Laura Arber

This morning I attended the Dayton Marketing Community Big Idea Breakfast. What is a Big Idea Breakfast? It’s a casual format breakfast where speakers talk about their ‘big idea’ for 5 minutes and then have a 10-minute discussion.

Today’s event featured 5 speakers:

• Peter Benkendorf, Dying City Symposium – Peter is organizing an innovation symposium based on the Forbes magazine article that cited Dayton as one of the fastest dying cities in America. The Big Idea is to invite other Ohio cities that were on the dying list. The symposium is planned for August 7–9.
• Alan See, Austin Pike Interchange Twitter Page – Alan’s Big Idea is to use the Twitter page to promote the new Austin Pike economic development area. See Twitter.com/AustinPike_I75
• Coach Steve White, Host Beneficiary - Coach suggests that two businesses can work together to benefit each other and grow their businesses.
• Scott Hull, Visual Ambassador – Scott says we are forced to be normal … Mainstream thinking is to provide good enough solutions at a low price. Instead, he wants us to see a link between art and commerce. More information at www.visualambassador.com
• David Esrati, Bcycle – David introduced an affordable way to get around town that is healthy and clean for the environment. More information at Bcycle.com

Thank you to the speakers for the taking the time to share their ideas with us.

It was a great way to start the day … positive people talking about new ideas. My favorite idea is the dying city symposium. What’s your favorite?

Bing’s been buzzing with publication work, as we just wrapped up three significant print projects at the same time:

• Wittenberg Magazine for Wittenberg University and its alumni
  
• Dayton Children’s Growing Together newsletter
• Graceworks Lutheran Services’ 2008 Annual Report

What does it take get three projects out the door all at once? Team work.

We’re lucky to have people who are willing to work hard, do things outside their normal scope, and still keep up with projects for other clients.

Because we’re a small agency, this means that everyone wears multiple hats and learns to become a master juggler. For example, some of the things the team did (outside their normal job “scope”):

• Picked-up and dropped-off proofs
• Re-arranged personal appointments
• Designed pages and reviewed proofs while holding a brand new baby

Working for a small agency with a busy workload requires all of our staff to have patience and flexibility – one day I reassigned a job four times.

In the end, I am happy to say, all projects were completed on-time and to the satisfaction of our clients.

This month’s Dayton Defense Association featured the Wright Image Group.  They are promoting the adoption of the Wright Flyer as a single, easily identified symbol … an icon.

They are proposing to place a monument at the intersection of I-70 and I- 75 to give the Dayton area an instantly- and internationally-recognizable symbol.  The structure will have 120′ wingspan and sit atop a pedestal 220′ high.

To see an architect’s replica of the airplane check out the Wright Image Group’s site.

What do you think?

During our weekly staff meetings, Bingers are encouraged to share any professional development they’ve accomplished over the past week in order to sharpen their talents. Here’s a snippet of some of our recent skills shared:

Joyce Jones:

You can add a background to a PDF in Acrobat, and set that background to appear only when printing, only onscreen, or both. Here’s how: Choose Document > Background, select a color from the color picker, or browse to a file you want to insert as a background, and set its opacity, scale and position. Then click Appearance Options in the Appearance area of the dialog box. There, you can control whether the background appears on screen, when printing, or both. The possible uses for this are mind-boggling.

Laura Arber:

It always amazes me when you start researching or learning about something, the more you realize how much it is already being used around you. I started looking at digital publications last week and have noticed them everywhere, including in my Zappo’s e-newsletter. Same thing with the book Twilight; my sister told me to read it, and now it seems everyone I know is reading it. This week, I learned that it’s always fun to learn.

Joe Gauder:

I attended Updayton’s Young Creatives Summit and realized how effective collaboration can be, given the right tools. It was good to see a significant turnout that genuinely cared about the future of Dayton. It’s time to work together and show how innovative and creative we can be at making Dayton the best possible place to attract and retain creative talent and generate some active growth.

Roger Starnes:

Being “off” on vacation allows time to focus on family and one’s self. It is very beneficial for one’s sanity! The hectic times we are in due to market conditions and the volatility of business can eat a person up, just trying to keep up. Those of us with homes, young children to tend to, a spouse, responsibilities at church, bills and such, find that too much pressure can really be harmful. This reflects on your attitude and your ability to be creative.

Melissa Blevins:

I attended a webinar on how to build a persuasive business case for marketing initiatives. When building the case, keep in mind the goal is NOT perfection (a difficult idea for creatives to swallow, I realize). Instead, you should try to demonstrate thoughtfulness and comprehensiveness. Use tangible measures and data whenever possible – and get stakeholder buy-in on the numbers in advance. Better yet, get your data directly from the stakeholders (finance, accounting, etc.).

Angela Brown:

In researching a problem for a client, I found that JPEGs that are emailed from Mac to PC users can become corrupted. These corrupted files will give the error “No Preview Available” when the PC user tries to open it. This problem can be corrected by zipping the JPEG before emailing it.

Joy Sutton:

I’ve been razzed by family and friends about compulsively checking my BlackBerry for new texts and emails, and I’m also guilty of checking Facebook or the latest news headlines on my mobile even in the middle of conversations with real live people. This week I learned that there’s a term for this type of behavior — infomania. I guess it’s time to seek help!

Nick Gaskins:

I’ve been investigating PDF SEO best practices with Joe’s help. Learning this is a big field with lots of places to make improvements. Should have some good implications for our clients who post lots of PDF files in hopes of making them easily findable, crawlable, searchable. Overall, we’re learning how critical it is to invest more time in developing a structured approach to clearly written content with appropriately hard-hitting tags.

Holly Shannon:

When moving a Binger from a MacBook to a Mac tower, applications and user data moved over easily, but the migration of e-mail data proved a bit more challenging. In order to successfully retain all e-mails, contacts, addresses, mail rules, and signature files, I came up with an easy process:

1. Prepare Apple Mail data by filing all e-mail located in the Inbox. (Mail left in the Inbox at the time of migration will not transfer into Entourage correctly)
2. Backup your current Mail database located in user/Library/Mail.
3. Copy the entire Apple Mail folder to the new machine (replacing the default Mail folder) either using target mode or zipping the folder and moving via external thumb drive.
4. Launch Entourage 2008.
5. Since Entourage has never opened before, an option to import will start – Choose Apple Mail.
6. Select all items EXCEPT for Accounts.
7. The importing will begin and you should see all folders, messages, signatures and rules successfully populate in Entourage.

Okay, maybe we are Google fanatics?

In addition to using Google Calendar, we are prolific users of Google Docs (or “G docs”). G docs are part of the Google Apps suite. We maintain G docs for all sorts of things – ranging from what to order for lunch to proposal writing.

G docs are great for:

• Meeting notes & Agendas
• Proposal drafts – or any document that requires collaboration
• Spreadsheets
• Ideation or brainstorming documents
• Contact lists

We like G docs because:

• They are easy to use. They are very similar to Microsoft Word and you only need an Internet connection to access them (vs having to pull documents from a server or Share Point).
• They allow real-time collaboration. During meetings you can update notes or you can co-author items with another writer in real time.
• They reduce email. You can share documents without having to constantly send attachments and keep track of which one is most up-to-date.
• They track revisions. You can see who edited what – and when they did it. And if you don’t like their changes, you can revert to a previous version in just a click.
• They can be archived. When a project is complete, you can export G docs in a variety of common file formats (like Word, PDF or text) and archive the document with the project.
• They are free. This is the most amazing part (and it makes me look like a hero on my boss’ eyes).

Google Gears allows for offline access of the documents (but not spreadsheets). So, you can edit the document offline and when you log back on, the edits synch up. We also back-up G docs using a Google Download Script.

If you’re interested in seeing other applications for Google Docs – check this out:

You can use Google Docs to share and manage your NCAA basketball pool.  Other user examples include the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Red Sox fans.