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nancydsmithus · 5 years

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Smashing Magazine Is Thirteen!

Rachel Andrew

2019-09-06T12:00:59+02:002019-09-06T10:45:19+00:00

This week, Smashing Magazine turned thirteen years old. The web has changed a lot since Vitaly posted his first article back in 2006. The team at Smashing has changed too, as have the things that we bring to our community — with conferences, books, and our membership added to the online magazine.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that we’re a small team — with most of us not working fulltime for Smashing. Many in the team, however, have been involved with the magazine since the early days. You may not know them by name, but you will have enjoyed and benefited from their work. I enjoyed finding out what everyone gets up to outside of Smashing, and also how they came to be involved — I hope that you will, too.

Vitaly Friedman is the person you probably think of when you think of Smashing Magazine, and rightfully so. He posted his first article to the site on September 2nd, 2006. When asked what he likes to do outside of Smashing, he says,

“I’m a big fan of hiking, running, ironing and fruits! For me, ironing shirts is really like meditation — and I also loooooove music festivals (which is something most people don’t know about me as I tend to be quite obscure about that).”

Vitaly has done pretty much everything at Smashing at one time or another — web developer, writer, editor, designer, creative lead and curator. These days, he helps to keep us all on track with his vision for all of the Smashing things, and always has some new ideas! Vitaly (originally from Belarus) travels as much as I do, our company standups usually involve us reporting our current and next location and timezone! As you’ll discover, however, while Smashing Magazine is a German company, the team lives — or has roots — all over the world.

Iris Lješnjanin is our senior editor on the magazine, and does an amazing job maintaining communication between our many authors, editors, and reviewers. She also does the majority of the subediting work on the magazine, trying to maintain the individual voices of our authors while ensuring the articles are easy to read for our worldwide audience. She has been part of Smashing since 2010, helping to develop the brand, mentoring in-house interns, and developing the process for working with authors and editors that keeps our daily publishing schedule rolling!

Iris grew up in Abu Dhabi, UAE, after the Bosnian War broke out, and moved to Germany to pursue her degree in linguistics. As I was gathering information for this article, she explained:

“I grew up multilingual, so it’s difficult for me not to love languages. Everything from the differences in tones, melodies, rhythms and cultural undertones of various languages is what will never cease to amaze me. Since I currently live in Freiburg, German is obviously the predominant language in my daily life alongside my mother tongue (Bosnian), but I try my best to learn new ones by listening to music, reading books and newspapers, watching TV series, and so on. One thing I find funny and interesting about languages is that, at the end of the day, they’re out of our control. Just like you can’t control who you meet in life, you can’t control which languages you learn. You meet them, get to know them, and fall in love with them.”

Unless you write for Smashing, you may never encounter Iris, however, her work is a key part of everything we do — a true behind-the-scenes superstar!

Another person who does a lot of work behind-the-scenes is Cosima Mielke, who joined Smashing in 2012 for a six-month long internship and is still working with us. Cosima is our e-book producer and editor, but gets involved in far more than that. She is behind the posts in the newsletter, and the ever-popular monthly wallpapers post, and many other editorial tasks that crop up.

Cosima loves being outside in nature, riding her bike, and creating things. Her background is not web development, and she told me,

“At Smashing, I’ve gained an entirely new look at the web which I only knew from a user’s perspective before I started working here. What fascinates me most is the strong community sense in the web community, that people are so open to sharing their knowledge and the tools they build to make life easier for everyone else — without asking for anything in return.”

As we cover such a wide range of topics here at Smashing, no one person can be an expert at all of them. Therefore, Iris and I are assisted by our subject-matter editors, some of who have been with us for a very long time.

One such editor is Alma Hoffmann. Originally from Puerto Rico, she moved to the USA to study for her MFA in Graphic Design and now teaches at the University of Alabama. Like so many of our Smashing crew, Alma is bilingual, though I believe she is the only one of the team who can claim to have been a ballroom dancer!

Alma first became involved with Smashing Magazine when she wrote an article in 2010. We perhaps didn’t have the editorial process then that we do now as she got a surprise when her first draft showed up live! She remembers,

“I emailed Vitaly thanking him and since then we have been in touch. He tested the waters by sending me articles to review and in 2013, he and Iris asked me to be the design editor. I wear that title like a badge of honor. Later on, in 2017, I was invited to be a speaker at the conference in Freiburg. I had a blast and met so many interesting people!”

Another of our editors is Michel Bozgounov. Like Alma, he originally became involved with SmashingMag by writing an article. After writing a second article in 2010, Vitaly asked him if he would like to edit a section of the magazine dedicated to Adobe Fireworks. Michel wrote an article when Adobe ultimately ended work on the product, however ,he now edits articles about the newer tools that have filled the gap — such as Sketch and Figma.

In his spare time, Michel loves to draw:

“It all started a few years ago, with a notebook, a fineliner, and a few watercolor pencils that I stole from my wife. Turned out I couldn’t stop drawing and for the last three years or so I imagine and then draw on paper small bits of a strange, but kind of fascinating world that I see in my mind — the world of Monsters & Carrots. For now, this world exists nowhere else but in my notebooks, and I showed only some small parts of it on Twitter.

Michel said that through working for Smashing,

“I learned how to be a better editor, and how to be more careful with words. I consider my experience at Smashing Magazine to be invaluable. I got in touch with so many people from all over the world and developed good online and offline friendships with many of the authors, experts, and editors that I worked with. Definitely, I can say that my job at Smashing Magazine opened many new doors and changed my life in a good way.”

When it comes to UX-related content, Chui Chui is one of our wonderful editors who works with authors to cover the most up-to-date topics on the magazine. Drew McLellan has recently taken on editing the coding section of the magazine, which includes everything from PHP to HTML, to JavaScript and more! If you write for Smashing Magazine it is likely that your main editorial contact will be with one of these editors, who will work with you to make sure your article is the best it can be.

Yana Kirilenko helps with preparations of articles to be published and talks to all our Smashing TV speakers to arrange the formalities, so they can connect with our wonderful community.

Next, we have Inge Emmler who keeps us all on track with our expense receipts, and requests to spend money! In addition, she helps out our community when they get in touch. If your book order didn’t show up, then Inge is probably the person who will help you. She loves to be able to make our customers happy and remembers an anecdote from her time at Smashing where she sent a free e-book to one person, brightening their day despite the fact they had just lost their job.

When not helping our the Smashing community and chasing us for our expenses, Inge loves to do things with her hands, be that refurbishing her house, gardening, cooking, and more recently taking photographs of flowers.

Jan Constantin has been part of the team since 2012, between then and now has fulfilled a number of roles — office manager, event manager, junior editor, and fullfillment manager! The nature of a small team is that we all sometimes end up doing something quite different than we originally imagined. Jan enjoys rock climbing, tabletop games and Sci-fi/Fantasy. He confesses that despite working for Smashing all these years he still doesn’t know more than basic HTML.

Ricardo Gimenes is the creator of the Smashing mascot, and therefore is the person we all go to with requests for illustrations of cats involved in a variety of non-catlike activities. Ricardo told he is:

“A half-Brazilian half-Spanish designer who loves graphic and motion. I’ve been a kind of "gypsy" for the past 20 years since I’ve lived in 6 different countries working as a designer (Brazil, Italy, Germany, England, Japan, and now Sweden). I love board games — I have more than 80 games (and counting) in my collection. Every week, we have a board game/beer night with friends here at my home. I’m a big fan of football (and weekend player). I love to play guitar, blues, and rock and roll.”

Ricardo has been with Smashing since 2009, however, he didn’t meet Vitaly or the rest of the team in person for five years as he was based in Brazil. You can see his work all over the magazine and also at our conferences, as he designs each of the conferences to match the location and theme of the event.

Among many other things, Ricardo illustrated these posters for our Toronto Conference. (Photo credit Marc Thiele)

I was lucky enough to speak at the very first SmashingConf in Freiburg in 2012. Marc Thiele brought his expertise and knowledge of conference organization to that event. It was a great success and the SmashingConf series has gone from strength to strength, with events happening in Europe, America, and Canada. Marc is still involved with Smashing, offering advice and experience as a friend of the team and also serves on the Smashing Board, helping to shape the direction of the company. He also takes photos at many of our conferences — such as the one above. Marc told me that,

“Working on the Events team, it’s exciting to bring Smashing Conference to all those different places and many people. Creating the Smashing Conference in old town halls, in beautiful theatre and music venues, this is exciting and wonderful to see the outcome and the effect it has on many people attending the event.”

The conference team has grown since those early days. Amanda Annandale joined the team three years ago, and now produces our New York event and has also produced events in London and Toronto. Originally from a theater background, Amanda was a professional stage manager in the USA for ten years.

Producing SmashingConf NY has created a strange turn of events in Amanda’s life,

“For 10 years I was a professional stage manager in New York City, working on musicals, new performance pieces, dance, you name it. One place I worked in was the New World Stages. It was working an event at this venue that I met my husband! Now — nearly 8 years later, I’m back working at the same venue, but this time on the other side when we hold our SmashingConf NY event every year!”

Amanda has the help of Charis Rooda, also an experienced conference organizer outside of Smashing, who runs WebConf.asia and was involved running conferences in The Netherlands before moving to Hong Kong. Charis makes sure that our speakers know where they are supposed to be and when, and also takes care of much of the social media and website content around the conferences. When not working, Charis loves doing art puzzles, and tells me that,

“With 1000 pieces you think you’re never going to finish it, but when you start and keep on going, you will make it. Pretty much like running a conference!”

When asked what surprising thing she had learned while working at Smashing Charis told me,

“I learned how to use em dashes — the punctuation mark which can be used instead of a comma, not to be mistaken for the en dash or hyphen — and my life will never be the same.”

Mariona Cíller was part of the conference team but this year her role is transitioning to more broadly lead the Partnerships and Data side of the business. She has been part of the team since 2015 at SmashingConf Barcelona.

Mariona is a former web designer and developer, and describes herself as, “in love with science and technology, the open web, open-source hardware, and software”. She lives in a laboratory at her grandfather’s 1920’s embroideries factory which she remodeled over the past 5 years. Today, it is a digital fabrication laboratory (FabLab) connected to 1700+ labs from all over the world via the Fab Lab Network and the Center for Bits & Atoms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she graduated from the Fab Academy in 2015.

Mariona is currently studying for a Ph.D. in computer science and human-computer interaction at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). Her research focuses on digital social inclusion programs for the neighborhood youth and community in Barcelona. She manages to find time to be a Mozillian and volunteer her time as a wrangler for MozFest2019!

I’ve learned a lot about many of the Smashing team while researching this piece, however, someone very familiar to me is Bethany Andrew — as she’s my daughter! Bethany has been doing some work for Smashing for a little over a year, first brought in to do some video editing work on the conference video. She still edits many of our videos and has also run a Smashing TV session. A trained dancer and singer, Bethany is part of a gospel choir in London, a true crime nerd, and a lover of Indian food. She said about her time at Smashing,

“It’s so lovely to now be working with everyone at Smashing. So many people have known me since I was a kid through my mum, or she’s always spoken about them. It’s nice now I’m all grown up (or trying to be) that I get to work with this lovely lot and develop my own friendships with them.”

The newest member of our team is Esther Fernández, who has joined Mariona to work on Partnerships and Data, and will be meeting the team for the first time in Freiburg at SmashingConf. I asked Esther to tell me something about her life outside of Smashing, and she said,

“I’m a very curious person. I love the sensation of having learned something new by the end of the day. I get part of that knowledge through books — I’m an eager reader — but also through films and any kind of artistic expression. I have a self-taught knowledge in psychology and I really enjoy hiking, riding my bike, and having conversations with other inquisitive people.”

Then, there is me. Editor in Chief since October 2017, however, I felt part of Smashing long before that. My first Smashing article was published in June 2010 and I was part of the review panel for several years. In addition, I have had chapters in a number of Smashing books, and have spoken and run workshops at SmashingConf since the beginning. Smashing has been part of my own journey as a web developer, speaker, writer, and editor. I love to work with people who are committed to doing the best they can do, dedicated to the web platform and the community who work on it, which is why I’m very proud to be part of this team.

I hope that you, now feel you know us a little better. I certainly found out a lot about my colleagues while writing this. I love how much everyone feels a part of Smashing, whether they work a few hours a month or full time. And, the reason we do this at all? That should be left to Vitaly, who describes best how all of us feel about working on the magazine, conferences and all the other things we do.

“One incredible thing that keeps happening to me all the time is that people come to me and tell stories of how Smashing changed their lives many years ago. Maybe it’s just one article that really nailed it and helped a developer meet the deadline, and sometimes it’s those certain encounters at a conference that simply change your life. I vividly remember stories of people whom I’ve met at conferences when they were students, and who now have companies with dozens of employees. These stories change everything — we don’t hear them most of the time, sitting everywhere in the world and just writing, publishing and curating events, but there is always impact of our work at people around us. And that’s something we shouldn’t take lightly.”

(ra, vf, il)

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juditmiltz · 6 years

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National Cheat Sheet: Real estate’s top billionaires revealed, retail apocalypse continues… & more

Clockwise from top left: Dollar Tree to shutter or rebrand hundreds of Family Dollar stores, the richest real estate billionaires on an annual Forbes ranking hail from China and Hong Kong, dozens of Gap and Victoria’s Secret stores prepare to close amid low sales and real estate investment trusts are benefiting from the Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates where they are.

China, Hong Kong real estate billionaires top Forbes richest ranking Forbes has released its annual ranking of the world’s wealthiest people, and the real estate moguls who placed highest on its list are all from either China or Hong Kong. Evergrande Group’s Hui Ka Yan took the 22nd spot with a net worth exceeding $36 billion, while Dalian Wanda chairman Wang Jianlin placed 36th with a net worth of $22.6 billion, according to Forbes. Irvine Company chairman Donald Bren was the highest-ranked American property mogul, placing 68th on the list. Related Companies’ Stephen Ross took the 191st spot on the ranking with a net worth of $7.6 billion. Ross, the developer behind New York’s Hudson Yards, was the only major Manhattan real estate billionaire in the top 200. [TRD]

Hundreds of Gap, Family Dollar, Victoria’s Secret stores to close Around 230 Gap stores and 53 Victoria’s Secret stores will be closing, their respective parent companies have said. Dollar Tree, which owns the Family Dollar chain, also plans to close up to 390 stores and convert another 200 Family Dollar stores into Dollar Tree shops, the Wall Street Journal reported. (Dollar Tree bought Family Dollar for around $9 billion in 2015.) As for Gap, it plans to split off its Old Navy brand into a separate company, as the chain’s “business model and customers have increasingly diverged from our specialty brands over time,” said a statement from board chairman Robert Fisher. Old Navy has been doing better than its sister companies, Gap and Banana Republic, according to USA Today. Meanwhile, Victoria’s Secret, a flagship of retail giant L Brands, has experienced a drop in sales amid an increased desire among shoppers for so-called “comfort lingerie,” according to CNBC. [TRD]

Amazon pulls plug on 87 pop-up stores, plans new grocery store chain Fresh off ditching Long Island City for its so-called H2Q, Amazon is now preparing to shutter 87 pop-up retail stores throughout the country, according to the Wall Street Journal. The e-commerce giant, which launched the small store concept in 2014, is reportedly reevaluating its physical retail plans. The purported move comes as Amazon prepares to launch a new grocery store line, one whose first outpost will open in Los Angeles, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Los Angeles store could open before the end of the year, and two other stores are expected to open at the beginning of 2020, according to the outlet. Amazon’s new chain isn’t being billed as a competitor to Whole Foods, which the company acquired in 2017 and reportedly has plans to expand, but will instead offer a broader range of products. The new stores will be about 35,000 square feet, although its plans aren’t set in stone, as Amazon could back out of its existing contracts, the outlet reported. [TRD]

We Company sheds 300 staffers, or 3 percent of its workforce The co-working giant formerly known as WeWork, most recently valued at $47 billion ahead of a January rebranding as the We Company, let go of 300 employees last week, according to The Real Deal‘s exclusive reporting. The layoffs, which sources said took place globally in its WeWork, WeLive and WeGrow divisions, are the largest by the company since its formation in 2010. A We Company spokesperson said the company has plans to hire 6,000 employees this year, or about 500 per month, to bolster its current head count of roughly 10,000. The SoftBank Group-backed firm, whose CEO Adam Neumann has come under scrutiny for personal investments that mirror those made by the We Company, last made major cutbacks in 2016. Sources told TRD that the latest force reductions have been positioned as being for performance-related reasons. [TRD]

Keller Williams credits tech expansion for 2018 deal surge A week after Douglas Elliman and Realogy disclosed less-than-stellar financials for 2018, franchise brokerage rival Keller Williams has unveiled some key financial metrics that it hit last year. The Austin-based real estate company said that its agents in the U.S. and Canada closed $332.4 billion in sales volume during its most recent fiscal year, up 5.7 percent from 2017, as contract volume jumped 5.5 percent year-over-year, to $365 billion. Keller Williams declined, however, to disclose its net income or address a decline in franchisee profits. The company, whose CEO Gary Keller returned to its leadership ranks earlier this year, claimed that key investments in technology were paying off. Official agent count remained steady at 159,447, although Keller Williams is in the midst of purging potentially thousands of inactive agents. [TRD]

REITs benefit from Fed’s decision to keep interest rates steady The Federal Reserve’s recent decision to keep interest rates where they are has been good for real estate investment trusts. Real estate stocks on the S&P 500 fell 5.6 percent in 2018, but have jumped by 12 percent since the beginning of this year as investors set their sights on REIT shares, the Wall Street Journal reported. “The surprising drop in yields and the drop in mortgage rates could potentially be another positive for housing and housing-related stocks going forward,” LPL Financial senior market strategist Ryan Detrick told the outlet. The Fed raised interest rates four times in 2018, but held off on another rate hike in January. [TRD]

MAJOR MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

New York’s Chrysler Building nears potential $100M sale Aby Rosen, principal and co-founder of Manhattan-based real estate firm RFR Holding, is nearing a deal to acquire the iconic Chrysler Building, according to The Real Deal‘s exclusive reporting. A source with knowledge of the negotiations told TRD that the purchase price is “not much higher” than the $100 million estimate that the Commercial Observer reported the building could trade for, in part due to a ground lease on the landmarked property. The Chrysler Building’s current owners, an Abu Dhabi government fund and the developer Tishman Speyer, put the Art Deco-style office tower up for sale in January. CBRE Group is marketing the building, which saw the Abu Dhabi Investment Council cough up $800 million in 2008 for what would become a 90 percent stake in the tower. [TRD]

Silverstein Properties, Cantor Fitzgerald to raise nearly $2B OZ fund In one of the largest funds so far to target the Trump administration’s increasingly popular Opportunity Zone program, financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald and real estate developer Silverstein Properties announced on March 7 that they had joined forces on a fund that they hope will raise $2 billion. The duo, which are both based in Manhattan, said they will target ground-up developments in primary metropolitan markets with a focus on industrial, hospitality, office and retail projects. The partnership between Silverstein and Cantor Fitzgerald is the latest in a series of moves by real estate firms and other investors seeking to capitalize on the OZ program. Earlier this week, Greenwich, Connecticut-based Belpointe Capital announced its plans for an OZ-focused real estate investment trust that it hopes will raise $3 billion within eight years. [TRD]

Michael Cohen sues Trump Org over $2M in unpaid legal fees President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, fresh off testifying on Capitol Hill and suing two Chicago-based taxi medallion moguls over a $6 million condo loan in Miami, is back in court again. Michael Cohen has sued the Trump Organization for breach of contract over its alleged nonpayment on roughly $1.9 million in legal fees. Cohen claims the president’s namesake real estate company must reimburse him for legal costs he incurred as a result of investigations into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Cohen’s lawsuit, filed in Manhattan by lawyers from Binder & Schwartz and Gilbert LLP, states that at various times he has been represented by the Blakely Law Group, Davis Goldberg & Galper, McDermott Will & Emery, Monico & Spevack and Petrillo Klein & Boxer. Cohen, who was disbarred in New York State last month, claims that the Trump Organization cut him off after he began cooperating with federal prosecutors. [TRD]

Top Miami broker teams merge at Coldwell Banker, rebrand One of Miami’s top broker teams has left its home of 16 years to merge with another top team. Judy Zeder’s team has parted ways with Coral Gables-based EWM Realty International and is teaming up with Jill Herzberg and Jill Eber’s group at Coldwell Banker. The new group will be called The Jills Zeder Group with Coldwell Banker. The families that comprise the two groups are longtime friends, Zeder said. “It’s a very unusual situation to have three families get along and like each other,” said Zeder, adding that they would be “working together for the benefit of the clients.” The two teams have closed a combined $5 billion in real estate sales since 2006. Eber and Herzberg, known as “The Jills” in South Florida’s real estate market, saw a former Miami realtor who tried to extort them receive a jail sentence in February. [TRD]

Nashville-based office REIT mulling potential IPO Priam Properties is thinking about going public in a move that would make the Nashville-based outfit the first real estate investment trust in the U.S. to pursue an initial public offering this year, Bloomberg reported. The office landlord “has held discussions with investment banks about selling shares as soon as this year,” the outlet reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. Priam generally focuses on “high-growth markets” in states such as Florida, Ohio and Tennessee. Its representatives didn’t return requests for comment about the reported IPO. Dallas-based Fathom Realty, a cloud-based brokerage founded in 2010 that operates on a 100 percent commission model, is another real estate firm reportedly considering an IPO this year. [TRD]

Chicago gets priciest resi sale this year as condo trades for $11.3M Despite some areas along the southern shore of Lake Michigan sinking due to climate change, Chicago had its priciest residential sale of 2019, the Chicago Tribune reported. A 31st floor unit at No. 9 Walton, a luxury condo tower along the Windy City’s Gold Coast that has attracted business magnates and celebrities, sold for $11.3 million to an as-yet-unidentified buyer. Nancy Tassone of Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty had the listing for the four-bedroom, 7,100-square-foot condo unit, while Natasha Motev of Jameson Sotheby’s is advising the buyer. Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who made headlines earlier this year for a record-setting penthouse purchase in New York, paid $59 million in late 2017 to buy the top four floors of No. 9 Walton. That deal remains the most expensive residential transaction ever in the Chicagoland area. [TRD]

Compass’ Bay Area growth continues with Alain Pinel Realtors acquisition A week after picking up customer relationship manager Contractually, Compass is expanding again. The New York-based brokerage announced on March 4 that it bolted on Saratoga, California-based Alain Pinel Realtors, which has 1,300 agents in 33 offices across Northern California, Inman first reported. Compass’ expansion in the Bay Area continues an acquisition spree it began in 2017 when the SoftBank Group-backed firm snapped up San Francisco-based Pacific Union International, which reported $14 billion in sales in 2017. The acquisition of Alain Pinel brings Compass’ agent count in the Golden State up to around 4,500. Compass CEO Robert Reffkin said in January that the firm doesn’t plan to expand into any new markets this year. [TRD]

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/2019/03/08/national-cheat-sheet-real-estates-top-billionaires-revealed-retail-apocalypse-continues-we-company-sheds-staffers-more/#new_tab via IFTTT

#The Real Deal Miami

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juditmiltz · 6 years

Text

National Cheat Sheet: Real estate’s top billionaires revealed, retail apocalypse continues… & more

MAJOR MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

Compass�� Bay Area growth continues with Alain Pinel Realtors acquisition A week after picking up customer relationship manager Contractually, Compass is expanding again. The New York-based brokerage announced on March 4 that it bolted on Saratoga, California-based Alain Pinel Realtors, which has 1,300 agents in 33 offices across Northern California, Inman first reported. Compass’ expansion in the Bay Area continues an acquisition spree it began in 2017 when the SoftBank Group-backed firm snapped up San Francisco-based Pacific Union International, which reported $14 billion in sales in 2017. The acquisition of Alain Pinel brings Compass’ agent count in the Golden State up to around 4,500. Compass CEO Robert Reffkin said in January that the firm doesn’t plan to expand into any new markets this year. [TRD]

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/2019/03/08/national-cheat-sheet-real-estates-top-billionaires-revealed-retail-apocalypse-continues-we-company-sheds-staffers-more/#new_tab via IFTTT

#The Real Deal Miami

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