Print something lately?

Let me paint you a picture! I’m en route to a venue where I am the key note speaker. All 60 of my hard copy hand outs were back at the office underneath my memory stick. <yeah, I know>. At 120km an hr on the QEW <give or take 20> I realize this fact and immediately go into WTF mode. I found a shop that does on the spot printing… and one that would use their memory stick to get the file off my laptop. This is a 5pg color handout x 60 copies.

Tickled pink at my genius for solving this en route and with time to spare I check the first copy that comes off the printer and say – cool! Looks good! How much for all of them?

THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS! I politely declined, retreated to my car where I f-bombed up a friggin storm and then decided green is the way to go… I’ll simply email them a pdf after the fact!

But my point is this… given where we are today and where the evolution appears to be taking us… how can on the spot printers evolve with the rest of us?

Remember – the Chinese symbol for crisis involves two characters. 1 stands for danger, the other stands for opportunity. Pronounced ‘wei ji’.

So you can kind of have your very own newspaper . This newspaper would  contain the feeds from all the sites you currently frequent. You have accounts with Twitter, Blogger, WordPress, Digg… and more. Go to Genwi.com – enter your username for each of your accounts and Genwi will allow you to aggregate all your feeds into your very own newspaper.

If we can set up information to flow to us… what happens to the need to search? What happens to <as George Dubyah would say> The Google?

Alright… Can we have a moment of silence for Time Inc. ? 60 seconds… c’mon count em’!

You and I have both been hearing the anxious cries about the end of the printed word. The end of printed news, magazines, books, blah blah frigging blah!

Read full story here…  http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-made-to-order-magazine,0,7970503.story

People… this may be the end of the way we used to do things but it by no means equals extinction! Take four steps back… stop panicking, take a deep breath and embrace the fact that you’re in the midst of an evolution – poised for great things.. Shift your focus to evolution and you’ll be on your way to create your very own Time Inc.

Isnt’ there a radio ad that reminds us what communication would be like if it hadn’t advanced beyone the ol’ tin can and string… we didn’t kill communication with the cell phone - we just made it better. Technology doesn’t have to mean grave yards and tomb stones for some … it could just as easily mean sky scrapers and trump towers.

Time Inc. gets my respect for this cool little venture. What is keeping you up at night? Flip me a note… we should talk.