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SaaStr Podcast #187: Christoph Janz, Managing Partner @ Point Nine Capital on Making Venture Capital More Human
by Harry Stebbings | Company Culture, Fundraising, Podcasts
Welcome to Episode 187! Christoph Janz is the Managing Partner @ Point Nine Capital, one of Europe's leading early stage funds, with a portfolio that includes the likes of ZenDesk, Algolia, Delivery Hero, Revolut, Contentful, and many more incredible companies. Before that, he co-founded two Internet startups (DealPilot.com in 1997 and Pageflakes in 2005). In 2008 he became an angel investor and discovered Zendesk, Clio, FreeAgent – and his love for SaaS. Christoph is also the writer of the phenomenal blog, The Angel VC, a must read for me.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
* How Christoph made his way from serial founder to angel in ZenDesk to today, founding one of Europe's most successful early stage funds in the form of Point Nine Capital.
* Product market fit is one of the most used words in the industry, so wtf really is product market fit? What does product market fit look like in terms of metrics across the core disciplines: MRR, churn and conversion from free to paid?
* What is the hailed question that all Series A and B investors want to know? What does it take to make the graduation from Seed to Series A today? In terms of scaling, why does pouring fuel on the marketing fire not always equal more leads? How does Christoph view the role of outbound? Why is it such high hanging fruit? What is core to executing outbound successfully?
* Point Nine did a comprehensive assessment of how founders view the fundraising process. What were the biggest elements founders dislike about the process? From now on, what is the thinking behind the strategy that Point Nine will always do their pro-rata in the Series A? How does this affect reserve allocation?
Christoph's 60 Second SaaStr
* What does Christoph know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
* What does it take for European founders to make it big in the US?
* Most common mistakes CEOs make in the scaling process?
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Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Christoph Janz
Harry Stebbings: We are back on "The Official SaaStr Podcast" with me, Harry Stebbings. It would be great to see you behind the scenes on Instagram, @hstebbings1996 with two Bs, where you can both ask questions for future shows and suggest guests.
It'd be great to see you there. However to the show today, and I'm very excited to welcome back a guest that I've wanted to have on the show for a very special round two for a long, long time. With that in mind, I'm excited to have Christoph Janz rejoin us in the hot seat today.
Now Christoph is the managing partner at Point Nine Capital, one of Europe's leading early‑stage funds with a portfolio that includes the likes of Zendesk, Algolia, Delivery Hero, Revolut, Contentful, and many more incredible companies. Before that, he co‑founded two Internet start‑ups, dealpilot.com in 1997 and Pageflakes in 2005.
In 2008, Christoph became an angel ambassador and discovered Zendesk, Clio, FreeAgent, and his love for Saas. Christoph's also the writer of the phenomenal blog, "The Angel VC." It is always a must‑read for me, and if you haven't checked it out, then that is a must. The links can be found in the show notes.
That's quite enough from me. Now, I'm very excited to hand over to Christoph Janz, managing partner at Point Nine Capital.
[background music]
Announcer: Good. That's perfect. I think we're warmed up.
Harry: Christoph, it's absolutely fantastic to have you on the show for a very special second time. Thank you so much for joining me again today, Christoph.
Christoph Janz: Thanks for having me, Harry. It's great to be on your show again.
Harry: Not at all. I've been stuck in the treasure chest that is your blog for the last few days. I want to kick off with, for anyone that missed our first episode, how did you make your way into SaaS, and what I call the wonderful world of VC?
Christoph: Yeah, sure. I've been an entrepreneur for pretty much my entire life. I started trading Commodore C64 computers when I was 12, built a mail‑order business during high school, started my first Internet startup back in 1997. I sold that company after a few years, started another one, sold that after a few years as well.
After that second exit in 2008, I was looking for what's next. It wasn't quite clear to me if I should start another company or look for angel investments. I started to look around, browsed the Web for new ideas, and then I stumbled on a website that looked interesting. It was a website that talked about Help Desk 2.0.
Harry, you're probably too young for this, but around that time, everything had to be 2.0, so that was the Help Desk 2.0. That website talked about making customer support better. It had a large picture of a friendly Buddha smiling at you. I thought that it was interesting, so I reached out to the founders.
Harry, you probably know the rest of the story, but for everybody else, that company was Zendesk, which at that time was a four‑person startup, just getting started, didn't have an office yet, operating out of the loft in Copenhagen of one of the three co‑founders.
Today, Zendesk is one of the leading cloud‑based software vendors for customer support, went public a couple of years ago, and is worth a couple of billion dollars. Zendesk is really what got me into SaaS. If you talk about beginner's luck, it doesn't get much luckier than that.
During that experience, after a couple of weeks or months of working with Zendesk, I started to look for other SaaS companies with somewhat similar characteristics, mainly around the consumerization of enterprise software.
I made a couple of angel investments over the next three years or so, and then I finally teamed up with Pawel Chudzinski to raise a fund, Point Nine Capital, and that's what I've been doing since.
Harry: What a journey it has been since. I do have to ask though, Christoph. One question that I'm always fascinated by is you said there about your entrepreneurial endeavors, you saw firsthand many boom‑and‑bust cycles in the market.
How do you think seeing the boom‑and‑bust cycles of the early 2000s and then 2008 informed how you think today when investing?
Christoph: Yeah, I think it probably does have an impact when you've seen some really high highs and then shortly afterward, some really low lows as far as the level of enthusiasm or the hype cycle is concerned.
It makes people like me, who are a bit older and have seen the dot‑com boom and bust maybe a bit more skeptical when they see things like ICOs getting all the hype and so on.
Maybe it also means that you get too cautious, and then maybe younger people are better at spotting some of the greatest new opportunities. Maybe you get a little bit more careful when you've see some of these things, but overall it's probably a helpful or a valuable experience to have seen some of these cycles.
Harry: For sure. I do want to break this show though up today into a couple of different but really aligned parts, starting with the question that's always on the lips of founders and VCs, being product/market fit.
Moving to that subsequent stage, post‑product/market fit, scaling the product/market fit from there, and then finishing on your operations at Point Nine and a brilliant piece you recently wrote. Does that sound good?
Christoph: Sounds great.
Harry: I love the title of this, "WTF is Product/Market Fit?" I have so many founders say…Jason Lemkin says it's 10 unaffiliated customers. Brad Feld says it's 500k in revenue. What does product/market fit really mean to you, Christoph?
Christoph: I probably have a bit of a love‑hate relationship with the term or concept of product/market fit, because on the one hand, it's incredibly important, and as you as say, everybody says you need product/market fit, and that's true.
Mark Andreessen famously said that the only thing that really matters is product/market fit, and you should be obsessed about finding product/market fit until you have it. It's an incredibly important concept, and it really defines a lot of what you should do.
There's almost like a before‑product/market fit phase and a once‑you‑have‑it phase, and it determines a lot of the strategies and tactics that you have to apply.
On the other hand, there is really no generally accepted definition of this. You already mentioned two definitions that may not be completely compatible, or at least may be similar, but not the same.
There are other people, like Paul Graham, who, I think, said, "Product/market fit simply means that you make stuff that people want." Others have somewhat more sophisticated definitions.
I think Mark Andreessen said that product/market fit is being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. I think you mentioned Brad Feld said you don't have product/market fit until you have, I think, a half a million in ARR or something.
There is a pretty broad definition of product/market fit, so the term is maybe a bit overused and under‑defined. There is not just one correct definition of it.
What I personally like is to define product/market fit as having a product that solves a problem for a significant number of independent customers, quite similar to how Jason put it when he says you need three, four, or five independent customers. I think that's a pretty pragmatic and useful way of looking at it.
Harry: He said that about significant number of customers. The hallowed word for all VCs is often TAM, total addressable market. I'm interested, Christoph, to what extent does market size really play a role in your investment consideration today?
Christoph: It does play an important role for us. We, like pretty much all other investors out there, aspire to invest in companies that eventually become very large, so we do look at market sizes whenever we consider making an investment.
At the same time, we're also aware that it's really, really hard to predict market sizes, and it can be a pretty humbling experience. For some of the best companies out there, maybe there was no market initially. Maybe they created their market.
If you think about Twitter or Snap, or maybe even some companies on the B2B SaaS side, such as Slack or UiPath, where arguably maybe there was no market, or it would have been very hard to estimate.
We do look at the market size, but we try to be not too dogmatic or religious about only wanting to invest in companies that target a certain TAM, because the TAM can change so much over time. The best teams find ways to expand into new markets, and so on and so forth.
Harry: Going back to the product/market fit element, we had Peter at Segment on the show recently. He suggested a kind of poignant catalytic moment when they realized that they had product/market fit. It doesn't always seem to be the case that it's this one moment.
How do you think about product/market fit as a single moment versus a continuous evolution towards it?
Christoph: I actually saw a fantastic presentation of Peter Reinhardt at SaaStock in Dublin a few years ago where he described Segment's journey towards a product/market fit. I think they'd been trying various things for months, if not years, and they didn't really work out.
Suddenly, they hit on something. He described it as if a landmine had exploded. That was when they suddenly got to this incredibly strong product/market fit.
I think this is an amazing experience for Peter and Segment, but in my experience, it's not the rule. It's more like the one exception. I think it's much more typical that product/market fit isn't that black and white. It's more a gradual process, more like you continuously increase the degree of product/market fit.
It may not necessarily only go always upright. You might think to have product‑market fit, and then things happen in the market, maybe you lose some customers or there is a new competitor. Then you are maybe less sure that you actually have product/market fit.
I think it's very rare that it's so black and white as in the Segment case. Definitely made things very clear and easy for them, and probably gave them a strong signal to say, "Now it's really time to put the…
Harry: Pedal to the metal, fuel on the fire.
Christoph: "…pedal to the metal." I think most founders don't find themselves in that situation where it's so clear. It's more as search for product/market fit that may take two or three years, where you're not really sure, how strong is your product/market fit really?
Harry: I'm going to ask a really unfair question here, [laughs] but I would love to hear your thoughts. Obviously, we're going to take into account that all businesses are very different, and this doesn't encompass every business.
If we're looking at data and measurements, and assessing product/market fit across different disciplines and metrics, and taking three in particular, what kind churn rate would suggest a positive assessment towards the product/market fit lens to you?
Christoph: Harry, that's a really unfair question indeed.
Christoph: It really depends. I think it's hard to generalize. It depends on various factors. It starts with a question like, "How qualified are the prospect, and then the customers that you onboard in the first place?"
I will mention some numbers, because you asked for it, but I think you really have to take them with a big grain of salt. I would say, as far as churn is concerned, if you're an enterprise SaaS, and you only look at the properly onboarded customers, the churn rate for them should be pretty close to zero.
If you're an SMB SaaS, then it's always somewhat higher. It might be 1.0 or 1.5 percent per month, just because SMBs go out of business at a certain rate, maybe 10 percent per year or so.
I also mentioned properly onboarded customers, because your churn rate might be higher if you have some customers among your customer base which shouldn't have been customers in the first place, because maybe there is no great fit between what they need and what your product offers.
I think the churn rate in the first couple of months of the lifetime of your customers can be higher, until you really figured out what the ideal customer looks like, and you only get this type of customer. In the beginning, when you look at the churn on a cohort basis, then it's not too worrying if there is a drop‑off during the first one, two, three months or so.
If you look at all those customers that survive the first couple of months, then I think you should expect that most of them will stick around.
Harry: Again, another very unfair one. A lot of founders assimilate product/market fit to where they are in terms of MRR. They often actually have the two questions. They think, "What sort of MRR suggests product/market fit?"
Maybe one which, again, is very challenging, but what sort of MRR suggests a series A raise today and that graduation from seed to A? How do you think about MRR in relation to those two?
Christoph: I think it's really difficult. You might get to hundreds of thousands of ARR, like tens of thousands of MRR, without having product/market fit, if the founders are great salespeople.
You just sell to clients whatever they want, and you somehow manage to get away with it, and you deliver a product that might need a lot of customization, and so on.
I think it's almost impossible to say, "This is how much MRR you need, and then you know you have product/market fit." As a very, very general rule of thumb, I would maybe say, just in terms of the order of magnitude, if you are going after what we tend to call the rabbits types of customers or deer, then maybe that's around 10k of MRR.
If you are, however, aiming for those large customers, which we tend to call elephants or whales, then that number might be significantly higher, because product‑market fit requires some degree of repeatability.
If one customer is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in ACV, and you think you need a couple of them to know that you have product/market fit, then you obviously get to a higher number.
Harry: Absolutely. Now I've grilled you enough so unfairly, I would love to discuss the phase, post‑product/market fit. Assuming that we have that critical stage, when speaking to series B or C investors, a lot ask the fundamental question. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what the fundamental question is and what they really mean by it.
Christoph: I think it's very different if you compared series A and series B. At the series B and later rounds, I think it's all about scaling and about the confidence that a company is able to scale, meaning scaling customer acquisition, but also meaning scaling the organization and everything that comes with that.
At the series B and maybe even more so at the series C level, I think VCs want to understand your customer acquisition channels, your CACs, your payback ratios, lifetime values, all of these great metrics, and want to get a sense for whether you have something that is repeatable and whether you have channels that you can scale.
On the other hand, at the series A level, I think sometimes the series A can have more like the characteristics of a seed round. It depends on, obviously, the type of investor. The level of proof that series A investors want to see at that stage is much, much lower.
It's more about getting some confidence of product/market fit, again, hard to define. Series A investors usually want to get some proof that there is product/market fit. For some investors, that means they want to see something in the order of a million or one‑and‑a‑half million in ARR, but not for everybody.
It greatly also depends on the founding team and the track record of the founding team, the size of the opportunity, and all of these factors. At the series A level, it can sometimes be somewhat more qualitative, whereas, starting from the series B, it becomes much more quantitative and metrics‑driven.
Harry: You said that about the scaling of customer acquisition costs. I was with a founder the other day, and he said, "If I spend 10k, then I get 100 leads, so if I spend 100k, I'll get 1,000 leads." I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and maybe the dangers and inherent challenges around this.
Christoph: In what you just described, the ability to scale your budget by 10x, and then also get 10x the amount of customers, is actually very rare in B2B SaaS. For a consumer Internet business, let's say an e‑commerce business, I think this is more frequent, because you can do mass‑market advertising, maybe TV ads, whatever.
In B2B SaaS, I think it's pretty rare that you can so easily scale advertising budgets. The reason for that is that almost naturally when you start, you capture the lowest‑hanging fruits first.
You get the warmest leads first, because those are the ones that are actively looking for whatever you offer. You get the cheapest keywords to start with. That makes it very hard to extrapolate from the results of the early paid advertising trials that you might make as a founder.
Harry: You said about the warmth of the leads there. You also said before that making outbound sales work is an indicator of maybe a scalable customer acquisition. It's also expensive and timely. You've seen many successful businesses scale their outbound sales. What have been your learnings on making outbound successful, and why it presents such a scalable acquisition channel?
Christoph: I'm actually not sure if we've seen so many companies make it work. I think it's pretty hard to make it work. If we talk about the low‑hanging fruits, then I think outbound is actually a very high‑hanging fruit. It's very difficult, but it also means that if you can crack it, then you potentially or probably have a highly scalable channel.
If you are able to cold‑call prospects and turn them into customers, then you can basically call up every potential customer on the planet. It can be highly scalable, but it's really, really hard to make it work economically. It's usually not something which I would recommend an early‑stage SaaS founder to do as one of the first things.
It's usually something that you should consider doing when you are starting to exhaust other channels. It should also never be your only customer acquisition channel. If you get really no inbound interest and no organic demand for the product, then I would be concerned that product just isn't great enough, and that customer acquisition, in the end, will be too expensive.
Harry: A final question before we discuss Point Nine and the recent fantastic blog post. You mentioned about scaling outbound. I often meet a lot of founders who want to scale outbound on the enterprise side, but often, obviously, there's a long payback period for the enterprise sales cycles.
They suggest about doing SMB and smaller deals in that meantime. How do you think about doing both at the same time, the effectiveness of it, and the concerns for the founder of the long payback period if doing it enterprise‑only?
Christoph: For most founders, most SaaS companies, I think they are probably better off if they have quite a lot of clarity on the type of customer that they serve ‑‑ again coming back to these animal metaphors that we like so much ‑‑ if you only serve either the rabbit‑type customers, or the deer, or the elephants.
It has so many implications on how you run the entire company, on your cost basis, and how you do, what language you use on your website, and how you do marketing and sales. If you try to sell to tiny customer and large customers at the same time, that can add a lot of complexity and make things more difficult.
I would, however, say that there are definitely exceptions to this general rule. I think one exception are companies often that have a product addressing developers. Then you often have this situation that developers are the people who first discover the product. Maybe you have a free plan for them or a very cheap entry‑level plan.
Eventually, you get into a larger enterprise. Algolia from our portfolio would be a great example for a company that has been very successful like this, and which is now generating a significant share of their revenue from large customers, but they still have a product that is loved by developers. They managed to make that work.
We see Slack would be another great example of a company that is managing to serve a large variety of different types of customers at once. Unless there are strong reasons for that strategy, or unless you feel a really strong pull from the market to serve various types of customers, you're probably better off simplifying things a little and really focusing on a customer segment that is not too wide.
Harry: You mentioned your portfolio and Algolia there. I do want to touch on, before we move into the quick fire, Point Nine, that today.
You recently wrote the fantastic blog post about making VC more human. You did a great survey on European fundraising for founders and the experience. You found that founders were still frustrated with the process. What were the commonalities, Christoph, in terms of their biggest frustrations?
Harry: We did a survey. I think it's been one or two years ago or so already. We asked founders to rank the various things that they don't like about fundraising. Our experience is that fundraising can still be a major distraction, if not a pain in the ass, for founders, because it take so much time away from the real business.
There were several things which founders don't like about fundraising. One is that it takes so much time. You often don't know where you are in the process. I think that was probably the number one thing which people pointed out.
They talked to a lot of VCs, and then people failed to close the loop. You follow up and you just don't know where you are. I think that is one thing.
Another thing is having to deal with complicated term sheets, due diligence checklists, legal contracts. All that legal side of fundraising is something which founders tend to hate. I think they rightfully don't see a lot of value in that.
Another factor is something which we addressed in this recent initiative and blog post that you mentioned. This is not something we asked about in the survey some years ago, but which we also know is an issue, that founders are worried what their existing investors do.
Are they going to participate in the next round of funding or not? If not, what kind of signals does that send to the next‑round investors? Those are some of the things that we tried to address in the initiative that you were referring to.
Harry: Christoph, you're making my life incredibly easy there by saying about the previous‑round investors following on. You said in the post that you always do your pro rata. Talk to me about the thinking behind this and how it maybe affects your thesis on reserve allocation.
Christoph: For everybody who hasn't read that blog post, what we decided to do was that we announced and made a pledge that we will always do our pro rata in a series A for all of the seed investment that we're doing from now on.
It may not actually have such a dramatic impact on our reserve allocation. In most cases, we would probably have done the follow‑on investment anyway, even without that pledge. We're now a bit more careful to make sure that we reserve enough money to fulfill that pledge, but it doesn't make a huge difference.
I think it's mainly about the peace of mind that we're helping to create here for the founders, just having the certainty. Maybe we will do our pro rata in 90 percent of the cases anyway, because we want it, but as a founder, until the round is done, you may not know that this is the case. You may not know that you are, in fact, in the 90 percent bucket and not in the 10 percent bucket.
Our intention was to just take one topic off the table, because we think there are enough topics which you have to worry about as a founder, as you go through that process.
Frankly, it also make our life a little bit easier, because we don't have to debate these decisions anymore. We have a default now. Whenever a company goes on to raise a series A, we don't even have to debate it internally anymore.
Harry: You mention debate there. I'm playing slight devil's advocate here, Christoph, but there is the caveat that only if the round is done by a legitimate A‑round investor is this the case of certain follow‑on.
Most often there, with these rounds, with legitimate A‑round investors, actually the founders don't need it. Often, the A‑round investors want to maximize their ownership as much as possible. I'm intrigued. Is this caveat not a slight contradiction in the case?
Christoph: It's true that, in some cases, even though we commit to doing our pro rata and want to do it, maybe it's hard for us to do it. Maybe the new investor in some of these very hot rounds maybe feel like there is not enough volume, and they want to try to reduce the allocation to the existing investors.
In the cases where things go really well, it's true. There, that commitment isn't really needed, but I think it helps founders in the beginning. At that time, they don't know yet if they are going to be one of these hot companies where there is too much money rather than too little on the table.
On your point about being legitimate A‑round investors, it's not like we have strings attached there or a footnote like, "Here are the qualifications or what a series‑A investor should look like." We will do this regardless of the quality of the series‑A investor.
It's not like this has to be a tier one or some other kind of definition. We will also do it regardless of the performance of the company and how bullish we are. The only thing that we said there was it should be an externally‑led A round.
If it's some weird financing like a government loan or an internal bridge for a few hundred thousand, that is not an A round. That is the only thing that we wanted to make clear. Other than that, there really are no strings attached. That's the whole idea around it.
Harry: I love it. That clarifies that for me. In terms of the step further into the weeds, there's the term sheet. It's often immensely confusing for founders. You standardized and published yours. Why do VCs sometimes have very long and complex terms sheets, Christoph? It maybe seems unnecessary to have 10‑12 pages.
Christoph: I think there probably is no good reason for that. I think it's more a historic reason. Maybe years ago or decades ago VCs used that, basically maybe just used the leverage which, back in those times, they had, at least in Europe, to secure rights which go beyond what you should get as a VC.
I think a certain amount of detail in a term sheet might be reasonable. You want to be clear that, if you sign a term sheet, both sides really know what they get. The last thing you want is to sign a term sheet, and then later on the deal doesn't get through because maybe there was a misunderstanding.
I don't blame any VC who has a term sheet that has a couple of pages instead of maybe just one or two, but it shouldn't be 10 pages, and it shouldn't be super complicated. It doesn't have to be written in the language that only lawyers understand.
I think it's about finding the right balance between making sure that the key provisions are in there so that both sides know what they're getting, but at the same time trying to avoid making it unnecessarily complicated.
Harry: I'm thrilled I was not the only one struggling with the complexity of some term sheets. I would love to move into my favorite of any interview, being the 60‑second SaaSTr. As you know, I say a short statement, and you give me your immediate thoughts. How does that sound?
Christoph: I will give it a try. I will do my best.
Harry: What does it take to start in Europe and make it big in the US?
Christoph: As a founder, you have to be super committed. Every founder has to be incredibly driven and committed to building a successful company. For European founders who want to make it in the US, I would say the bar is even higher.
If you look at, for example, the founders of Zendesk or Algolia, they took their families and moved them from Europe to the US. That's a huge step which requires a lot of conviction and commitment, and a very strong desire to build a very large and successful company.
I think you also have to be incredibly smart and fast‑learning. Some things work different in the US, so you have to be able to adapt to that and be able to survive in that hyper‑competitive environment.
Harry: What are the most common mistakes that CEOs make in the scaling process?
Christoph: I think maybe the most common mistake is trying to scale too early, like trying to hire too many salespeople before you have a product that is worth selling or before you've figured out the first sales yourself. I would say that's probably the most common mistake.
Then maybe underestimating how long it takes to build a team, let's say, on the sales side, basically how much lead time you need to find the right salespeople, train them, make them effective.
If you have a certain goal of your sales targets for 12 months from now, and then you try to work your way backwards there, if you don't do this very carefully, I think you can easily end up in a situation where you realize you're missing your targets, but it's way too late to address that, because you should have hired more people months ago.
Maybe the last thing I would add ‑‑ and this is also a topic that I feel very strongly about and wrote a blog post about ‑‑ that if you don't really invest in people enough early enough, one of the things that we see that differentiate experienced serial entrepreneurs from first‑time entrepreneurs is that the experienced people hire a dedicated full‑time HR person.
Like Head of Talent, Head of HR, Chief People Officer, or whatever the title might be, much earlier than the less experienced ones, because they know that a person like this can really be almost like the magical secret weapon who can help the CEO scale in a much better and much faster way.
Harry: What would you most like to change in the world of SaaS today?
Christoph: That's a good question, Harry. I'm not sure. I think we live in a pretty good world and time to start a SaaS company. There are so many APIs, tools, and building blocks that you can use, so I think it's a pretty good time to start and scale a SaaS company.
If I could change something or have a wish, maybe it would be that there are more, better financing options for those SaaS companies that are not on the unicorn path, if you want to put it that way.
As you know, VCs ‑‑ and I don't exclude ourself from that ‑‑ everybody is focused on these gigantic outliers, on these very, very rare outcomes. I think for every SaaS company that can get to $1 billion in eventual evaluation, there are probably 10 that can get to $100 million, and maybe 100 that can get to $10 million, or tens of millions.
There can be lots of great, profitable, viable businesses which are worth pursuing, but which don't produce the kind of returns which make sense for venture capitalists. I think there is an increasing supply of capital for this type of company from PE investors and different types of investors.
It seems like this is getting started now, or we're seeing more and more of that, and this is something which I am hope we'll see more of, because that is, I think, a difficulty for SaaS founders who are building great companies, but not the type of companies that just doubles or triples for many years in a row.
Harry: Should early‑stage companies take multi‑stage VC fund money?
Christoph: My answer to this might sound a little bit self‑serving, because as you know, we're an early‑stage fund. We are exclusively focused on seed early‑stage investments.
I think in most cases, the answer to your question is no. I think there might be exceptions, but in most cases, if you are a seed‑stage startup, and you're raising half a million or a million, then it's not a great idea to take this check from a fund that is managing hundreds of millions or maybe a billion or several billions.
It's unlikely that you will really get the same attention, like a company where that fund puts in 10 million, 20 million, 30 million. All the great benefits that some of these large funds have, you will probably not get them if you are just an investment, which from their perspective is really tiny.
You are kind of like an optionality ticket in most of these cases, and then you have the signaling risk. What happens when you raise the next round, and the market knows that this was just an optionality ticket?
The market cannot expect that if things go decently well that investor will take the lead in the next round. I'm sure there are exceptions, but usually I think it's a good idea to choose an investor where there's a fit between what they typically do in terms of the stage, and the stage that you are currently in.
Harry: Especially for maybe slightly less‑funded ecosystems like the UK and Europe in general, it also often takes up, kind of, the biggest prices up of the next round of a seed, because they're disincentivized to price it up, I think that's often something that's not considered enough.
I do want to finish, though, on what do you know now that you wish you'd known at the beginning, Christoph? This can be the beginning of your entrepreneurial career. It could be the beginning of your angel investing, or the beginning of Point Nine, but the beginning of…
Christoph: I think when I started with SaaS investing, then it was probably quite helpful that I didn't know so much about Saas, because all the investors who knew a lot about enterprise software at that time, a lot of them looked at Zendesk in the early days and passed on it, because there were lots of good reasons why this wouldn't work.
I think a certain amount of naivete that I had was probably useful. If I think about, what do I wish I had known then, maybe it's just the knowledge or the experience that what massive success looks like.
Where the companies that I started before I became an investor had various degrees of success, like lots of complete failures and one or two companies that had a decent level of success, but nothing even remotely close to the order of magnitude of the success of Zendesk.
I never experienced that kind of growth and that kind of ambition. Maybe if I had had known that, yes, it's actually possible to create a company that gets to $100 million in revenues within a couple of years and that eventually becomes worth billions of dollars, that would probably have helped me maybe make some better decisions at the time.
Harry: Christoph, as you can tell, I've certainly enjoyed having you back on the show. Thank you so much for joining me again today.
Christoph: Thank you very much to you, Harry.
[gong]
Harry: I have to say, it's always such a pleasure to have Christoph on the show, and such a fantastic chat there. If you'd like to see more from Christoph, you can find him on his blog, The Angel VC, or on Twitter @chrija.
Likewise, it'd be great to see you behind the scenes here at SaasTr. You can find us in Instagram @hstebbings1996, with two Bs. It'd be great to see you there.
As always, I so appreciate all your support, and I cannot wait to bring you a very special episode next week.
SaaStr Podcast #036: Christoph Janz, Co-Founder @ Point Nine Capital On the Importance of Local Investors
Is it better to (1) build a product then find a market for the product or (2) Find an underserved market and design a product tailored to the customers' needs?
SaaStr Podcast #053: Greg Sands, Founding Partner @ Costanoa Venture Capital Discusses How to Assess Product/Market Fit & Customer Segmentation


text:
Bodenwerder ist eine Stadt im Landkreis Holzminden. Sie ist der Geburtsort und langjährige Wohnsitz des "Lügenbarons" Hieronymus Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Münchhausen und trägt deshalb seit dem 25. Oktober 2013 den amtlichen Namenszusatz "Münchhausenstadt". Die Stadt ist zudem Sitz der Samtgemeinde Bodenwerder-Polle. Bis Ende 2010 hatte die Stadt den Status "Staatlich anerkannter Luftkurort", seit 2011 "Staatlich anerkannter Erholungsort".

Geographie

Lage
Der Ort liegt zwischen Hameln und Holzminden an der Oberweser. Südöstlich davon liegt der Vogler. Bei Bodenwerder mündet die Lenne in die Weser.

Stadtgliederung
 Bodenwerder
 Buchhagen
 Kemnade
 Linse
 Rühle

Geschichte
In der Nähe des Klosters Kemnade entstand nach 960 n. Chr. auf einer Weserinsel gegenüber der Lennemündung eine Marktsiedlung mit Namen Insula (Werder, im ursprünglichen Sinne einer Insel in einem Fluss).

Im Jahre 1245 kaufte Ritter Heinrich II. von Homburg vom Kloster Corvey die Siedlung und gab ihr am 29. Januar 1287 die Stadtrechte. Erste Erwähnung von "consules" erfolgte 1284. 1289 existierte bereits eine wichtige Brücke über die Weser, die eine Verbindung zwischen den damaligen Hauptverkehrswegen zwischen Hameln–Paderborn und Einbeck–Frankfurt am Main herstellte. Um 1340 entstand durch grundherrlichen Akt eines der Homburger Bodonen eine planmäßig erbaute Anlage mit Mauern und Türmen, daher die Ableitung zum heutigen Stadtnamen aus "Bodonis insula", "Insel des Bodo": "Bodenwerder". Nach dem Aussterben der Homburger 1409 gehörte die Stadt zum Herzogtum Braunschweig-Lüneburg, 1521 dann nach der Hildesheimer Stiftsfehde zum Fürstentum Calenberg unter Erich I.

Ab 1418 erwarb die Stadt umfangreichen Forstbesitz im Vogler. Im Jahre 1442 wurde die Familie von Hake mit Besitzanteilen in Bodenwerder belehnt, ihr Amts- oder Wohnhaus war vermutlich der heute Schulenburg genannte Freie Sattelhof. Zwischen 1460 und 1470 wurde die gotische Pfarrkirche St. Nikolai als dreischiffige Hallenkirche erbaut. Im Glockenturm befindet sich noch heute eine Glocke von 1471. In den Jahren 1542 und 1543 wurde die Reformation eingeführt. In der Kirche befindet sich ein Taufstein von 1608. In den Jahren 1899 und 1900 wurde im Süden der Kirche ein neuer Chorraum geschaffen, 1960/62 erfolgte eine einschneidende Umgestaltung des Kirchenraumes mit Inventarien.

Statius von Münchhausen (1555–1633), ein Sohn des zu großem Reichtum gekommenen Feldobristen und Söldnerführers Hilmar von Münchhausen (1512–1573), ließ das Herrenhaus erbauen. Er bewohnte jedoch vorwiegend die von ihm ebenfalls errichteten, bedeutenden Schlösser Bevern und Leitzkau. Einen Bodenwerder ähnlichen Amtssitz erbaute er in Bolzum.

Einer seiner Nachfahren war Hieronymus Carl Friedrich von Münchhausen, Offizier in russischen Diensten, der sich 1750 auf sein Gut in Bodenwerder zurückzog und dort Freunden seine phantasievoll ausgeschmückten Jagd- und Soldatenabenteuer erzählte, die gegen seinen ausdrücklichen Willen von Anderen, vor allem von Rudolf Erich Raspe, dann auch von Gottfried August Bürger, als "Lügengeschichten" erweitert und veröffentlicht wurden. Von 1810 bis 1813 gehörte die Stadt mit dem Kanton Bodenwerder zum Distrikt Rinteln im Königreich Westphalen.

Im Jahre 1935 erwarb die Stadt das Herrenhaus des 1797 verstorbenen Barons Münchhausen und nutzt es bis heute als Rathaus. Sie integrierte ein zu besichtigendes Erinnerungszimmer für den berühmtesten Sohn der Stadt.

Bodenwerder gehörte zu dieser Zeit zum Kurfürstentum Hannover (ab 1814 Königreich Hannover). Mit der Annexion Hannovers 1866 kam auch die Stadt Bodenwerder zu Preußen. Im deutsch-französischen Krieg von 1870/71 fielen zwei Männer, deren Andenken in einem Kriegerdenkmal gewahrt wird.

Im Jahr 1886 wurde eine jodhaltige Solequelle erbohrt.

Während der Industrialisierung siedelten sich Binnenschiffswerften (darunter die Arminiuswerft) und Baustoffindustrien (unter anderem ab 1946 die Vereinigten Baustoffwerke Bodenwerder, ab 1961 bekannt mit der Weltmarke Rigips) an.

Religionen
In Bodenwerder gibt es zwei evangelisch-lutherische Gemeinden (Pfarramt I und II) mit den Kirchen St. Nicolai und der Klosterkirche St. Marien in Kemnade. Weiter gibt es dort die römisch-katholische Pfarrei St. Maria Königin. Daneben existiert eine neuapostolische Kirchengemeinde. Außerdem gibt es eine freie evangelische Gemeinde mit dem Namen Generation Church – Kirche für alle Generationen.

Im Ortsteil Buchhagen befindet sich das kleine abgelegene, gebäudemäßig noch im Aufbau begriffene orthodoxe Dreifaltigkeitskloster. Es existiert seit Anfang der 1990er Jahre und ist das erste deutsche orthodoxe Kloster. Formal (kirchenrechtlich) untersteht es der Metropolie der bulgarisch-orthodoxen Diözese von West- und Mitteleuropa.

Eingemeindungen
Am 1. Januar 1973 wurden die Gemeinden Buchhagen, Kemnade, Linse und Rühle eingegliedert.

Einwohnerentwicklung

 1860: 1300 Einwohner
 1933: 1840 Einwohner
 1961: 3235 Einwohner (am Tag der Volkszählung, dem 6. Juni; mit den später eingemeindeten Orten: 5761 Einwohner)
 1970: 3464 Einwohner (am Tag der Volkszählung, dem 27. Mai; mit den später eingemeindeten Orten: 5898 Einwohner)
 1973: 5967 Einwohner (am Tag der Eingemeindungen, dem 1. Januar)
 1987: 6029 Einwohner (am Tag der Volkszählung, dem 25. Mai)
 1996: 6450 Einwohner
 2002: 6308 Einwohner
 2005: 6089 Einwohner
 2007: 5875 Einwohner
 2008: 5762 Einwohner
 2009: 5646 Einwohner
 2010: 5582 Einwohner
 2011: 5701 Einwohner
 2012: 5707 Einwohner
 2013: 5621 Einwohner
 2014: 5634 Einwohner
 2015: 5597 Einwohner
 2016: 5547 Einwohner
 2017: 5562 Einwohner

Politik

Gemeinderat
Der Gemeinderat, der die Gemeinde Bodenwerder vertritt, besteht aus 17 Mitgliedern. Aus dem Ergebnis der Kommunalwahl 2021 ergab sich folgende Sitzverteilung:

Gemeindebürgermeister
seit 2021 Friedrich-Wilhelm Dornette (SPD)

 2016–2021 Friedrich Wilhelm Schmidt (CDU)

 2012–2016 Elke Perdacher (SPD)
 2009–2012 Friedrich-Wilhelm Schmidt (CDU)
 2006–2008 Karl-Gerhard Sievers (SPD)
 1996–2006 Hartmut Schüler (CDU)
 1981–1996: Karl-Gerhard Sievers (SPD)
 1957–?: Fritz Sagebiel (SPD)
 1874–1885: A. Quentin
 1867–1873: Cuno von Schulzen

Kultur und Sehenswürdigkeiten

Museum
 Münchhausenmuseum in der Schulenburg

Bauwerke

 Schloss Münchhausen, früheres Herrenhaus des Gutshofes der Familie von Münchhausen und Geburtshaus des als Lügenbaron bekannt gewordenen Hieronymus von Münchhausen
 Schulenburg, ein steinerner Wohnturm aus der Zeit um 1300 auf dem Gutshof der Familie von Münchhausen
 Reste der mittelalterlichen Stadtbefestigung (Bastion und Torturm)
 Romanische Klosterkirche St. Marien im Ortsteil Kemnade
 Wehrkapelle gegenüber der Klosterkirche
 Kapelle St. Gertrudis (Galerie Corvinus)
 Stadtkirche St. Nicolai
 Bismarckturm, ein 13 m hoher denkmalgeschützter Aussichtsturm auf dem Eckberg (errichtet 1913, eingeweiht am 21. September 1913)

Regelmäßige Veranstaltungen
 Kirschblütenfest in der Rühler Schweiz (April)
 Verleihung des Münchhausen-Preises (September)
 Münchhausen-Spiel am Rathaus (jeden ersten Sonntag von Mai bis Oktober)
 Münchhausen-Musical (jeden zweiten und vierten Sonntag von Mai bis September)
 Lichterfest an der Weser mit dem größten Höhenfeuerwerk Norddeutschlands (zweiter Samstag im August)
 Schlossparkbeleuchtung im Hehlener Schloss (alle zwei Jahre im August)
 StadtSpieleFest an der Promenade (dritter Sonntag im August)
 Tag des offenen Denkmals (September)
 Adventskonzert der Chöre in der Klosterkirche Kemnade (Dezember)
 Sterntalermarkt (Dezember)
 Kulturzentrum KulturMühle

Ausflugsziele
 Sommerrodelbahn Bodenwerder (inkl. Minigolf und Billardgolf)
 Hallenbad an der Oberschule Bodenwerder
 Anleger der Weserflotte
 Weserpromenade

Wirtschaft und Infrastruktur

Verkehr
Straßenverkehr
Bodenwerder liegt an den Bundesstraßen 83 und 240 und an der Landesstraße 587 sowie am Weserradweg.

Schienenverkehr
Am 9. Oktober 1900 wurde die Bahnstrecke Vorwohle–Bodenwerder–Emmerthal mit den Bahnhöfen Buchhagen, Bodenwerder-Linse und Bodenwerder-Kemnade eröffnet. Seit 1982 ist der Personenverkehr eingestellt.

Unternehmen
 Niederlassung der Saint-Gobain Rigips GmbH

Öffentliche Einrichtungen
 Wertstoffsammelplatz der Abfallwirtschaft des Landkreises Holzminden in Kemnade (seit 1991)
 Die Freiwillige Feuerwehr Bodenwerder sorgt für den Brandschutz und die allgemeine Hilfe.

Bildung
 städtischer Kindergarten
 evangelischer Kindergarten
 Grundschule Bodenwerder
 Oberschule Bodenwerder
 Münchhausenschule – Förderschule mit dem Schwerpunkt Lernen

Persönlichkeiten
Ehrenbürger
 Louis Adolf Heinrich Knopf (1832–1919), Arzt und Geheimer Sanitätsrat

Söhne und Töchter der Stadt
 Johann Bernhard Friese (1643–1726), Rechtswissenschaftler
 Christian Heinrich Behm (1662–1740), Konsistorialrat, Abt im Kloster Amelungsborn
 Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen (1720–1797), bekannt als Baron Münchhausen, der durch seine Lügengeschichten, z. B. den Ritt auf der Kanonenkugel, berühmt wurde
 Julius Scharlach (1842–1908), Rechtsanwalt und Kolonialunternehmer
 Johannes Körting (1856–1952), Ingenieur
 Hermann August von Münchhausen (1856–1922), Gutsbesitzer und Pferdezüchter
 Wilhelm Beye (1881–1960), Landwirt, Politiker (DVP), Mitglied des Braunschweigischen Landtages 1927–1930
 Ernst Katzenstein (1897–1989), Rechtsanwalt
 Erich Hansmann (1920–1989), deutscher Politiker (SPD), Mitglied des Niedersächsischen Landtages 1959–1965
 Willi Waike (* 1938), deutscher Politiker (SPD), Mitglied des Niedersächsischen Landtages 1982–1994, niedersächsischer Finanzminister 1996–1998
 Friedrich Buttler (* 1941), Ökonom
 Jonatan Briel (1942–1988), Filmregisseur und Drehbuchautor, gründete 1962 das Jugendfilmstudio Holzminden
 Klaus Ritterbusch (* 1947), Maler und Fotograf
 Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich (* 1952), Präsident der Universität Hildesheim

Weitere Persönlichkeiten, die mit der Stadt in Verbindung stehen
 Jacobine von Dunten (1726–1790), Ehefrau des Baron Münchhausen
 Werner Lämmerhirt (1949–2016), Gitarrist; lebte zuletzt und starb in Bodenwerder
 Oliver Sauerland (* 1974), wuchs in Bodenwerder auf, Inhaber eines Plattenlabels in Hannover

Literatur

 Hermann Braun: Die Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Bodenwerder und der Gemeinde Pegestorf im Regierungsbezirk Hildesheim (= Die Kunstdenkmale des Landes Niedersachsen. Band 36). Niedersächsisches Landesverwaltungsamt Hannover. Hannover 1976.
 Ludwig Bode: Bodenwerder in alten Ansichten. Zaltbommel 1991.

Sonstiges
 Die Landschaft um Bodenwerder ist Schauplatz von Wilhelm Raabes Roman Alte Nester von 1881.

Weblinks

 Münchhausenland Bodenwerder
 Artikel Bodenwerder. GenWiki
 Private Sammlung historischer Ansichtskarten von Bodenwerder

Einzelnachweise

Ort im Landkreis Holzminden

Ort an der Weser
Staatlich anerkannter Erholungsort in Niedersachsen
Stadt in Niedersachsen
Stadtrechtsverleihung 1287

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
826 (DCCCXXVI) je bilo navadno leto, ki se je po julijanskem koledarju začelo na ponedeljek.

Dogodki

krstitev danskega kralja v Mainzu.

Rojstva
 - Tabit ibn Kora, arabski astronom, matematik († 901)

Smrti

Glej tudi


We are still in the process of updating the 0628/0629/0630 ART Gallery reports for the 2019 submission of the HIC/PIT information to HUD. HUD has not yet announced the submission deadline for this information.
We performed a test auto-mapper run last weekend due to the changes we made to the report to see how many sites could receive the report. During the test we ran into issues with Client Location and night-by-night shelters in the report so we removed it late last night from the ART Gallery. We will send out an announcement once we are ready to officially release the revised 0628/0629/0630 ART Gallery reports. We will also send out an announcement once HUD announces the submission deadline for the HIC/PIT information.
If you wish, you can access the 2018 version of the 0630 report in the Recycle Bin under the Public folder. However we do not recommend using this report. The counts in the report this year will be changing due to changes to how clients are pulled into the report based upon Client Location and CoC Code information and changes to how night-by-night clients are pulled into the report.
We will include the change details in the User Manual once we have officially released the report. We will also include an Input Control on the detail tab of the 0630 report to help you find any clients that have Client Location issues causing them to not be pulled into the report.


text:
Bug of the MonthCOVIDMask RespiratorTSI Brand Insights
Advanced TechnologyBug of the MonthDisinfection/Sterile ProcessingEnvironmental ServicesHAIsHand HygieneLong-Term CareOperating RoomPersonal Protective EquipmentVascular AccessView More
Medical World NewsVideosWebinars
Infection Control Today
Sponsored ResourcesWhitepapers
© 2021 MJH Life Sciences and Infection Control Today. All rights reserved.
Bug of the Month
Mask Respirator
TSI Brand Insights
Disinfection/Sterile Processing
HAIs
© 2021 MJH Life Sciences™ and Infection Control Today. All rights reserved.
Synthetic DNA Vaccine Against MERS Induces Immunity
A novel synthetic DNA vaccine can, for the first time, induce protective immunity against the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus in animal species, reported researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus particle envelope proteins immunolabeled with Rabbit HCoV-EMC/2012 primary antibody and Goat anti-Rabbit 10 nm gold particles. Image courtesy of NIAID
David B. Weiner, PhD, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and colleagues published their work in Science Translational Medicine (STM) this week. The experimental, preventive vaccine, given six weeks before exposure to the MERS virus, was found to fully protect rhesus macaques from disease. The vaccine also generated potentially protective antibodies in blood drawn from camels, the purported source of MERS transmission in the Middle East.
MERS is caused by an emerging human coronavirus, which is distinct from the SARS coronavirus. Since its identification in 2012, MERS has been linked to over 1,300 infections and close to 400 deaths. It has occurred in the Arabian Peninsula, Europe, and in the U.S.
The recent 2015 outbreak in South Korea was of great concern as the infection spread from a single patient to infect more than 181 people, resulting in hospital closings, severe economic impact, and more than 30 deaths. During this outbreak rapid human-to-human transmission was documented with in-hospital transmission the most common route of infection.
"The significant recent increase in MERS cases, coupled with the lack of effective antiviral therapies or vaccines to treat or prevent this infection, have raised significant concern," Weiner says. "Accordingly the development of a vaccine for MERS remains a high priority."
The vaccine was able to prevent MERS disease in the monkeys and offered benefit to 100 percent of the animals in this study in terms of minimizing symptoms. In addition, the vaccine induced antibodies that are linked with protection in camels, a species that is thought to be a major source of transmission to humans in the Middle East, showing that this vaccine could be deployed to break this this link in the MERS transmission cycle. In the field, say the researchers, this vaccine could decrease person-to-person spread of infection in the event of an outbreak and help to protect health care workers or exposed individuals.
"This study was only possible by bringing together an international group of investigators with the necessary skills, including, the lab of Heinz Feldman at the NIH, Gary Kobinger from the Canadian government, scientists from Inovio who developed the plasmid delivery technology, along with Penn colleagues," says first author Karuppiah Muthumani, PhD, a research assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine. "This simple synthetic vaccine has the potential to overcome important production and deployment limitations, and what's more, the vaccine is non-live, so does not pose a risk of spreading to unintended individuals." Collaborators include researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, the University of Washington, and the University of South Florida.
Other coauthors are Darryl Falzarano, Emma L. Reuschel, Colleen Tingey, Seleeke Flingai, Daniel O. Villarreal, Megan Wise, Ami Patel, Abdullah Izmirly, Abdulelah Aljuaid, Alecia M. Seliga, Geoff Soule, Mathew Morrow, Kimberly A. Kraynyak, Amir S. Khan, Dana P. Scott, Friederike Feldmann, Rachel LaCasse, Kimberly Meade-White, Atsushi Okumura, Kenneth E. Ugen, Niranjan Y. Sardesai, and J. Joseph Kim.
The work was funded in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R01-AI092843) and Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Source: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
See also: http://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/news/2015/08/nih-scientists-successfully-test-mers-vaccine-in-monkeys-and-camels.aspx

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński expressed his support for the idea of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency's reform while questioning some of its aspects.
EU spending has been tripled in securing the EU's external borders and ensuring security, said the head of Frontex on Saturday.
European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), founded in 2005, is an EU agency tasked with border control of the Schengen Area in coordination with the border and coast guards of member states.
The European Commission, with the support of several countries, has proposed to boost the number of Frontex external border guards from 1,500 at present to 10,000 by 2020. Also to be extended is the agency's scope of activity. Reforms propose that guards operating within Frontex would be, to a great extent, able to decide on admittance to the Schengen zone.
These ideas are contested by some states, including Poland. Among disputed issues is not only the cost of boosting the Frontex personnel, but also the prospect of states losing control over their border security.
"It is unacceptable for us to have supranational guards deciding on our borders. It may lead to a situation where an individual deemed a threat to national security is admitted into our country", Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński told the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
The Minister also contested the European Commission's plan to strengthen the powers of the European Asylum Support Office, intended to facilitate the asylum application procedure. With the host state's approval, the office is to be a decision-making body on granting asylum.


text:
Home Tech A fan recreates Bloodborne as a PSX game
A fan recreates Bloodborne as a PSX game
Leonard Manson
A user on Twitter shares his progress on a personal project that aims to move Bloodborne as a PSX game. The result is fantastic.
We already know what Bloodborne would be like if it came out in 1996. Lilith Walther heads Bloodborne PSX, a project that aims to emulate the From Software title with the look that technology allowed 24 years ago.
Demake, as projects of this nature are often called, is being developed under Unreal Engine. The work has required certain adjustments with respect to the original game. For example, the power of enemies who kill with a touch has been reduced, in addition to other healing mechanics so that it does not feel "completely impossible". Given the technical limitations, the control of the character does not have the same agility as on PS4.
Progress is practically daily, as the young woman shares on her Twitter account. She has already managed to get hit healing, energy bar, and executions to work after blocking a rifle attack.
The community is always behind these audiovisual what-ifs. It has happened with practically all the featured releases. The last to receive this glimpse was Cyberpunk 2077, the title of CD Projekt Red. Anders LundbJórk developed a small portion playable through the streets of Night City. Indelible.
Changes in Japan Studio
What about the future of Bloodborne? Although we do not know what will happen next, before closing 2020 the departure of Teruyuki Toriyama, producer of the game at Japan Studio, transcended. In a brief tweet, the creative assured that he will continue with "the challenge of creating new IPs" in his new company, so he does not abandon the video game industry.
March 2021 will mark no less than six years since its launch. From Software's situation was different compared to today. The team led by Hidetaka Miyazaki keeps the launch of Elden Ring, his last work, in the air. Since its announcement in 2019, only a couple of the director's statements have emerged. In this piece we review everything we know so far.
An Image Allegedly Owned by Honor 10X Pro Has Been Released
Where are the Nutcracker statues in Fortnite Season 5?


1 وَكَانَ فِي الأَرْضِ جُوعٌ غَيْرُ الْجُوعِ الأَوَّلِ الَّذِي كَانَ فِي أَيَّامِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ، فَذَهَبَ إِسْحَاقُ إِلَى أَبِيمَالِكَ مَلِكِ الْفِلِسْطِينِيِّينَ، إِلَى جَرَارَ. 1 And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines unto Gerar.
5 مِنْ أَجْلِ أَنَّ إِبْرَاهِيمَ سَمِعَ لِقَوْلِي وَحَفِظَ مَا يُحْفَظُ لِي: أَوَامِرِي وَفَرَائِضِي وَشَرَائِعِي». 5 Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.
7 وَسَأَلَهُ أَهْلُ الْمَكَانِ عَنِ امْرَأَتِهِ، فَقَالَ: «هِيَ أُخْتِي». لأَنَّهُ خَافَ أَنْ يَقُولَ: «امْرَأَتِي» لَعَلَّ أَهْلَ الْمَكَانِ: «يَقْتُلُونَنِي مِنْ أَجْلِ رِفْقَةَ» لأَنَّهَا كَانَتْ حَسَنَةَ الْمَنْظَرِ. 7 And the men of the place asked him of his wife; and he said, She is my sister: for he feared to say, She is my wife; lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah; because she was fair to look upon.
8 وَحَدَثَ إِذْ طَالَتْ لَهُ الأَيَّامُ هُنَاكَ أَنَّ أَبِيمَالِكَ مَلِكَ الْفِلِسْطِينِيِّينَ أَشْرَفَ مِنَ الْكُوَّةِ وَنَظَرَ، وَإِذَا إِسْحَاقُ يُلاَعِبُ رِفْقَةَ امْرَأَتَهُ. 8 And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife.
9 فَدَعَا أَبِيمَالِكُ إِسْحَاقَ وَقَالَ: «إِنَّمَا هِيَ امْرَأَتُكَ! فَكَيْفَ قُلْتَ: هِيَ أُخْتِي؟» فَقَالَ لَهُ إِسْحَاقُ: «لأَنِّي قُلْتُ: لَعَلِّي أَمُوتُ بِسَبَبِهَا». 9 And Abimelech called Isaac, and said, Behold, of a surety she is thy wife; and how saidst thou, She is my sister? And Isaac said unto him, Because I said, Lest I die for her.
10 فَقَالَ أَبِيمَالِكُ: «مَا هذَا الَّذِي صَنَعْتَ بِنَا؟ لَوْلاَ قَلِيلٌ لاضْطَجَعَ أَحَدُ الشَّعْبِ مَعَ امْرَأَتِكَ فَجَلَبْتَ عَلَيْنَا ذَنْبًا». 10 And Abimelech said, What is this thou hast done unto us? one of the people might lightly have lien with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us.
11 فَأَوْصَى أَبِيمَالِكُ جَمِيعَ الشَّعْبِ قَائِلاً: «الَّذِي يَمَسُّ هذَا الرَّجُلَ أَوِ امْرَأَتَهُ مَوْتًا يَمُوتُ». 11 And Abimelech charged all his people, saying, He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.
12 وَزَرَعَ إِسْحَاقُ فِي تِلْكَ الأَرْضِ فَأَصَابَ فِي تِلْكَ السَّنَةِ مِئَةَ ضِعْفٍ، وَبَارَكَهُ الرَّبُّ. 12 Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him.
14 فَكَانَ لَهُ مَوَاشٍ مِنَ الْغَنَمِ وَمَوَاشٍ مِنَ الْبَقَرِ وَعَبِيدٌ كَثِيرُونَ. فَحَسَدَهُ الْفِلِسْطِينِيُّونَ. 14 For he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants: and the Philistines envied him.
15 وَجَمِيعُ الآبَارِ، الَّتِي حَفَرَهَا عَبِيدُ أَبِيهِ فِي أَيَّامِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ أَبِيهِ، طَمَّهَا الْفِلِسْطِينِيُّونَ وَمَلأُوهَا تُرَابًا. 15 For all the wells which his father's servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth.
16 وَقَالَ أَبِيمَالِكُ لإِسْحَاقَ: «اذْهَبْ مِنْ عِنْدِنَا لأَنَّكَ صِرْتَ أَقْوَى مِنَّا جِدًّا». 16 And Abimelech said unto Isaac, Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we.
17 فَمَضَى إِسْحَاقُ مِنْ هُنَاكَ، وَنَزَلَ فِي وَادِي جَرَارَ وَأَقَامَ هُنَاكَ. 17 And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there.
18 فَعَادَ إِسْحَاقُ وَنَبَشَ آبَارَ الْمَاءِ الَّتِي حَفَرُوهَا فِي أَيَّامِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ أَبِيهِ، وَطَمَّهَا الْفِلِسْطِينِيُّونَ بَعْدَ مَوْتِ أَبِيهِ، وَدَعَاهَا بِأَسْمَاءٍ كَالأَسْمَاءِ الَّتِي دَعَاهَا بِهَا أَبُوهُ. 18 And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them.
19 وَحَفَرَ عَبِيدُ إِسْحَاقَ فِي الْوَادِي فَوَجَدُوا هُنَاكَ بِئْرَ مَاءٍ حَيٍّ. 19 And Isaac's servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water.
20 فَخَاصَمَ رُعَاةُ جَرَارَ رُعَاةَ إِسْحَاقَ قَائِلِينَ: «لَنَا الْمَاءُ». فَدَعَا اسْمَ الْبِئْرِ «عِسِقَ» لأَنَّهُمْ نَازَعُوهُ. 20 And the herdmen of Gerar did strive with Isaac's herdmen, saying, The water is ours: and he called the name of the well Esek; because they strove with him.
21 ثُمَّ حَفَرُوا بِئْرًا أُخْرَى وَتَخَاصَمُوا عَلَيْهَا أَيْضًا، فَدَعَا اسْمَهَا «سِطْنَةَ». 21 And they digged another well, and strove for that also: and he called the name of it Sitnah.
22 ثُمَّ نَقَلَ مِنْ هُنَاكَ وَحَفَرَ بِئْرًا أُخْرَى وَلَمْ يَتَخَاصَمُوا عَلَيْهَا، فَدَعَا اسْمَهَا «رَحُوبُوتَ»، وَقَالَ: «إِنَّهُ الآنَ قَدْ أَرْحَبَ لَنَا الرَّبُّ وَأَثْمَرْنَا فِي الأَرْضِ». 22 And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now the LORD hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.
23 ثُمَّ صَعِدَ مِنْ هُنَاكَ إِلَى بِئْرِ سَبْعٍ. 23 And he went up from thence to Beersheba.
24 فَظَهَرَ لَهُ الرَّبُّ فِي تِلْكَ اللَّيْلَةِ وَقَالَ: «أَنَا إِلهُ إِبْرَاهِيمَ أَبِيكَ. لاَ تَخَفْ لأَنِّي مَعَكَ، وَأُبَارِكُكَ وَأُكَثِّرُ نَسْلَكَ مِنْ أَجْلِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ عَبْدِي». 24 And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake.
25 فَبَنَى هُنَاكَ مَذْبَحًا وَدَعَا بِاسْمِ الرَّبِّ. وَنَصَبَ هُنَاكَ خَيْمَتَهُ، وَحَفَرَ هُنَاكَ عَبِيدُ إِسْحَاقَ بِئْرًا. 25 And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the LORD, and pitched his tent there: and there Isaac's servants digged a well.
26 وَذَهَبَ إِلَيْهِ مِنْ جَرَارَ أَبِيمَالِكُ وَأَحُزَّاتُ مِنْ أَصْحَابِهِ وَفِيكُولُ رَئِيسُ جَيْشِهِ. 26 Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar, and Ahuzzath one of his friends, and Phichol the chief captain of his army.
27 فَقَالَ لَهُمْ إِسْحَاقُ: «مَا بَالُكُمْ أَتَيْتُمْ إِلَيَّ وَأَنْتُمْ قَدْ أَبْغَضْتُمُونِي وَصَرَفْتُمُونِي مِنْ عِنْدِكُمْ؟» 27 And Isaac said unto them, Wherefore come ye to me, seeing ye hate me, and have sent me away from you?
29 أَنْ لاَ تَصْنَعَ بِنَا شَرًّا، كَمَا لَمْ نَمَسَّكَ وَكَمَا لَمْ نَصْنَعْ بِكَ إِلاَّ خَيْرًا وَصَرَفْنَاكَ بِسَلاَمٍ. أَنْتَ الآنَ مُبَارَكُ الرَّبِّ». 29 That thou wilt do us no hurt, as we have not touched thee, and as we have done unto thee nothing but good, and have sent thee away in peace: thou art now the blessed of the LORD.
30 فَصَنَعَ لَهُمْ ضِيَافَةً، فَأَكَلُوا وَشَرِبُوا. 30 And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink.
31 ثُمَّ بَكَّرُوا فِي الْغَدِ وَحَلَفُوا بَعْضُهُمْ لِبَعْضٍ، وَصَرَفَهُمْ إِسْحَاقُ. فَمَضَوْا مِنْ عِنْدِهِ بِسَلاَمٍ. 31 And they rose up betimes in the morning, and sware one to another: and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace.
32 وَحَدَثَ فِي ذلِكَ الْيَوْمِ أَنَّ عَبِيدَ إِسْحَاقَ جَاءُوا وَأَخْبَرُوهُ عَنِ الْبِئْرِ الَّتِي حَفَرُوا، وَقَالُوا لَهُ: «قَدْ وَجَدْنَا مَاءً». 32 And it came to pass the same day, that Isaac's servants came, and told him concerning the well which they had digged, and said unto him, We have found water.
33 فَدَعَاهَا «شِبْعَةَ»، لِذلِكَ اسْمُ الْمَدِينَةِ بِئْرُ سَبْعٍ إِلَى هذَا الْيَوْمِ. 33 And he called it Shebah: therefore the name of the city is Beersheba unto this day.
35 فَكَانَتَا مَرَارَةَ نَفْسٍ لإِسْحَاقَ وَرِفْقَةَ. 35 Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.


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iLounge › How-to › Ask iLounge
Size of Smart Playlists
By Jerrod H.
Updated May 12, 2021 7:19 pm UTC
Articles, Ask iLounge
Q: I can't find out why some of my smart playlists suddenly shrink on my iPod. I have a smart playlist with 75 five-star songs on it, where the songs rotate throught the playlist based on last-played date. Anyway, sometimes the playlist will suddenly jump from having 75 songs on it to having 54 songs, or 11 songs. The songs are still on the iPod, but they're no longer in the playlist. Do I have corrupted files? I've restored my iPod, and that didn't help.
Any idea is this is a known bug and if there's a fix?
– Brian
A: Brian, from our experience, our best guess is that your iPod is working exactly as it should, and that your smart playlist needs a bit of work.
It sounds like your smart playlist has a rule that selects songs from a specific period of dates – for example, "Last Played is not in the last 3 days."
Since the size of this playlist ultimately depends upon how often you play your music, this isn't what you want.
Rather, you should try using a simpler one-rule solution like the one below, where the playlist will always have 75 songs, and is set to select songs by "Least Recently Played," which will work regardless of how often (or not) you use your iPod.
Jerrod H.
Jerrod was a contributing editor at iLounge. He mostly wrote articles about iTunes and iPod accessories. He was known for his in-depth knowledge of both topics and was often able to provide readers with unique insights into the world of Apple products.


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Grenson was born in 1866 in Rushden, Northamptonshire. William Green, the founder, started making high quality shoes for London Gentlemen and was so successful that he soon had to build a factory and the company grew from there.
Recently Grenson has undergone a new lease of life, helped by their focus on quality and modern design whilst never losing sight of their impressive heritage.


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Julian Boyd may refer to:

Julian P. Boyd (1903–1980), American professor of history at Princeton University and first editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
Julian C. Boyd (1931–2005), American linguist, professor at the University of California, Berkeley
Julian Boyd (basketball) (born 1990), American college basketball player


Aaltonen, a 360° full-speed car turn, not only looks effective, but also proves a driver's professionalism and craftsmanship. Sometimes this trick can help you to steer out of a skid by turning the car, when there is no time or space left for speed adjusting manoeuvres.
Aaltonen Team Sp. z o.o was founded in 2008. The Company operates on the B2B market, specialising in logistic and distribution services for car importers and their dealer networks.
The Company supplies tyres, rims and complete wheels for car showrooms, car service workshops and automotive stores, as well as to the leading dealer networks and importers.


Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University recently conducted a national survey of reporters and editors to gauge their usage of social media sources when researching stories.
This is a topic I've written about in the past, related to a separate survey that found 70% of journalists use social media for reporting, but I thought it was a more current look at the data and an interesting counterpoint to my recent post about whether or not journalists are on board with social media.
The Cision survey found 89 percent of journalists turn to blogs for story research, 65 percent to social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, 61 percent to Wikipedia, and 52 percent to microblogging services such as Twitter. At first glance, it would appear as though the majority of reporters and editors are in face "on board" with social media.
Is Social Media Important to Journalists?
According to the survey results, only 15 percent of respondents said social media is "Important", while 40 percent said "Somewhat Important." While usage levels may be higher, take those stats with a grain of salt. I'm sure most journalists would say they use email as part of their daily work, but only a very small percentage of the messages they receive are "important" to the work they do.
Of additional interest, the survey data suggests journalists reporting and producing stories for websites found social media most important (69 percent), while traditional newspaper and magazine journalists found social media less important (48 percent). Few surprises here, but very significant data for media relations professionals to take into consideration when leveraging social media as part of their programs.
What is surprising is the number of journalists that cited blogs as an important source of background information for story research. 89 percent of the journalists surveyed use blogs for their online research – only Corporate Websites (96 percent) is used more by journalists. What's the takeaway here? Make sure you have your newsroom up-to-date before you launch that blogging initiative, but get on the blogging bandwagon fast if you're not there already.
It's also obvious from the survey data that journalists are warming up to social networking sites for story research. If your expert sources aren't already using LinkedIn and Facebook to promote their expertise, this should be a component of your PR strategy moving forward.
I love surveys like this. This is the type of data PR professionals need to develop more effective communications strategies. Read more about the survey results in the Cision press release here.
Is Art or Math More Important in PR?
Is Twitter the Way to Reach Younger Readers?
Why is B2B Spending More on Social Media?
Thanks for sharing. I completely agree that surveys like this are helpful. Believe it or not, I still have some clients who think the best, most valid coverage is what appears on the front page of a print newspaper, and the only way to get there is through a news release. Research like this is the ammo I need to state my case.
"Journalistics" is a great site — truly a public service of benefit to any journalist or PR pro. Count me in as a regular follower.
I do have one question about/quibble with this Cision survey: When it says that "89 percent of journalists turn to blogs for story research," I wonder, "what blogs," or "what kinds of blogs"? My concern is that misguided corporate marketing departments, many of whom still view blogging as a form of product or brand advertisement for their company vs. what it's meant to be — practical, non-biased information — will see this and go "Oh boy, let's churn out more blogs and drive up our media coverage!" As a former reporter turned publicist, I certainly hope that my colleagues in the media community aren't turning to such thinly-veiled corporate propaganda for story research.
As a journalist, I prided myself on the hours I put in researching and fact-checking story ideas before creating a news article, feature or trend piece . All journalists did in that bygone era, ergo I'm not patting myself on the back — it was standard operating procedure for the profession. These days, I notice with increasing alarm the tendency of reporters to simply re-hash a company press release and post it as "news," without making the least effort to ground the story with an interview, fact check it with an industry analyst, or round it out by including opposing or competitive viewpoints. In my estimation, reporters who do this are just hacks. If they're now using corporate blogs as sources, they might as well change their job description to the same thing they sometimes call me and me colleagues – flaks.
First of all, I would like to say that I completely agree with HDLime about the need of changing the client´s mind through the advantage of the new media, and this text is a good example for that.
I was doing a work experience in a newspaper and when I did not have a topic for this day, my boss always told me: "look for it in different blogs". So one day, I did a feature article in a whole page about the tourism in one city only using blogs, because I needed to know the opinion about the visitors of the city and Internet allows me to have a lot of different points of view with only one click.
Finally, I would like to say that the data about Corporate Websites (96% of the journalists use it) have two points of viwe for me. In one side, it is an advantage because the journalists search information directly of the source without intermediary, but on the other side, the journalists could publish only propaganda. Journalists should use more that this source.


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Twitter | Facebook La Vie des Idées
Review Arts
Scottish Architectural Photography
About: "Classical Edinburgh", an exhibition at Edinburgh City Art Centre
by Clarisse Godard Desmarest , 23 December 2019
Photography, both an art form and a tool for documentation, can bear witness to the history of a city. "Classical Edinburgh" celebrates Edinburgh's neo-classical architecture as seen through the lens of photographers Edwin Smith and Colin McLean, and invites reflection on the conservation of architectural heritage.
This exhibition of photographs, mainly black-and-white, entitled 'Classical Edinburgh', is a celebration of Edinburgh's architecture, a half century or so after the publication of A. J. Youngson's magisterial The Making of Classical Edinburgh published by Edinburgh University Press in 1966. It coincides too with a re-issue of Youngson's book. This exhibition presents some of the original photographs included by Youngson, as well as a new, contemporary set of photographs of Edinburgh, from the same views.
Alexander J. Youngson was Professor of Political Economy at the University of Edinburgh (1963-74) and his volume, published in anticipation of the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the creation of the New Town, has long been considered the standard work on the development of classical Edinburgh. It has certainly framed our understanding of a unique piece of urban architecture and development which occurred some fifty years after Bath's likewise famous classical new town, and which it sought to surpass. The acknowledgement of Edinburgh's merits brought the city UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 1995.
Photography has played a disproportionate role in documenting Scotland's history, particularly that of Edinburgh—famously, by the pioneer photographers William H. Fox Talbot, Thomas Annan, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson in the 19th century, and, more recently, with for example Bob Morris's Scotland 1907. The Many Scotlands of Valentine and Sons Photographers [1]. The importance of the early photographers to Scottish contemporary photography has been fundamental, as seen for example in the work of Calum Colvin (RSA 2007), a Scottish artist whose work combines photography, painting, and installation, and often deals with issues of Scottish identity and culture and with the history of art. At the Ages of Wonder; Scotland's Art 1540 to Now, an exhibition of works collected by the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture, in the National Galleries of Scotland (4 November 2017–7 January 2018), one of the highlights was a reconstruction of Calum Colvin's photographic studio displayed as a celebration of Scottish national poet Hugh MacDiarmid.
The rise of conservation
While photography became popularised widely in the 19th century because of its value for documenting its subjects so clearly, and for its artistic qualities, it could be argued that photography is the one art form in which Scotland—or rather Edinburgh—had a pioneering role. [2]. Consequently, it seems fair to regard the photographs for this landmark publication, and celebrated now in this exhibition, as a direct legacy of that early and ongoing Edinburgh tradition, a tradition which became so successful in the city thereafter. The photographs for this publication are the work of Edwin Smith (1912-72), who was once described by Sir John Betjeman as 'a genius at photography'. Smith, whose principal passion was for painting, was a London-born photographer with a unique ability to sense the prevailing mood of a place, and who earned the soubriquet 'the English Atget'. [3]
Edwin Smith, Princes St Gardens From Jenners Roof, 1960s
The photographs included in The Making of Classical Edinburgh were mostly taken by Smith in 1964, specifically for the publication. A few more on display at the City Art Centre exhibition were from Smith's personal archive and date from an earlier visit to Edinburgh, in 1954. His collection of photographs, donated by his widow, Olive Cook, are now part of the Robert Elwall Photographs Collection at the RIBA British Architecture Library in London. Smith became known for capturing British building types, and he was unusual in that most of his photography was commissioned for inclusion in books, rather than for more lucrative and more ephemeral reproduction in advertisements or magazines. Shunning the trend for small portable 35 mm cameras, Smith preferred using a wooden and brass field camera and a tripod to capture in print buildings, as well as the fragility of the historic built environment. Many of his photographs of Edinburgh were purposely taken on overcast days, when light was more subtle and revealed a building's texture and detail.
Youngson's publication, and Smith's photographs, stimulated an awareness of the New Town and its contemporary threats. In 1967 an exhibition called '200 Summers in a City', commemorating the New Town's inauguration two centuries previously, was held in the Waverley Market; which drew a large audience of visitors. Soon afterwards, in 1970, the newly-formed Scottish Civic Trust held a conference in the Assembly Rooms entitled 'The Conservation of Georgian Edinburgh', which in turn led to the formation of the Edinburgh New Town Conservation Committee (ENTCC), now Edinburgh World Heritage Trust (EWHT). Following the conference, the City developed a large-scale conservation programme which needs to be seen against the precedent of the 1962 Loi Malraux (implemented 1963) which allowed for the protection of historic districts, with the first secteur sauvegardé being established in the Marais, in Paris, in 1964. It was then argued that Edinburgh could learn from Paris the need for a strategic plan to avoid decay, problems of traffic, and to prepare for the growth of commercialisation.
Colin McLean, North Bridge from the Wellington Statue, c. 2017
In 2017, architectural photographer Colin McLean decided to re-interpret the Edinburgh seen in Edwin Smith's photographs. He did this with new images, taken by him from almost identical viewpoints to those of Smith, in an attempt to reflect on the changes that have affected the built environment a half-century after Youngson's publication. Colin McLean FSA Scot, chair of the Scottish Civic Trust, also wrote the preface to the 2019 edition of The Making of Classical Edinburgh, in which he stressed the value of conservation in the present day. This re-edition includes twenty-four contemporary reproductions of Edwin Smith's original photographs by Colin McLean, in an appendix to the original text.
The exhibition display: Edinburgh fifty years apart
On entering the exhibition space, on the second floor of the City Art Centre, in a pleasant room ornate with Doric columns (appropriate to the theme of Classical Edinburgh), the visitor is immediately drawn in by an informative panel superimposed onto a large-scale black-and-white photograph of the Playfair Library at the University of Edinburgh. The first section of the exhibition presents photographs, by McLean, of Calton Hill—the National Monument; James Craig's Observatory House (1776-92, with additions in 1893), now converted to holiday accommodation; and William H. Playfair's City Observatory (1818), converted in 2018 for the Collective Gallery; the latter two demonstrating how historic buildings can be adapted thoughtfully and successfully for re-use, as if to illustrate McLean's own message. Two discrete sections in the display present—separately—photographs by Smith, and by McLean. Additionally, the display has information panels with photographs of both Edwin Smith and of A. J. Youngson, which nicely bring those two important figures to life.
Much of the exhibition's content shows a strong continuity in the appearance and conservation of buildings between the 1960s and now (for example, the view of the North Bridge, looking South from the Wellington Statue), while others show a contrast—in particular, the two views of the city from Salisbury Crags. Smith's photograph (1954; see illustration) of Auld Reekie was taken before the first Clean Air Act was introduced in response to London's Great Smog of 1952. In startling contrast to that foggy view of Edinburgh and its skyline of chimneys, McLean's photograph is in bright colour, and shows a healthier smoke-free environment. In this photograph the St Leonard's redevelopment also appears, in the foreground—a post-war development in the heart of the city illustrating how significant change has happened in some areas, where styles of architecture other than neo-classical have been adopted.
The last section of the exhibition presents contemporary photographs by McLean which seem almost as if they were taken in the 1960s; testifying in doing so that conservation has worked very effectively in protecting Edinburgh's historic buildings (e.g. Ann Street). The exhibition shows evidence of how so much of the past is still here today, cared for, and in good condition.
Edwin Smith, Edinburgh Looking West From the Crags to the Castle, 1954
The picture of big sacks hanging onto the railings, in lieu of wheelie bins, in the richest parts of the New Town, shows that people had been at pains to try and avoid the intrusion of inharmonious large items from blocking views of the superlative classical terraces. Two photographs of a double porch in Broughton Street, from 1964 and today, show that a decision was made in the interim to remove the paintwork in an attempt to restore the original Georgian character of clean dressed ashlar.
The exhibition also includes a three-dimensional model of Edinburgh in 1829 signed by 'I. Howell' (presumably John Howell, 'Polyartist' in Edinburgh). This model is thought to have been cast in the same mould as that of the cast-iron relief photographed by Edwin Smith in the 1960s and included in The Making of Classical Edinburgh. As with maps, it is difficult to know whether the model accurately reflects what had actually been built or, perhaps less accurately, what was planned, but Youngson and Smith evidently valued it. The model does, however, clearly show the New Town on its axis of George Street, the Northern New Town stretching down the slope to Fettes Row, where building commenced in 1821, and the Moray Estate, laid out by James Gillespie Graham in 1822. It is informative to compare and contrast this model with detailed maps including those by Robert Kirkwood (1819), and by John Bartholomew (1826) and William Home Lizars (c.1826-8; c.1830-1) for the General Post Office Directory; and interesting also to see the value placed by contemporaries on the New Town they were in the process of building (the model was produced the same year as Thomas Shepherd's Modern Athens: Displayed in a Series of Views, 1829).
The work of talented architects (notably Robert Adam, James Craig, William Henry Playfair, Thomas Hamilton, James Gillespie Graham, Peddie and Kinnear) all feature prominently in the display; which also, if less markedly, celebrates the success of Edinburgh sculptors. This includes a close-up of the Royal Scottish Academy building, and the sculpture of Queen Victoria dressed as Britannia, by John Steell (1844). Modern recognition of the value of the sculptural heritage is clear from a recent 2-volume publication: Ray McKenzie, with Dianne King and Tracy Smith, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh [4].
Photographs of the Royal High School, then and now, remind us of the significance of this building for the history of neo-classicism, not simply within the context of Edinburgh or of Scotland, but far beyond. The interior of the school was photographed by both Smith and McLean; the neo-Greek doorway through which leavers would pass on graduation day to embrace the wider world was removed in the 1970s when the building was converted into the home for the anticipated devolved parliament. (The 1979 referendum was unsuccessful and future hopes that the building would play host to the new parliament were abandoned in the 1990s, when the building had become associated with the demands for Scottish independence.) The public local inquiry of 2018 concerning the building's possible conversion to become the diminished centrepiece of a vast luxury hotel shows very clearly the current challenges to the built heritage.
One photograph—the east side of St James's Square—shows a part of Edinburgh that has been transformed not once but twice since Smith's time. There, Smith captured the last days of tenements erected in the 1780s (those had an almost Roman severity and grandeur typical of the first phase of New Town development); but which were demolished in 1965 to make way for the St James' centre. Two women, one holding a baby, stand outside a doorway; parked beside them is a car with a 'GB' sticker suggesting its owner was sufficiently wealthy to travel abroad. Now, in 2019, this location is non-residential and is instead a gigantic construction space where a large development, which includes a hotel, is under construction.
In addition to the photographs, two screens present videos. One of these shows original photographs taken by Edwin Smith, each of which is then followed by a recent one by Colin McLean in black-and-white, and sometimes with a third version, also by McLean, in colour. The second video presents the photographer at work in Edinburgh, and features both Edwin Smith and Colin McLean, against a musical background.
Reaching out to the public through different media
The exhibition is accompanied by a second publication: A Capital Investment—Commercial Architecture in Edinburgh's New Town [5], by David M. Walker. In this condensed analysis, Walker deals expertly with the emergence within the New Town of this new type of commercial architecture, which transformed the once residential suburb into the financial capital it remains today. McLean's photograph of the bright interior of The Dome, George Street, and its elaborate plasterwork, conveys the opulence of the former home of the Commercial Bank.
The City Art Centre has also scheduled a range of associated or commemorative events, including lectures, creative classes for adults, family events and photography tours, running parallel to the exhibition.
This renewed interest in the New Town and its commemoration, as the city witnesses some of its most significant changes since WW2, appears also in a recent volume of essays on Edinburgh. [6] Another publication on the subject—aimed for a wider public audience—is Edinburgh Revisited (2019), a new book of photographs (Gordon Hunter) and poems (Don Ledingham). It is hoped that both the exhibition (free admission) and the recent publications mentioned here will extend the appreciation, and promote the conservation, of Edinburgh's townscape.
This exhibition, set in the heart of the Old Town but within a space overlooking the New Town which it celebrates, shows the evolution of the city in the last half century. It concentrates on the city's past, and its focus is appropriately not exclusive to the New Town and its neo-classical architecture. In an exhibition space owned by the City Council, the visitor may reasonably expect questions to present themselves concerning the future of the city – when current building projects will be changing the cityscape very markedly in the next few years (e.g. St James's Centre and the Impact Centre). Such an interrogation on the future of the city was included in the 1967 exhibition in the Waverley Market; John L. Paterson, its architect, designed a large unit, 'City-Scope', which created an enclosure and was designed to stimulate (through form, space, light, colour and sound) the imagination of the spectator into an awareness of the possible nature of future cities.
Above all, and through the captivating photography on display, the exhibition presents the New Town of Edinburgh as well meriting its World Heritage status in terms of both its architectural excellence and its state of preservation. It seems that—when the New Town, unprepared for modernity and at risk of degradation—the above-mentioned 1960s arguments that Edinburgh could learn from the Loi Malraux, were heeded.
Reviewed: "Classical Edinburgh", Exhibition at Edinburgh City Art Centre, 9 November 2019 to 8 March 2020
by Clarisse Godard Desmarest, 23 December 2019
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Clarisse Godard Desmarest, « Scottish Architectural Photography. About: "Classical Edinburgh", an exhibition at Edinburgh City Art Centre », Books and Ideas , 23 December 2019. ISSN : 2105-3030. URL : http://www.booksandideas.net/ClassicalEdinburgh.html
If you want to discuss this essay further, you can send a proposal to the editorial team (redaction at laviedesidees.fr). We will get back to you as soon as possible.
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[1] Bob Morris's Scotland 1907. The Many Scotlands of Valentine and Sons Photographers, Edinburgh, Birlinn, 2007)
[2] See for e.g. Bob Morris's Scotland 1907
[3] Eugène Atget (1857-1927) was a renowned French photographer operating in Paris at the turn of the 20th century and whose documentary vision proved highly influential on the Surrealists, in the 1920s.
[4] Ray McKenzie, Dianne King and Tracy Smith, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2018)
[5] David M. Walker, A Capital Investment—Commercial Architecture in Edinburgh's New Town
[6] Clarisse Godard Desmarest (Ed.), The New Town of Edinburgh: An Architectural Celebration, Edinburgh, John Donald, 2019.
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04/02/2020 • by Richard Montgomery
Remote Notarization and Remote Witness Signature (Estate Planning Documents)
Since the time that Governor Hogan issued Executive Order Number 20-03-30-04 Authorizing Remote Notarization on Monday, March 30, 2020 , the MSBA has received a number of inquiries concerning which electronic notarization services beyond those listed in the Secretary of State's Advisory Guidance which offered a non-exhaustive list of vendors that included: DocVerify, LenderClose, Notarize, … Continued
Since the time that Governor Hogan issued Executive Order Number 20-03-30-04 Authorizing Remote Notarization on Monday, March 30, 2020 , the MSBA has received a number of inquiries concerning which electronic notarization services beyond those listed in the Secretary of State's Advisory Guidance which offered a non-exhaustive list of vendors that included: DocVerify, LenderClose, Notarize, NotaryCam, Pavaso, Safedocs, SIGNiX, and World Wide Notary. Members asked whether the the Secretary of State's remote notarization requirements could be met using services such as Zoom, or eNotary | DocuSign (not currently operating in Maryland). The MSBA has sought further clarification from the Secretary of State's Office in the form of a more expansive list of known vendors, operating in Maryland, that are approved for remote notarization under the terms of the Executive Order. We will provide further information on this matter as soon as it becomes available.
Additionally, MSBA members have inquired about COVID-19 emergency relief on a similar, but unrelated matter: Remote Witnessing, especially in connection with Estate Planning matters. The MSBA is exploring possibilities with the Governor's Office in this area. However, the distinction, for the purposes of seeking relief in the area by way of Executive Order is significant. Remote Notarization, conceptually had recently been enacted by Senate Bill 678 (with a delayed effective date of October 1, 2020) during the 2019 General Assembly session. However, also during the 2019 legislative session, the General Assembly passed legislation that specifically prohibited remote witnessing of wills (House Bill 1140). While there are a variety of documents, other than wills, which perhaps could be executed remotely, the legislature's affirmative prohibition in the area of execution of wills creates a challenge for gubernatorial relief by way of executive order. Importantly, however, at the time that the General Assembly enacted the prohibition of remote witnessing of wills, no one imagined a pandemic with the far-reaching impact brought by COVID-19. Accordingly, the MSBA will continue to explore with the Governor's Office all options for effectuating emergency relief in execution of crucial estate planning documents.
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