Areo - what does it even mean?
"Name of company/product" was the first issue opened in our shared development repository. It is also the one that stayed unresolved the longest. In this post we will try to summarize why we think areo is a good fit.
Areo means "area" in esperanto.
Esperanto
Some snippets borrowed from an esperanto FAQ :
- Esperanto is a language designed to facilitate communication between people of different lands and cultures.
- Esperanto is considerably easier to learn than national languages, since its design is far simpler and more regular.
- Esperanto's purpose is not to replace any other language, but to supplement them.
Area
Area is geometric quantity. The "geometric" part is two dimensional but as a "surface area" it can also be used to represent three dimensional objects.
Managing areas/spaces is an important part of facilitie management. Also area units (sqare meters or feet) are important units for measuring and benchmarking costs, performance
So why is this revelvant for our company/ product
Break down barriers - We want areo to be an area where everyone involved in managing and operating the built enviroment can come together to share data and work together to benefit the end users and the environment. We also want to help bring down the barriers to communication and prevent misunderstandings, both technically and culturally.
Universal language - Technically we of cource need to support the "world languages" of our industry - RVT, DWG, PDF, DOC etc. However we also see it as a big part of our mission to support, promote and help the esperantos of our industry - IFC, COBIE, JSON, HTML.
Simple - Any new tool that wants help change an industry need to be simple. Simple to get started, simple to see benefits for all involved.
Measurable - It should be easy to see progress towards goals visually and compared to your goals
How we plan to do so is a topic for another post. Stay tuned and follow along...
