Think of it as burning our boat!
The world has a number of boat (and bridge) burning festivals and folk-sayings, but here I'm referring to the English expression, probably based on the example of Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés...
In the early 16th century he arrived in what is today Mexico, upon which he ordered his crew to burn the ships they arrived on, deliberately destroying any option of retreat!
That's an extreme example, and perhaps more daring than changing our company look and logo, but we changed our logo with the same fighting spirit!
So what exactly did we do, and why?
That logo had to go
For legal reasons we have to retain backups of our emails, and the IT team pointed out the company policies about not deleting any backups of anything, ever. Captain Cortés never faced such mutiny!
OK, so we could not digitally burn anything, so we did the next best thing, totally changed the look, feel and design of the website – including a new logo – and then, with great ceremony, we hit 'Upload'...
We hadn't clicked 'Publish' yet but there was no turning back!
So what's so significant about the new logo?
Well the important point is not so much the new one – nice as it is – but moving away from the old one.
The old logo, which was self-designed when I was a full-time engineer and Plex-Earth was just getting started, was an unashamed tribute to the Google Earth 'placemark' symbol.
The blue and green colors of our planet completed the look, and that familiar little logo has earned many compliments over the years!
As logos go, it was lovely, but now, in 2021 it is indeed time for it to go, because of that link to the past, and that link to Google Earth.
Google Earth and AutoCAD haven't gone away, but the world has changed
For literally a decade, to the world's top architects and engineers Plex-Earth has meant Google Earth and AutoCAD.
Today other companies provide equal or superior satellite imagery to Google Earth, with higher resolution and more frequent updates.
Google Earth doesn't just now face stiff competition from the likes of Nearmap, Hexagon, Airbus or dealing directly with Maxar; it's also being displaced by Google's own Google Maps, the mobile-phone version.
I'm a great believer in the expression that if you want to change things, then you need to change things, and it was time for us to change too! Time to provide the same kind of service we've always done – bringing satellite imagery directly into your AutoCAD – but to bring you those premium providers.
It's about giving you choices, by making multiple providers as easy and as accessible to you as we already did with Google Earth.
You don't need to choose which provider you want when you sign up with Plex-Earth 5, because we give you access to ALL of them, for the same affordable fee. You get to pick and choose the best option for each scenario while you're actually using it.
Creating such a platform, which could deal with multiple providers, flexible enough to bring in future options but keeping the whole thing simple and easy for the end-user? That was never going to be an easy task!
We knew it was going to be tough. We knew we'd be pushing all of our team members beyond their comfort zones and restructuring pretty much everything from the ground up...
...and we knew we could fail.
If we succeeded, it would be a revolution in the AEC industry, saving you time, giving better insight, reducing rework; it would be even more amazing than the original Plex.Earth 1.0 was...
And then 2020 happened
What a year!
Talking about changing things, now reactions to COVID-19 were changing everything! Just like our clients, we now we faced all the same challenges, but forced to work remotely!
Some parts of transitioning to remote-work went really smoothly. Some didn't.
The biggest thing that kept our spirits and energy high was hearing from clients that they were relying on Plex-Earth more than ever, as it allowed them to avoid or reduce the new problems and risks of site visits.
To help even more we offered our Basic version for free, in our Punch the Pandemic promotion – and then in May 2020 Google decided it was the perfect time to abolish the API of Google Earth!
That's the part of the software designed to interface with other software, such as Plex-Earth. Without any warning, it was deleted in the version 7.3.3 update.
For sure, we were able to work around this, simply by encouraging users to download earlier versions of Google Earth, but our decision to build business relationships with superior providers was already proving wise!
Of course it was tempting to just keep on keeping on, keep using early versions, perhaps asking Google to reconsider, and yes we've already incorporated Google Maps, but that wasn't the plan.
The plan was to REVOLUTIONIZE AEC IMAGING.
Nothing less!
If the temptation was there, we might take it, and that's why, with so many things unfinished, we went ahead and hired consultants to craft that new website, the new company colors, and that shiny new logo – and then uploaded it all.
No turning back, no retreat, no surrender! We left ourselves only one option – succeed at bringing you an easy-to-use platform greater than Google Earth, better than Bing Maps, to bring you the BEST providers out there.
We did it.
During Autodesk University 2020, on November 17th, we were able to hit 'Publish'.
Goodbye 2020, goodbye old logo and a VERY happy new from everyone at Plexscape!