Before Independence Day, Before Lost in Space, Before Tom Cruise, There was Radio and Orson Wells...

"...We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own.

We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. 

With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. 

Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

It was near the end of October. Business was better. The war scare was over. More men were back at work. 

Sales were picking up. 

On this particular evening, October 30, the Crosley service estimated that thirty-two million people were listening in on radios..." - Orson Wells, 1938.

In a world without the internet, Twitter, cell phones or email a fictitious account of an invasion from Mars scared children, and angered many.

I submit to you a feast for your ears and the kaleidoscope of your mind. Travel back when this new medium, radio, ruled and was blamed for the Death of the Stage show and rotting young minds...enjoy.

Steve Jobs Talks about " Xerox and Copier Heads".

13,000 feet somewhere over the Untied States of America heading to the Executive Summit.

This is a must see for everyone in the industry, in any industry actually. The year is 1996 and Steve Jobs is lamenting how Xerox had the world by a string, they just didn't know it.

Hear for yourself, possibly the first time a pundit refer to "toner-heads, copier-heads". Amazing.

Granted, those times were remarkable; Bill Gates is buying and selling the perennial operating system.  Wozniak is programming for days at a time and the first generation of computer geeks begin to take shape.

The status quo was being challenged by a unorganized, disconnected, computer nerds "doing it for fun".  Xerox, IBM, Burroughs, and others didn't see the PC revolution coming and when they did, most denied .  The rest, as they say, is history. They also say, "study history or be doomed to repeat it".

Look at your industry - There are two sides: the status quo and what I like to call the "Pirates".  The status quo employ marketing departments, game the search engines and confuse marketing content with content.  They purchase analysts and dictate to the market,  spinning a message through the ever dwindling and irrelevant equipment channel.  They tell us to sell equipment all the while knowing it is a dying argument.

There is no paper in the future because there is no future in paper.

Arrrg!  On the other side live the pirates, rogues, outcasts, crazies, disgruntled - the explorers, selling professionals, visionaries, lone wolves.  We'll play the game, find the edges and push. Of course we'll get in trouble, and from the outsider view, we will fail.  But failure has always been about getting back up, not quitting.   The ones on the sidelines never quit, do they? When things go well, everybody's a champio.

I guess what I like about this video is recognizing that this has all happened before.  The timing for such a revaluation couldn't be better.  Unlike the days of Young Jobs, we have instant connectivity to all the like minded.  The days of single voices, screaming in the night are gone.

The only question is what side do you call home?  

Do you feel the need to be dependent upon a " board of directors" or sales manager?  
Do you criticize free flowing organizational construct?  Is structure and policy more important?  
Do you manage to outside benchmarks and look for templates?  
Have you uttered and believed the phrase, "it's always been done that way"?  
Do you still think the "OEMs drive the industry"?  

Yes? Congratulations, you're part of the status quo - leave now and immerse yourself in the following movies/series(therapy): Oblivion, Cloud Atlas, V Is For Vendetta, Battlestar Galactica, Serenity, The Patriot, Tombstone & Saving Private Ryan. Not Glenn Gerry, Wall Street, or Boiler Room. Go...go now.

On the other hand, if you see through the manipulation that is an equipment quota (and still meet them), if you question studies reporting users demand mobile print, or print is growing.  If you do your "job" without going "to the office" and STILL required to show up for Monday morning sales meetings, if you've ever been "written up" - you could be Jobs-like, a Zig in the world of Zags.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

Drop me a line.  I'm starting a group of fringe-thinking, bleeding-edgers.  We'll have a charter, but no Board of Directors.  We'll have meetings and adult beverages will be on the agenda.  Our goal will be to network within the group, share cutting edge ideas having fun and making money.

Moderator:

For our audience, what is 'toner'?

Jobs, "Its the black stuff..."

See the video here, http://youtu.be/_1rXqD6M614.


Click to email me.

013 - We Are #MSFT's Worst Nightmare

First published, 1/9/13 on Walters & Shutwell.

The War is Over: WinTel is dying. How do I know? The growing pile of HP technology in the corner of our room tells me so.

Don't get me wrong - I am not a Cult of the Mac, graphic designer types. The last Apple computer my family owned was an IIe back in 1980.   My father, the teacher, got a massive teacher discount.  I barely touched the thing.

I grew up on DOS 2.0-4.0(the one with the square mouse pointer) my first job was with an Inacomp selling B2B, computerized accounting systems.

In addition to Great Plains,  I sold the difference between "IBM-DOS" and "MS-DOS". We despised MACs for their ease of use and lack of business applications.

I sold IBM PS/2' with OS/2. I was there from the beginning of the War. I was there when IBM, like Cleopatra on her barge, left the field of battle open to the clones and Steve Jobs.

A couple decades later, I was a Crackberry advocate and 'droid proponent.

I sold HP9065(Konica) copiers to IT directors back in the day because they loved that little blue logo. My managed print services practice was built around the Edgeline (cold sweat at night) - again, IT loved the logo.

So, yeah - I drank the Koolade for decades.

A few days ago, we brought into the office an iMAC. Jennifer uses it with her iPad, and I use a 2-month-old Mac Book Pro, with my iPad. We moved an older iMac out to be used by the kids. They have an iPhone and iPad Mini between the two. And iPod Touches.  They can bring the devices to school because the school district has implemented a BYOD policy.  A school district - that's what I said.

In the corner of the room sits an HP InkJet printer next to a half-empty box of A4 paper. The case is at least five years old and still contains a few original reams.

We don't print much.

On top of the printer is what I call, "the world's largest laptop, in the world" - some HP huge contraption that I am sure was great in its time but has also been downgraded to kid duty.

There is a Compaq/HP laptop stashed somewhere and soon to join the "pile of HP" is my last PC, ever. A very nice, HP, steel thing-a-ma-bob with so many .tmp files loaded on it, I should just take it into the woods and shoot it out of its misery.

But I won't. I need it for the picture.

We didn't wait for DOS 8.0 because we knew it was going to be a dog.

We didn't wait for all the new tablets, Droid or otherwise, because we knew they would never, ever be an iPad with the Retina display.

We didn't run out and grab the latest E-reader either  - who wants a reader when you can get an iPad mini? Who?

Not many.

Conversely, corporate America did wait. But by the time they saw what they waited for, the Kool-aid had lost its sweetness.  DOS 8.0 won't save anyone, it will remain planted in the past - #MSFT's last attempt has fallen short.  Xbox to the rescue?


Our house is now a house of Mac.

No patches, no blue screen of death, no drivers, no long boot times, and no eye fatigue.

For me, it wasn't how good my eyes felt the second I started using the iPad, that convinced me of MSFT and the PC's death.

It wasn't the zillions of cool, available, and affordable productivity apps or the fact that all my contacts and music are sharable without the headache that tipped the scales.

Just because my computer is now a pleasure to work with, easy to understand, and powerful enough for NASA, I could still see an HP or Dell somewhere in the future. In a public library or someplace.

The convenience, ease of use, and increased productivity of the Mac hadn't convinced me totally of The Fall.

The thing that clinched it, the one observation that pulled it all together, that last nail in the coffin was a little device that fits in the palm of my hand.

A technological marvel.

Like the penny in Somewhere in Time - Apple's Magic Mouse snapped every second from 1980 into the present. Boom, here it was, full circle.

The last item MSFT will see as it fades to black is the first object that set Apple apart:

The Apple (Magic) Mouse.

"Alas poor #MFST, we knew you well..."

"Oh, Canada" - The Symbols of Western Civilization Attacked.

“He was an awesome person,” Perron said. “He always had a smile on his face no matter what situation he was in.”

"You're doing good, you're doing good, buddy," he told Cirillo. "You're breathing -- keep breathing."

"You are loved. Your family loves you. You're a good man," she told him.

Unleashed Workers and the Paperless Office

It Was a Good Run: Paper and the Pony Express

The debate rages — is there, will there ever be, a paperless office? 

The politically correct response is, “no silly, it's less paper, not paperless.” My answer is the paperless office is already here and those who refuse to admit it are deniers. In the end, we’re all simply debating ourselves, expecting different results; academic insanity.

As I consider the denier position of print volume is increasing or holding steady, I wonder why HP is experiencing so many challenges and why did International Paper shuttered A4 paper-making plants? I can imagine many carriages and buggy whip manufacturers feeling the same way and expressing similar arguments the year automobiles started replacing horse-drawn carriages en masse: 1913.

Note: Buggy whips are actually a humane product used to lead horse-drawn buggies, making snapping noises to encourage them to speed up and not meant to ever touch or harm the horse.

Read more, here.

There was a time, long ago, when men rode horses, coffee was brewed and mail was delivered by hand.

Remembering is romantic and foretelling.

We stand at the precipice of the paperless age. Like the steam engine, postal stamps, cigarettes, and the horse, paper will be regarded with nostalgia and a twinkle in the eye as you tell your grandchildren how you once read email on a sliver of dead trees.

"Be Brave."

Three Ideas for Copier People Selling Managed Services

The move into managed services is well on its way and traditional copier reps are getting caught in the middle between selling boxes and selling services.  Pundits and consultants lament "copier people cannot sell managed services" unless they attend a day of specialized sales training.

It is true, I've seen plenty of managed services or IT sales destroyed by copier sales reps - from Cali to N.C. I've written about a couple of instances.

The thing is, for all the challenges and failures, the rep is not to blame. We train them to always be closing, find pain and twist, to hunt, take-down, close, trap and "increase share of wallet" - armed with this mentality, its a miracle anybody sells anything, let alone a nuanced offering like managed services.

So, as a copier rep, what can you do to secure more managed services contracts/agreements?  Should you heed your sales manager's advice and  treat help desk like a fax board?  Does your OEM offer any clues? How about a few days of off-site training followed up with a phone blitz?

"No...no...no..."