Hello Fellow CSI members,
I had the pleasure of taking my daughter to the Peking Acrobats a few nights ago. Interestingly enough the Wells Fargo Center had this listed as an event in the Family Calendar. The Family Calendar mostly involves the sort of shows little one’s will enjoy and understand – Piggly Wiggly Bird Bath Pie was a good one. Not that a little one wouldn’t (or couldn’t and didn’t) enjoy the Peking Acrobats but it was mostly a bunch of under 10 year olds getting a lot of crazy ideas about hanging from the kitchen light while trying to spin plates or dangling from a toe while twirling a 50 lb vase with one arm. This show was amazing.
The performers just kept raising the bar with the things they were doing. I think the penultimate act was a guy standing up four champagne bottles in a square on a table and then carefully set a chair on the four bottles – one leg positioned on top of each bottle – and then climbed onto the chair. With all the precision and grace required to do something like this I was satisfied enough that he could have stopped there. So here he goes setting another chair on top of the first chair – climbing up that one, and again another chair, and again, and again. He stopped every once in a while to do a one armed handstand or a little Roman Chair sit-up type move. When he finally stopped it was because the pole was too short to hand him any other chairs. He did a little deal at the top of the chairs – you know, cocked the last chair at a 45 degree angle on the chair below it and did a hand stand with his legs contorted in different directions. His feet actually touched the roof of the auditorium (about 25 or 30’).
Of course, all this was happening about 4 feet off the front of the stage. All the while every eager person under the age of 10 was taking mental notes about the type of chair, position, weight distribution and so on. I remember going to these types of things as a kid and gaining some great ideas to try to talk my friend’s younger brother into. “Sure, we’ll stack the chairs, you just climb them – it’ll be easy!”
One thing that struck me was the depth and diversity of skill that all the performers had and how they, for the most part, relied on each other to pull off the acrobatics. Be it balance, strength or some crazy combination of twisted bodies the acrobats made a really good team. As they cycled through the acts you could get a feel of how each person, albeit each one an all-arounder who could do any of the acrobatics, had a specific role. The stocky gal was usually the one with the rope in her teeth or around her neck swinging people while they spun plates. Each person knows their role and without them (or if they failed in some way) the whole thing would crash. It did a couple of times.
Similar is the coordination that we look for on our jobs. The effort to create an effective team of architect, engineer and contractor can be no less daunting than trying to swing people from a rope while they spin plates. Drill down into each profession and it can be rife with its own complications of supporting the team that has been assembled to carry out an owner’s wish. Knowing how to execute the moves so that the process goes smoothly takes knowledge, both practical and theoretical, but also a desire to see the others succeed as well.
This month we have an opportunity to listen to two speakers, Mark Labourdette and Greg Neil, discuss how to create effective relations between architects and general contractors. They will discuss how successful contractors and architects can forge successful relationships and what the key is good communications between the two. Further, they will look into what contractors and architects are each looking for that constitutes a good team approach for successful projects and happy clients. I hope you can all make it unless, of course, you are busy learning to spin plates.
On another note, I would like to welcome aboard Kara Ameral. She has been hired by the Chapter as the RECSI Administrative Assistant. Many of you who attended last month’s dinner meeting may have noticed Kara working the reservation/check in or meeting with members. She is a very dynamic and outgoing person who is well qualified to help our chapter grow. The demand for Kara is simple, we are trying to get the Board and Committee Chairs focused on planning and outreach. The vision of growing membership and providing more for those members is the job of the Board and Committees; Kara is there to help see this through. Welcome Kara, we are happy to have you on board and look forward to you becoming a fixture of the RECSI Chapter.
Finally, I would like to express RECSI welcoming and excitement by inclusion of the AIARE in the RECSI Product Show this year. AIARE will be hosting the educational portion of the event this year. The cooperation and cross pollination of our two organizations continues and I look forward to seeing increased attendance at the educational events at the RECSI Product Show. This event will take place on March 12th and at this point we have two seminars that will be running from 11 am to 3 pm with the product show starting at 3 pm. More updates available soon.
I look forward to seeing all of you at our next two dinner meetings, February 5th - How General Contractors and Architects can work best together- Best Practices and March 5th – Building Information Modeling – by Guy Messick, design technology director at TCLD. Of course, plan for the Product Expo – March 12th from 3pm until 7pm. Thank you all for your support and continued membership in this great organization.
Respectfully,
