Stop and Go

Nobody likes stoplights. We understand at an intellectual level that they are a necessary evil to facilitate the smooth flow of traffic, but deep down you know they are targeting you in particular, right? They see you coming and they do what they were designed to do: they stop you.

I think they would be more popular if they saw their job as not to stop people, but to let them go. And since they are inanimate (or so they would have us believe) it is up to us to change their outlook. We need to stop calling them stop lights and begin referring to them as go lights. That way they will have a positive outlook, and feel they are fulfilling the destiny when they let the most people go through as opposed to the current state of affairs.

Sent from my iPad

Working from home

I've been working at home for a little over a year now, and I can tell you it is a mixed bag. On the one hand, you can't beat the convenience of being able to work whenever you want. However, it takes a great deal of self-control to get anything done, because the number of distractions is potentially limitless. Also, it is difficult to separate church and state, as it were.
It's also difficult to work on personal projects with a clear conscience. It used to be that I could work on Argos projects at the office and do personal stuff at home. Now they are the same place and for some reason it makes me feel hesitant to actually do anything - like I'm stealing time from the company.
Which is both true and false at a very basic level.
Right now there is no particularly viable option for working out of the house, but I'm still trying.

Edit - 9/1/11 - I've started using a VPN software to log into a client's remote server to update their Filemaker database. That means I can do basic changes and maintenance from home without making the fifteen minute drive to their office. It's really cool, but it seems to only exacerbate the whole isolation issue.

Being Busy

I just started a large project for a client, but one that involves more than just my labor. I have to direct the efforts of others. As I've mentioned previously, I'm not that good at that. It's just not something I do well without preparation and thought. So in addition to having a lot to do, I also have a lot to worry about.

Also, it means leaving the house during the day to be at the site where this work is occurring. Even when I had an office, my wife was always there with me. It's sort of odd to come home in the evening and see her for the first time that day (I leave the house by 6:45am). It feels odd to bellow "I'm home" without the irony of having seen each other all day.

We've started a diet, and being busy has kept me from straying. There is no readily available source for snacking at the job site, so I'm not having any problems with temptation, plus I'm not really sedentary for the majority of the day like I normally am. I lost 8lbs the first week (I know the first week's loss is always greater than later weeks, but it's hard not to see that as a good sign). I hope it's not setting me up for a false sense of facility with the whole thing. Only time will tell. The culmination of the current job involves a trip to Vegas for two weeks, and I'm not looking forward to the inevitable weight gain. Hopefully the stress and activity level will keep me from backsliding too far. But after the project is over, I'll have to start some sort of exercise program just to keep up.

It's an old axiom that if you want something done, give it to a busy person. Now I'm finding I am a busy person, and it's a little disconcerting. I had been teaching myself animation using Blender, and I had just started getting into it when the project landed. I'll have to reteach myself a lot of the basics all over again. And I had a project going with Filemaker that I will probably not be able to finish till it's all over. So much for relying on the busy person.

At the very least I'm sleeping well at night. I have to, what with getting up at 5:30. Still, I had the time to make this post, so what can I complain about?

Vacation

I recently went on vacation with my wife and a friend, and it was lovely. It was a very long weekend, full of diversion and conversation. It makes me kind of mad that I denied myself these things for so long in pursuit of a goal that was never really mine to begin with. There are several things I like about vacations, but oddly enough, getting away from work isn't really one of them. I like my work. Even so, vacations are great because they remove me from the embedded context of my life. You could restate that as 'pulling me out of my rut', but that has negative connotations I'm not really intending.

I probably exercise more on vacation simply by walking around than I ever do at home, so 'relaxing' isn't really the big draw. I tend to be a stress-free person, so stress relief isn't really it either. And while I did see some wonderful things and took a bunch of pictures, it couldn't honestly be called educational. We did nothing particularly extreme, and yet it was all memorable. Up until this last weekend I was honestly puzzled by what I felt I had gained by taking a long weekend, driving a total of over 15 hours, and spending lots of money during a recession. I didn't regret it, but some part of my brain that needs to analyze things just wasn't happy without a decent answer. And that answer was given when my sister-in-law stopped by for a brief visit with her three kids.

I don't have a lot of experience dealing with kids, and frankly I'm a little timid around them, afraid I'm going to knock them over or something. But as far as I can tell, these kids bounce pretty well, and by the time they left, I was feeling much more relaxed. But in all of that, the thing I noticed was that I couldn't withdraw into myself hardly at all. My wife and her sister did most of the actual care and feeding, all I did was make sure the DVD player was hooked up properly, and take photos where appropriate. But despite being evenly numbered (3 adults vs. 3 children), they took up all the available space in my attention. By the time they left, all I wanted to do was crawl into a book and hide, but it felt weird because I was suddenly focused on myself again. It brought into sharp relief something I've known for a while: I'm an essentially self-obsessed person. I'm even writing a blog without an audience, for god's sake. Without my wife, I would probably be a hermit.

After four years of design school, I feel I can take criticism pretty well. When I realized I was allowing myself to fall into bad habits of un-involvement and disengagement, I took it as a clue to work on change. And that is what my previous vacation provided as well. It's like stepping out of my house and noticing that it's a beautiful day. That the neighbors I've been steadfastly ignoring are waving at me as they walk the dogs. It's an opening up of my awareness to the larger world. And for a few moments I blink in the bright sun shine and tentatively wave my hand, then walk back in and close the door. But it is good to be reminded they're out there.

Social Networking

I'm still new at the whole social networking thing. I only joined Plaxo at someone's advice as a simple way to transfer contacts from one program to another. Then Linkedin, which I'm still not really using to any real benefit. Just the other day I joined up with Facebook, and I was pleasantly surprised - a lot of my old friends are already on, and while I'm not exactly having big conversations with them, it is nice to hear from them from time to time. Even the trivial data about what they're doing is a pleasant buzz of familiarity.

It made me think about what I'm trying to accomplish here. Most of these entries are far too long to be palatable. If this were a regular blog, trying to attract readers, I'd have to be much more brief and update much more often. When I look at my "wall" in Facebook, it reminds me of the things I've heard about Twitter - short missives during the day, with occasional links so people can follow them. It's an entirely different experience, and I find I like it. When I first heard about it I assumed it would be a constant distraction, much like the proliferation of RSS feeds I compulsively follow now. But in many ways, it is less distracting, and more immediate, because these are people that I already have some connection with.

Now keep in mind that I am essentially a self-centered person. I can tune out the world pretty thoroughly. This was a real handicap in running a business, but not when I'm working for myself. As long as I can keep off the web, I can get a lot done. The big downside is that I rarely think to reach out to people, even people I like. Very out-of-sight, out-of-mind. It also means that the thoughts percolating in my head are very self-referential, and I let them perc till they are fairly bursting. This results in few but long-winded blog posts, rather like this one. So I'm wondering if the social outlet of Facebook will let me 'bleed off' my ideas, and mix them more with those of my peers.

Coffee anologies aside, I am, tentatively, a convert to this new media. Whether that will result in more or fewer posts here has yet to be shown.

Trade shows must evolve

I just recently got back from a job in Vegas, setting up a trade show display for a client. I had a local union laborer there to help me with the heavy lifting, and we got it done within budget, with a happy client. By any standards, it all went well. But there were a lot of small things that made me think that trade shows, at least the big ones, are on the way out.

Now, keep in mind, I've been involved in designing, building, installing and maintaining tradeshow booths for clients for the last twenty odd years. I've been to just about all of the big Tradeshow cities at one time or another. The economy has gone up and down, and will go up and down again and again. But there were some signs that things are coming to a head in this industry. For tradeshow people, a lot of what I say will seem simplified, but the teeming millions that read this might not be as informed.

These are small things, as I said. Any one of them would barely have registered on me in the normal course of things. The first was the freight. We shipped to the advance warehouse. The big advantage of the advance warehouse is that when the schedule says you can start setting up at 8 in the morning, you go in at 8 and your freight is there, on the floor. If you had shipped direct, 8 would be the earliest possible time they would unload your truck, which means you might get it at 8:05, you might get it at 10, 12, 5, you never know. But we had gone to Advance - we were good. Not only that, but my labor company had checked on it the day before, and the freight desk had said they would get to it that evening. When I got to my booth, there was no freight. It was 7:30, so I wandered to the freight desk and asked when I'd get my stuff. I was told it was in a truck being unloaded, 45 minutes, tops. My labor shows up at 8 and I tell them to stick around, we'll be able to start any moment. at 8:45 I go over to the desk and ask again. They say it will be any minute. At 10:15 I get my first bit of freight. I've paid my guy for over two hours for nothing. Well I've been in the business for a while, being lied to by union people is something I'm used to. But when I go to complain, they try to tell me that Advance works that way. The start time is when they start bringing stuff in. I should be grateful I got stuff in that morning. They later admitted lying on that point, but by that time, they had lied about enough things that I wasn't interested in what they had to say.

To make a long story short, similar things happened with electrical, and with the pipe and drape people. And they all were similarly dismissive - being screwed is how it is supposed to work, just put your face in the pillow and think of England. This is now a standard operating procedure: Lie, and if they call you on it, say that it's always like that. It was system wide, and showed a contempt for the exhibitor that this industry just can't afford.

Now, as I said, we still got everything done. The client was happy with the job I did. But the show was about 65% of what it had been the year before. All of my clients are pulling back. But those numbers are heavily tied to the economy, and the economy will turn around. Eventually. I'm confident it will. Any day now.

But by that time, will people really want to go through the truly monumental and growing inconvenience for these shows? What about virtual meetings, teleconferences, and smaller venues? Short answer will be yes and no. There will always be a need for face-to-face meeting, for hands on demos of products, for socializing with your peers. But will those needs be met by trade shows? Or are there more accessible, more convenient, and ultimately more profitable methods? If an exhibitor spends 60k on one show, would that more profitably be spent in online, possibly viral, marketing backed up by a more decentralized and mobile sales force? Or even inviting all their customers to a big party? I should note that most of my clients have been talking of downsizing their shows for years now. Maybe now is a good time. Maybe someone with a great out of the box idea for getting people together will find a way to capitalize on this.

My point is this - trade shows are enormous beasts. They are one of the first things to be trimmed when the budget shears come out. No one I know really likes doing them - that's why they hire me to handle all the details. Almost all the talk I hear about economic growth is not in heavy industry but in ideas, software, the sciences, things that don't require a lot of hands on, with personel who are already intenet savvy, so online meetings will grow. If we get socialized healthcare, a lot of small business are going to spring up, and they will mostly be going to smaller local shows. The field is changing, and the dinosaurs need to evolve. How can I sell a client on a big trade show booth production when everywhere I turn, people are trying to make the experience as difficult and torturous as possible?

Long time no see

I've been feeling really guilty about not posting more regularly. Previous posts were from thoughts I had had previous to starting this thing up, and I was worrying that I just wasn't having good enough thoughts any more. Nothing of great intrinsic value, anyway.

Then I started looking at other blogs and realized that mostly they're about things other people have bumped into and found, rather than what they have created. I'm not sure if that's what I'm going to do, but perhaps I shouldn't feel too guilty about not being deep and meaningful at least once a week.

I've also wanted to start doing several projects, pulling my limited time in a bunch of different directions. The only thing stopping me is that I am afraid that I will suck at any and all of them. It's a common problem with the beginning of any project and is hardly worth the effort to mention it. This is a variant of why I'm not blogging as often as I have in the past - fear of not being as great as I think I should be.

But the closing of the woodshop has in several ways liberated me. I've already 'failed' at something big and important. Sure, it was a qualified failure, and it has left me in a better position, and I wonder at times why I bothered - but it feels like a failure all the same. And yet I survive. I haven't really lost any clients through this. I've lost a lot of obligations. It's like the first time you take a shot to the nose: it hurts, but not as bad as you imagined. And after that, a fist isn't as frightening.

Secondly, now I have more time to consider what else I might do. Before, any time not spent on work was potentially cheating not just myself, but a number of employees who depended on me. So any personal work of any real scope was tainted with guilt. I could sketch, but I couldn't draw - not really. The time it takes to finish a drawing was too self-indulgent compared to the needs of the company. So not only do I have more free time, but that time is entirely my own. I don't have to validate it to anyone except maybe my wife, and she is very supportive. It may be illusory, but it feels like I'm getting more done in the last two months than I had in the previous year.

And lastly, it has provided a better sense of scope. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, I was feeling guilty about not posting, and worried about the quality of my posts. But frankly, as far as I can tell, no one reads any of this, so I can spout gibberish and it wouldn't matter. It's essentially a journal meant for me, to put down recurring thoughts that I want to record but have no other forum for. It's a vain hope that in a decade I'll look back and think I wasn't a complete couch potato. It isn't obvious how losing the shop ties in with that, but I'll try to explain. Toward the end, as things were becoming more and more of a struggle, my dreams about expanding the business were overshadowed by concerns for just keeping it going. The future looked bleaker and bleaker, and only a gordian solution kept us out of eventual bankruptcy. My previous optimism had been replaced by a sense of overwhelming pessimism and I was becoming more cynical and serious. But now I am feeling a dawning optimism again. My wife has noted it as well, in terms of my joking around more and generally being more outgoing and social. This blog is something of a reflection of that. But so is my failure to regularly post - because I'm picking up a lot of those scattered and abandoned projects and dusting them off. So dear imaginary reader, please forgive my tardiness. I have other things to do, places to be, people to see. And I wouldn't want it any other way.