AREsketches Goals

The first year of the #AREsketches book volume 1 has come and gone. I almost missed the publishing month anniversary it’s been so crazy!

As any creative person might attest to, I tend to find new fun creative projects when life gets busy. Because, you know…what’s ONE more project on the bonfire when it’s blazing hot?? My brain also likes the calmness of turning analytics into art (hello, map of the world on my office wall). So for a couple nights this past month, I gave an hour or two when I could to making a map of where in the US the AREsketches books now call home.

There are some caveats to the map, as no metrics are perfect – especially when humans are involved. These images only show AREsketches purchases made through me. Amazon doesn’t give me buyer information, so I don’t know where the 159 volume 1 books sold through them have gone, only the 199 sold through my site. They also don’t take into account the awesome family and friends who have bought the book for the architect-to-be that they know and might live in another state or city. And believe me, there are more than a handful of those – because people are awesome and I got to help play Santa this past Christmas. So without further ado, here are the maps of the AREsketches book reach:

Alaska, guys! The book is in Alaska! It also made it to an APO (military base), which is also cool that someone is getting their study on while they serve our country overseas. I will say, the fact that there are no volume 2 sales in my home state is a little heartbreaking, but that goes to show that getting your license is a national issue…and this need wasn’t a homegrown, half-baked thing.

So…what now?

Well, the AREsketches goals for this next month….is to just keep my head above water. I plan to keep working on the Structures sketches, and hope to get into a better groove at sending out weekly newsletters (the blog wasn’t the only thing that suffered when work ate my life for breakfast). When I get that groove back, I plan to get my hands on some 5.0 study material and start researching what it might look like to also start sharing that content, or at least transferring some of the existing content into the re-arranged 5.0 test sections. I believe I currently have all of the content for the Programming & Analysis section, it would simply take fact-checking against written material to make sure I’m not missing anything.

1. Finish out the 4.0 sections – the understood likelihood is that I will have to transition soon because 4.0 sunsets next summer (2018).
2. Start sketches for the new 5.0 sections.
3. An APP! I’ve been trying to set aside some money to look into what a digital version of the AREsketches resource might look like. I hope to give this a more concerted effort in the next year or so. Right now content creation is priority number one.

What now?

In the meantime, I will be in Orlando this week at #A17con. I have to speak in a session right after Michelle Obama’s special keynote…no pressure. If you’ll be in Orlando, stop by session TH214 at 2:30pm Thursday. If you don’t want to throw some cabbage my way that afternoon, but happen to see me wandering the expo floor before then, crazed out of my mind from nervous insanity – tell me your best joke. Who knows, maybe I’ll use it as an icebreaker – with credit of course.

Life’s crazy. But these are the goals, and now you can keep me accountable.

With that, it’s time to get back to sketching.