December 06, 2004
Heeb Hanukkah Party
If you’re culturally Jewish but not religious, then a Heeb party is for you. If you want to be in a packed basement with lots of horny Jewish girls, then a Heeb party is for you. And, if you want to listen to decent music at the venue New York Press says is the “best bar to pick up dorky but cute girls,” then you should be upset you weren’t at this Hanukkah party at LIT.
The place filled up by 9:30 pm, probably because the $1 vodka drink specials ended at 10:00 pm. They gave out donuts and free copies of Heeb Magazine.
The highlight of the night was partying with the Assistant Art Director of Playgirl magazine. Jewish pornographers are interesting.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 04, 2004
Holiday Hackshop
I just love Eyebeam. If I wanted to start a collective work space, I would probably model it off of Eyebeam. I attended their Holiday Hackshop and learned to knit. That’s right, activists opposed to sweatshop labor were teaching people how to knit as a protest against The Man. I may not have agreed with their politics, but heck, I am glad they were there.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 09:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 03, 2004
What the Blog?: Literary Blogger Summit
The panelists at this Housing Works Used Book Cafe event spend hours each day reading online and print publications. Then, they write about what they read on their blogs. What motivates Maud Newton, Ron Hogan, Laila Lalami, Dennis Loy Johnson, George Murray and Michael Othofer to dedicate a significant part of their lives to their websites? I don’t know? Why am I a political junkie who doesn’t write about politics on the Net?
I attended this event with brooklynvegan, who has some pretty damn good photos of this event on his site. The panel discussion will air on C-SPAN's BookTV, which is really interesting because I listen/watch it almost every weekend. I listen to C-SPAN, cable news and talk radio as a supplement to my reading. I like listening because it is entertainng and because I just can't read 24/7.
Literary bloggers are like other bloggers in many ways, but are different because many were already writing their commentary before blogging technology became prevalant and because their writings are a little more snarky and negative just by the very nature of writing book reviews.
Here is my quick analysis of the panelists:
-- Dennis Loy Johnson is an excellent moderator and very telegenic.
-- Maud Newton is OCD.
-- Ron Hogan distinguishes himself by writing up reviews of public readings by authors.
-- George Murray is funny and has an appealing personality.
-- Laila Laima and Michael Othofer fill niches by writing about international and foreign-language authors.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 11:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 17, 2004
Outsourcing: The Economist vs. The Nation
With a red Economist banner on the right and a blue Nation banner on the left, a packed auditorium heard a debate about the future of outsourcing. Both sides claimed the moral high ground and to be thinking about the best interests of both the middle class in the U.S. and the poor masses in the developing world.
Ha! While many of their arguments had merit, I could not forget that the presenters were elitists talking to the privileged about how they were going to be a little less rich due to the outsourcing phenomenon.
Speaking for The Nation, Naderite Lori Wallach invoked self-interested anger and said that globalization and outsourcing hurt America by sending high paying jobs overseas to “third-world” countries.
A few minutes later Wallach seemed to contradict herself by calling for changes in the WTO and other global trading rules that help the West at the expense of the developing countries. There are only two ways to explain this inconsistency. One argument would be that globalization is inherently bad. Except for cultural purists, like say al Qaeda, no one publicly supports this position. Wallach put forward a second explanation. She believes that Big Business and multi-nationals rape the system for profits at the expense of everybody else.
The Economist’s Clive Crooks argued that outsourcing lifts up the developing world’s standard of living. Crooks also propounded the basic economic belief that outsourcing reduces the costs of goods for consumers. However, he had little to say about its depressing affect on European and American wages. That said, he made a convincing case that technology and progress destroys many more jobs and creates much more pressure on earning power than globalization ever could.
Unfortunately, neither the Right nor the Left adequately addressed the undeniable fact that there is rising inequality within the domestic and international economy. The Left complains about it, while the Right accepts inequality based on the belief that wealth will “trickle down” to everyone else.
The other undeniable reality is that the U.S. has no where to go but down. Wage stagnation is real. High-wage jobs are being replaced by low-wage, low-skill jobs. To this I say, “What’s the big deal?” While a living wage, 40-work weeks and job security are great, are they really inalienable rights? Are we really that bad off?
As a side note, I am glad that twelve years ago Bill Clinton picked Robert Reich to run the Labor Department, in part because of his best-selling Work of Nations. The book advocated efforts to facilitate corporate, personal and government investment in human capital.
BTW: WNYC’s Brian Lehrer moderated the event. It was held at the New York Society of Ethical Culture. The Economist’s Ben Edwards and The Nation’s William Greider were also panelists.
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October 25, 2004
NYRAG's 25th Anniversary
New York's professional philanthropic community showed up at Gracie Mansion to celebrate the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers' twenty-fifth anniversary. I was invited because two years ago I worked for NYRAG. The mansion had a lot of wood and expensive furniture. The awards ceremony wasn't bad, except that the last presenter droned on for seven minutes with a spoken word recitation.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 10:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 20, 2004
Corporate Greed Is a Problem, Duh
Nomi Prins talked about her new book, Other People’s Money, at a conversation sponsored by the Demos think tank. She is a former investment banker who blames politicians for letting businesses hurt consumers and citizens. Prins said that deregulation of banking, telecommunications and energy industries in the 90’s removed existing protections that allowed unethical businessmen to run rampant.
I don’t blame the politicians per se, put I do think that principles of long standing laws and regulations should be applied to new and emerging sectors – the Internet, hedge funds and energy trading shouldn’t be exempted.
John Cassidy of the The New Yorker said that the general public and the business press have to accept blame for their uncritical optimism during the 90’s bubble.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 10:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 19, 2004
What’s New? Half-truths and Spin in Politics
The blare of talk radio and 24/7 cable news reminds us that political communication is like the nuclear arms race of the Cold War. Each side feels the need to create weapons (talking points) and worries that unilaterally disarming (being candid) will be a damning sign of weakness. Instead of giving peace (intellectual policy discussion) a chance, the Bush Administration has decided that going on the offensive (full-fledged spinning) is the best approach to fighting the media wars.
Maybe I’m being too creative, but this is the allegory that came to my mind while listening to Bryan Keefer and Dan Senor at a debate sponsored by the Donald & Paul Smith Family Foundation and moderated by Harvey Shapiro of Institutional Investor.
Keefer operates the websites Spinsanity and Campaign Desk. He blames the media for its inability to hold politicians accountable. While I sympathize with his arguments, I strongly disagree that spin is the media’s fault. I tend to agree with the Bush Administration’s operating assumption that the media is just another interest group; I don’t hold the media to a higher standard than any other entity in society.
Senor was the former Chief Spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. I generally agreed with him when he wasn’t busy defending the Bush campaign. Senor thinks that level of discourse in politics hasn’t devolved and is similar to the tone of previous years. He defended the use of slogans as an honest way to communicate messages to the public.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 10:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 18, 2004
Bush vs. Kerry: Who’s Good for High Tech?
It just wasn’t even close. In a debate sponsored by the New York Software Industry Association, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform got lost a debate against former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt about which presidential candidate would be better for the IT industry. Hundt supported Senator John F. Kerry and Norquist supported President George W. Bush.
Norquist was totally unprepared for the debate. He relied on his static view that all industries benefit from low taxes, fewer regulations and a hands-off government. Unfortunately, Norquist didn’t seem to know about many of the intricacies of tech policy.
Hundt knew much more about the subject. I was impressed that he didn’t brag about working with Al Gore to create the Internet – he obviously didn’t, but under Hundt’s visionary leadership of the FCC the Information Society flourished.
With the able help of Moderator Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, and questioners Jonathan Krim of the Washington Post, Paul McDougall of InformationWeek and Time Race of the New York Times, the following positions were taken:
-- Self-employed Tech Workers – Kerry offers them affordable healthcare plans. Bush will cut their taxes.
-- Immigration & Outsourcing – Norquist supports bringing in more foreign workers using H1-B Visas. Hundt talked about Kerry’s plan to eliminate tax breaks for sending jobs overseas.
-- Industrial Policy – Norquist tried to tag Democrats as supporters of “industrial policy” and “command-and-control” economic policy. In my opinion, Hundt didn’t do a good enough job proving Norquist wrong. While Clinton/Gore may have supported some proactive policies, they were also very strong advocates of the private sector leading the economy and technology industries.
-- Internet Tax Moratorium – Norquist supports keeping it. Hundt ridiculed the Bush Administration for not eliminating the 3% excise tax on telecommunications.
Larry Greenmeier wrote up this summary, A Left-Right Technology Debate for InformationWeek.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 09:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 06, 2004
Best Practices for Storage Compliance Management
It just wasn't about Sarbanes-Oxley. Nope, this vendor sponsored seminar also dealt with other requirements for regulatory compliance, like HIPAA in healthcare and ISO 18501/18509 in manufacturing. In fact, a lot of requirements for storing data are for internal compliance. Marc Farley said that legal demands to retain records in lawsuits will be a big driver for storage in the future.
Brian Babineau of the Enterprise Storage Group seemed very knowledgeable, but his presentation did not cover anything I did not know. He did claim that the permanence requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley did not necessarily mean WORM technology had to be used.
Rob Peglar of Xiotech made an interesting point by saying that meta data like indices should not be backed up to tape.
Bill Reed of Business Launch hosted the event, and he was very funny.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 04:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 29, 2004
Oasis Sanctuary Benefit @ 2 Rivers
I attended the Oasis Sanctuary Benefit as my friend David's guest. This was a fundraiser filled with animal activists and Playboy bunnies.
David and I have gone to a bunch of similarly themed events. We saw lots of half naked women at a Republican National Convention protest.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 09:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 20, 2004
Religion, Jews and Israel
Is Judaism a culture or a religion?
That was the question I wanted answered by David Sarna, Amichai Lau-Lavi, Founder of Storahtelling, Ruth Calderon, Philosopher and Educator, and Dor Chadash's David Borowich. Tonight they participated in a panel discussion about "The Role of Religion in the Jewish State."
I didn't hear anything ground-breaking, but I did leave with a better understanding of the issues.
Sarna took the position that Halachic law cannot be ignored anymore than a Constitutional legal system. He wasn't the best public speaker. Lau-Lavi told a compelling story about a pluralistic society. Calderon took the moderate position, but still declared the right to practice her religion any way she pleases.
Who is a Jew? I don't know. The compromise in 1948 doesn't seem that bad as a status quo.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 09:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 10, 2004
Blogs: The Future of Politics
After attending this event, I had to put up a posting. I came to the event wanting to know why people should care about what someone else has to say. The speakers had some opinions on this subject. Daniel Radosh (www.radosh.net) believes blogs are great entertainment. Jeff Jarvis (www.buzzmachine.com) believes blogs are empowering and that they are useful for influencing influencers. Geralidine Sealey (www.salon.com) said that her publications audience likes the up-to-the-minute commentary posted by practicing journalists. Like any good moderator, I couldn't tell what Bryany Keefer (www.campaigndesk.org) thinks about this subject.
I agree with Jarvis that blogs are great ways to develop a public conversation about a subject. I also agree that linking between blogs is very big deal. In my opinion, linking on blogs creates context that Google searches and link libraries don't provide.
I wish people had spoken about the hivemind concept, knowledge management and RSS feeds.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 09:00 PM | Comments (1)
March 15, 2004
Investorside Conference
Biased analysts abounded in the 90's. Today, an overflowing room of analysts gathered at the first Investorside Conference to defend their profession. The main themes were the growth of theindependent research industry and ways to eliminate incentives for research to be influenced by covered companies, investment bankers, and other interests. Here are some of the most important pieces of information I collected from the conference:
- Stanton Green, president of Vista Research, said that his firm has a 90% customer renewal rate and that their customers are split 60/40 between mutual and hedge funds.
- Peter Sidoti of Sidoti & Company claimed that after all costs are considered, it costs $300K to cover a company at bulge bracket firm like Goldman Sachs. Sidoti specializes in analyzing in small-cap stocks and says that hedge funds don't trade in these companies.
- BNY Jaywalk's Christian Ward discussed his company's business, which was established to help large financial institutions fulfill their obligations under the Spitzer Settlement to purchase independent research. BNY Jaywalk helps investors set up evaluation tools to review what research to buy. It allows researchers to sell their research on a per copy basis; clients are only allowed to view reports of companies that are rated the best. Debra Walton, Global Managing Director of Research at Thomson Financial, said that Thomson has created an independent research dashboard to demonstrate value and let users fulfill their fiduciary obligations to diligently measure the performance of the analysis. Stephen Parker, founder of Rontech talked about his company's software, which allows mutual funds evaluate research, brokers and vendors and comply with laws and regulations.
- The panel on soft dollars attempted to disprove certain myths about soft dollars. The panelists claimed that most abuses had taken place at investment banks and not in their segment of the industry. In fact, they provided several credible arguments about why eliminating soft dollar payments would only help the large institutions that were responsible for the abuses of the '90s. They emphasized that best execution of trades meant getting the best total return and not just lowered trading costs. Also, they claimed that transparancy and disclosure in trading was incredibly important. From this perspective, mutual funds are already highly regulated, while hedge funds have almost controls on them.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 08:57 PM | Comments (0)
February 02, 2004
Is Cheating OK?
George Washington admitted to chopping down a cherry tree. Retold for over 200 years, this story demonstrates that cheating is wrong even if you won’t get caught.
David Callahan launched his new book, The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, at a panel discussion held at the National Arts Club, by blaming dishonesty on society’s money culture. Joining Callahan were David Cay Johnston tax reporter for The New York Times and James Surowieki of The New Yorker.
I left this event upset about the speakers’ justifications for lying and cheating. IMHO, everyone does it is not a legitimate excuse.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 08:55 PM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2004
Changes in Equity Research
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s Global Settlement and former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt’s Regulation Fair Disclosure have changed the way Wall Street research is performed. A panel sponsored by the New York Society of Security Analysts reviewed these changes and who is poised to take advantage of the altered equity research business.
The panel agreed that the Global Settlement’s attempt to finance independent research is aimed at retail investors and will likely fund research on widely held stocks that already receive coverage elsewhere. John M. Eade, president of Argus Research Corporation, expressed the opinion that government action alone won’t create un-biased research and proceeded to promote an association of independent research firms called the Investorside Research Organization.
Andrew Klein, founder and chairman of Soleil Securities Group explored the process in which the financial community uses independent research. A salesman representing the research producer calls asset managers early each morning and tries to give them investment ideas. Each quarter, asset managers and others in their organization get together. They discuss which research has been accurate and valuable and then decide what research they will buy in the future. Klein believes this approach discourages a subscription research business model.
Jack Rivkin, chief investment officer of Neuberger Berman, agreed that there will be a greater emphasis on quality research as large investment banks and financial institutions reduce their research departments. Rivkin also believes that the use of "soft-dollars" hasn't been eliminated by division between research and investment banking meant to remove conflicts of interest. Instead, it has made more difficult to get money for providing ideas that result in trades. Another result of the split between research and investment banking is the reduction of the number of stocks covered by an analyst.
Jonathan Glick believes that analysts don’t need ideas and rather just want facts to support their own ideas. His company, the Gerson Lehrman Group, uses a business model that connects organizations with experts on a broad range of subjects. The use of research to validate existing ideas is also prevalent in the field of competitive intelligence, according to Benjamin Gilad, President of the Academy of Competitive Intelligence.
The other major change in the industry is that sell-side analysts are much less likely to support investor relations executives. This has resulted in less coverage of stocks. This also means there are opportunities to help companies raise money, support a share’s price and convince Wall Street that the company will do well. This is where independent analysis comes into play. Independent research firms can be paid to create logical arguments to sell a stock.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)
Defining Terms and Organizing Business Information
Google’s upcoming IPO of several billion dollars illustrates the importance of information search and retrieval. Today’s event, Using Taxonomies to Organize Enterprise Information, demonstrated the limitations of automated methods like Google and the continued significance of real people for the management of information. In fact, Gartner claims that there is a 80% chance that the number of professionals handling knowledge mapping will double by 2005.
Taxonomies are hierarchical classification of things that shows relationships among categories that supports the discovery and access to information. Yahoo! is an example of a taxonomy for all types of information. It has limited value because the indexing is done by non-subject matter experts. Data increases in value when it is easy to find and collected in databases that can be merged because they have similarly defined variables. www.taxonomywarehouse.com is a good resource to find free and purchasable taxonomies. The event’s sponsor, Convera, also sells taxonomies as part of its software package.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)
January 15, 2004
Beyond Light and Air: Zoning as a Tool of Social and Economic Reform
Bloomberg official and an advocate strongly disagreed about the using zoning to create manufacturing jobs in New York City. Speaking at an Association of the Bar of New York City event, Adam Friedman, Executive Director of the New York Industrial Retention Network explained how real estate prices and zoning changes are hurting the city’s base of manufacturing jobs. Sandy Hornick, Deputy Director for Strategic Planning at New York City’s Department of City Planning, claimed that zoning has a limited ability to promote industry development.
Hornick also supported Michael Slattery’s view that macro-trends over the last century were the reasons that manufacturing declined in the City. As the Real Estate Board of New York’s Senior VP for Research, Slattery supported flexible zoning that allowed market forces to build office space and residential housing.
Other panel participants included Eva Harnhardt of the Municipal Art Society and the moderator Stuart Beckerman, Esq. Everyone in attendance agreed that manufacturing jobs were important. In addition to paying better, than retail and restaurant jobs, Friedman also provided a strong reason why manufacturing jobs are important to certain populations in the city: 63% of manufacturing jobs are held by immigrants and 24% of the sector employees do not have a high school diploma.
On a personal note, I believe that New York should concentrate on knowledge industry jobs. However, I don’t have a good solution to the problem of creating high paying jobs for immigrants and people with limited educations; of course, no one else has a solution either.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)
December 11, 2003
Economic Costs of America Unilateralism
New York Times economics columnist Jeff Madrick argued that American foreign policy hurts the domestic economy. In his role as the New School’s president, former U.S. Senator Bob Kerry was the master of ceremonies for this lecture, which is the first of a series of NASDAQ Economic Policy seminars.
Madrick sounded like a West Village liberal complaining about the Bush Administration. He complained about U.S. unilateralism dealing with the Iraq conflict, the ABM Treaty, Kyoto environmental protocol and differences from Clinton’s policies. Madrick said negative opinions about America will hurt international trade. While this argument is plausible, are consumers really making buying decisions based on these feelings?
A more believable hypothesis is that foreign policy has increased international instability and increased worldwide defense spending. More danger and risk means higher trading costs and decreased investment. Madrick also stated that increased defense spending means governments allocate less money for everything else.
Unfortunately, Madrick did not go into the numbers. The presentation was heavy on rhetoric and light hard facts.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 08:33 PM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2003
Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals Monthly Meeting
Ben Gilad, Ph.D., President of the Academy of Competitive Intelligence, gave a presentation about why executives do not use competitive intelligence. Psychological bias causes many executives to overlook facts and logic. Faulty thinking arises when a personal quality dominates a person’s other forms of cognition. Blind spots in decision making process. Greed, opinion, routine, ego, emotion, success and hope are the most common dominant ways of thinking.
Do blind spots affect your client or boss’s judgment? When you asked his opinion about something, did he dismiss the idea offhand? Is “if it is not broken, don’t fix it” the operating motto? Does your boss make decisions based on fear of failure? Is your client ever satisfied?
No matter how good the information, executives often ignore the risks and opportunities presented in a report. So, provide actionable recommendations, but don’t forget to present your findings so that your audience actually listens.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 08:08 PM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2003
US, France and the Crisis Over Iraq
A roundtable discussion moderated by Charlie Rose. Participants included Pascal Bruckner, essayist; Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard, Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia, Institut d’Etudes Politiques; Gerard Grunberg, Institut d’Etudes Politiques; Jim Hoagland, The Washington Post; Tony Judt, NYU; Sylvia Kauffmann, Le Monde; Denis Lacorne, Institut d’Etudes Politiques; Ezra Suleiman, Princeton University.
There was a general consensus that President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin overplayed their hands in the winter of 2001 because of some kind of vanity.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 08:07 PM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2003
Crain’s New York Business Breakfast: Meet Amanda Burden, Chair of the City Planning Commission of the City of New York.
Amanda Burden gave a speech and was questioned by Crain’s journalists Greg David and Stephan Friedman.
Ms. Burden gave the goal of saving manufacturing lip service, but wasn’t too excited about the garment district. Interestingly, she said they were developing an industrial policy to support manufacturing. I thought this was a poor choice of words.
Burden said that developing Downtown and the Far West Side were not incompatible goals. compared to the immediate construction plans for Lower Manhattan, the Far West Sidevs development goals are being framed over a 40 year period of time. The reporters expressed the skeptical view that the Far West Side plans are not that real and are window dressing for the city’s bid to get the Olympics.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)
New York’s Labor Market: Where Are the Jobs?
Occurring hours before the latest unemployment figures were released, the panelists had a positive outlook on the job market. In fact, James Brown of the NY Labor Department predicted an oncoming labor shortage. Erica Groshe of the New York Federal Reserve noted that despite a stagnant economy, those with jobs were experiencing wage growth.
Fact: OTC stands for On the Job Training. Although a majority of jobs require this, federal programs do not support OTC.
Fact: New York City has a high concentration of jobs in industries like social services, legal, museums, and securities that are expected to grow rapidly in the US.
Participants: Dr. Erica L. Groshe, Assistant Vice President, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York; James P. Brown, Labor Market Analyst, New York State Department of Labor; John Tepper Marlin, Chief Economist, New York City Office of the Comptroller; and Bonnie Potter, Executive Director, New York City Employment and Training Coalition.
The event was organized by the New York City Employment & Training Coalition and hosted by Citigroup. NYTC is an association of community-based organizations, educational institutions and labor unions that provide job training and employment services to over 300,000 New Yorkers.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 07:46 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2003
Cross Media Forum 2003: Night of the Media Heavyweights
Representatives from most forms of media gathered to debate the advertising and marketing effectiveness of their mediums. The main theme was that the world’s change and consumers react to advertising different. Everybody agreed that a mix of different advertising mediums is important. The event took place at the Equitable Building’s auditorium and over 500 people attended. The following organizations were represented onstage: Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, Direct Marketing Association, Magazine Publishers of America, Newspaper National Network, Interactive Advertising Bureau, Outdoor Advertising Association of America, Radio Advertising Bureau, and Television Bureau of Advertising, and Mediaweek, Advertising Research Foundation, American Association of Advertising Agencies and Kraft.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 07:45 PM | Comments (0)
Manhattan Nonprofit Day
Funny as it may seem, this event took place in Queens, in Citibank’s Long Island City building to be exact. There were classes provided during two breakout sessions. It was one of several recent trainings sponsored by Citibank. Consultants from the Nonprofit Connection, a technical service provider based in Brooklyn, led the training sessions. I attended two workshops. One was on community needs assessment. The other was on branding. Afterwards there was lunch and Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields showed up late.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 07:43 PM | Comments (0)
October 17, 2003
Common Grounds Replication Conference
Inspired by continued requests for information about their projects, Common Ground Community, Inc. held a two-day to provide information about supportive housing. Over 100 people came from around the world to learn how to replicate the Common Ground model.
Supportive housing is defined by the Corporation for Supportive Housing as a cost-effective combination of permanent affordable housing with services that help people live with more stable, productive lives.
Common Ground was led the effort to buy and refurbish the historic Times Square Hotel and the Prince George Hotels. These hotels have many studio apartments and house a variety of tenants, including the elderly, formerly homeless, mentally ill and HIV/AIDS patients. Common Ground believes that solutions to homelessness include more than just warehousing people in shelters. Instead, they provide social services to tenants to help them adjust to the “real world.” Common Ground's success was recognized in 2001 when its founder and president, Rosanne Haggerty, was awarded a "genius grant" by the MacArthur Foundation.
Common Ground has established a Foyer model supportive housing facility at The Chelsea in New York City. Based on programs popular in Europe, it is especially used to help kids aging out of foster care. This is only a start at feeling a huge need - there are only two city shelters, with a total of 100 beds that are dedicated to young adults. Common Ground is also working on projects at the Andrews and Prince Hotels using a program called First Step Housing, which develops single room occupancy (SROs) facilities like flophouses.
The conference featured classes on financing property development and establishing partnerships. One lesson was to consider separating property management from social services - this way there is less of an adversarial relationship with the tenants and social workers.
Finally, another important lesson is to mix types of tenants so that there are role models for residents.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 07:20 PM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2003
BiZBash Jacob Javits Meeting and Event Expo
Over 1,000 event planners attended this two-day conference produced by BizBash. It included twenty five educational sessions and a tradeshow. The classes I attended emphasized the need to work weekends and provide 24/7 handholding to clients. The most interesting panel had representatives from New York City, Chicago, Southern Florida, Los Angeles and Las Vegas comparing the benefits of holding events in their hometowns. Some of the best tidbits about the cities were:
- Chicago: Food is a central part of society life. There is a huge local community of interior designers that can design custom sets and event locations.
- Las Vegas: Gone are the days of family entertainment. Sin City is back!
- Los Angeles: The weather is always great. The glitz of Hollywood is a draw. Movie sets can be used for events.
- New York City: Events have to push the envelope to get attention. The city has the more raw space than any other metropolitan area.
- Southern Miami: Many events use a water theme and boating is popular.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 07:23 PM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2003
Putting Foundation Dollars to Their Best Use: The Role of Cost Benefit Analysis
Speakers: Joseph Cordes, Associate Director of the School of Public Policy and Administration, George Washington University; Sharon M. Oster, PhD, Yale School of Management; Christopher M. Harris, Program Officer, Ford Foundation; Hildy J. Simmons, Managing Director, Global Foundations Group at J.P. Morgan Private Bank; Gladys Carrion, Executive Director, Inwood House; William D. Watley, Chief Executive Officer, New Jersey Commerce & Economic Growth Commission; Howard P. Tuckman, Dean of Rutgers Business School.
This lecture was hosted by the National Center on Nonprofit Enterprise and featured a presentation by Joseph J. Cordes, PhD, of George Washington University. Professor Cordes reviewed how cost-benefit analysis was developed to evaluate government regulation. He believes that it can help decision makers in the nonprofit sector. Using his methodology, nonprofits would assign monetary values to evaluate the social benefits, social costs and transfer effects of any of their programs. Cordes believes that by looking at the impact of programs on different stakeholder groups, a nonprofit professional can learn a lot about their programs. Overall, he expressed hope that cost-benefit analysis would provide consistent measurements that would allow comparison between programs.
After the presentation, a panel of experts made comments. Sharon M. Oster of Yale University noted that it was difficult to project benefits into the future because "discount rates" often run close to zero. In other words, while an investment in a security may have a rate of return of 5% a year, a nonprofit enterprise might only achieve a 0-1% rate of return.
Other commentators worried that cost-benefit analysis does not take into account individual traits like leadership. Gladys Carrion, executive director of Inwood House, worried that cost-benefit analysis may be another fad that adds more burdensome paperwork to already overworked social service providers.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2003
Jersey City: New York's Sixth Borough
A roundtable organized by The Steven L. Newman Real Estate Institute at Baruch College and The Office of the Mayor of Jersey City.
Speakers: Mark Munley, Director of Economic Development, Jersey City; Robert Cotter, Director of City Planning, Jersey City; Robert Burchell, Director, Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University; Robert Rudin, Executive Vice President, CB Richard Ellis; Mitchell Hersh, Chief Executive Officer, Mack-Cali Realty Corporation, Richard Lefrak, President, The Lefrak Organization; Timur Galen, Vice President, Goldman Sachs & Co.; Shirley Jaffe, Vice President for Economic Development, The Alliance for Downtown New York; Claude Shostal, Senior Fellow, New York University Real Estate Institute.
Jersey City has experienced a rapid expansion in its commercial real estate market since the mid-1980's. Currently, most of the tenants belong to the financial, insurance and real estate (F.I.R.E.) industries. There was a general agreement that there just is not enough new office space in Manhattan to fill all future demand.
Jersey City competes with Midtown and Downtown for tenants, but presenters all agreed that Jersey City's real estate market should be viewed as a sub-sector of the larger regional economy. Jersey City's competitive advantages are in cost, product and access. Besides lower rents, the cost of doing business in New Jersey is 35% lower than in New York. Compared to buildings in New York, Jersey City office space that is easily converted to the needs of large corporations. Compared to lower Manhattan, Jersey City is more accessible to airports and prospective workers driving from the Jersey suburbs.
There were some worries about the commercial market place. Robert Rudin, a representative from C.B. Ellis was especially worried about a short-term oversupply of office space. In fact, while developers are doing fine, many tenants have been forced to sublet their spaces, becoming de-facto landlords.
Posted by lawrencehecht at 07:14 PM | Comments (0)
