here. So I think people will be experimenting with that too, just kind of where they're at, but... Yeah, interesting. And anything, I guess another question, since you're operating in Manhattan, what's that been like in terms of the real estate market in Manhattan and how have you guys navigated that? There's probably just a lot of uncertainty right now, I assume.   23:04 CC: Yes and no. It's interesting, our... Almost every... All of our tenants are... They are coming back to the office. They haven't expressed any intent to abandon. I think what's been shifting is more how they're using the space. And part of it is they're decreasing density because of COVID. So even if they're decreasing the number of people, they still kinda need the same amount of space, 'cause they're also decreasing density. But one of the things we've seen, and it's interesting... RXR is a... We own both urban and suburban real estate, so we have spaces in Westchester and Long Island around New York. We've had a lot of our tenants looking for... To switch to like a hub and a spoke model, where they have a couple anchor offices in the city, but they also wanna have satellite offices that are closer to home for people so they have a kind of third space. Where they... Maybe they don't wanna work at home 'cause you know, whatever, there's kids, dog, distractions, something, they wanna be able to come to a space to work or do their video conferencing, but they don't wanna come to the office, per se.   24:23 S1: Right, right. So sort of deconstructing the office space...   24:27 CC: Yeah.   24:27 S1: Into more atomic elements.   24:29 CC: Yes, so we've had...   24:31 S1: Yeah, and I think Microsoft's starting to do some of that too, in terms of also just making sure we can attract a good, diverse set of talent. One of the issues we had is obviously moving to Redmond, Washington or whatever doesn't really make sense for a lot of folks, and I think one of the benefits maybe of this kind of deconstruction of that office space is that it allows people to be part of the team without necessarily always physically being here. And we can hire from a broader talent pool that doesn't have to necessarily pack up their house and move cross country to Redmond. And maybe this idea of these satellite offices and things where people can go... You're right, you don't have the dog barking and all the other stuff going on, but you can work and be focused. So that could be a really interesting part of the story as well. By the way, I should also mention, just as a nod to our sponsors here that this all runs on Azure, all your stuff, so that's like...   25:31 CC: Yes.   25:32 S1: That's a good thing. Hashtag Azure. Gotta pay the bills, you know. Cool. So yeah, no, this has been great. Any final words you wanna add? Any kind of words of wisdom, prophecy that, [chuckle] you want to give us a heads up on?   25:51 CC: No, other than... I think being in New York has been interesting in that we were, for better or for worse, like the beginning of the outbreak in the United States, and really the hotspot for a while, and it's been... You know, we're knock on wood, kinda through the woods, it's been calm through lockup as well.   26:09 S1: Coming through the other side, yeah.   26:11 CC: But we're, I think, the first suffering the aftermath as well. I know my first day back at work was a little... Made me nervous, you know. It's like...   26:25 S1: Yeah, sure.   26:25 CC: I gotta get on the train, I haven't even left my house in a month, right? I kinda became a xenophobe. But we've come back, it's been... We have not had any outbreaks in our space. We're able to maintain our social distancing. It's...   26:45 S1: Right, right. It's working.   26:48 CC: Yeah, it's working.   26:49 S1: Yeah, yeah. Well.   26:51 CC: And just been... Been nice.   26:52 S1: That's a good thing. That's a good thing. Yeah, it is that confidence of... I think I'd mentioned tennis. I hadn't played for almost six months and played a doubles match the other day, and we were kind of distanced and all that. And kind of... About halfway through we were like, "Is this working? Are we... Is this good?" And we were like, "Yeah, this actually, this works." So I think people are getting confidence that these new things can work. They're getting more comfortable with it, and... Yeah. And just kinda move forward. But yeah you guys have been sort of at the epicentre here so... Sort of good lessons learned. But yeah, no, great. I appreciate the time, Cory. I think the stuff that you're doing is definitely cutting edge and... [27:31] ____ have a big impact for folks in your area and hopefully beyond as well, so... Yeah. Really appreciate the time.   27:39 CC: Oh, thank you, I appreciate you having me on.   27:42 S1: Sounds good. Alright, Corey. Take care.   27:44 CC: Alright, thank you.  

In this first episode of Season 2, Samantha McClary, editor of real estate media company, EG, (virtually) joins Bold founder Caleb Parker to share some of the chatter she’s hearing in commercial real estate. The two discuss whether people are really productive working remotely, what the “new normal” looks like when we come out Covid-19 lockdown, how companies are rethinking their office strategy, the role of Space-as-a-Service and of course how this affects commercial landlords. Connect with Sam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/samanthamcclary Connect with Caleb on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Caleb_Parker Questions in this episode: How has your productivity been affected during lockdown? Does everyone in your team feel the same as you, or does it vary based on each person's work from home circumstances? CBRE projects offices could be half empty for up to a year after lockdown. Do you think people will want to rush back to the office and stop working from home? Referring to the recent EG podcast with Neil Usher, he talks about a reset as companies consider a strategy for a return to work. Can you elaborate on that, and what this will mean for landlords? What PropTech companies / solutions can help #CRE serve their customers better / keep customers safe when we come out of lockdown? Before the pandemic the movement toward Space-as-a-Service, which includes coworking, flex and serviced offices, was approaching 10% of the overall office stock.  Considering we're all undergoing this global remote work experiment, and the latest headline of Barclays CEO saying "putting 7,000 people in a building may be a thing of the past" + RXR nixing the big Airbnb deal at 75 Rockefeller in NYC - what talk are you hearing from asset owners/managers on this topic now? Once we do get back to normal (or a new normal), do you expect to see the money in CRE bypassing traditional asset managers and doing deals directly with Space-as-a-Service operators? (Referencing #WorkBold podcast Season 1, Episode 10 with Dror Poleg) Value Bombs There are too many PR-seeking headlines and knee jerk reactions from commercial real estate to this pandemic. But companies are rethinking their office strategy. Tech and media companies are productive working remotely. Remote work productivity is linked to how people are doing emotionally. Creative work requires coming together in a face to face environment. Working remotely doesn't work for everyone. It's not the office OR remote work. The future includes both. The future = smaller head offices, remote work and access to workspace close to home. Real estate investors will partner with the best Space-as-a-Service operators to improve the customer experience. About Samantha McClary Samantha McClary is EG editor, Co-founder of REWIRE and Co-host of TechTalk Radio. Connect with her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-mcclary-b4635a4a/ Subscribe Apple | Spotify | Google | Stitcher | Podbean   Sponsors   Bold helps commercial real estate create & manage flexible spaces to dream, create, share, and succeed in. Now part of NewFlex (www.workbold.co)   NewFlex delivers and manages a range of branded solutions for every type of building, in every type of location, for every type of occupier. Including the flexibility to develop your own brand. All enabled by flexible management contracts where we are invested in making money for you. (www.newflex.com)   A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production company for brands, organizations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right equipment, training, and guidance to ensure you sound amazing. - (https://www.apodcastcompany.com and www.podcastsyndicator.com)  

Check out the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TF_3JUMzm2I   A candid conversation with RXR's Seth Pinsky in NYC. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/charles-weinraub/message

On this episode of QuestCast, I speak Massimo Noja de Marco, Founder and Chief Concept Officer at Kitchen United, a kitchen-as-service provider (also referred to as ghost or virtual kitchens) now expanding rapidly throughout the United States. The company raised Series B round of $40 million from RXR Real Estate to expand into New York and other regions. RXR led the funding round along with GV, the venture capital arm of Alphabet. Mostly chain restaurants use off-premise kitchens to serve their growing delivery business and the exploding off-premise dining market. Marco talks about the trends pushing the category’s rapid growth, what restaurant managers are looking for in a off-premise kitchens, and how the rise of delivery services like UberEats and Seamless are transforming the way we eat, work, and play.

General crime statistics are down, but hate-fueled attacks are on the rise. More than ever, people are feeling emboldened to act on their intolerance and bigotry. But in a society that is trying so hard to progress, how do you stand up in the face of hate? In this LIVE! episode of the Typed Out podcast, I am joined by Lex Evan of Alt Pronouns, Joanna Hoffman of Athlete Ally, and David Garten of host company RXR to chat about disarming those who are motivated by fear.

Dislocation is a podcast dedicated to innovation in real estate — exploring technology's impact on the way in which assets are planned, designed, financed, built, marketed, and operated. This week, Dror and David discuss how demographic changes impact demand for real estate; how cyclical demand impacts innovation in housing construction; and recent developments in the Space-as-a-Service market. Key points from this podcast: - There will be 21 million people aged 100 or older by the year 2100, compared to onyl 150,000 in 2000. - 50% of households in large US cities are single-person. These households used to consist mostly men, but are now majority female. - Rezi is planning to spend $10 million on buying up residential leases and using them as inventory to streamline the multifamily rental process. - Autodesk CEO says that “by 2050 there will be two billion more people on the planet – we have to build 1,000 more buildings a day for the next 32 years to house them." — is that a lot or a little, and how will construction catch up? - Is it possible to integrate and innovate in the construction industry in the face of extremely cyclical demand? How will AI and automation impact how the industry respond to such cycles? How does Katerra approach these challenges? - Convene raises $152m from ArrowMarks Partners, Revolution Growth, RXR, Brookfield - Breather launches new "Month Plus" offering, to provide longer-term furnished private offices to its clients - Senior WeWork executive tells media "We are a real estate company in the same way that Uber is a taxi company. We have no real estate and they don't have any taxis" — is that true? And if not, why do they keep repeating it? ____ David Friedlander is the founder of Hothouse.co, a marketing communications, public relations, and trend consultancy with a narrow focus on the future of real estate. Hothouse work has been featured in the New York Times, Wired, Dwell, CNN, and many other outlets. Read more here: hothouse.co/about/ Dror Poleg is the founder of NYC's Rethinking.RE, where he advises institutional real estate investors on innovation and investment in emerging technologies. His insights have been featured in reports and events by KPMG, Urban Land Institute, JLL, PERE, NYU, Savills, Estates Gazette, and EPRA. Read more here: www.rethinking.re/dror-poleg/

Dislocation is a podcast dedicated to innovation in real estate — exploring technology's impact on the way in which assets are planned, designed, financed, built, marketed, and operated. This week, Dror and David discuss a recent UCS study about the impact of climate change on RE markets, PMG's new shared/social housing expansion, Harvard's report on the state of housing, Breather's new institutional backers, MetaProp's new Proptech venture fund, and ING's analysis of technology's impact on traditional real estate owners. Contents: - 02:25 Union of Concerned Scientists research report on the potential impact of climate change on real estate - 8:30 PMG, a large residential developer, and their PMGx shared/social/coliving projects in Chicago, Denver, Miami and beyond - 13:11 Harvard Center for Housing Study's report on the state of the nation's housing - 16:50 Breather, a space as a service operator, raises $45m from Temasek and CDPQ - 23:35 MetaProp closes a new $40m Proptech fund, with LPs PGIM, RXR, Cushman & Wakefield, CBRE, and JLL - 30:15 ING report about the impact of technology on the real estate industry ____ Dror Poleg is Managing Partner of NYC's Rethinking.RE, where he advises institutional real estate investors on innovation and investment in emerging technologies. His insights have been featured in reports and events by KPMG, Urban Land Institute, JLL, PERE, NYU, Savills, Estates Gazette, and EPRA. Read more here: www.rethinking.re/dror-poleg/ David Friedlander is the founder of Hothouse.co, a marketing communications, public relations, and trend consultancy with a narrow focus on the future of real estate. Hothouse work has been featured in the New York Times, Wired, Dwell, CNN, and many other outlets. Read more here: hothouse.co/about/

Hello otakus, in this episode Mykey and JazWonder (of the Rhythm & Rebel) talk about the CW's newest DC show Black Lightning. They guess what kind of impact it will have on the rest of DC's lineup and the comic TV and movie landscape.

So in this episode,Mykey Fresh and JazWonder of the RXR show, discuss what they thought of 7 Deadly Sins and Legion. Along with OVAs and The Breaks, the ending song is Nanatsu No Taizai from Man with a Mission. Thanks for Listening!!!

If you were a fan of snowboarding during the 90s, then you are already familiar with Jeff Curtes' work.  During that time he dominated the pages of Transworld Snowboarding and signed with Burton Snowboards as the principle photographer.  He would go on to produce some of the most iconic images of Burton's elite team of riders for the next 20 years.  He was there to watch as the small sport of snowboarding became an industry and children like Shaun White grew up to be dominate athletes and business men.   Through it all, Curtes was a steady presence of consistent work with an easy going attitude based around the fact that he was just trying to have fun as well.  On this episode of the podcast we sit down and talk about growing up in a small town outside of Milwaukee and, together with his younger brother Joe, falling in love with snowboarding at an early age.  When his brother began to start winning all the competitions, and the sport began to take notice, Jeff decided to focus on documenting the world of snowboarders he was surrounded by.  Before long he was being published, and the rest is history.  After many years of being totally immersed in the world of snowboarding, Jeff has moved on with other commercial and adventure lifestyle work, and is looking at what the next phase of his career might hold.  He currently shares space on RXR's very impressive roster of photographers, filmmakers, and athletes.  It's a great conversation about doing what you love and having fun while you do it.   To Learn More About Jeff Curtes Visit: http://jeffcurtes.com About Visual Revolutionary http://www.visualrevolutionary.com Because we are interested in people's story, and not what type of gear they use, we introduce a new much needed podcast in the world of photography and filmmaking.  Featuring in-depth conversations with some of the world's leading photographers, filmmakers, and other visual artists, we are bringing you the backstory on how they got to where they are today.    

Fragestellung: Das Ovarialkarzinom ist die fünfthäufigste Krebserkrankung bei Frauen. Trotz radikaler chirurgischer Interventionen und nachfolgender Chemotherapie beträgt das Fünfjahresüberleben nur 42%. Die anhaltend schlechte Prognose macht die Suche nach Zielmolekülen im Sinne einer „targeted therapy“ zur Erweiterung des Behandlungsspektrums nötig. Diese Arbeit soll neue Erkenntnisse über die Expression acht verschiedener Rezeptoren der Kernrezeptorsuperfamilie (THRα2, THRα1, THRα1/2, THRβ, THRβ1, RXRα, PPARγ und VitDR) im Ovarialkarzinom bringen und Aussagen zu ihrem prognostischen Stellenwert ermöglichen. Patienten und Methoden: Das untersuchte Kollektiv besteht aus Patientinnen, die an unserer Klinik zwischen 1990 und 2002 aufgrund eines Ovarialkarzinoms operiert wurden. Die Gewebeproben wurden nach den gängigen Methoden der Immunhistochemie bearbeitet, die Färbungen mittels IRS-Score bewertet und mit SPSS statistisch ausgewertet. Ergebnisse: Alle von uns untersuchten Rezeptoren werden im Ovarialkarzinom exprimiert und zeigen zusätzlich zu ihrem nukleären Vorkommen eine Koexpression im Zytoplasma. Speziell PPARγ und THRβ1 kommen überwiegend extranukleär vor. Die Analyse der Rezeptorexpression nach histopathologischen Subtypen ergab eine Spezifität von THRβ1 für klarzellige Ovarialtumore. THRα1/2 ist in allen Subtypen außer dem muzinösen exprimiert. Bei Tumorprogression erlischt die Expression mehrerer Rezeptoren: Mit Verschlechterung des Gradings kommt es zum Verlust von THRα2 in serösen Ovarialkarzinomen und tendenziell auch im Gesamtkollektiv. Beim serösen Ovarialkarzinom wirkt sich dies verkürzend auf das Überleben aus. Auch die Expression des THRβ1 in klarzelligen Tumoren und des VitDR in serösen Karzinomen sinkt signifikant mit der Verschlechterung des Gradings. In fortgeschrittenen FIGO-Tumorstadien verlieren die Karzinome außerdem ihre THRβ1 Rezeptoren, sowie seröse Tumoren tendenziell ihre THRα1/2 Rezeptoren. Zusammenfassung 4 THRβ erfährt als einziger Rezeptor eine Expressionszunahme bei Tumorprogression und ist im Stadium III der FIGO-Klassifikation deutlich überexprimiert. Die zytoplasmatische Expression von THRα2, THRβ und VitDR scheint zudem die Mortalität zu erhöhen. Außerdem zeigt sich eine lange Reihe an Rezeptorkorrelationen. Diskussion: Im Zuge der Entdifferenzierung des Gewebes zeigte sich für mehrere Rezeptoren (THRα2, THRα1/2 und THRβ1) ein intranukleärer Expressionsverlust. Die intranukleäre und zytoplasmatische Expression der von uns untersuchten Rezeptoren korreliert dabei umgekehrt proportional miteinander (Ausnahme VitDR). Eine persistierende intranukleäre THRα2-Expression ermöglich zumindest im serösen Ovarialkarzinom ein längeres Überleben, während die zytoplasmatische Expression von THRα2, THRβ und VitDR im Gesamtkollektiv hochsignifikant das Mortalitätsrisiko steigert. Diese Translokation im Rahmen der Tumorprogression könnte evtl. durch einen Enzündungsprozess oder durch eine Schilddrüsenstörung ausgelöst sein. Weitere Untersuchungen mit Vergleich der Rezeptorexpression im gesunden Ovarialgeweben und simultaner Messung von Schilddrüsenhormonen und Entzündungsparametern sind ausstehend. Die intranukleäre Expression von THRβ hingegen nimmt bei Tumorprogression zu. Sein Stellenwert in der Kanzerogenese des Ovarialkarzinoms ist genau wie seine Bedeutung in der Krebsentstehung anderer Tumore noch nicht geklärt. RXRα, PPARγ und THRα1 scheinen im Ovarialkarzinom eine untergeordnete Rolle zu haben.

Die Schizophrenie, eine psychiatrische Erkrankung mit stärksten Auswirkungen auf Wahrnehmung, Gedanken und Emotionen der Patienten, tritt weltweit bei etwa einem Prozent aller Menschen auf. Ihre genaue Ursache ist bisher weitgehend ungeklärt. Neben Umweltfaktoren spielt die genetische Komponente eine herausragende Rolle, wobei nicht ein Gen alleine beteiligt ist, sondern ein Zusammenspiel verschiedener Gene als Auslöser vermutet wird.Die Erforschung solcher Suszeptibilitätsgene kann zu besserem Verständnis der Ätiopathogenese der Erkrankung führen und schließlich zu neuen Ansätzen in Diagnose und Therapie. Zahlreiche funktionelle Kandidatengene der Schizophrenie, allen voran der Dopaminrezeptor D2, unterliegen der Regulierung durch Retinoidrezeptoren, welche dadurch selbst zum Gegenstand der Forschung werden. In vorliegender Arbeit wird das Gen des Retinoidrezeptor RXR gamma (RXRG-Gen) untersucht, das sich auf Chromosom 1q22-23 befindet. In einer Fall-Kontroll-Assoziationsstudie mit 287 Schizophrenie¬patienten und 421 gesunden Kontrollpersonen als Probanden werden zwei Einzelbasenaustausch-Polymorphismen – einer ist innerhalb der potentiellen Promotorregion lokalisiert, der andere befindet sich auf Exon 8 –auf einen Zusammenhang mit Schizophrenie untersucht.Bei den Allel- und Genotypfrequenzen der Polymorphismen rs1467664 und rs2134095 zeigte sich keine signifikante Assoziation mit Schizophrenie, bei rs1467664 konnte der homozygote Genotyp des selteneren Allels Guanin im Vergleich zu den zusammengefaßten beiden anderen Genotypen einen Trend in Richtung Assoziation aufweisen. Um eine Beteiligung des RXR gamma bei der Entstehung der Schizophrenie endgültig klären zu können, müßten noch andere Polymorphismen des Gens flächendeckend untersucht und ein stärkeres Augenmerk auf das Wechselspiel mit anderen Genen gelegt werden, da eine isolierte Betrachtung eines Gens innerhalb der Ätiologie einer so komplexen Erkrankung wie die der Schizophrenie zu wenig Aussagekraft hat.

Etwa 25-50% der Frauen im reproduktionsfähigen Alter erleiden in ihrem Leben einen spontanen Abort und 2-3% der Frauen rezidivierende Aborte [1]. Ein Großteil der Aborte bleiben weiterhin ungeklärt [4]. Folglich besteht ein essentieller Forschungsbedarf in der Ursachenerkundung und Prävention von Aborten. Die Rezeptoren Retinoid-X-Rezeptor α (RXRα) und Leptin Rezeptor (ObR) spielen eine Rolle in der plazentaren und fetalen Entwicklung. In vorherigen Studien konnte die Arbeitsgruppe von Toth und Jeschke et al. (2008 und 2009) zeigen, dass die Expression von RXRα und ObR jeweils in villösen- (VT) und extravillösen Trophoblasten (EVT) erhöht ist. In einer weiteren Studie konnte eine vermehrte Anzahl an apoptotischen EVT in Aborten festgestellt werden [191]. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war die Analyse der (patho-) physiologischen Rolle der Rezeptoren RXRα und ObR in Aborten mit speziellem Fokus auf apoptotische Prozesse. Dazu dienten Stimulationsversuche, in denen humane villöse Trophoblasten und Trophoblast-Modellzellen mit Retinsäuren und einem Prostaglandin-Derivat inkubiert wurden und deren Einfluss auf die RXRα und ObR Expression in den Zelllinien untersucht wurde. Des Weiteren wurde die Expression der Rezeptoren zusammen mit einem Marker für Apoptose in Abortplazenten detektiert. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass die Substanzen zu einer Abnahme der RXRα Expression in Trophoblast- und Trophoblastmodellzellen führen. Da Abortplazenten eine erhöhte RXRα Expression aufweisen und mit einer vermehrten Anzahl an apoptotischen EVT assoziiert werden, dient die Liganden-abhängige Reduktion der RXRα Expression durch die Substanzen vermutlich als Schutz vor einem apoptotischen Zustand bzw. vor einem Abort. RXRα stellt einen potentiellen Zielrezeptor in der Prävention von Aborten dar. Die ObR Expression in Trophoblastmodellzellen wurde durch die Retinsäure erhöht. Die Zunahme der ObR Expression kann als eine potentielle Reaktion auf ein vermindertes Leptin Angebot im Abort gedeutet werden. Weiterhin konnte eine Co-Expression des Apoptosemarkers mit RXRα bzw. ObR in EVT von Abortplazenten beobachtet werden. Als Ergebnis sind die vorliegenden Erkenntnisse nicht nur für das Verständnis über die Regulation der Rezeptoren im Abortprozess, sondern auch für den physiologischen Schwangerschaftsverlauf von zentraler Bedeutung.

The liver X receptors (LXRs) have been shown to be crucially involved in maternal-fetal cholesterol transport and placentation. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression pattern and frequency of LXR under normal physiological circumstances and in spontaneous abortion and/or recurrent miscarriage. A total of 29 (12 physiologic pregnancies/10 spontaneous abortions/7 recurrent miscarriages) human pregnancies in first trimester were analysed for LXR expression. Expression changes were evaluated by immunohistochemistry for receptor and quantitative RT-PCR (TaqMan) was performed to determine the level of LXR mRNA expression. We also stained for RXR alpha and PPAR gamma as possible heterodimers of LXR. LXR expression was downregulated in the syncytiotrophoblast of spontaneous abortion placentas compared to normal pregnancy. In recurrent miscarriage there was a trend for a downregulation. Decidua showed an even stronger downregulation in both groups. In the syncytiotrophoblast we found a positive correlation for the combination of LXR/PPAR gamma in abortions and a negative correlation for LXR/RXR alpha. In addition, double-immunofluorescence staining showed that LXR as well as RXR alpha and PPAR gamma are expressed by the extravillous trophoblast. Finally, RXR alpha and LXR showed coexpression in the same extravillous trophoblast cells. To conclude, our data show that LXR expression is decreased in miscarriage.