Friday, February 9, 2007
On the Road with Adam
I was just chatting with Randy Davidson of WhatTheyThink about new media and opportunities for using online video.
He pointed out Quick Printing magazine's Video Network. It's almost completely empty, but it looks like they have built a decent infrastructure to do some cool things.
This got me thinking about an idea I have been floating around about for a while: A cross-country video tour of the printing industry.
The idea would be to visit printers and vendors across the country and capture their story on video. Then turn them into a 30-45 min video blog entries. With 2 to 3 entries per week.
This industry has a rich history and there are many printers with humble beginings. Some started in a garage with a single color press serving the local town or village or they formed to meet the printing needs of a family or friends business. And years later they are multi-million dollar companies serving international clients.
Historical anecdotes alone would easily provide enough content. Add the current climate of rapid change, the adoption of new technology and processes, and you find a lot of printers doing some pretty creative things to meet the changing needs of their customers.
Randy says he will publish it, now I just need to find some financial backers. Anyone?
6 Comments
Great idea Adam. Sounds like an excellent project for one of the industry associations like PIA. They could use it as part of their outreach programs. Be sure to include me in if you get funding. Good luck.
Comment by Peter Renton - Friday, February 9, 2007 at 01:10 PM
That is a great idea. This would be something that an industry vendor or association should sponsor for sure. I would suggest maybe making the videos shorter and as an added bonus to a blog post or article, however. It seems like the sweet spot for online videos is somewhere around 7 minutes. The average YouTube video is 2.5 minutes. They could be longer than that, but I'd tend to think 45 minutes is way too long.
The other thing you could do to get funding is figure out what you'd need and start a fundable project for it and just throw it out there. I know the industry 'sphere is not as big as we'd like it, but it would be another good experiment - http://www.fundable.org
You'd also want to get volunteers to help with getting transcripts of all the videos made so the content is searchable.
Good luck with this. Hope to see it happen. On The Road with Adam Dewitz would indeed be cool...
Comment by Eric - Friday, February 9, 2007 at 03:22 PM
Pitching a to a single vendor would be one approach. But, I wouldn't want that to create an atmosphere of "Adam is only visiting companies that support vendor X."
As far as length goes: short can be sweeter. I don't think I would want set a length requirement. Some videos could be 7mins, some 19, and so on depending how exciting the topic is.
A blog component would definably be part of the mix.
Comment by Adam - Friday, February 9, 2007 at 03:33 PM
When I was with Consolidated Graphics, as their Director of Development I visited a great many of their companies. It takes a special kind of person, I think, to enjoy a printing plant, but I'm that kind of person.
I mean, let's face it, most shops aren't in the best spot in town, the buildings are a bit shabby, but my oh my, the characters you meet!
Comment by Thomas D. Greer - Friday, February 9, 2007 at 04:34 PM
Not all magazine's web sites are as devoid of video content as Quick Printing's site. Have you seen all the print industry videos produced by In-Plant Graphics?
Comment by Bob - Monday, February 12, 2007 at 03:25 PM
Bob, I wasn't aware of In-Planet's video selection. I just checked out a couple of the videos including the one shot in Rochester in December.
In-Planet definitely has the edge in adoption of new media technology: video, RSS, etc.
I did find the video to be a too little small. It would also be cool if they were shareable like YouTube.
Comment by Adam - Monday, February 12, 2007 at 04:35 PM