Sand dollars, great bad service lessons and the “J-Mac”

Not too long ago while strolling around a trade show, checking out displays and how vendors were presenting themselves I was taught a few business lessons.

Lesson number one. Do not fall asleep in front of your display. Sure it was during a lull in traffic but I saw one guy totally nodding off. To his credit though, his head was still upright.

Lesson number two. Get up! I saw several sales reps constantly in their chairs as potential clients came by. Some would even remain in their chairs when people showed interest or asked questions.

Now, there were plenty of others that were awake, upright and great representatives of their product, but it’s usually the bad one’s that stick out in your memory. That’s why although I don’t like bad service, bad movies or bad food; I usually gain more than I lose from these experiences.

Not much Mac news this week. The new OSX version 10.5 named “Leopard” is apparently due out in early August. Maybe that will herald in the towers. I can only hope.

If anyone has Steve Jobs’ ear (Apple CEO for all you non-Mac fans) let him know this computer idea. Design a portable-tower combo machine that enables you to “dock” a laptop into a tower to combine the tower’s added power (and expandability) with the portable to do cpu heavy applications (Motion, FCP rendering, etc).

When you are only doing simple applications (web, email, text, etc.) you can “un-dock” and do that work anywhere or use it (the portable) to show examples to clients. When you “dock” there is a built-in sync application that updates any new files.

I would jump at buying this machine. You might have to call it a “J-mac” though, as I think Jean came up with most of this idea when I was debating to get a MacBook Pro, wait for a tower or to get both. If you do speak with Steve let him know to give me a deal on the “J-Mac” for the idea.

I’ll leave the “believing in yourself” entry for next week. I’ll need some careful reflection on that. But on a related thought, we were up to the shore this weekend and Jean and I were taking about generating new clients (clients, not projects). I said ten for the year and she said why don’t you be conservative and shoot for two. On the sandbars the tide was way out and we were finding (and rescuing) stranded sand dollar urchins (usually you might one or two on a lucky day). I said, “One sand dollar found equals one new client”. Well I found at least ten. Most without even looking. On my way back into the cottage I found an empty one that now sits in my office as a memento. We shall see what kind of karma this brings.

CM

Live and ranting

It’s official now! We’ve tweaked it for the last week or so and here is CM Creative’s web presence (www.cmcreative.ca). I thought we'd go for an un-offical offsite blog as well so bogger.com here we are! The beginning of our empire building. Much thanks go out to several people. Firstly to Jean for all her encouragement and support. Next to my web designer, Ray McKenzie (contact me for his info) for great teamwork, concepts, hard work and cool design (simple is hard work) and a big shout out to Franklin McMahon (http://www.fmstudio.com/blog/index.html) for amazing advice and inspiration.

We’ll have a few more revisions on the website in the coming weeks. I’ll get my photography up, consider a podcast, dig into projects for new images and setup a RSS feed when I get a good blog archive.

What do you think about video clips? Personally I have been going with video stills to maintain the simplicity but in the future I could have some short samples (if there seems to be functionality to it).

Podcast? I think I'll try it soon. Maybe launch it with the new tower after it arrives on my doorstep. Now there’s setting a goal in front of everyone. Go Franklin (episode 54)!

Speaking, rather writing, about Apple, in Mac news I’m still hedging for the intel towers that are due out in August (hopefully sooner). But my dilemma now is LCD monitors and video editing. How to maintain that true color matching?

I was at a industry show last week that one of the major players in monitors admitted that LCD do not give you that true color match and proper black calibration like a high-quality CRT does and they are getting out of the CRT business (consumer and eco-friendly reasons). So what to do? Apple is recognized as having one of the top LCD monitors so I will have to do some investigation to their color matching and their professional video editing compatibility. If no good answer, then I'll probably go with a professionally calibrated broadcast and a dual high quality LCD setup (those Apple cinema displays look awesome)…maybe score a deal for a dual monitor quad Intel tower setup and fly like the wind.

To tempt me even worse there is processor talk of a new chip (Woodcrest) that will be another speed bump jump but not due out until 2007. I know I can’t wait that long for sure. I’m in as soon as the towers are out. I’m always nervous with first run anything but I’ll take the risk of the bugs being worked out in the imacs and powerbooks and I’ll be a guinea pig for the first little bit (but hopefully not much). My clients can expect lots of cool new teaks, titles, graphics and quick workflows when that rolls out. These have to come out soon or Jean is going to get me a powerbook just to shut me up!

Look for weekly updates and next week, a chat about belief (in yourself and your product).

CM