Category: Off Topic

Blogoversary and Why I Blog

Instead of substantive information, today’s post focuses on me and this website.

Compliance Building went public on February 12, 2009. Since then, I have managed to publish a blog post every business day. Sometimes, more than one. I hope at least some of those 1250 posts were useful to you, whether you are a subscriber or one of the other 200,000 or so visitors to Compliance Building over the past two years.

Thanks for reading.

If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe and have my posts sent to you. It’s free, except on the Kindle. (I can’t convince Amazon to change the price.)

I started my first blog, KM Space, on this day in 2007. I set up Real Estate Space a few months later. Now I’m moving into my fourth fifth year blogging.

Why do I do this?

Mostly, I publish because the information is useful to me. This blog is a personal knowledge management tool. It’s all about trying to capture information that interest me and has relevance to my day-to-day work. I find that writing my thoughts adds some clarity to my thinking. By putting all of that information into the blog, it’s in a place where it is easy to find.

The secondary reason is that it’s good for the industry to be focused on compliance and ethics. If it’s good for the industry then it’s good for my company and good for me personally. If a fellow private equity real estate company gets into compliance or ethical trouble that will reflect poorly on the industry as a whole. Inevitably, that will make my job harder. It will likely make it harder to raise capital and to get deals done. That’s bad. So I try to share information that will benefit the industry because that benefits me.

I admit this blogging experiment is self-centered, but I’m happy to have you along for the ride.  If you want more detail on this you can read my Why I Blog page.

For those of you who know me from KM Space, I will continue to publish a subset of my Compliance Building posts to the KMspace feed. No need to say goodbye. Unless I’m boring you.

Image is from Cake Wrecks: Close Enough.

Snow and Compliance

Dilbert.com

I’m staring out my front door at a half foot of snow, swaying branches heavily laden with wet snow, and an un-plowed street.

The latest weather report for Boston:

A Blizzard Warning remains in effect until 8 PM EST this evening.

* Locations… the East Coast of Massachusetts from Scituate northward.

* Hazard types… snow and blowing snow.

* Accumulations… 12 to 16 inches of snow.

* Timing… the heaviest snow will fall through noon time. Snowfall rates of 2 to 3 inches per hour are possible at times.

* Impacts… hazardous travel conditions expected. Heavy snow will significantly impact the morning commute. Strong northeast winds will combine with heavy snow to create blizzard conditions at times.

* Winds… north 20 to 30 with gusts up to 45 mph.

* Visibilities… one quarter mile or less at times.

Precautionary/preparedness actions…

A Blizzard Warning is issued when sustained winds or frequent gusts over 35 mph are expected with considerable falling and/or blowing and drifting snow. Visibilities will become poor with whiteout conditions at times. Those venturing outdoors may become lost or disoriented…
so persons in the warning area are advised to stay indoors.

I will take that advice and stay indoors.

Sometimes compliance means a day working at home with the kids.

Happy New Year

New Year’s Eve is generally a time to reflect on the past and look forward to the future. For many it also involves an excessive amount of alcohol, an expensive dinner in a crowded restaurant, or a long wait for Chinese food delivery.

I’m sure there is a compliance story in there somewhere. But I’m just going to enjoy taking some time off. Enjoy the end of your year and the start of the next.

Holiday Compliance – Don’t Impale Rudolph

It’s the holiday season. Like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, your community may run a similar parade.

They need to pay attention to compliance issues.

Particularly, they need to compare the height of the parade’s balloons to overhead power lines and traffic signals. For your entertainment, a parade that failed.

Nominations Open for the 2010 Clawbies

Nominations are open for the 2010 Clawbies, , honoring the best in Canadian legal blogs.

My old blog, KM Space, was a past two-time winner of a Clawbie: Friend of the North 2007 and Friend of the North 2008. Compliance Building stayed on the Clawbie list for 2009.

It looks like I didn’t pay much attention to Canada during 2010, since I only published two Canada posts:

With the flurry of regulatory changes happening south of the 49th Parallel, I have not paid much attention to the Canadian law blogs dealing with compliance, privacy, ethics and other topics that interest me here at Compliance Building.

I will throw two blogs in for nominations:

  1. Brian Bowman – On the Cutting Edge. This was the only Canadian blog that made it into one of my blog posts for 2010. It’s only fair that I nominate it.
  2. The Business Ethics Blog by Chris MacDonald. He has a Ph.D. instead of a JD and business ethics is not a pure legal topic. However, if business lawyers are not thinking about business ethics, then they are not doing their jobs very well. Just because something is legal, does not mean it is ethical or a questionable move by the company.

I would also throw Stem Legal’s Law Firm Web Strategy blog and Jordan Furlong’s Law 21 into pool, but since they are sponsors, I assume they are not eligible. (Oddly, Law 21 garnered a nomination from the American Bar Association for their Blawg 100. I guess the ABA is looking to annex Canada.)

Happy Thanksgiving

That means an extra long weekend for me.

Down the road at Plimouth Plantation they hold onto the belief that the first Thanksgiving in the United States happened in 1621 at their location:

The history of Thanksgiving goes much further back than Plymouth and 1621. In fact, people across the world from every culture have been celebrating and giving thanks for thousands of years. In this country, long before English colonists arrived, Native People celebrated many different days of thanksgiving. “Strawberry Thanksgiving” and “Green Corn Thanksgiving” are just two of kinds of celebrations for the Wampanoag and other Native People.

In 1621, the English colonists at Plymouth (some people call them “Pilgrims” today) had a three-day feast to celebrate their first harvest. More than 90 native Wampanoag People joined the 50 English colonists in the festivities. Historians don­t know for sure why the Wampanoag joined the gathering or what activities went on for those three days. Form the one short paragraph that was written about the celebration at the time, we know that they ate, drank, and played games. Back in England, English people celebrated the harvest by feasting and playing games in much the same way.

The English did not call the 1621 event a “thanksgiving.” A day of “thanksgiving” was very different for the colonists. It was a day of prayer to thank God when something really good happened. The English actually had their first thanksgiving in the summer of 1623. On this day they gave thanks for the rain that ended a long drought.

Enjoy the long weekend, if you can.

The First Thanksgiving by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

Salute a Veteran

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson first proclaimed an Armistice Day for November 11, 1919.

“To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…”

The United States Congress passed a resolution seven years later on June 4, 1926, requesting the President issue another proclamation to observe November 11 with appropriate ceremonies. An Act approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday:

“a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day’.”

Congress amended this act on November 8, 1954, replacing “Armistice” with Veterans, and it has been known as Veterans Day since.

My thoughts go out to Marine Corps Sergeant Jason Cohen, currently serving.

Enjoy Columbus Day

Replicas of the Pinta, Santa Maria, Nina, lying in the North River, New York. The caravels which crossed from Spain to be present at the World's Fair at Chicago.

I’m enjoying Columbus Day. School is closed and the office is closed.

The Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492.

The Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria Come to the World’s Columbian Exposition

During the fair, replicas of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria were moored in the south lagoon of Jackson Park.

William Curtis, an official with the U.S. State Department in Spain, had proposed the idea of building replicas of Columbus’s caravels. A commission was established in Spain to build the ships and sail them to Chicago, site of the World Columbian Exposition marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage.

Building the Santa Maria went smoothly, but the construction on the Nina and the Pinta which Americans in Spain were building, went more slowly. Instead of building new ships, the builders used the hulls of two rotting ships for the replicas of the Nina and Pinta.

The Santa Maria was finished and sea worthy by July 1892, but officials ruled that the Nina and the Pinta were not sea worthy. The Santa Maria sailed for Puerto Rico under its own steam, while two United States Navy ships towed the Nina and Pinta from Spain. All three of the replica ships were towed through the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes to Chicago.

After the fair, the three ships were turned over to the City of Chicago. Tourists still came to see and tour them, but the city of Chicago didn’t maintain them. The city of Chicago decided to use them in the ceremonies for the opening of the Panama Canal, sailing them from Chicago to the new Panama Canal.

The three ships ran into rough seas on Lake Michigan. The Nina and the Pinta managed to reach the shores of Lake Erie, where they had to be beached and eventually towed back to Chicago. The Santa Maria struggled on to Boston.

The idea then became to show of the ship at ports along the East Coast. But the crowds did not come.

The Pinta sank at its moorings and in 1919. The Nina caught fire and sank. In 1920, the Santa Maria was rebuilt and drew tourists until 1951, when it, too, burned.

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