February 20, 2015

WeWork's Ambitious Plan to Re-Design Apartment Living

February 20, 2015/ Ray Long

Co-working superstar WeWork is preparing to launch its first residential venture in the Crystal City neighborhood of Arlington, VA - just outside of Washington DC. The project, which has taken on the unofficial names of "WeWork Residential" and “WeLive” is the renovation of an older office building into 250 micro-apartments.

How important is building community in an apartment complex? And how might WeWork's special blend of co-working magic make this project a step-up from traditional apartments.

In this piece I want to take a look at what we know about the WeLive project itself, look back at some of my own apartment and housing experiences, and finally have some fun brainstorming how WeLive might change the micro-apartment game forever...

March 22, 2014

The Rise of Explanatory Journalism

March 22, 2014/ Ray Long

I've watched with increasing excitement the development of new ventures in explanatory journalism, such as Vox.com by Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias and their team; Fiverthirtyeight.com from Nate Silver and his team; and The Upshot from David Leonhardt.

The reason for these new ventures: the news does a poor job of explaining material to the public - an embarrassment in a connected world and something we hope will soon change...

April 14, 2013

Uber Promo Codes? Why? You Already Like Us

April 14, 2013/ Ray Long

I'm not saying Uber is intentionally trying to annoy long-time customers... but by consistently promoting deals that only apply to first-time customers, they're doing just that...

April 13, 2013

Revisiting #SLS13

April 13, 2013/ Ray Long

Time flies. Just that fast, this was the third annual Social Learning Summit presented to us by American University's Social Media Club. I can still remember some of the conversations I had at the first SLS back in 2011. The AUSMC continues to fine tradition of putting on one of the best conferences of its type in the area... and it's all done by college students...

April 11, 2013

Death of the SmarTrip

April 11, 2013/ Ray Long

@raylongdc you can!And it can all be done online at smartrip.wmata.com as long as your old card, and new card are registered.
— @wmata (@wmata) April 11, 2013

Finally pulling the trigger on this new SmarTrip situation. Long-story short, the card's been giving me problems for weeks now.

First a few gates stopped recognizing it, then a few pay stations stopped, and the moment that I returned from the Dominican Republic - the card just didn't work at all - forcing me into the shame of a paper card to get out of National Airport Tuesday night (perhaps second only to the shame of being that guy that holds up the line because your card isn't working at the gate).

Anyway, it's off to find a new SmarTrip - kinda bummed though - it's like my years of DC fun since I moved here in late 2007 are wrapped up in that old card. Oh well, here's to the next 5 years of Metro adventures.

March 28, 2013

Cleared to Land→

March 28, 2013/ Ray Long

I spent some time last night back at the Long View Gallery for the opening of the DCist Exposed show. My friend, Dan Lauf, made it into the show for the second straight year - this time for "Cleared to Land". See the photo on Flickr. And check out more of Dan's work at The Curious Tripod.

March 19, 2013

Washington DC Metro Map - Super Mario 3 Style

March 19, 2013/ Ray Long

super-washington-metro-2018-jpeg-dave-delisle-20186.jpg

My gaming youth meets my Washington DC present in Dave Delisle's geeky map mock-up of the DC Metro Map.

You have to love the detail of this. Dungeons for transfer stations, boats on the Potomac, airships representing National and Dulles airports.

But he even went above and beyond to include pipes for connecting rail stations, Rush Only service areas, and even made two totally different maps representing the two phases of the Silver Line.

Prints & Posters of both versions are available for purchase through his website.