Mayor Adler’s 2015 Year-End Letter

I looked for an online version of this letter from Mayor Adler but couldn’t readily find it. So I decided to post it.

I don’t know about you, but I think we Austinites have a lot to be thankful for, as we close out 2015. Sure, there’s much more to do. And, we can begin that work tomorrow. But, today, we should reflect on the good things going on.

“Thank you” to the mayor, city council, and the city of Austin (and surrounding city jurisdictions) staff & management, for the leadership and public service provided. Let’s keep working to make the greater Austin area a shining city, welcoming to all.

Here’s Mayor Adler’s 2015 year-end letter – enjoy!

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Dear Rebecca & Steve,

We did it. Thanks to all your help, we were able to find housing for 200 homeless veterans in Austin. Along the way, we created a new way to attack this problem and eliminated the waiting list for homeless veterans to get help. Great cities do big things, and this is a very, very big thing. Good job, Austin.

At the beginning of the year, there were 234 homeless veterans in Austin. When I took up this challenge in May, there were 200 remaining without homes. By Veterans Day, we still needed 118 homes for these heroes. Thanks to your overwhelming support –as well as the tireless work of homeless advocates and the Austin Apartment Association – we found the last of those 200 homes this week.

Before we tackled this problem, homeless advocates never imagined they could catch up to the sheer number of homeless veterans because they were working alone. I want to personally thank the Austin Apartment Association for making this fight their own and helping eliminate the waiting list and getting so many homeless veterans into permanent housing.

And, of course, the biggest thanks goes to the folks who had been trying to house the homeless for so long without much help, most notably Ann Howard, Executive Director of the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, or ECHO. We’ve said all along that it takes heroes to house these heroes. The good people who make up ECHO are the secret heroes of this story.

Thank you so much for helping make this happen. I am grateful to be the Mayor of a city that can meet big challenges. We’ve got a lot on our table in 2016 to deal with our traffic and affordability issues, but if we can make real progress on an issue that people used to think was hopeless, then is there anything we can’t do?

I don’t think so, and I can’t wait to get going in 2016. Happy New Year.

Thanks,

Mayor Adler

PS – Housing homeless veterans is not all we accomplished this year. Great cities do big things, and we did a lot of big things this year. In addition, the following actions were taken in 2015:

AFFORDABILITY

•    Created a homestead property tax exemption, saving homeowners a total of $3.5 million, with an intent to increase the exemption to 20 percent over the next few years

•    Cut the city property tax rate from 48.09 cents per $100 to 45.89 cents, saving the average homeowner roughly $14 a year

•    While reducing the tax burden on homeowners, added 50 new police officers, secured $3 million for body cameras for 500 officers, and increased spending for health and human services by $7 million and parks by more than $3 million

•    Increased senior and disabled property tax exemption from $70,000 to $80,000, a total tax cut of $1.6 million

•    Cut utility bills for Austin Energy residential customers by an average of $3.33 a month

•    Increased living wage for city employees from $11.39 an hour to $13.03 an hour

•    Worked with CM Garza to negotiate an agreement with the Pilot Knob Planned Unit Development developer that includes the addition of approximately 1,000 affordable housing units including 650 permanently affordable houses with no additional city spending, setting a new benchmark for the city’s SMART Housing program

•    Established a TIF for Homestead Preservation District A, and, with CM Renteria’s Committee, created three additional Homestead Preservation Districts (B, C & D) with Public Hearings, creating the first homestead preservation districts in Texas that leverage growth to pay for affordable housing in those neighborhoods where growth threatens to displace residents

•    Supported effort by MPT Tovo to strengthen the affordable housing requirements for planned unit development

•    Won a compromise that would make accessory dwellings (AKA granny flats) easier to build along transit corridors, increasing affordable housing opportunities while respecting neighborhood character

•    Initiated legal action to ensure an appraisal process that is fair to homeowners and aligned with the Texas Constitution

•    Initiated development of new rules to assist low-income tenants when developers plan to demolish apartment complexes where they live

•    With CM Casar, passed resolution directing fair housing as part of CodeNext, which will increase the number of affordable housing options for Austinites

•    Passed resolution calling on City Manager to implement permitting recommendations to expedite the review process and streamline approvals, which would make remodeling more affordable and feasible for homeowners and small business owners and decrease construction costs

•    As part of the Spirit of East Austin, ordered a survey of surplus properties to make better use of public resources

•    Recalibrated drainage fees so that utility bills did not unfairly burden renters

•    Leveraged private sector and philanthropy to assist nonprofits in housing homeless veterans

 

MOBILITY

•    Passed CAMPO 2040, a regional, long-range transportation plan that includes investments in new roads, traffic management, several MetroRapid bus routes and commuter rail to get people out of cars on congested roadways and into mass transit

•    Won national competition for Rocky Mountain Institute mobility transformation and named lead implementation city for RMI’s global mobility transformation initiative to find innovative and holistic solutions to congestion

•    Collaborated with Google to establish Austin as first test city for autonomous vehicles outside of their headquarters

•    The City Manager implemented the Traffic Congestion Action Plan (T-CAP), resulting in the following achievements:

• Among the intersections that were a part of the City’s Don’t Block the Box initiative, there were 5 intersections that experienced a blockage during at least 10% of the cycles with an average blockage of 32% of the time. While officers were station at these intersections, the blockage percentage was cut in half to 16% of the time. The two intersections for which we have after data shows that the blockages percentage increased to 22% after officers stopped enforcement.
• Retimed a third of the signals, resulting in 15% reduction in travel times and 40% reduction in stops.

•    Voted to approve $20 million to improve the intersection of the 51st Street and IH-35 to increase safety and mobility and reduce congestion

•    Voted for $54.5 million in traffic improvements at IH-35 & Oltorf to increase mobility

•    City of Austin achieved ambitious milestone goal for employee peak-hour commute reduction and now working toward goal of 30% reduction underway.  Movability Austin worked with multiple downtown employers to reduce their employees’ commute trips, or shift them to transit/bike/walk trips; new Transportation Demand Management program launched at ATD; new Smart Trips Program to encourage people to sue active transportation options, being piloted with people in the Rundberg/N. Lamar area.

REFORM

•    Led smooth transition from at-large seats to 10-1 system while increasing public engagement

•    Made appointments to boards and commissions and staff in the Mayor’s Office that reflect the city’s demographics

•    Created the position of Education Outreach Coordinator in the Mayor’s Office to enhance collaboration between local schools and the city

•    Created new City Council committees to allow for more meaningful public discussion

•    Created Council Transition Work group to recommend improvements to the Council committee system

•    Banned dark money in local campaigns to increase transparency in city elections

•    Reformed regulations of lobbyists to close loopholes to increase accountability and transparency in city government

•    Established Departmental Review Process modeled after the Texas Sunset Commission to identify improvements and efficiencies and to increase and deepen Council engagement on the budget

•    Reduced fee waivers to SXSW, saving Austin taxpayers $230,000 over last year, while increasing police presence throughout Austin during the three-week-long festival in 2016

•    Initiated regular meetings with regional mayors to discuss opportunities for collaboration

 •     To make city government more inclusive, printed Spirit of East Austin communications in Vietnamese in addition to Spanish and English.

SUSTAINABILITY

•    In Paris, signed the Under MOU 2 agreement with local governments to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, providing leadership on climate change

•    Authorized with the City Council the purchase of 400 to 450 megawatts of solar power and to solicit bids to purchase or build another 150 MW of solar by the end of 2019. Austin Energy signed purchase power agreements for an initial 288 MW of solar as part of the Council authorization to negotiate for 400 to 450 MW. The agreements position Austin Energy to be among the biggest users of solar power in Texas

•    Passed an ordinance to increase reuse and recycling of materials from construction and demolition projects. Beginning Oct. 1, 2016, the Construction and Demolition Recycling Ordinance will require 50 percent diversion of materials from construction projects larger than 5,000 square feet. In 2019, the ordinance will expand to include commercial demolition projects. Construction and demolition projects generate at least 20 percent of all materials that go to Austin-area landfills. This ordinance takes a huge step toward achieving Austin’s Zero Waste goal by requiring more recycling and reuse of valuable materials

•    Austin Energy surpassed 1,000 MW of wind power with two new wind farms coming online in 2015. Austin Energy’s 1,340 MW of wind power is about 10 percent of the wind power fleet in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, increasing the use of renewable energy in Austin Energy’s portfolio

•    Launched partnership with national retailers such as The Home Depot and Lowe’s to offer point of sale discounts to customers to purchase energy efficient products. The initiative leverages the combined size of the utilities to reduce administration costs and pass savings on to customers

•    Achieved slightly over 64 MW demand reductions, driven by strong performance in GB ratings and energy codes, small business lighting and residential demand response

•    Installed 7.7 MW of residential and commercial solar, providing long-term savings and cutting greenhouse gas emissions

•    Surpassed 1,000 MW of wind power with two new wind farms coming online in 2015, making Austin Energy’s 1,340 MW of wind power is about 10 percent of the wind power fleet in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas

•    Joined the Downtown Austin Alliance, downtown businesses, and Austin Resource Recovery to unveil an expansion of public recycling in the downtown area, an initiative called Recycle on the Go. Starting with nearly 50 new recycling cans this year, recycling containers will be installed throughout the downtown area over the next three years

•    Council approved one of the first energy storage systems tied to a community solar project in Texas. Part of the $3 million cost for the 1.5 MW battery storage system is offset with a $1 million grant received by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality

•    Austin Water repaired almost 7,800 water leaks, the third-highest recorded count for the department. Of those, almost 4,300 leaks were Priority 1 leaks and responded to within 3 hours almost 89% of the time

•    Weatherized 520 low income homes; our multi-family program reached over 8,400 apartment units

Translation Experience

One of the things I’ve learned from working with global startups like BSG Corporation, Agillion and Appconomy is best practices for marketing communications language translation.

In my experience, there are 4 levels of translation:

1. Basic comprehension
   • you can get this level from translate.google.com, Microsoft’s Skype Translator, or other similar tools
   • this is sufficient for about 40-60% comprehension
   • 
   • using these tools is ok for quick chat app translations and other headlines or phrases from non-native websites
   • but, I’ve found trying to use them for anything else is quite cumbersome and unproductive
   • avoid using them for document or web page translation. It’ll look like a 5 year old translated it to the native speaker
2. Rough draft
   • you can get this level from application providers, like bablic.com, transperfect.com, and other similar tools
   • this is sufficient for 60-80% comprehension and 80-90% spelling/grammar precision
   • they are useful for a head-start on large volume translation, but they aren’t a replacement for people…yet
   • the providers of these tools tend to imply that higher quality results are possible over time with statements like “the more you use the tool, the more it will become tuned to your favored phrases and words”
   • indeed, some possess what appears to be basic machine learning capability, but it remains inferior to the judgment of a human translator
3. Finished, professional copy
   • for this level, you need a live human being (preferably a team) who is expert in the source (“starting”) and target (“ending”) languages
   • this is sufficient for 80-90% comprehension and 90-95% spelling/grammar precision
   • most people typically use a fluent, bi-lingual employee, a translator from a university that has students majoring in foreign languages, or an online service with independent contractors like upwork.com (formerly Odesk) or elance.com
   • 
   • I highly recommend testing two or three of these providers with the same 3-4 sample work products, at the same time. Once they finish translating all samples, then have a trusted individual, fluent in the target language, review and score the results. (If possible, have more than one person do the review, so they can compare notes.)
   • before you give them the test – which you should pay them for, BTW – require that they provide you their pricing structure, both for the test as well as the full project or long-term assignment you have for them, so that you can do an “apples to apples” comparison of cost v. quality
4. Localized, native-equivalent content
   • for this level, you need a fluent, bi- or multi-lingual speaker AND reader, either highly familiar with the target region or a native of it
   • this is sufficient for up to 99% comprehension and spelling/grammar precision
   • the difference between this level and the prior, “professional” level is like the difference between an English-language news release written by an Australian-based translator for US target audience versus the same news release written by an American-based translator.
     • the former may choose to include “ue” at the end of words like “catalog” or “dialog” or use “s” instead of “z” for words like “categorize” or “digitize”
     • they will also have a different understanding of idioms and colloquialisms that indicate a truly, locally-appropriate translation
   • providers for this level of quality are usually from the top translating agencies in the target countries, for example, in China it would be companies like Linguitronics and Real Idea

You probably noticed that I only scored the level of comprehension and spelling/grammatical precision at 99%, even for the highest level of translation. In my experience, that last 1% will only come from having a professional copywriter from a PR or marcom firm do a final, editorial pass through the translation.

Yes, an additional pass adds time and money to the cost. But, if you want to achieve the highest level of quality, that’s what it takes. I can assure you that you want to avoid the alternative – embarrassing translations like the one I received just today.

[NOTE: for the record, the correct words are: “focused” “of” “markets” and “platform”]

Whether due to poor translation or general sloppiness, the multiple mistakes in the English-language translation in this example diminish the message and perception of the initiative – an outcome no one wants.

Designing a Chinese Logo

…or,

How an American Software Startup Chose an Indigenous Australian Marsupial as the Logo of a Chinese Mobile App

I know, right? Truth is better than fiction, most of the time.

But, indeed, that second blog title is the more colorful description of the actual process from 3 years ago, when I oversaw the creation of the logo and name for Appconomy’s first mobile app in China.

NOTE: The brand design example in this post is drawn from a larger presentation – Brand Element Basics – that is available on Slideshare.

Here’s what happened.

Our first app was designed to be an “every man’s” version of the Starbucks loyalty app, primarily for small-footprint, food & beverage (F&B) locations, like small tea shops or food stands, but also for other retail merchants, like  jewelry stores or mobile phone kiosks.

It is very common for Asia-Pacific mobile apps to have mascots or other anthropomorphic features (like eyes or hands) integrated into their branding.

So, we began by studying and evaluating the branding of various competing apps that were broadly in our category, as show in the example below.

From that initial survey, we chose a lengthy set of shape/color/font combinations, each with one or more referring sources.

We had already gone through an initial app naming process, settling on the working name of “Jinnang.” 

A jinnang is a special kind of man-purse, if you will, that is a key element in Chinese fairy tale that nearly everyone in China knows, kind of like the magic beans in Jack-in-the-Beanstalk, from Mother Goose in the US.

From the large set of options, we worked through pros and cons and down-selected to a smaller set of concepts that we wanted to further develop.

For the next round, we focused more on shapes and narrowing in on simple, unique, original imagery.

To help, we kept to a mostly black & white palette, to keep attention on the core visual composition.

As you can see, by this stage there were 2 macro-design concepts emerging, with one purely emphasizing the magic purse and another incorporating cute animal mascots.

The kangaroo was a natural option because of its pouch, which was kind of a built-in jinnang, and because it had friendly, yet strong character attributes.

And, it was a mascot that was still available, unclaimed by any other major software competitor, as far as we could tell.

Next, we undertook yet another round of narrowing on images, with the addition of color and fonts to the options, to give them full character.

At this point, it was TIME to CHOOSE a final concept!

Winner: the kangaroo!

From there, we advanced to a round of micro-tailoring of the concept elements, e.g., mouth, headwear, neckwear, color and more.

As you can see, we made him skinnier and gave him better posture, in the process!

Eventually, we settled on the finalized logo, both symbol & wordmark.

You may have noticed that, in the process, between the 4th round and the 6th & final round, the brand name changed from Jinnang to Jinjin.

The simple rationale was that “jin jin” was easier for English speakers to say and, as a meaningless set of morphemes – similar to the “goo goo or ga ga” of babytalk –  it would be easier to trademark.

There’s more to it than that, but I’ll save that story for another time.

Smartphone Denial

A few years ago, I wrote a post for Austin Startup in a weekly column I was doing called mobileTech Tuesdays.

The post was entitled “This Is Not A Smartphone And I Don’t Care” in which I reviewed my impressions of the first and only DellWorld I’ve attended, in 2011.

In the post, I used the photo of the giant, ruggedized structure you see in the picture, which dominated the exhibit floor, as visual proof of Dell’s abandonment of the consumer business.

Going “all in” on enterprise wasn’t a bad idea, so I wasn’t indicting the strategy. But, it irked me that the company was still trying to have it both ways, by continuing to spit out half-ass consumer products.

Even though I had supported the “home team” for many years, by buying Wintel PCs from Dell, I’d finally had enough a year later. I documented my frustrations with my Inspiron XP in a post entitled “I’m Done with Dell” in September 2012.

That didn’t necessarily mean I was done with Dell entirely. As far as I was concerned, Dell for the enterprise was the only viable option, having served as a Chief Information Officer (CIO) and a consultant to CIOs for a number of years, earlier in my career.

So, about a year later, I was intrigued when Dell introduced a product called the Cloud Connect in late 2013. I got on the beta program list and received my copy of the product.

This is a good example of when a product sounds good in theory, but unravels in practice for all but the most niche use-cases.

The idea was to provide a portable pocket- or purse-sized computer in a memory stick form factor. In this case, an HDMI connector, rather than USB.

Interestingly, the product reminded me of an identical idea, introduced a decade earlier in 2003 by a company called Seaside, that had a Microsoft Exchange dedicated PC-on-a-USB called the xKey.

This was a time well before mass-market smartphones, back when pagers and the first pager-sized Blackberrys (we called them “Crackberrys” because they were so addictive, even then!) were the norm.

So, the idea of carrying a secure, battery-less PC in your pocket, seemed to make more sense. But, today, as the battle rages between iPhones and high-function/low-cost smartphone makers out of Asia, like Xiaomi, the Cloud Connect makes much less sense.

Because, while they would like you to think all you need is this, plus a monitor (preferably a Wyse)…

What you really need is this…

So much for portability!

And, while anyone 3-year old can use an iPhone or an iPad (product docs on top), I felt like I was returning to mainframe configuration class, when I slogged through the Cloud Connect docs (on bottom).

In fact, I had to laugh when, just like back in the days of IBM 360/370 Assembler manuals I had in college and my early days of Accenture, the Cloud Connect docs included the legendary “This page intentionally blank” apology.

A much smarter solution, in my humble opinion, would have been for Dell to focus on partnering with (or buying) an MDM software maker and then creating a flawless smartphone & mobile device management experience across its servers, network devices, and now vast array of storage, with EMC.

Because, at the end of the day, the Cloud Connect isn’t that much smaller than my iPhone 5s, which fits nicely in my pocket with room to spare.

My guess is that the product serves some particular US federal or state agency niche or one for foreign governments or NGOs requiring some extreme form of physical and digital security.

If not, then it demonstrates how far a company will go when it makes a strategic decision to avoid the consumer tech products business, even if it essentially means denying the ubiquity of smartphones & tablets, by instead recreating a smart version of mainframe computer networks, 50 years after they were the only show in town.