Spring Daffodil

Yes it is, Spring is finally here! This blog is supposed to be reserved for printing & technology related subjects, but I think it’s a little bit of a grab bag today.

First off, Check out these 2 links, courtesy of Guy Kawasaki and Twitter. The first is on how to use a Business card as a weapon, it’s pretty cool (actually unbelievable); I’d like to have this guy as a business card client. The next is on 42 ways to improve your life, I think there’s something here for everybody if your really into self growth.

No, I did not get an ipad last Saturday (they sold 300,000 of them on the first day).  Not sure what all these people will do with them, but I have no doubt that it will change many of the dynamics of home computing. And Adobe CS5 is just about due out, remember CS5 will only run on Intel based Mac’s. You can continue to use CS3 & CS4 on PowerPC based Macs, but Adobe will only support critical issues. And for staying up on technology, I am getting ready to go to the EFI Connect show in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks. EFI is the company that not only makes all the Fierry Rips that control most digital printing, but they are also developers of the major Estimating/Order writing systems that control a lot of Printing Companies out there. I’m looking for them to paint a picture of what a future printing company using Internet Based Store Front for Printing will look like (Yes, they also develop & host that platform for our Internet store front). This should prove to be interesting, we all need a vision to help build our business.

Sympathy Stunt?

In the “It’s all about us” column, our own Mike Green has been wearing around his neck brace for 2 weeks, since some goofball slammed into the back of his van in the rain on I75. We thought about putting up a sympathy photo of Mike with a saying “Please buy printing from me”, but that was a little tacky. As for the company as a whole, we are still working with Aileron on looking into the future and setting our direction; what a cool bunch of people and incredible facility to work with. And best of all, Anita walked into my office with a stern look on her face and handed me an envelope with “Letter of Resignation” on the outside. I guess I was a little to gullible to realize it was April Fools day until I opened the letter. It was her way of making a joke that it was 10 years to the day I purchased the shop from her and Marvin.

I think 2010 is going to be a good year. The Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce featured Oregon Printing in their latest Focus magazine (Winter 2010) and the printing business has been good and steady around the shop. Outside of the shop, we’ve been on 2 great canoe trips in the last couple of weeks (and 2 more big ones coming up), Laurie’s son started Tee Ball (look for some photos from her husband) and Mike at least came out of his “accident” with a new Saturn Cross Over van. My personal goal is to revive and use a Tamron lens that I have had around, but out of use for a while. Its a f2.8 constant aperture, 28 mm to 75mm zoom that I’ve never been really fond of (I never thought it was that sharp), but I decided to put in on a D70 body and take it out on the water. So far it’s actually done pretty good, for me it’s about trying to add a shallow depth of field to canoeing pictures with people in them. Sometimes it fun to give something like second life and have it work.

So with a trip coming up this weekend to the Clarion River in PA, and another in 3 weeks to the Beaver Creek (on the border of OH & PA), I think we’ll have plenty of time to talk printing, technology, photography, fishing and so on. I might even send a tweet or 2 from the river (OregonPrinting on Twitter), but don’t hold your breath (I’ll probably forget).

The Clarion River

The Beaver Creek

Social media, is it everywhere? Everybody has a Facebook page, a Twitter feed or a blog (ha, ha, you’re reading mine), or at least it seems that way. And where’s it all headed? It seems like the buzz around social media grows exponentially by the week. Is it justified? I believe it is. But I will say this, anytime something gets as much attention as social media is getting right now, everybody wants to be part of it…That will tend to bring out the good and the really dumb.

I believe its just 1 big inter-connected web. Somebody noticed you on LinkedIn updates on Friday morning and followed it. Your LinkedIn Profile takes that somebody to your web page, your web page contains your blog, which might have something of interest to the reader. Since that reader found something in common or of interest, they decide to follow you on twitter and so on. It might not work just like this, but you know the theory. So is this just mindless wasted time or are we really developing relationships and communities that will help each other, support each other and in the long run, alter our life patterns? That’s a big question right now.

There’s a million answers to that question, and they are all different. A good example is Facebook Communities. I watch my son’s generation who are all either at college or in post high school jobs. He knows where anybody he ever knew and cared about is, where they are going to school or work, probably their status and much more. He doesn’t make a concerted effort to do this, they are all just part of an social community that uses Facebook as its central information hub (it’s life to them). It’s amazing to watch these communities and many like them grow. It tells me that our methods of communication are changing big time, like it or not.

This brings me to the next point, we’ve got to help each other. The whole social media and Internet communications movement can be very complicated. In some respects we have given up the very organized 3 network and 2 newspaper model of information and entrainment for a wild west type, unorganized mass of media and information we’re all trying to wrap our arms around. The trade off is that under the old system, we had to listen to what “they” were saying, telling us, selling us and we did not have much of a choice. Now, even though its wild and unorganized, we can tune into, listen to and read what we want to. We are in more control of what reaches us than ever before, but we need to help each other understand where we are going.

There are more and more “Social Media” experts out there every day. Listen to them (I don’t know if you need to pay them), and listen to what your sons and daughters and neighbore are doing. You don’t need to go overboard and be super connected, just take small steps if you feel confused. It will all make sense slowly but surley.

Our strategy is to try to use some of these tools to communicate with our customers and friends. Help them solve a printing or communications problem, maybe share  an aspect of our lives with them and hope they do the same with us. I’ll tell you this, canoeing and photography are as important to me as printing, and printing and graphics are very important in my life.

I think it’s pretty exciting to be living in a time when we are experiancing the type of change that the digital revolution is bringing to us, but a lot of people are still uneasy with it. Be patient, help them out, and remember we don’t have any choice. The times are changing fast and we are all going down this road together. So as time goes on, we’ll try to write more about Social Media and Internet Communications, because its very tightly tied to our business also (like it or not).