the week that was 14-18th November 2016

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the week that was 14-18th November 2016

Singapore, Weekend 19 – 20 November 2016

A surprisingly quiet week. Little action, just a few meetings, some skirmishes between project consultants, but nothing of great excitement, which allowed me to spent time on other lighting issues and personal projects that are running parallel to our daily activities. Re-designing our website is one of them; after 5 years we are ready for some refreshment so we settled on the company that will help us over the coming months to rebrand and refresh our corporate look on the net. Depending on the outcome we may decide to carry that look further in other corporate documents. After the failure of two supposedly experienced and senior project directors we decided to re-organise the team internally to deal with the demands of a modern day lighting design practice. We engaged some new staff and will for now focus on grooming and growing our own “stars” rather then trying to find them from outside. Charlie’s (Martin’s) “Angels” are now in place! With end of the year holidays approaching there are still a considerable number of projects on full speed, with still some travel required, but overall it feels like everything is gradually moving into a lower gear.

Creative clients
One of our dear client’s has continuously excelled in making working on the project a great joy. Not only by being a great paymaster and taking well care of us during our site visits, they also have been very creative and motivating by coming out with little goodies, most of which they plan to actually use as merchandise when the hotel opens. Bags, shawls, T-shirts, pen’s and notebooks decorated with the hotel logo or related imagery have been developed of which we all got as little souvenirs and thank you gesture. Now they are bringing this to a whole new level, one that shows a great appreciation to the consultant’s team. We have all been asked to send in a couple if our preferred sketches which they will convert as an image on T-shirts. Each consultant will be honoured with a T-shirt promoting one of their favourite design sketches. A great and cool idea! I made my selection this week and forwarded the high res images to the client. Can’t wait!

Super Moon
This week as also Super Moon week. On Monday we saw the moon at its biggest as it passed the Earth close by. If you missed the Super Moon from this week, there will be another one in December but it will be slightly smaller than the November one which was the most “super” Super Moon :). The moon follows an elliptical path around the earth with the furthest and closest distances varying over the years. This time around the closest distance in orbit is 356,509 kilometres, just two weeks earlier it had swung out to 406,662 kilometres. The last time the moon was this close was in 1948 and the next time the moon will come within 356,500 kilometres will be in 2034 (356,448 km) and then in 2058 (356425 km). Because its closer than normal distance the moon looks bigger, hence the term Super Moon. With the estimated size being about 30% bigger the question arises whether the average illumination level of 0.25 lux that is normally associated with the moon can be augmented to 0.33 lux with a Super Moon?? The moon has always fascinated millions of people, me included. It is an amazing thought that a surface located such distance away illuminated by a sun so much farther away in our solar system manages to illuminate our earth to such extend. If you have experienced moonlight in a totally dark environment in the country side like I have you know what I mean…magical…

Facebook tagging
On to a totally different subject that got my attention this week…we are all experiencing the onslaught of emails mostly from Chinese lighting factories promoting their latest products. I get heaps daily, it’s hard to block out as there are new ones all the time. It seems they now have found new ways to “get” to you. This week I noticed for the first time that our company Facebook page was “tagged” (amongst 98 others!) by a Chinese manufacturer. Some even liked the page! It may have happened before but it was new to me. It is without doubt that social media platforms are the new way of marketing. If we use them to promote our practice, we can hardly be surprised that “they” use it reversely to get to you…

Samsung and Tesla
Finally some corporate news that is confirming a worldwide trend of integration of products and services. First Samsung announced it’s takeover of Harman a world leader of automotive products and also the parent company of Martin Lighting for 8 Billion dollars, a big acquisition. While a direct link with lighting still seems far away, its immediate interest is to move into the automotive business aiming to make inroads in the intelligent, wireless, driverless car business by taking on Apple and Google’s foray into this market. In the longer run it is logical to assume that developments in the smart lighting industry are to follow.

At the same time we saw the announcement that electric car maker Tesla has moved into the market of solar panels by developing a new generation roof tiles with integrated solar generation capacity. The glass tiles are offered as a textured glass, slated glass, Tuscan glass and a smooth glass version. In a statement to the media, Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, announced that the roof tiles would be cheaper than ordinary ones, longer lasting while providing electricity at the same time…who wouldn’t want that?

Interesting times ahead and developments that we should follow closely as they will certainly keep changing the world as we know it!
Enjoy your weekend