The No-Lesson Blog

This is a true story I used to tell my seminar attendees when the subject was digital printing. There is no lesson to it. It’s just a great story…

The year was 1998, and I was in Sydney, Australia, along with my mom. I had a chance to go there for the second time in 18 months and bringing her was, in my father's words, the highlight of the second half of her life.

It was a magnificent 10-day trip.

We were in our hotel room when I received an email from a client back home. They wanted 10 jewel case covers for a software beta. A PDF was attached.

As I wrote up the order and prepared to send it to an Indigo press down in the Atlanta area (there weren’t that many back then), a follow-up email came in with some changes from the corporate office in Denmark.

Now, as I said, this was 1998 and not a lot of people could manipulate PDF files. The standard practice was to go back to the original software, make changes, and then output a new PDF. I did not have the time to do that since the Denmark office had already closed.

A friend of mine in Denver, David Heitman, was way out ahead of everybody else technology-wise. I emailed him and asked if he could help.

He could.

So, I sent him the file along with the changes. David did his thing and we sent proofs to the client in Boston for approval. Once that was done, he sent the file to Jeff Prettyman, in Atlanta, whose company produced the piece, did the cutting, and FedEx’ed the finished product to the client back in Boston.

My mom was leaning over my shoulder and she asked what I was doing. I recapped the situation: Denmark to Melbourne to Denver to Atlanta to Boston. All in one day.

In 1998, this was a mind-blowing transaction.

Two punchlines to this story.

First, the slowest part of the process was FedEx. After all, they took all night to deliver the job.

Second, the client balked at the price. It was only when I explained what just happened that they begrudgingly paid my invoice.

Incredible. All around.

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